Story:

Kicho leaned to Euphy's ear, whispering like a market-gossip. "Oho... Mitsu-kun is brave, arguing about gods with a man who argues with goats."

"Shh. I want to hear who wins."

"Neither," Kicho murmured back, eyes on Nobu-kun's face with a wife's practiced accuracy. "He's already looking for a third road."

As if on cue, Nobunaga's gaze drifted from the map—to the two gorgeous women conspicuously eavesdropping at the table's edge—and his fiefdom of a mind found its third road.

"...Mitsuhide," he said slowly, "you worry about what the monks say about us. Well. Suppose something walked up to those walls that made their sutras crawl up their sleeves. Something no scripture has an answer for. Their surrender, your way—but my leverage."

"Meaning, Wagakimi?"

"Meaning—" Violet's hand shot up like a festival-schoolgirl, "—meaning send the conveyor with us! ♪ Me and Kicho-chan will be very persuasive!"

Mitsuhide looked at the fairy princess, then at the violet-eyed witch crackling faintly with mana, then at Nobunaga, with the expression of a man doing complex arithmetic on his own life expectancy.

"Wagakimi... are we threatening monks... with witches... to demonstrate our piety?"

"No, Mitsuhide," Euphy said sweetly, adjusting her hat. "We are introducing them to the future. It's polite to introduce yourself before you burn a bridge."

"I did not mean—"