All jokes aside, the house did have a spare room. It wasn’t furnished as a guest room, but it did have a closet and that was pretty much all it needed to be used as one after Tanya used one of her wands to resolve that deficiency. As she had packed up everything she left in Mizuki’s place due to the possibility she would not be returning, it was simple enough to unload everything and change out of the Dress With Pockets into clothing more suitable for wearing around the house.

“I missed the shopping trip?” Mother asked when she realized that Tanya had bought her yukata earlier that day.

“...Sorry.” Tanya said after thinking about it. “I just needed new duds.” She winced, realizing that she used Erf slang again. “I mean, I just needed clothes that didn’t make me look like I’m cosplaying.” Not looking like a tourist was pretty much impossible, just from her hair and face, but there was a difference between being a foreign girl and being a weeaboo otaku. “Now, I noticed that you have wifi now, so I set up the laptop I bought to download and update. So the internet’s probably going to be slow for the rest of the night.”

“Psh. I barely use it anyway.” Mother said, waving it off. “Come watch TV.”

As it was the Golden Hour of programming, the most popular shows were on. Mother favored the variety shows, although she couldn’t decide on her favorite. It wasn’t until Tanya had interacted with online friends that she really realized how strange some of the skits and games in those shows were; apparently Janapese TV was famous internationally for some of the content from those shows, particularly the parts where pain challenges and such were done.

But as the name suggests, they are variety shows. There’s plenty of other content, like comedians doing a bit, some cheesy skits, etcetera. So that ate up a few hours, laughing, relaxing… good times.

Afterwards was when the late night news programs came on, and apparently… She really should have been paying more attention to that video.

“While the mysterious ‘Mahou-chan’ and her arrival could have been faked, if we look just at the video, the supplemental videos showing the girl walking the streets of Tokyo prove that, at the very least, she is real.” The ‘Dr. Kaku’ on the television explained, “Furthermore, if there was some kind of trickery, it is clear that the train station was not in on it, and there is no evidence of any kind of tampering on the security cameras. One second, no Mahou-chan. The next? Mahou-chan.”

“The second after? Panicked fleeing before she gets crushed by a train.” The host added. Tanya growled at the reminder. Seriously, why didn’t the Arkenshoes put her somewhere more convenient? She sent a glare towards her room, as she had cleaned them up and moved them there to reduce the odds of something happening to them. “So Doctor, what about the flight?”

“I’ve run the numbers on how strong she’d have to be to jump that distance.” Dr. Kaku said, “Standing jump, five meters away, one and a quarter meters straight up, that breaks the standing long jump record by about two meters, and while it wouldn’t break the standing high jump, it would strain it.” He looked uncomfortable with this next bit, but continued: “An exact figure of how much stronger she would need to be is impossible, of course, given surprise presumably reducing the distance and adrenaline increasing it, but five to ten times as strong as she should be is in the right ballpark.” Tanya spent a few motes of juice to crunch the numbers. As she expected, a normal scout warlord without flight had a chance of making that jump… but could only do so when avoiding a sufficiently large hazard or area effect magic, such as that train. In the case of that train and her level? 40% chance to completely avoid damage, which would be the necessary level of success to make that jump. Because of her higher-than-normal Move and flight, the odds of her avoiding damage was 90%. She could make the calculation with normal physics, but she’d need to pose it as a hypothetical and couldn’t use shorthands like ‘level 10 warlord’, which meant she’d need to do some research in order to figure out the capabilities of a normal human, or at least find a reference person she could use Analysis on.

“It didn’t look like a jump.” The host said, bringing up a graphic that had her at the conclusion of her movement spliced with the start, and a distinctly non-parabolic line drawn between them.

“That was also the conclusion that was drawn.” Dr. Kaku replied, “Her motion, when analyzed frame-by-frame, did not follow Newtonian models. That does not necessarily mean she can fly, but it is strong evidence that something strange is going on.”

Mother looked over to Tanya. “You nearly got hit by a train?” She asked, before realizing the awkwardness of the statement. “Uh… You can fly?” She asked instead.

Tanya sighed and floated upwards, rotating upside down before answering: “Yes.” Then completed the rotation and settled back down. Unfortunately, unlike in Erf her hair did not accommodate that movement, and she had to immediately start tending to the massive strands so they did not become a disaster zone. Mother helped, of course. “Booping gravity.” Tanya muttered.

The TV interview continued: “What do you think of some claims that Mahou-chan is coming back from her isekai adventure?” The host asked.

“I think some kids watch too much anime.” Dr. Kaku replied, “Most train stations have had at least one person die at some point in their history, the fact that this one had that happen is irrelevant.”

Tanya took the remote and changed the channel to… some kind of seinen anime. “Honestly…” Tanya said angrily. “People will believe anything nowadays.”

“Well, you really did come back, son.” Father pointed out, “So you can’t really complain that they’re right.”

“Sure I can.” Tanya asserted, “Wild guesses being correct doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid wild guesses.”

Despite the annoying video (which now had fifty million views) and its domination of the news programs, Tanya still got to enjoy a quiet evening with her parents before going to bed. She did burn the rest of her juice on growing potatoes on a patch of dirt, then turning them into french fries with her cooking wand (to show off the massive pile of them, mostly), and then promptly turned them into shmuckers to give a small boost to the treasury. As she hadn’t spent much juice but still spent a decent amount of it, she got about fifteen thousand shmuckers out of the deal.

---------------------------

Surprisingly, the next day didn’t include another message from Maggie. This was good, because it meant that Maggie didn’t see the need to get an update every turn. She had found a website that allowed her to legally and safely sell her gold directly to the people who invest in it, and spent the morning having Grandfather help her set up a bank account she can use, addressed properly to her home, and transferred the money from the account Mizuki helped her set up to there. Helpfully, the bank also had the facilities to authenticate her gold, which meant the four bars she had produced now legally existed as two kilograms of 24 karat gold, although they got some strange looks from Tanya’s bald-faced lie that she melted and cast the bars herself from a much larger but less pure old figurine, positively gushing as she bragged about her ‘goldsmithing hobby’. It was still a small enough amount that it was barely plausible, but Tanya could see the exact moment when the bank employees decided that it was not their problem.

Grandfather was still occasionally chuckling when they stopped for lunch. “They bought that story about the statue so easily.” He said, “You’ve gotten really good at acting, boy.”

“Illusions require a keen understanding of how other people see the world.” Tanya said between bites of sushi. “I gave them the pieces: a young girl who thought nothing of dealing with twelve million yen’s worth of gold, a mysterious old man that’s handling the money, and a story that allowed them to connect those two data points.” She shrugged, “The story didn’t need to hold up, because the tellers would fill in the blanks for us. The girl’s clearly rich. The old man owned the statue, and because gold prices are up he wants to cash in.” She waves her hand vaguely. “Etcetera, etcetera. They might think we’re some Yakuza patsies, but they’re not gonna do anything about it immediately.”

“True, true.” Grandfather said, “Now, what do you say we make a visit to the old dojo? Kuno-san’s great grandson has gotten arrogant with all that talent of his, and I’d like to see him humbled.”

“I’d love to.” Tanya replied, popping the last piece of sushi into her mouth. It didn’t do much for her upkeep, but she still had quite a few Rands to cover that so it wasn’t yet a concern.

The dojo that Tanya learned kendo in was run by an old friend of Grandfather’s, apparently they both trained under the same Master and had even had a match to inherit it, as the old Master had lost his heirs during the Korean War during a minesweeping incident. The men were practically brothers, and Tanya distinctly recalled Kuno’s grandson to be an unstoppable force on the kendo field. That wasn’t to say that she never beat the other boy, but in the end, Tanya just couldn’t keep up.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The dojo seemed much the same as before; it was maintained to keep the same aesthetic of life before foreign influence. Grandfather had called ahead; there was a line of disciples sitting in seiza, both the ancient master and his disciple, who appeared to be… fifteen? She had him pegged as either in his last year of middle school or his first year of high school.

Kuno-shihan stroked his lengthy but thin beard as he looked at Tanya. For her, this was a bit of an impulse action, so she wasn’t dressed properly for the occasion: she was wearing a simple sundress and a straw hat to keep off the sun, unarmed with her crown and wand stashed in her purse. To prevent people from connecting her to ‘Mahou-chan’, she had tied her hair up in a pair of side-buns, as very few people could mentally connect just how compact one could make hair.

[Tate]

Combat: 2 (unarmed)

Defense: 6

Hits: 13

Her opponent was the equivalent of a level one knight, which was a bit surprising. Grandfather was not joking about his talent. She wasn’t concerned, though. On Erf, training weapons existed. Mathematically, they functioned as a substantial malus on damage, reducing the base damage amount to one and preventing the ability to crit. If you were truly beyond an opponent, you could still croak them in a few strikes, but that was more because of how fragile non-heavies were than anything else. It did reliably prevent you from croaking someone in a single strike, which is all she needed.

“So, this is your great-granddaughter?” Kuno-shihan asked Grandfather. He scowled. “Being a quarter foreign wasn’t enough for Tenko? He had to muddy his proud Japanese blood further?”

Tanya’s eye twitched. “Do not speak ill of the dead.” She said icily. “All men return to zero, to concern yourself with tribal nonsense like that is unbecoming of civilized folk.”

“Bah. What do you know?” Kuno-shihan gestured to the rack of shinai. “Tate, get ready.”

In a few seconds, Tanya was equipped with the training sword, although perhaps ‘sporting implement’ would be more appropriate given the context of kendo, and stood in front of her similarly equipped “peer” and they were going about the normal bows before a kendo match. Were they wearing proper protective equipment? No. Was Tanya at all surprised at this fact? Also no. ‘Bruises teach lessons’ as Kuno-shihan liked to say.

The match was kind of embarrassingly one-sided. Now that she was doing something she had actual experience doing before her summoning, she could see the effects of her elevated points, both from her leadership and just being high level. The moment the fight began, everything started to slow down, and she could feel the natural rhyme-o-mancy of timekeeping pull the world to the beat of the music.

Once, Tanya had wondered if the battle system on Erf had a notion of ‘defensive action’ like parrying. Surprisingly, the people she asked could not immediately answer the question. So she put it to the test on the training court, and discovered that dedicating oneself to defense, parrying incoming attacks without trying to strike back, basically let you roll your attack as a secondary defensive roll. There were applicability issues, of course, but it meant that Tate’s miniscule chance to hit her, about one in forty with a seventeen-point deficit, compounded on itself and became nigh impossible for him to hit her.

After a few attempts by Tate, Tanya decided that she had learned enough about combat in this world and lashed out with her shinai. With a kiai, she struck the boy solidly in the torso, knocking the wind out of him.

[Tate]

Hits: 7

Ouch. That was definitely excessive. She needs to pull her punches more. Tate wheezed as the point scored was announced, and with one look at the dangerous gleam in Tanya’s eyes, immediately surrendered. “You hit *gasp* hard.” He wheezed out as he walked towards his great grandfather.

“Sorry.” Tanya said, bowing in apology. “I’ll hold back more in the future.”

“At least she has skill.” Grumbled Kuno-shihan. “Are you happy, Katsuhito?”

“Extremely.” Grandfather said smugly. “Do you think she could win the tournament?” Unlike when she was young, he left unspoken.

“I’d really rather not.” Tanya said, using foolamancy to layer “I’d like to keep a low profile, Grandfather.” into his perception.

“Bah.” Grandfather said, “Well, I’ve had my fun. Come over when you’re done for the day, Yosho! We’ll play shogi.” Tanya blinked at her grandfather’s joviality. He sure lightened up over the years…

On the way back home, a group of delinquents catcalled her, but she distracted them by making an illusion of the catcalling one’s mother shouting in outrage, letting their own memories fill in details, which distracted them long enough that she was able to get out of sight. Well, she used ‘authority figure’, but from their panicked denials, it was the mother of the head delinquent that they seized on.

Once back, Tanya went into her room and did the one thing she had been aching to do ever since she came back: She went on her laptop and started up the newest Civilization game, ready to waste hours just… relaxing. No danger, no worries.

---------------------------

Over the next several days, very little happened. She got back into contact with both Mizuki and Takumi-san, informing the former that she would no longer be needing his hospitality and the latter that she did not expect to take him up on his generous offer for re-employment anytime in the foreseeable future.

Maggie contacted her again, but there wasn’t any substantial news, just a check-in for status. Even if the thinkamancer thought, accurately, that having their Empress be a dimension away was a problem, it did have some advantages. Like being unable to be attacked.

Her gold had sold for full price after about a week, and all told? Life was good. None of her online friends still played the games they enjoyed together, so she had to start anew on that front, but given the circumstances that was a very small problem.

Apparently, the ‘big thing’ nowadays vis a vis online communities was streaming, personalities playing games for an audience. In particular, people who used face tracking software to coordinate an online avatar, referred to as ‘Vtubing’. Most of the ones she checked out seemed personable and the games they played were… interesting, she guessed? Not every game that was popular to stream seemed that appealing, but there were enough strategy games and first person shooters that were streamed that she could find some like-minded gamers to socialize with.

The fact that she was absolutely sure that she had met some of those Vtubers as units back on Erf was not particularly relevant, given that one of her finest subordinates looked like Margaret Thatcher.

But soon enough, the Olympics came to Tokyo, and Tanya thought it would be fun to attend. Getting tickets was impossible due to the pandemic, but she didn’t let that stop her. Recon meant that she could see the events clearly even in the mother of all nosebleed sections: the rafters of the stadiums.

Still, the events weren’t as exciting as she thought they’d be, so her attention span eventually had her browsing on her phone. As she had veiled her position, she wasn’t worried about people noticing her, which happened surprisingly frequently. They couldn’t see through the illusion that made her look like a random crow, but there was still something suspicious about it.

…Wait. How many layers of indirect observation can she detect? Could cameras see through her illusion? The people pointing their phone cameras in her direction, which now that she thought about it was extremely suspicious, clearly didn’t work, but were the cameras recording the illusion or the reality?

Quickly, she searched on the internet for her online moniker, Mahou-chan, pairing the search with the word Olympics. Immediately, she found several videos posted that showed her sitting on her perch, the colorful armor that she was wearing easy to spot. Ah, boop.

How to handle this? She could probably leave, but that’d be seen too. Let’s go with… audacity. She dropped the now-useless illusion, and waved cheerily when the number of people seeing her spiked as a result.

It seemed to be the correct decision, as now that her presence was an unambiguously true fact the collected athletes decided that she was not their problem and started to ignore her. Instead, Tanya decided to make a new account on the video sites, taking the ‘Mahou-chan’ name (well, she used ‘Empress Mahou-chan’) and posting about how all of the athletes were ‘so cool’ and how great of a view she had from her private seat.

Turn around so the event is in the background, peace sign, smile… there. Selfie taken, social media accounts opened under the Empress Mahou-chan name, and… post. She wasn’t quite sure which to use, so she just looked up the five most popular platforms and made an account in all of them.

Taking inspiration from those Vtubers, she decided to fill out the biographies of those new social medias with a curated version of the truth: She was a magical girl Empress from another world that came to this world because it was way safer than being within reach of the Demon King, who was Charlie in this scenario.

By playing into tropes, she’ll be able to blend in with the other internet personalities, and that should do wonders to lower the amount of official attention she receives. Or it’ll just lead them right to her, but honestly? Being treated as a ruler of a foreign country wouldn’t be all that bad, so while this may not end well, she has a hard time imagining it ending in a way that wasn’t something she could work with. Worst case, she’d just be forced to go back to Erf, never to return. Which is pretty bad.

She’ll just have to see.

---------------------------

As she had expected, her social media presence exploded after she posted that selfie on the biggest social media site with all the appropriate hashtags.

“Thank you for the dono!” Tanya said cheerily as she altered her deployment settings. “I’ll shoot to recruit them, no problem!”

It did not take long for her to set up her own streaming setup, as Mizuki was quite well-versed in the process due to his mysterious girlfriend having done something similar for a while. Currently, Tanya was streaming a popular turn-based tactical RPG; she loved the earlier entries but there were heaps of new mechanics and gimmicks, to the point where she kind of felt like an old man when she complained. What kind of tactics RPG came with an undo button!?

The text-to-speech voice was clearly artificial, but it was quite helpful in not missing any important messages. “I would like to visit your world.”

“No, you don’t.” Tanya replied immediately. “There’s no video games over there, and there’s not a whole lot available to compete with it. Even if you’re a ruler or other kind of leader, you’d pretty much be stuck with booze and sex for entertainment.” She shrugged. “Videogames are much better.”

After a moment, Tanya reviewed the chat. “Commanding your subordinates to sleep with you isn’t nearly as awesome as it sounds.” Tanya said dryly. “I recall a ballad that was written about a King who could only get company if he ordered it. The epic of King Dump the Special. His Special Orders were infamously perverse, and it did his diplomatic posture no favors.”

Continuing to read, Tanya blushed. “No, I never ordered any of my subordinates like that. I always respected the dignity of my units.” Well, there was their habit of volunteering to act as her mid-air furniture… “Even when I had an unpleasant or degrading task that needed doing, I always had plenty of volunteers.”

Still, she finished setting up the deployment and started the map, checking movement ranges and starting to move. “Look, all I’m saying is that you’re making a lot of assumptions that can’t be guaranteed. Asking to be sent to another world and asking to become a powerful, important person are two different requests, and getting your first wish is no guarantee of getting the second.” After all, as someone who changed worlds three times now, she knew that well.

“Tenko?” Mother whispered. Tanya muted her microphone and gestured for her to go on subtly, still watching the game and chat. “There’s some government men to see you.”

Oh. Well, that was… a good thing? Maybe? Turning her microphone back on, she sighed. “Sorry chat, the government’s found my hideout and I gotta go convince them not to deport me.”

At least chat was on her side.