The Kindly Maid and Her Friend Remington

Chayson, the spy playing Nina's uncle, and Natalisha, the spy playing her aunt, were in the middle of sweeping Rikita Bones's townhouse for secrets — secrets that lurked in every corner, still waiting to be uncovered. Now that Nina, Rikita's granddaughter, had moved in, not a single day could be wasted.

Katahari, cast as Nina's older sister, had taken the roof and the townhouse's outer walls, while Exi, playing the older brother, was tasked with searching Rikita's room. Yet ever since a while ago, only two signals had been flickering back and forth across the beacon devices the team used to check in at regular intervals.

Katahari and Exi had gone silent.

Chayson and Natalisha, who had been searching the first floor and the basement respectively, sensed that something was wrong and met in the dark lobby.

"No word from either of them. Don't tell me my beacon's broken?"

"Mine's the same. Something must have happened on the roof and the second floor."

Chayson smacked his beacon device against his leg a few times, but no response came from Katahari or Exi.

Creeeak.

In that instant, a faint noise drifted out of the darkness.

"……!"

Natalisha flinched, spun through a full aerial somersault out of her standing position, drew her pistol before her feet even touched the floor, and landed light as a feather.

Chayson, pulling out a long portable bomb to match, squinted at the shape emerging from the darkness — and froze, utterly nonplussed.

"……What is that?"

"A maid's uniform? Not a person, though. A machine?"

Natalisha studied the unidentified entity with razor-sharp eyes. It was a mechanical clockwork doll, gliding toward them on rolling wheels like something skating across the floor, trailing a long maid's dress that brushed the ground — before gliding to a stop.

Its gears turned slowly, emitting small ticking noises. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

The two held their tension, glaring at the clockwork doll with the coiled readiness to strike at any moment. Whereupon the doll — stitched together out of sheet metal and utterly expressionless — moved only its mouth.

「Hel-lo there? I am the kind and gentle maid of this house. Whenever a problem arises in this home, my friend Remington steps in to teach the troublemakers a les-son.」

"The broom's name is Remington? How grandiose."

At Natalisha's remark, Chayson shot her an exasperated glance.

"Is the broom's name really what matters right now? Soltum is a free nation, sure, but since when do we have maids?"

"……!"

Both their gazes snapped back to the mysterious clockwork doll.

「Ah. Yes. Quite. Right. I am not a maid, merely a household servant. I was hired at a fair wage, you see. Being made of machine, I'm quite du-rable.」

The doll clasped its hands together, then spread them wide in a flourish. For a brief moment, something like glowing blue circuitry was visible inside the sleeves of the maid's dress.

Chayson clicked his tongue, as if he'd known it all along.

"A magitech device after all? This house really does collect all manner of oddities. It's eerie and unsettling, so I'm finding every last one of them and switching them off."

"Good idea. I don't care where it was stashed away before it came rolling out, but it's giving me a bad feeling."

Natalisha agreed and began advancing on the clockwork doll one measured step at a time. At that moment, the doll — which had been standing perfectly still — tilted its head with a creak and looked up at her. When she faltered under that inexplicably chilling stare, it rotated its head toward Chayson instead.

「What very bo-ring guests you are. Keep this up, and Remington will get very, very angry. And do you know what happens then? Things. Get. Ugly.」

"Waving a broom around and spouting nonsense……. Wait. Remington? Why does that sound familiar."

As Chayson grumbled and rifled through his memory, struck by a nagging sense of déjà vu, Natalisha murmured in dawning horror, her face a portrait of surely not.

"Remington? You don't mean the Remington. As in Holich's pride and joy, that Remington?"

The instant the words left her mouth, the clockwork doll's eyeballs swiveled toward her with a sharp click!

「Your instincts are im-pec-cable. Unfortunately, I dislike intruders with quick eyes. From this moment, the Remington 17400 will be administering your pun-ish-ment. Read-y. Fire.」

With that, it leveled at Chayson the broom whose bristles it had just cast aside.

Clack.

Chayson hurled himself sideways in blank disbelief.

BANG!

CRASH!

The spot where he had been standing shattered into splinters under the hail of incoming shot.

Natalisha's face drained white as she darted behind a cabinet.

"Insane. Why does a clockwork doll have a double-barrel shotgun……!"

It was the Remington 17400 — a shotgun intimately familiar to her, born and raised in Holich, the continent's great firearms power.

Clack. BANG!

Clack. BANG!

「Ladies and gentlemen. Are you watching? Behold the fire-power of the Remington. In-tense, no?」

Eyes gleaming like some instrument of slaughter, the clockwork doll hunted the two of them through the dark.

"Damn it! When did the stairs to the second floor and basement get sealed off?!"

"The door! Get the door open — we're going out!"

Natalisha threw her shoulder against the townhouse's front door, trying to burst it open, and went sprawling. Iron bars had been bolted over what, until moments ago, had been a thick wooden door.

"Ugh, for crying out loud. The front door's sealed too."

"Here! Through the window!"

Chayson spotted a window that hadn't been locked yet.

Clack. BANG!

The two of them just barely dodged the spraying gunfire and hurled themselves out into the night. The clockwork doll that had been chasing them stood at the windowsill and gave a stiff, jerky wave of its arm.

「Dear intruders. Good-bye now. At your skill level, this one's a loss. Good. Game.」

Then it clattered about briskly, repairing the floor it had shot to pieces, and slid smoothly back into the darkness.

Meanwhile, Nina — the moment she had pressed the intruder-repellent button, a steel wall had descended from the ceiling and sealed her inside Rikita Bones's room.

What on earth is going on? Is this a wall to protect me from intruders? I can't hear a single sound from outside.

Perhaps the steel wall came with soundproofing built in, because the silence around her was so complete it felt as though she were the last person left in the world. Glowing blue circuits ran along its surface in intricate lines — the wall itself seemed to be a magitech device.

I've never seen a magitech device this big inside a house before. Even the count's estate didn't have anything like this.

Nina marveled as she ran her fingers over the baffling wall. Magitech devices were objects of every description built from mana stones — minerals infused with magical power — and because mana stone refining allowed for such freedom of design, they found use in countless fields. Crafting a magitech device large enough to wall off a room for one's personal protection was something only the enormously wealthy could manage, even in the Kingdom of Ilite.

Then the red light on the button Nina had pressed flicked off with a tick. The steel wall that had descended along the room hummed back up toward the ceiling.

Oh! Did it find the intruder?

Curious, she tilted her head and cracked the door open. It was terribly quiet. Reassured, Nina scampered up the stairs and back to her own room.

The corridor was calm, the landing tranquil — as if nothing at all had happened. But when she set her pillow down on the bed, a commotion drifted in from the balcony.

Goodness! So there really was a thief?! Did the intruders get away?!

Afire with curiosity and fear alike, Nina lowered herself into a crouch and crept out onto the balcony on hands and knees — then went wide-eyed at the utterly unexpected people she found there.

"Oh my? Katahari? What are you doing out there? And Aunt Natalisha and Uncle Chayson are here too?"

The cluster of Nina's "relatives" gathered outside the townhouse flinched and looked up. Fearing they might somehow fail to recognize her, Nina waved and beamed brightly.

"It's me. Nina."

"R-right. Of course. It's Nina."

Chayson nudged the scanner he'd left lying on the ground with his toe, kicking it into hiding among the bushes. A muffled thud sounded from inside the shrubbery, but nobody paid it any mind.

Bewildered by the state of them, Nina leaned over the railing.

"Why is everyone outside? And I don't see Exi anywhere?"

Katahari, rubbing her shoulder like someone who had slept badly, shot a furtive glance at the bushes.

"It's nothing. Something started making a racket out of nowhere — don't ask me what — so we came out to look. Exi's…… probably just sleeping deeply."

"Oh! I pressed the intruder-repellent button!"

Nina scratched her head with an embarrassed smile.

"I thought I heard a strange noise, and I was worried a burglar had broken in. Turns out it was nothing, and I went and woke everyone up. Sorry!"

"……The intruder-repellent button?"

As Natalisha muttered it with an exhausted face, Nina nodded along energetically.

"Yes! Grandmother had one prepared, of all things. Did none of you know? I've no idea where she got such a magitech device, but it makes me feel wonderfully safe."

At the girl's bubbly reply, Chayson shut his eyes tight and answered through clenched teeth.

"……Right. Wonderfully safe indeed."

Natalisha and Katahari, too, quietly balled their fists and ground their molars.

The next morning, seated at the dining room table eating breakfast with the family, Nina gazed worriedly at Exi's still-empty chair.

"Is Exi feeling unwell? He still hasn't come down for breakfast."

Katahari, spreading butter on her bread, answered with a strained curl at the corner of her mouth.

"Exi's apparently still asleep."

"Oh! I suppose Exi is just a heavy sleeper?"

"No. That boy used to have his eyes open by five o'clock sharp. Now he's out cold like someone hit him with a sleep needle."