Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 13 - Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

SCHOOL AT WAR

  Tetty Goodgripp

“Assemble! Numbers!”

At Tetty’s order, there were cries of “One,” “Two,” and “Three,” and then Arlie made a chirping sound. With that, roll call was done. They didn’t need to call their numbers to know they were all there, but it was sort of like a ceremony, and they did it every time. All five of them called their assigned numbers out loud with serious expressions, and once it was done, their faces relaxed into smiles, and they gathered in a circle.

Tetty looked around, putting her hands to her shoulders to lightly massage them. The sky was cloudless, the stars were dim, and the moon was shining like it owned the place, so it was surprisingly bright out. Magical girls didn’t need light to see clearly, but she was happy for it anyway so they didn’t have to walk down a mountain path in the dark.

“It feels totally different at night, huh?” Tetty said. “During the day, it feels like any other ordinary little mountain.”

“You shouldn’t let your guard down just because it’s small. I’ve heard people sometimes get lost out here,” replied Miss Ril.

“Come on!” Rappy shot back. “As if any of us magical girls plan on getting stranded!”

“Strand-ed,” said Dory, “by Clas-si-cal Li-lli-an?”

The sudden pun made everyone burst out laughing. After a good chuckle, Tetty raised her head. “Well, even if it’s a bit dramatic to say stranded, let’s avoid getting separated. Even if these are only training homunculi, being careless means you could get hurt. We don’t know how many homunculi there will be, either.”

Her own remark about getting careless and being injured brought the last mock battle to her mind. It was thinking about that sort of thing on a regular basis that had made her body move when something happened. Mephis would hate being rescued or defended. She scolded her body to keep something like that from happening next time—but the mountain was big enough that she doubted they would come in contact with the other groups anyway. She felt pathetic for being so thankful about that.

“Hey, guys! I brought something fun!” Rappy opened up her palm to reveal some little objects wrapped like hard candies. Some sparkled pretty colors, while others looked like rough crystals.

“What are these?” asked Tetty.

“Minerals and stuff! I wrapped them up and brought them over! Hold them in your palm, Rilly! And then open ’em up when you need ’em! How about that? Isn’t it a great idea?”

Miss Ril’s magic let her absorb the property of whatever metal she touched, transforming her body. As Rappy said, bringing a bunch of items for her to use would really enhance her abilities.

“That is a good idea…,” said Miss Ril, “but where did you get these from?”

“I just borrowed a few from the science room in the new school building!”

“Come on…don’t take risks like that so casually,” said Tetty.

“Hey! I didn’t steal them! When I asked the science club kids, they shared some with me!”

Tetty could easily imagine that scene. She’d heard quite a few magical girls would go to the new school building to negotiate with kids from Umemizaki Junior High School. Not to say that other people doing it made it okay, but it was a minor crime, compared to stealing from the science room. Tetty exchanged a look with Miss Ril and smiled awkwardly—though Miss Ril’s expression didn’t change—and it was decided that Miss Ril would hold on to the things Rappy had borrowed.

“I’m impressed you came up with this, though,” said Tetty.

“I mean, like! The other groups have been getting serious lately, right? So then we’ve got to come up with lots of ideas, too! I don’t want to be lined up at the bottom rank during our graduation! Let’s be the best students!”

“The best students wouldn’t sneak into the school building,” Tetty pointed out.

“That all depends on the parameters for best students,” said Miss Ril.

Feeling a tug on her skirt, Tetty turned to see Dory pointing up the mountain. Looking over, there was a black figure rising from the ground. Tetty checked the time on her magical phone. It was still 11:25—five minutes before the start time.

Weird, she thought, Ms. Calkoro made such a point of the time, and as she watched the figure move, it ran down the mountain path toward them, raising its claws. Before they swung down on Tetty, she grabbed its arm.

While locked in a struggle against the homunculus, Tetty called out to the others. “It’s not eleven thirty yet, right?”

“Not yet,” Miss Ril confirmed.

“But this means it’s started now, right?”

It wasn’t just the one; more jet-black figures were rushing in. Tetty was forced to crush the arm of the first unit, then grab its head and rip it from the torso.

“Looks like we’re starting early,” said Rappy.

“Should we check with the teacher?” asked Miss Ril.

But with the homunculi grabbing at them one after another, this wasn’t the time to make any calls. Dory swung her drill, and Arlie knocked one down with a body blow, then slammed a fist into it. The battle had already begun in earnest. This was beyond a situation where they could do nothing and say they just waited since it was early.

Tetty gave instructions. “We have no choice, given the situation! We’re moving on in!”

“’Kaaay!”

“Let’s do our best, everyone.”

“Beeest!”

Since they’d already gotten started, that just made things faster. With Tetty and Dory in the lead, they kept in a formation that protected one another’s backs, defeating the homunculi as they made their way forward. The mountain path was comparatively well maintained, and since the homunculi were spawning along the path, it was very easy to follow. The girls tore at, crushed, bashed, and grabbed the homunculi until their numbers gradually dwindled.

“Therrre!”

Farther down the path, homunculi were gathering. While sticking to their formation, Group One headed on that way, keeping up the pace as they continued taking down the black figures.

“Hey! You think these’ll count toward our total?” Rappy wondered aloud.

“She said there were cameras set up…but I don’t see them,” replied Miss Ril.

“They’re magical hidden cameras, aren’t they?” said Tetty.

“And therrre!”

Discovering a group of homunculi, they hurried over. Tetty bashed and crushed several and was about to run off to the next when her feet stopped. Since she was in the lead, everyone else came to a halt along with her. “What’s up?” Rappy called out curiously. “Did something happen?” Miss Ril asked with concern. But Tetty didn’t respond, only stood there. It wasn’t that her feet had stopped—her legs just wouldn’t move.

The jet-black figure rising up in front of them was of a completely different shape from the ones they’d fought before. It had a rapier at its belt and was wearing knee-high boots. Between its costume and overall appearance, there was no question—it had been designed to look like a magical girl. The feather decorating its cap fluttered in the wind.

Its characteristic jet-black body and smooth surface texture were the same as the other homunculi, and that made its magical-girl shape feel grotesque. But Tetty hadn’t stopped because it was creepy or bizarre. A shiver ran through her spine, heart, and lungs; just being close to this thing made her feel weak in the knees.

The jet-black magical girl rose up, and a split second later, Tetty was grasping its rapier in her right mitten. The fencer drew its sword and thrust. Tetty didn’t even notice that the rapier had been drawn, and she hadn’t been able to see the step in or the thrust, either. By the time she thought, Ah, it was right in front of her. If not for her magic mittens, she would have been stabbed.

Tetty blocked the fencer’s knee drive with her left mitten. While she was hesitating for a moment as to whether she should crush it or not, something flashed.

Rappy screamed, and Miss Ril shrieked.

At the same moment as that knee strike, the fencer drew a dagger with its left hand, slicing at her. Tetty only had two mittens, one on each hand. She’d stopped the rapier first, then blocked the kick, and both her hands were occupied. She let the dagger’s attack through. Blood spurted from her cheek.

She didn’t even have to think what she should do next. She released the leg and the rapier, knelt down on the ground, and bowed her head.

“Your Excellency, please forgive me for my rudeness.”

The general clapped its hands twice, acknowledging her apology. Grateful for the general’s generosity, Tetty rose and turned toward the traitors.

“Tetty!”

“Hold on a sec! The heck’s going on?!”

They were all powerful magical girls. But Tetty would destroy them. She would eliminate all enemies to protect the general.

  Pshuke Prains

The jet-black magical girl threw a straight punch—which dropped halfway to shift to a low kick instead. It was so terrifyingly fast, it was all Pshuke could do to follow its moves and feints with her eyes.

Diko hopped on the spot to dodge. As she escaped into the air, a jet-black right arm stretched toward her face, but right before it made contact, Diko used her magic to vanish, and the jet-black magical girl’s swipe whiffed through air. That was when Group Three surged in.

With Sally from the air above, holding the leg of her crow, and Lightning bounding off a tree, they launched themselves at the jet-black magical girl. Pshuke sprayed misted lubricant ahead of her to skid along toward the enemy. In a high-speed slide with a reduced friction coefficient, she was putting together a mental plan of getting the enemy’s leg in a joint lock, but a new black shadow slid out from behind a tree and blocked her way. With a click of her tongue, she jumped to the right. Sally and Lightning were both disrupted, too.

Diko appeared. A black magical girl with roses on her shoulders attacked with an unhesitant sequence of spear-hand, block, and palm strikes. Diko blocked and struck back with a knee, and the enemy countered with an elbow slamming down, following it with a knife hand when Diko staggered, and Diko vanished again.

“Luxury Mode: On.” Lightning was slicing at the one with the roses when a new unit—a silhouette like an armored warrior with a naginata at the ready—interrupted her with a slash. Their blades clashed, sending an armored shoulder pad flying and knocking away one of Lightning’s drums.

The unit that appeared before Pshuke carried a cylindrical object under its right arm. Before even realizing that it was a Gatling gun, Pshuke had run off into the shadows, from one tree to the next. The bullets that trailed after Pshuke blasted away the thicket with a bursting din, tearing up trees and tossing up dirt and sand. The line of their impact approached Pshuke. Tree roots were shredded, and her legs ached with the strain.

She was at her limit. She tried running around in an attempt to cause friendly fire, if possible, but the enemy was making sure to avoid attacks on their allies with surprising sensitivity. Pshuke rolled away from an attack, but when her hand reached out to try to climb a tree, a girl in a black karate gi front-kicked her high into the air.

Pshuke had managed to guard it in time. But her right arm was numb. Breaking tree branches and scattering leaves as she landed, she turned back to try to return to her group, but a black shadow instantly blocked the way, leaving her with no choice but to flee in the other direction. The others were getting farther and farther away.

It was hard to understand what had happened. The black magical girl–like creatures were probably homunculi. Pshuke had seen a type of homunculi called Demon Wings, which had been developed based on Archfiend Pam’s motif. But even compared with those, what they were seeing now was too similar to magical girls.

She pictured a detour in her mind’s eye to get back to the others. This wasn’t the kind of situation Pshuke could get out of on her own. If she got surrounded, she’d be crushed. She started running and immediately stopped. Something black was welling up from the earth, blocking the way ahead. It took the form of a girl with a javelin in each hand, and it pointed them both at Pshuke.

This again?! Crap!

Pshuke jumped to the side to avoid the javelins’ attack, spraying a mist of magically enhanced hot pepper extract, but it didn’t seem to work at all; the red just stained the homunculus’s face as it thrust its spears at her. Pshuke somehow avoided its continuous thrusts as she backed up, and the moment her back touched rough bark, she went down on all fours like a beast, sticking out her leg as the enemy stabbed through the trunk behind her, landing an attack on its solar plexus before backing up and getting away.

The enemy yanked its javelin out of the tree and stuck its two javelins, right and left, together, and twisted them. With a whoosh, a massive blade appeared, and the two javelins transformed into a giant halberd. Despite all her complaints, Pshuke had been diligently taking notes in class, so she knew this was Halberd Emimin, the magical-girl criminal who had been traveling around, carrying out robberies as she went.

The homunculus swung the halberd up. Pshuke evaded it with a sideways leap, but its strike was so powerful that it made the ground shudder, and it was hard to stay on her feet. It blasted away tree trunks, split open the earth, and sent dust billowing into the air. With dust, branches, and leaves falling all around, Pshuke kept moving, racing all around the black Emimin as she sprayed lubricant over the ground.

Pshuke smothered her shrieks as she avoided the second and third attacks, and as Emimin had her weapon raised for a fourth, the homunculus stepped on a patch that had been sprayed with lubricant and staggered. With the enemy’s stance unsteady, Pshuke went into a low-friction-coefficient slide to get this one’s leg now, twisting her ankle, then breaking her knee. After taking the enemy down, before she got up again, she sprayed adhesive all over the enemy to stick it to the ground, then immediately got away.

An instant later, Pshuke ducked to avoid an attack from behind. This was a new one. From a low stance, Pshuke sprayed a strong liquid acid above her, but the new foe ignored the burning of its body as it made a grab at Pshuke, taking her by the shoulders. Pshuke’s water gun could ultimately only spray mist, so its force would always be inferior.

Held down from above, she felt a foot stomp on her right hand, the one holding her water gun. The part of the jet-black magical girl that corresponded to the mouth split open to reveal countless sharp needle fangs inside.

With its mouth gaping open, the jet-black magical girl tried to bear down on Pshuke but was slammed aside with a crash. It rolled away, hit a cliff, and came to a stop.

“Hurry! Get on my back!” The homunculus had been knocked away by a magical girl with glasses. It was Calkoro, transformed.

Pshuke did as she was told, and they immediately took off. Calkoro used her hands and left foot to support her body with the edge of her giant abacus, paddling her right foot on the ground to move forward, like a skateboard. It was entirely the wrong way to use an abacus.

Pshuke sprayed lubricant at the earth behind them. The homunculus that tried to follow them slipped and pitched forward, making a dramatic noise as it fell over. It got in the way of the other jet-black magical girls farther behind, and they crashed into one another.

There’s more and more…!

The number of homunculi was increasing. Calkoro yelled something, and when Pshuke faced front, she saw multiple jet-black magical girls rising there, too. This time, Pshuke fired her lubricant at the ground ahead, temporarily speeding up the abacus to race on through before the homunculi could finish rising up.

“Don’t! Do anything weird! Without asking!” Calkoro yelled. “If I can’t calculate it, we definitely would have overturned just now!”

“Ms. Calkoro!” Pshuke also yelled. She rarely ever raised her voice like this. “What is going on?!”

“They’re out of control! This doesn’t make sense! Why is this happening?! With the homunculus?! The principal and I! Are the only ones with authorization! They can’t go into combat mode without our authorization! They shouldn’t! But the lab! He was dead!”

With a fallen tree acting as a ramp, the abacus took a jump.

“The security device was broken! And my magical phone isn’t getting through! And the school equipment isn’t responding to my commands at all! So I thought if I broke the master unit! On the observation deck on this mountain! There’s the master unit!” Calkoro twisted around in midair, going from landing to instant reacceleration like she was drifting with a car.

Pshuke yelled, “You haven’t reported this?!”

“I told you I couldn’t use the terminal! And the security device is broken. And we don’t have the time to search for a way to contact Central Authority! If we just break the master unit, they’ll stop! The lab! Developed them! The new-model homunculi! On their own! The lab’s security system! Has gone out of whack! It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything!”

“Complaining at a time like—” Before Pshuke could finish saying “this,” the abacus slowed, then stopped. A black figure was rising up down the way. Though it was all black, Pshuke could see it was standing with a crisply straight posture, with a fluffy skirt, a crown on top of its head, and other lavish accessories.

There was a shrill noise like a draft blowing through an old house. It was the sound of Calkoro’s exhale.

“Hey, Ms. Calkoro,” said Pshuke. “Why are we stopping?”

“A copy of…Grim…Heart… No way—why?”

The black queen slowly began to move. It seemed she hadn’t seen them yet. Rather than slipping under her arm, it would be faster to crush her now—but Pshuke didn’t even have the time to think that, as the abacus turned right around, and Pshuke clung to Calkoro’s back. They started racing right back in the direction they’d come.

“Ms. Calkoro! The other way! There’s tons of enemies this way!”

“If that’s what we’re up against…I’d rather fight tons of enemies!” Calkoro yelled, and the abacus sped up. Before their eyes, the countless jet-black magical girls that blocked their passage were increasing in size. Cursing, Pshuke pointed her water gun ahead.

  Kumi-Kumi

She didn’t understand what had happened, but it was clear that this situation was abnormal. Gunshots, explosions, screams—any and every kind of violent noise tore through the tranquility of the night, with no sign of stopping. The horde of jet-black magical girls that surrounded Group Two tightened their circle.

Kumi-Kumi made eye contact with Adelheid, Mephis, and Lillian. Adelheid, Lillian, and Kumi-Kumi nodded, and for some reason—she must have just gone along with everyone else without getting what it meant—so did Kana. Finally, Mephis nodded firmly. “Let’s get pumped and go, bitches!”

“Yeah!”

“Right!”

“Yippee ki-yay!”

“Nothin’ beats a rumble in the streets,” Kana muttered in a calm manner that ran contrary to the meaning of the statement, but nevertheless, she was charged for the fight.

Mephis and Adelheid were side by side as they dived into the enemy forces. The all-black bodies conformed to the template of homunculi but were shaped completely differently from the ones Kumi-Kumi knew.

Mephis punched, kicked, and punched again at the nearest enemy. The unit she hit swiped aside her fist with the back of its hand. The black figure shifted smoothly to a jab-jab-straight, then hook. It moved fast, and its combo was tight. It was as good as a magical girl.

Adelheid bashed into it from the side and cut it down. She split open its boxing-gloved hands, then sliced open its windpipe with her return swing. The homunculus gushed black fluids and collapsed. From behind, one more, two more, three, four—a wide variety of magical girl–type homunculi appeared one after another.

“That one just now!” Mephis yelled.

“What?!” Adelheid yelled back.

“It’s like one we learned about in class!”

“Do ya need to say that now?!”

Adelheid stepped in. She sliced down one enemy, but a second stopped her thrust. The black magical girl that had blocked Adelheid’s saber with its giant shield slammed Adelheid. Adelheid was sent flying into a boulder back-first, but she still didn’t flinch.

“Kaiser Schlacht!”

Bounding off the rock, she slammed her whole body into the great shield, striking it with an attack that used the energy from the damage she’d taken. She bashed and bashed, and when the enemy’s guard weakened at the side, she hit it with a roundhouse kick that was supple like a whip. Right before it would have connected, a bullet shot at her from the rear diagonal, and she dodged at the last second, somersaulting away.

The cowgirl in a ten-gallon hat that had fired the shot followed up with three more shots. Adelheid rolled on the ground to avoid the first, cutting down the remaining two shots with her saber. The gunslinger dropped her handgun on the spot and drew a shotgun from her belt. Even Adelheid wouldn’t be able to slice that down. She rolled and leaped, just dodging. One shot, two. With every shotgun blast, rock shattered and earth flew, pitting countless holes everywhere.

“Screw you, bitch!” Taking advantage of the opening where its attention was focused on Adelheid, Mephis kicked at the cowgirl as well, but the homunculus safely avoided it, pointing its shotgun at Mephis next.

“Don’t dodge my fuckin’ kicks, you chickenshit!” Mephis yelled, and the cowgirl paused for just an instant. Even when Mephis stepped in range to kick, the homunculus somehow avoided it—but it didn’t manage to dodge Adelheid’s slice coming from behind. With its back cut in half and scattering black liquids, it blocked Mephis’s kick with its shoulder, rolling away back into the group.

“That one’s like a cockroach!” Mephis said. “Drop dead already!”

“One in every few o’ these critters is a real beast!”

As if matching Adelheid’s heads-up, the jet-black magical girls moved up the mountain like liquid sloshing along, hiding in the shadows of the trees to vanish. Before Kumi-Kumi could wonder why, two little balls were tossed in to roll around—Adelheid shoved Mephis down, and Kumi-Kumi ran.

Adelheid covered Mephis, and Kumi-Kumi dropped on top of both of them. The two hand grenades that had been thrown in exploded, the shock and sound of their blast sweeping the whole area.

With dust billowing up around them, Mephis, on the very bottom, yelled, “You’re too heavy!”

“I can’t help…being heavy…”

“And slow!”

“I’m…sorry.” Making a noise like an engine drive, Kumi-Kumi rose to her feet. Adelheid pressed her head, somehow getting herself up despite her swaying, then extended her hand to Mephis, the two of them supporting each other as they got up.

“Can you guys still hear? You’re not hurt?” Mephis asked.

“Somehow,” said Adelheid.

“No…problem.”

“The next group is coming!” Lillian warned the others.

The trees being blasted away had opened up the whole area, giving a nice view and making the night sky easier to see. With the space made so it could accommodate even more numbers, greater hordes of black figures than ever before loomed beyond the dust that still had yet to thin.

Adelheid readied her sword in the standard stance, blade raised to eye level, while Mephis raised her fists in front of her face, Kumi-Kumi lined up beside the two of them, and Lillian took up position protecting their backs.

“Oh-ho,” Kana muttered, looking at Kumi-Kumi. “How interesting. It was made with your magic, Kumi-Kumi.”

“Lillian’s magic…is in it, too.”

Right now, Kumi-Kumi was wearing her handmade armor.

She’d been working on it bit by bit on a regular basis, whenever she had the spare time. Gathering gratings, bricks, concrete, parking chocks, household electronics, and other parts from rubbish sites and large-sized refuse, she’d broken it all down and reassembled it with her magic, putting it together to make armor parts that she’d sneaked into the school warehouse and hidden. She’d begun it with the casual thought that if she ever got found out, she could just stop, but no matter how much time passed, she was never discovered, and her parts-making had gradually gotten deeper, and now it had become a tough armor that would even resist a magic hand grenade.

A mix of concrete, asphalt, and the thick rubber tires used for playgrounds, and then further strengthened with her magic, it was as sturdy as a fortress. She’d been excited to bring it to that night’s field exercise, thinking it would be really powerful, but she’d never imagined it would be useful in the sense of protecting her life.

Weaving it together with Lillian’s magic yarn had made it possible for the joints to move smoothly, and she’d also actualized over triple the efficiency in the transmission of force. Tucked inside the armor, Kumi-Kumi could move the giant arms and legs as if they were her own body.

At this point, you couldn’t just call it armor anymore. Standing at six feet tall, this construction was so perfect, you could call it fortified armor. She kept the name—Powered Kumi-Kumi Fortress Mode—tucked away in her memory and did not tell anyone.

Kumi-Kumi wanted to brag about this stuff, but looking at the way the enemy magical girls were moving, she couldn’t afford to be so brash.

Clanking as she advanced, Kumi-Kumi swung her right arm to swipe away a jet-black magical girl, and moving more smoothly than a living creature, she shifted to a roundhouse kick with her left leg, slamming back two homunculi together. When she followed up with a back-turn kick, the enemy backstepped away, but she guarded herself from the enemy’s spinning circular saw with her right arm’s shield. It felt heavy. The round saw dug a third of the way into her shield and stopped. If that had gone straight into a magical girl’s body, it would have cut her in two.

As Adelheid had said, one in every few of them was a powerful unit.

“Leave the easy ones…to me! You take…the strong ones!” said Kumi-Kumi.

“Roger!”

“Ah got it!”

“Everyone take care!”

“As for what you define as strong—”

Clad in her fortified armor, Kumi-Kumi mowed down enemies and sent them flying. The units that resisted or avoided her attacks, Adelheid and Mephis fought, while Lillian guarded her major blind spot at the rear. And though she couldn’t see very well, out of the corner of her eye she caught Kana, for her part, dodging enemy attacks and such. She seemed to be muttering something to herself, but Kumi-Kumi couldn’t hear what it was. Figuring that if she wasn’t getting in the way, it should be fine to leave her like that, Kumi-Kumi advanced.

Though her thick armor was getting worn down, she gradually made her way forward, breaking through the area that had been destroyed by the hand grenades. The plan was to cut diagonally over the mountain and escape to the outside world. Since this was beyond a field exercise now, there was no reason Group Two would be blamed for escaping. Kumi-Kumi wondered if the other groups were safe, but she shook that thought off. They didn’t have the time to be worrying about other people. She swung her arm, then a leg, an arm, an arm again, and suddenly she felt the weight there go light.

She looked at her right arm. The fist section was missing. It had turned to black dregs that scattered in the air.

She looked at the enemy she thought she’d just punched. It didn’t even look as if it had attacked. It was just standing there. Kumi-Kumi punched it, and when her armored fist touched it, it disappeared. It was a magical girl in a headdress and other fluttery accessories. Though it was black all over, patches and other repairs could be seen here and there on her costume.

Kumi-Kumi bashed the patchwork girl with her left arm. The part that hit the homunculus became black dregs and vanished. The magical girl wore a bright smile of sincere enjoyment. A chill ran down Kumi-Kumi’s spine. This one was different from the others. This was beyond being strong or weak. She couldn’t fight this. Kumi-Kumi let the giant frame of Fortress Mode fall down on top of the homunculus and undid all its connections, putting her hand on the shoulders of the suit to do a backflip and escape to the rear.

She mercilessly abandoned the armor that she had so painstakingly put together. She thought it would gain her a bit of time, at the very least. But she didn’t even get a blink of an eye before she discovered that even that thought had been an underestimation.

The patchwork magical girl pierced through the thick armor as if there were nothing there. There was no resistance at all, black dregs dispersing around as she approached. Her right arm reached out, her broad grin coming closer. Kumi-Kumi was in midair. There was no way for her to get away.

She started opening her mouth, thinking she had to say something to the others, at least, and then a dull impact hit her in the side, making her cough and scatter spit.

It was Kana. She’d leaped in from the side, scooping Kumi-Kumi in her arms to land and then keep running. The patchwork magical girl landed after them, pursuing them both. Kana left the path, racing deeper into the wilderness.

Still in her arms, Kumi-Kumi was about to order her, “Don’t run,” but seeing the patchwork girl in pursuit, she clenched her jaw. No. They had to run now. This time really was hopeless. They’d die if they got touched. No damage got through. Even if all of them—Mephis, Adelheid, and Lillian included—joined forces, there was no way they could beat that. So then it was better for Kumi-Kumi and Kana to lure it away, while the others could use that time to move.

Still carried in Kana’s arms, Kumi-Kumi pulled out her pickax, swinging it to scoop out the ground. The cluster of cubes that had been earth until a moment ago showered the patchwork girl pursuing them, but they just turned into more black dregs. Never mind stopping—she didn’t even slow down.

The enemy was pretty fast, but Kana’s legs were, surprisingly, even faster. They gradually pulled away, and Kumi-Kumi started to get optimistic, thinking if they could just lead it around a ways behind them, then somehow—but then for some reason, Kana suddenly stopped. Kumi-Kumi’s head bonked into the back of Kana’s, and she groaned. “What…?”

She looked ahead. A single magical girl in black stood there.

  Kana

She didn’t have to dig into her memories to recall the homunculus that stood before her. Kana leaped straight up, grabbing a tree branch to dodge the patchwork homunculus as it came charging from behind. Using the tree branch as a horizontal bar, she spun around to turn back in the opposite direction, and with the momentum of her spin, leaped, ran, and accelerated.

“Why…run? We should have…kept going,” Kumi-Kumi said.

She was not at all wrong. The homunculus standing there hadn’t even made to look at them. It would have been obvious to assume they could have slipped under its arm or knocked it away. But Kana knew—there was no hope in going forward.

“The one standing there like a queen is without a doubt Grim Heart,” said Kana.

“Grim…Heart…?”

“The most powerful fighter of the Osk Faction. If the homunculi deployed here are designed based on real magical girls, we should assume its combat capabilities are proportional to hers. Even if that possesses only a third of Grim Heart’s strength and our whole class came at her, we would all be destroyed.”

“Even if…she is strong…if she doesn’t see us and is just standing there…”

“It looked to me as if she wasn’t merely standing there, but that she was guarding something. Over that way is…”

“I think it was…the way to the observation deck…”

“In other words, she’s guarding that. Though I don’t know why.”

“But…still…we’re being chased… It would be better than that patchwork…”

Kumi-Kumi was yet again not wrong. The patchwork magical girl would nullify any kind of attack and couldn’t be affected by anything. At a glance, she seemed invincible. But she wasn’t necessarily invincible in the true sense of the word.

Kana turned back and called out, “What’s your weak point?! Tell me!”

“I see,” Kumi-Kumi muttered, her fingers on Kana’s shoulders squeezing harder. “Your magic…gets the answers to questions, huh. So then…her weakness…”

“No, it seems unfortunately she speaks a different language. She doesn’t understand me.”

Kumi-Kumi moaned, and her fingers squeezed Kana’s shoulders harder.

Running between the trees, they expected to find the others of their group again, but the place where they’d been fighting was already empty, with no trace of either allies to rely on or homunculi.

Kana had no more time for thinking. Black shadows were slowly oozing out of spots where there had been nothing before. The footsteps racing gleefully behind them were coming closer.

As Kumi-Kumi’s fingers were starting to squeeze even harder, Kana laid her hands over them. The crushing squeeze of her fingers let up.

Though the patchwork homunculus hadn’t understood her, it wasn’t as if Kana couldn’t communicate with any of them. Though they were mentally slow, the vast majority did understand words. And the whole time, Kana had been asking them their weaknesses.

The magical girl–type homunculi all had three weaknesses in common: They slowed down when exposed to bright light, particularly the light of the sun; they avoided friendly fire at all costs; and they listened to orders from the administrator. It would be a while before the sun rose, and Kana didn’t know where the administrator was. So that left one thing to take advantage of.

Kana grabbed at a homunculus that was rising up right that moment, taking it by the shoulder with her right hand, her left going between its thighs to grab it. Unflinching as it kicked her and punched her in the face, she wrenched around the body in her grasp to swing it at the footsteps running toward them.

Homunculi would always avoid hitting their allies. The patchwork homunculus’s touch in itself was an attack. So then what would it do if an ally’s body was flung toward it? Kana figured it would disable its magic and attempt to catch its ally’s body. This was really just a guess—a gamble, so to speak—but she thought the odds weren’t so bad.

There was a sound like splashing water. The two homunculi collided, and the patchwork homunculi’s upper body was pulverized. It staggered, fell, melted into the earth, and vanished. Kumi-Kumi tossed away what was left of the homunculus she held, and that melted and disappeared in the same way.

She beat down the remaining homunculi with her bare hands, routing the units that came to attack her from behind.

On Kana’s back, Kumi-Kumi let out a sigh that sounded like it came from the depths of her heart, jumping down to take two, three steps, then stretched her back as she checked to see that she could still move.

Finally, she leaned her hands on her knees and let out a sigh even deeper than the last, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at Kana. “Good grief…that was…reckless.”

“Pardon me.”

“But…you saved me. Thanks.”

“I’m very much obliged.”

Even as they were talking, black bubbles swelled up all over, about to rise. If these were being generated automatically, then they didn’t have the time to be standing around. Some of them would be strong ones like the patchwork girl, or worst case, even ones that were beyond the limits, like Grim Heart.

“What should we do?” Kana asked.

“We head…this way.” Kumi-Kumi pointed her pickax down the hill.

“You mean we run?”

“From here…it’s difficult to…search for the others…and meet up. Our magical phones…aren’t getting through…either. So then…we should…get out…and report this…from the school.”

“I see.”

Readying her pickax, Kumi-Kumi took the lead, feet pointed toward the countryside. Right as she was about to set off, a black wall appeared, blocking the area right in front of her. She couldn’t stop. Kumi-Kumi was moving toward a wall that was completely the same texture as the homunculi—Kana grabbed her by the collar and yanked, pulling her back as Kana pitched forward.

Kumi-Kumi, her face twisted in shock, drew farther away. Kana’s body was on the black wall. She was being pulled in. Her body heat was being sapped away. She sank in. Kumi-Kumi reached out to her.

“Stay back.”

With just that brief final remark and a watery sound, Kana’s whole body sank into the black wall. She couldn’t see anything; she couldn’t hear anything. All that came to her was a keen sensation of pain, like being strangled, and her body heat being continuously sapped away. I guess this is what dying feels like, she realized.

It was rather anticlimactic that her final words were “stay back.” In manga, people would say a little more of what had to be said before they died. But she supposed reality was like this. Kana convinced herself that perhaps having been able to save her classmate made this not so bad, and she was somewhat satisfied with that. She still wanted to enjoy school, and she had lingering attachments to that manga she hadn’t finished, but she knew the trick to happiness was a certain degree of resignation.

  Thunder-General Adelheid

There were enemies in front of her. Behind her, too. There were few allies. A lot of people from the Archfiend Cram School were battle junkies, but still, it had to be a minority who would enjoy this.

But she wasn’t going to whine about it. Adelheid had jumped into this being fully aware that it was a battlefield. Even if it was more of an intense battle zone than she’d expected, she wasn’t going to run. Slicing up and then away, back-to-back with Mephis, dicing up the black magical girls that were captured in Lillian’s casting net, the trio climbed up the animal trail.

After getting separated from Kumi-Kumi and Kana, they hadn’t been able to hold position. Even if they had waited for the other two, the patchwork girl would have followed. All they could do was pray that the pair would somehow escape the patchwork homunculus or defeat it.

The blade of her saber was slick with black, tarry fluid. Flicking off the stickiness, Adelheid thrust her saber into the foe before her. Right that moment, the jet-black magical girls ahead suddenly hopped away like waves parting. The space ahead of her opened up. There was a jet-black magical girl atop a hill, swinging a blade. She was far away. Swing all she wanted, she wouldn’t reach.

No!

Her black sword swung down into empty space. Adelheid clenched her teeth. She didn’t know what. But something was coming.

“Blitzkrieg!”

With a time delay of zero seconds, the slice that should not have reached hit her face. She directed the energy she took to her legs and stepped forward. Cracking open the earth with her step, she struck at high speed, sweeping her blade out horizontally as she and the enemy passed by each other.

Even with its torso cut halfway through, the samurai-style magical girl tossed away its sword to wrap its arms around Adelheid. By the time Adelheid was wondering what was going on, she felt a sharp impact in her torso and groaned deep in her throat. A black rod had pierced her cape to impale her. Looking to see where it had come from, she saw the black shadow that had to have been right there just now melt hazily into the background and vanish.

“Adelheid!”

“Don’cha worry ’bout me!” Adelheid had thought she’d put energy into her voice, but not only did it crack, it was shaking. She’d been hit hard. It seemed the samurai’s embrace hadn’t just been a move of desperation but an assist for an ally. Maybe that had even been a kamikaze attack in the first place.

Adelheid cut off the staff stuck in her torso. That made it a bit easier to move. It was thick for an arrow—but hadn’t the one that had disappeared been holding a bow?

She knew that one. It was a magical girl that would shoot harpoons instead of arrows. The devotee of the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry—Melville.

“Watch out!” Adelheid cried. “This one enemy can hide like a chameleon!”

Mephis answered her with a yell. Lillian bounded off an enemy and into the air, landing on Mephis’s shoulder to jump a level up, reel in the navy-blue yarn strung up on tree branches to swing yet higher, soaring into the air to toss her knitted net in a radial arc. The homunculus caught under the net was sliced to bits or torn to shreds—and then the net caught over an empty spot of nothing before being torn up.

“There!” Mephis kicked at the empty space, knocking back the invisible thing. It rolled, tearing a deep skid in the ground, and a blurry outline became visible. Its magic wasn’t as effective as the real Melville. The vague shadow was right in front of where Lillian landed. It was a fox before the hounds.

Lillian tugged the knitting yarn over her shoulder, and the yarn she had strung up around the ground tightened. With its feet caught, the shadow—the black Melville—was finally out of options, showing herself to draw her bow at Lillian, when a crow swooped toward it and tore its throat to shreds.

“Sally!”

Help’s arrived, Adelheid thought, looking over to see Sally was also looking on her last legs. She was carrying the detransformed Lightning on her back. It seemed she’d passed out.

“Hey, you!” Mephis yelled as she punched an enemy. “The hell’ve you guys been doing?! You better explain what’s going on!”

“I don’t know, either, okay?!” Sally’s crow shone intensely bright, and the homunculi slowed down.

Mephis punched, Adelheid sliced, and Lillian tied and beat.

Sally wiped her forehead with her upper arm and sighed. “Yeahhh, I really have no idea… Pshuke got knocked away from us and went off somewhere. Ranyi and Diko got separated from us, and Lightning wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to tell her to stop, ignoring fuel consumption to fight at full power, and then she passed out… What about on your end?”

“Kumi-Kumi and Kana took a real nasty fucker with them and ran,” said Mephis. “Better than you guys, so we win.”

“It’s totally pointless to compete over who’s better off,” Adelheid pointed out.

Adelheid flicked a glance at Lightning, on Sally’s back—she looked like she was in pain but remained picturesque, smiling in her sleep. That wasn’t acting. She really was passed out. So what the heck had that been the other day, when she’d taken Adelheid’s attack like it was nothing and then left? And the worst part was that this was just the time you’d want her to show off that abnormal toughness, and she wasn’t being useful when she should be.

Still, the three of them now being four and a bird made the fight a bit easier. Adelheid constricted the blood vessels in her torso to stanch the bleeding and fought with all the strength she could. She didn’t scrimp with the use of her magic, cape sweeping and saber swiping, and before you knew it, the number of enemies had decreased.

But this wasn’t a relief—it made her uneasy. This wasn’t the first time the black magical girls had momentarily retreated. Right before they threw in those grenades or the time that one with a sword had raised her blade—in other words, when doing an attack that was bound to hit their allies—they’d back up without any sort of discussion required.

“Watch out!” Adelheid cried.

A sudden burnt smell tickled her nose. They all leaped away, and at the same moment, there was an explosion.

Black flames wavered playfully, the fire spreading from one thing to the next. Adelheid covered her mouth. Smoke hung in the air. The black fire spread. Melted in the flames, a jet-black magical girl grinned. Adelheid knew that silhouette. It was the Archfiend Cram School graduate, Lake of Fire Flame Flamey.

Black flames roared up explosively. The flames kept on spreading and spreading. Someone screamed. Adelheid thought—there was no way they could find Flame Flamey when she was merged with fire, and Adelheid couldn’t deal physical damage to her. In other words, this was someone Adelheid couldn’t beat.

In coordination with Flamey, the black magical girls all swooped in at once. Adelheid’s group blocked, hindered, and tried to avoid them, but the black flames obstructed their path. Sally got punched, and she and Lightning were sent flying together. Adelheid leaped after them to catch Lightning’s body. Lightning was still looking serene.

Ah could just about throw ’er away, Adelheid thought, but of course she couldn’t do that. Wrapping Lightning in her cape, she put her on her back. Slicing, sweeping, and blocking enemy attacks to absorb them, she sent the energy right into her slashes.

“What do we do?! Shit!” Mephis yelled.

But forget it, there was nothing they could do. Even if they continued to hold here, the fire was narrowing the space where they could fight around them. Adelheid absorbed attacks, then released, absorbed and released, absorbed and released over and over, when she noticed the presence moving on her back.

“Ahhh, what a nice nap.” Lightning tapped the side of Adelheid’s head twice. She was in magical-girl form now. “You were leaking a bit of energy, Adelheid.”

“The heck? You were stealin’ my energy?”

“Stealing it? How rude. It flowed right to me.”

Adelheid didn’t grasp the logic, but she understood what Lightning had been doing. She’d never known a magical girl before who’d been able to do something like that, but she’d also been forced to understand—whether she liked it or not—Lightning was outside of the norm.

Adelheid blocked an attack, and instead of immediately releasing the energy, she sent it through her body. The energy gradually seeped out from her back, where she was touching Lightning, and was lost.

“That’s theft, gal!”

“Don’t say that! You’ll make me look bad.”

Adelheid turned the energy from attacks toward her internal cycle only. If Lightning was going to steal it, she’d let her take it. If anyone could break them out of this situation, it wasn’t Adelheid. It was Lightning.

“Nice, very nice. I’ve stored up quite a bit,” said Lightning.

“Then handle this already!”

Lightning swung up her sword. A glow ran along it, and thunder roared. Purple bolts mowed down the whole area, evaporating the black magical girls. In a trancelike voice, Lightning murmured, “Lightning Bolt.”

“Sayin’ a move name after ya fire it is against the style.”

“Oh, please. It’s fine.”

“And yer taste in namin’ ain’t the best.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you.” Lightning giggled, and Adelheid laughed quietly as well.

Holding on to the leg of her crow, Sally flew over to come down beside Adelheid. She seemed glad for some reason. “You two were looking a little Cutie Healer–esque, yeahhh.”

“What in the Sam Hill?”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Of course it is,” Sally replied.

Lightning fired off some more bolts, thinning the enemy forces, and Mephis and Lillian beat those that fled and stamped them out, while Adelheid ran over the black flames toward them.

Adelheid heard another scream. Her eyebrows came together. The scream was far away. No, it was far but getting closer. A giant abacus roared in while knocking down trees, Pshuke and Calkoro riding it.

The two magical girls were shrieking, clinging to the abacus as they landed in the middle of the flames. Sparks danced up high, caressing them as they both screamed two, three times as loud as when they’d landed, saying, “Hot! Hot!”

“Hottttt!”

Pshuke sprayed misted white fluid all over, and the flames’ might subsided in the blink of an eye. With the strongest spray, she blew out the ball of flame, and the black Flamey writhed in agony and disappeared.

  Ranyi

A swarm of jet-black magical girls that just about filled her whole field of view, overwhelming the group. Ranyi kicked and punched, but no matter how many she defeated, they kept on welling out forever, like a faucet that someone had forgotten to twist off. Pshuke had run away, Lightning had collapsed, and Sally had taken hold of her crow and fled with enemies in pursuit and Lightning in her arms.

Ranyi was staggering. Everything hurt. If possible, she wanted to never move again. Diko was the only one still moving. Up against a homunculus designed after the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, Diko was still fighting. Though she was being pushed back, she had not fallen. The homunculus’s power and speed were inferior to the real Cranberry, who Ranyi had seen countless time in images. But that was compared with the real thing. Looking at these homunculi as individual units, she was frighteningly strong. Right before Cranberry’s hand reached out to stroke her, Diko vanished, and Cranberry’s hand brushed a tree. Under her touch, the tree burst open from the inside.

Shaking her head, Ranyi kicked at a jet-black magical girl. It felt like the inside of her skull had been shaken up.

Diko had been training on homunculi more diligently than anyone before even entering this school. That had to be why she could still fight. Ranyi wasn’t as diligent as Diko—since she’d thought that wasn’t a very important factor to be chosen as Lazuline.

Now that she thought about it, Diko had been more diligent than anyone about everything. But put the other way, that meant even training her hardest, she’d failed to be chosen as Lazuline.

She had wanted to become Lazuline. She’d put up with everything for that one goal, but in the end, it had been no use. But even after it had been decided that Diko couldn’t become Lazuline, she’d continued the same training. Neither was she thinking like Ranyi about the next after the third. She just did it like it was the obvious thing to do.

Ranyi breathed out, then in. She was close to her limits. She looked at Diko. Their eyes met. Diko smiled. That wasn’t a smile of resignation or desperation. She had looked clearly at Ranyi and smiled.

Ranyi breathed in again. She asked Diko, “What’s so funny?” Without speaking out loud, Diko answered, “That look on your face like you’re ready to cry was funny.”

Ranyi breathed out, smacking her cheeks hard. The inside of her cheek split, and the taste of blood spread in her mouth. It was the perfect stimulant.

The scenery transformed around them. She was no longer looking at the mountains at night. There was nothing around, just endless blue sky and earth all the way to the horizon. This was the place Lazuline belonged. Diko and Cranberry were fighting there, while all around, homunculi were dancing in ecstasy.

You think I look funny when I’m about to cry? Ranyi yelled back threateningly via her mind.

Diko smiled again.

Oh, so you can show me a good expression, huh? Ranyi laughed. That look is way more you.

Then Ranyi gave a short howl. A magical girl with a Gatling gun swung around its barrel to point at her. Before she could fire, Ranyi closed the distance between them, taking the gun under her left arm. She broke it off like snapping a joint in a lock, throwing the enemy off balance to strike it in the knee, then a kick high up to smash its temple.

“Don’t ya underestimate me!”

Smacking her tail on the ground, she leaped. Midair, she flipped upside down, launched off a tree branch, then flipped again to right herself, kicking away Cranberry’s rose. Black flower petals dancing, the homunculus turned back to glare at her.

Ranyi shot a silent sign to Diko, who responded with a smile.

She erased all the madly dancing homunculi from her mind, all aside from Cranberry. Those were to be ignored. Cranberry wasn’t using her wide-area destructive sound waves because she was taking care not to hit the others. There was no point in bothering fighting what was just an obstruction to the enemy.

Matching Diko’s blow, Ranyi thrust out with a spear-hand. Dropping it right before it could be blocked, she switched to a backhand blow, and this time, Diko matched her with a front kick, the two of them moving like a single creature. There was no need to say a word. Lazuline should move on instinct.

Cranberry’s brutal high kick came flying at Ranyi, knocking her back even through her overhead block, sending her rolling along the ground. Cranberry didn’t give her a glance, turning back in the other direction to press close after Diko, who was trying to back up with zigzagging steps.

Ranyi smiled. The tougher things were, the more Lazuline would smile.

With kicks, punches, claws, swords, and needles, it was as if the black magical girls were carving up her body, but they didn’t exist, so there was no need to pay attention to them. Smacking with her tail, she peeled herself off the ground to leap to a tree that had broken right in the middle to fall on the ground.

Ranyi activated her magic. She went through a triangle entrance made up of broken branches. She connected one door to the other. She came out the exit made of two fallen trees leaning on each other. Ahead of her was Diko’s back. There was no need to call out to her. She charged forward toward Diko’s back, and the instant before they would have touched, Diko vanished from the world. In front of Ranyi’s eyes was the Musician of the Forest. Ranyi jumped.

Her hand touched Cranberry’s face. Grabbing those long ears tightly, she pulled them close. Cranberry’s fingers stroked Ranyi’s stomach. Something inside her burst. Hot liquid overflowed. Blood burbling from her lips, Ranyi murmured voicelessly. The words “Don’t underestimate the tenacity of a goldfish” reached no ears. Ranyi head-butted Cranberry, kicking her in the back of the head as she spun the two of them around, and when Diko appeared, she hit Cranberry’s gut with a short upper.

Cranberry still did not fall. Of course. Being the mortal enemy of the first Lapis Lazuline, the Musician of the Forest wouldn’t go down that easily.

Ranyi and Diko pincered Cranberry from the front and the rear, hitting her continuously with short strikes. All the vital points at the back were at Ranyi’s disposal—kidneys, spine, vertebrae of the neck. Diko dropped her elbow on Cranberry’s collarbone, vanishing before the enemy could strike back. Ranyi didn’t retreat, kicking low at Cranberry’s calves, then slipped and fell.

Huh? she thought, but her body wouldn’t move. She felt oddly heavy. Her vision was red. Diko’s expression was grave. The jet-black magical girls were coming to swarm where Ranyi had fallen. She had to move. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even manage to lift a finger. Cranberry kicked Diko, knocking her out of Ranyi’s field of view, then lumbered heavily in the direction Diko had flown as if she couldn’t even see Ranyi. Your opponent’s right here, Ranyi said in her mind.

The Musician of the Forest turned back. It wasn’t that she’d heard Ranyi’s thoughts. As proof of that, Cranberry wasn’t paying attention to her. There was someone else captured in the Musician’s gaze. A magical girl in a white school uniform pierced through the darkness to appear, leaping. The Musician’s body warped and bent but still tried to keep moving forward, and the white magical girl swung a weapon like a naginata at her, and the Musician’s head flew from her torso.

The one holding the naginata—the white magical girl—sighed like she was wringing everything from the depths of her lungs, then immediately came to peer into Ranyi’s face, turning back to yell something.

Next, a girl with a rifle on her back showed up to yell, “Uluru is the administrator! Everyone, stop fighting!”

The jet-black magical girls stopped moving. Ranyi exhaled, and blood spewed out along with it.

If the administrator was here, then it was okay now. With that thought, she lost consciousness.

  Rappy Taype

The magical girl–type homunculi were gradually increasing in number. Not only that, Tetty had gone over to the enemy side, too. The way she moved and the change in her expression told them. It wasn’t that she’d betrayed them; she was just being mind-controlled. They couldn’t harm her.

They couldn’t use their magical phones to get help, either. They couldn’t get through to anyone.

Everyone was being pushed to the limit. Miss Ril was fighting the fencer magical girl on her own. Rappy was dashing around the black swarm to stir them up, but the enemies were too good, and they wouldn’t let her get away with it, leaving her with more than a few wounds. The open slice on her back was particularly deep.

Dory drove through an enemy with her drill, calling out to Arlie in her shrill voice. Arlie responded at an even higher pitch. Even without understanding their cries, their panic and frustration came across.

As they were talking, Arlie’s armor was being grabbed at and torn away. Tetty was grabbing and crushing her armor faster than it could regenerate. Tetty Goodgripp was strong. And when she was being controlled, her usual gentleness was gone. She assaulted Arlie without mercy.

If they let her go on like this, Arlie wouldn’t last. Rappy yelled, “Arlie! Swap!”

Rappy smoothly slipped in to stand in front of Arlie. Tetty tried to grab Rappy’s arm but only managed to peel off one layer of the wrap stuck to it. Right as she peeled off the second layer of wrap, Rappy’s hand grabbed her mitten from above, holding it down. Rappy wrenched them both around as she circled to Tetty’s back, wrapping her left leg around her to restrain Tetty’s right arm as Rappy’s own right arm went around her neck. Rappy clenched it hard, strangling her. A crushed voice leaked from Tetty’s throat.

Arlie yelled something, and when the homunculi tried to swarm Rappy, Arlie beat them away. An agonized sound seeped from Tetty’s lips. Rappy’s arm squeezed harder. She wasn’t going to kill their own group leader. She was going to strangle her unconscious. But right when she’d just about done it, a shock ran through her side. Her arms’ grip weakened. Tetty slipped away, dropping to the ground to cough like she was in pain. Rappy pulled out the dagger thrust in her side and tossed it away, sticking wrap over her wound to stanch the bleeding.

It was the fencer. She’d saved Tetty by throwing the dagger at her from a distance. Rappy looked over to see Miss Ril was crumbling and starting to fall apart. Even for someone as sturdy as Miss Ril, the fencer was extraordinarily powerful. She was too much to face one-on-one.

When a homunculus attacked from behind, Rappy struck back with an elbow, then followed up with a kick to knock it away. I’m doing this all of my own will, she thought. It seemed she wasn’t being controlled by the fencer.

Arlie was under attack by multiple enemies. Struck by whips, gouged by spikes, sliced by blades, her armor was being destroyed. Black mucus like the body of a homunculus oozed out from between her destroyed parts to repair her armor, but the pace at which she was being destroyed was faster.

Miss Ril was being driven back, too. The fencer sliced at her, scattering fragments of her body. With each strike of the fencer’s knee or elbow, the cracks in her body spread, hideously deforming her shape. One more blow to the face, and instantly, her figure warped, her head swallowing up the fencer’s arm. Miss Ril’s body, deforming like fluid, twined around the fencer. It was one of the metals Rappy had brought: mercury.

Nice! Mercury!

Before the fencer could shake Miss Ril off, Dory bashed into her. When another homunculus tried to get in her way, Rappy body-slammed it away, opening up Dory’s path.

Dory tried to drive her drill into the fencer’s stomach, and the fencer stopped the drill’s spin with both hands. Drill Dory’s magic drill would continue to spin until its destruction was complete. The more an enemy tried to stop it, the faster its rate of spin got and the harder and stronger the drill became, and there was no upper limit.

Fencer and drill maintained a momentary balance, but ultimately it ended in the drill’s victory. Its powerful rotation burst through the fencer’s torso, flinging it away to hit the ground. Miss Ril tried to pull away from the fencer, but a hand grasped her tight. It was the fencer.

Before Rappy even noticed something flash, Miss Ril’s whole body was sliced apart. The scattered mercury of her body tried to gather together, but the fencer’s palm struck it from above, making it scatter once more. The fencer’s mouth creaked open into a grin. It used its hands to crawl along, moving so fast you wouldn’t think it was just a torso, to body-slam Dory, slicing at her when she staggered. Blood spurted.

Supporting Dory as she was about to collapse, Arlie spun the two of them around to take the blow from the fencer instead. Her armor, which had gradually been regenerating, blocked the fencer’s attack with its thickly viscous surface, and the fencer skittered backward like a cockroach.

Tetty got up. Terror and turmoil could be seen in her eyes. The brainwashing had been undone, but she was moving slowly, and it was the most she could do to avoid the homunculi’s attacks. Rappy ran, withstanding pain as she went, to scoop up Miss Ril’s body with wrap, ducking to avoid an enemy attack, then leaping to slide in and stand beside Arlie. Even just breathing was painful. Though she’d stanched the bleeding, the damage was serious. And she wasn’t the only one. They’d all easily gone over their limits.

It was baffling how Dory hadn’t collapsed with such awful injuries. Tetty was intensely disturbed. Miss Ril’s body wouldn’t come together. Arlie clenched a fist and looked ahead. Rappy looked over that way, too. In the distance, they heard a loud noise.

The sound was gradually approaching. After a while, the black swarms parted all at once. A blue magical girl leaped out, stabbing a homunculus with her trident. The stabbed unit instantly froze white, then shattered to pieces.

“Arlie! Sorry I’m late!”

Rappy’s thoughts were all over the place. Arlie knew this person? Why was she here? But this wasn’t the time for questions. The newcomer with the trident fired ice arrows that impaled the black magical girls. The fencer grabbed the homunculus beside it to block the arrows, continuing to use it as a shield to charge forward with fearsome speed, then leaping past Arlie to slice at the girl in blue. She blocked with her trident, and Arlie swung a fist at the fencer. The fencer leaped back, skittering away to disappear into the back of the swarm.

The black magical girls surrounded them from a distance. It seemed they were wary of projectile weapons.

“Hey! Stranger! What’s going on, here?!” Rappy demanded.

“I’m sorry! I don’t really know, either!” the girl with the trident replied, swinging her weapon up high. “We’re doing it! Get ready!”

“Doing furreal?” Dory yelled—what did she mean they were doing? Arlie responded as well, but Rappy couldn’t tell what she was saying.

Dory swung her drill while Arlie swung her right fist. Arlie drew Rappy and Tetty close with her left arm. Rappy didn’t really get what was going on, but she did get that it seemed best to stay close, for now.

The three magical girls swung down their weapons and fist all at once, and the girl with the trident yelled, “Ultimate Princess Explosion!”

The air made a creaking sound, and Rappy’s vision went white.