Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

UNPLANNED, UNEXPECTED

That magical girl did not have a single hair on her head.

Bald magical girls were unusual, but not completely unheard of. There were various situations that might make them bald: having the motif of a certain religion, or having been hit by a magic attack that had burned it off or made it fall out, or shaving it off to keep from being attacked by a magical girl who used the hair of others as a weapon. And there was one more case where they might shave their heads—to indicate an apology.

The first magical girl had the logo of a famous cake shop printed on the bag hanging from her hand, the second magical girl had a square box done up in wrapping paper from a famous traditional sweetshop dangling from her hand, and the third magical girl carried under her arm a manila envelope with Written apology on it in attention-getting block script, and all of them hung their heads with somber expressions, quietly proceeding down the hall like a funeral procession until all three stood in a row in front of a door.

The trio eyed the plate on said door and either scowled or clicked their tongues.

“What’s this supposed to mean, he’s temporarily out of the office?! Inheritance? Island? I don’t care! Know when not to head out, old man!”

“Just how long do you think I had to line up to buy the seasonal limited Mont Blanc from Athena Wave?”

“This is bullshit! I wrote today’s date on the written apology!”

Either taking off the bald wig to fan herself with a hand like she was hot, or smacking the wig like she was annoyed, each of the three cursed the owner of that room for a while, the expression of their anger gradually toning down until eventually their faces and voices became calm and cold and they put their heads together in the empty hallway.

“Well, whatever. It’s not like our strategy has failed. We’re just still not done.”

“It really was a great plan to pretend to be remorseful and visit the office of the Management Department chief to create an opening from the inside.”

“Old men are weak to the tears of young women, after all. Even if he puts on a tough face as the great chief of the Management Department, he’s the same on the inside. If this goes well, then we’ll be the ones who succeeded at extreme information theft, and we can get as famous as the Magical-Girl Hunter, and we’ll get so many jobs—”

The three magical girls were so engrossed in their secret criminal discussion that they failed to notice that the door of the department chief shone blue and twisted up, opening a hole the size of a human head, and before the magical girls could even react, they were drawn toward it and sucked in to be absorbed, screams and all, and then, with another twist, the hole disappeared as if it had never been there, and nothing remained but the single bald wig that fell there, all alone.

The magical girl who had been sneakily watching from behind a pillar trembled, and the faceless puppet on her right hand also trembled, just like its owner. “Terrifying…the Management Department is just as scary as the rumors said.”

The freckled magical girl who’d been leaning forward from behind to witness the entire thing shook her head. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. That trap will probably only activate for those with bad intentions. We have a sincere desire to be on good terms with the department chief, so nothing should happen if we approach…but, well, there’s no need for us to choose to approach the room while he’s out.” Saying just that, the freckled magical girl turned away from the door to the department chief’s office and started walking back the way she’d come.

The magical girl with a puppet on her hand rushed after her. “Are you going back?”

“If he’s not here, then there’s nothing we can do. Let’s get an appointment before we come next time. I wanted to at least see him as soon as possible, though.”

“It sounds like he’s gone to an island or something—if you’re in a hurry, then how about we just go over there?”

The magical girl with the freckles looked at the ground as she walked, then touched a hand to her chin and considered awhile before looking up. “He’s got a temper to begin with, so let’s not do anything to offend him. Look, if he hates impropriety just as much as the rumors say, then he’ll accept Magical Girl Resources, now that the puss has been taken out.”

“Yes’m. Well, let’s do that, then. By the way, will the girls sucked in be all right?”

“Before, when a bunch from the Archfiend Cram School were taken in by the dozens, they were apparently released in three days.”

“That’s pretty unbelievable…”

Muttering quietly to each other, the two magical girls left. The bald wig that had been abandoned there lay there as if in protest.

  Touta Magaoka

Marguerite had told him to head to the main building—so he would go there as fast as he could.

Pulling Yol’s hand, he ran as fast as possible. Things he would normally be worried about, like that his arm might get cut by sharp leaves or his cheeks stabbed by pointed branches, he completely ignored, and he only thought about running fast. To be more accurate, he didn’t even think. He just let his legs move.

The first thing he saw was not the main building; it was sheep. A bunch of sheep were gathered to bleat baa baa and lackadaisically eat grass. If there were sheep, then there would be Pastel Mary. Touta hadn’t heard about sheep being kept on the island, so he figured these had to be hers.

He’d hardly had anything to do with her and had only ever spoken a few words with her, and he only remembered her name because she’d been brought up as the number one suspect in the grayfruit thefts. And actually, considering the situation then, she was the only possible culprit. If those suspicions were correct, that meant she was a good-for-nothing adult who only thought about herself.

Touta did understand that, but he still didn’t slow down. Even if she was a thief and a good-for-nothing adult, right now Pastel Mary was the only one he had to rely on. It was like the saying he’d learned from the manga dictionary of proverbs in the school library, “A drowning man will grasp at straws.”

Passing by the sheep, they went through an area that was filled with branches and leaves to come out to an open space. Suddenly under the light of the sun, Touta squinted. Before he could check around him, someone yelled, “Watch out!”

Someone leaped in from the side to scoop up him and Yol, and they rolled over the ground, and the someone who’d grabbed them came to a stop when her back hit a tree. Though his eyes wanted to spin, he somehow got them facing forward and looked. A magical girl like an Arabian dancer was floating in the sky with an old mage underneath her, and beside them was the fluffy-wuffy Pastel Mary, and there were lots of sheep around them, as well as tools and glass bottles and strange objects placed everywhere. Patterns he’d never seen before were painted on the earth in red and blue, and even just at a glance, there were enough lines there to make his head hurt. Mage, magical girl, and all were looking at Touta and Yol in surprise.

The magical girl in a school uniform rubbed her back with an “Ow, ow” as she stood up, releasing Touta and Yol. “The thing right there like a translucent tray is dangerous, so you can’t touch it.”

Touta looked where she pointed. It was right there. A vague something about five feet wide was floating about a foot and a half off the ground. Touta didn’t reply to her, instead rushing to tell her what he had to say right now.

He told her that there were people fighting with the goddess magical girl close by and that he wanted them to go help. There was a mountain of things he was curious about, like why everyone was here and what they were doing, but this was more important than asking those questions. Yol added her part along the way, clasping Touta’s hand hard enough it hurt as she spoke along with him. Touta squeezed back just as hard as spittle flew from his mouth, and he didn’t even apologize for it as he talked, talked, and talked.

He wanted them to go help Marguerite and the others. He wanted them to beat the bad guy together.

Right as he was talking, there was a loud bang and the ground shook. Touta and Yol supported each other, hastily looking behind them. They watched as trees were blasted away and then fell. There was another loud sound, and shaking. They were the sounds of trees falling.

“Mei will go,” the dancer-style magical girl muttered with a stone expression, looking toward the sound. “Nobody follow,” she added, and then she vanished too fast for anyone to intervene.

The old mage stomped on the ground in aggravation. “They’re too close. We have no time.”

Pastel Mary moved her head uneasily, turning to the old man. “Wh-what do we do? Do we cancel preparations and, um, run? There are the children, so.”

Being brought up as a reason to run, Touta told them, “Don’t worry about us,” which Yol followed up with, “If there’s anything we can help with, then we’ll help.”

“Besides…” Touta moved his face to look up at the sky. Black smoke was trailing. It was closer than when he’d seen it before. “There isn’t really anywhere for us to run to, either.” Pastel Mary seemed startled, and she lowered her head slightly at Touta and Yol.

“We need all the help we can get right now,” the mage said with a nod. “I’m thinking to make an impromptu gate to escape from the island. Preparations for that are complete…somewhat. We’re about to have the ceremony for it. Oh, we have essentially no more concerns about energy. Make sure to stay away from there. If you touch it, you’ll be sucked in.”

Pulling Yol’s arm, Touta moved away from the translucent tray. The mage nodded, beard swaying. “There is a silver lining. I have another mage assistant. Girl, you remember what you learned at school?”

Yol stuck her hands in her sleeves and popped them out again. Those cards with characters or patterns on them were stuck between her fingers. “Please leave it to me, Master Ragi. I will show you even more than I learned at school.”

The instant after declaring that coolly, she just about fell over, and the magical girl in a school uniform supported her from behind and brought a glass bottle to her mouth, having her drink the thick purple liquid inside. When Touta asked what it was, he received the response, “Hair growth formula.”

  Miss Marguerite

Tree trunk–like elephant legs were swinging down with such bloodthirst, she wanted to look away. They stomped mercilessly in one strike, two, putting the full body weight into it. The first stomp hit the goddess’s right shoulder, the second her right upper arm, and then Clantail’s elephant legs rose one last time to crush the enemy.

But even as she was under assault, the goddess was getting into a ready posture. She took the first strike hard on a shoulder, and with the second she stopped using her arm as a shield. The force, weight, and magic power on top of that would have crushed a magical girl, and only a goddess could have met those foot stomps with guards. Never mind breaking bones, they didn’t even break skin.

Clantail’s rage-filled attacks were powerful. At times, a magical girl’s anger was power. But Marguerite thought that Clantail’s strength lay not in powerful attacks but in versatility and flexibility. In that sense, the way Clantail was putting disproportionate emphasis on attack power now was extremely dangerous. She was probably even forgetting how important it was to replenish, that she needed grayfruit.

Marguerite aimed for the moment when the right arm, which held the ax, was tensing, and ran. She slipped smoothly between Clantail’s legs to make an ultralow thrust, which the goddess dodged with a somersault, and, a beat later, Clantail’s stomp shook the ground.

The goddess backstepped away. Clantail turned into a lion and pursued her, and Marguerite followed, leaping from tree to tree while maintaining a distance from which she could intervene at any time.

Marguerite went along a tree branch and bounded off a tree trunk. She made it seem like she was trying to get behind the goddess to get her in a pincer with Clantail, making the enemy worry about it to suppress her movement. She was actually going for something else. Marguerite crouched deep a moment before leaping off a tree trunk, flying at Clantail on a sharp trajectory. She caught an arm around her waist to bring herself to a sudden stop, and, astride the lion’s back, she faced the goddess.

“Here.” Marguerite shoved a grayfruit in front of Clantail’s face. Even without the damage, having transformed at will so many times running around against the monster, she would run out of strength.

Clantail moved just slightly from the neck up, looking at the grayfruit that was held out to her.

The voltage of her anger decreased a little—not much, but a little—and the small light of reason lit in her eyes. A drop of cold calculation joined her passionate and strong desire to fight, to defeat the enemy. It was telling her that to win, she had to be calm and eat the fruit.

Clantail absolutely needed the grayfruit right now, as a symbol of calm as well as simple replenishment. That was why Marguerite held it out to her. But this also created an opening for the enemy.

Right as Marguerite held it out, the goddess stopped. She twisted her back as if copying Marguerite’s form from when she’d thrown the rock, and, with a swing of her arm, she threw Maiya’s stick.

Marguerite kicked off Clantail’s back to leap upward. The fruit she’d failed to hand to Clantail she chomped in one bite, tossing the stem into the grass. Clantail transformed from a tiger into a snake that shone black, making use of the height difference to avoid the staff.

The form of her throw had made it look as if she’d just given the staff a very light toss. But Maiya’s staff drove through the air faster than the speed of sound, blasting away branches and leaves. The throw was powerful like an automatic cannon shot, breaking thick tree trunks, sweeping up an intense cloud of dust where it landed.

Evasion was the only possible correct answer. But now Marguerite couldn’t give Clantail the fruit, and the most she could do was escape into the trees. Clantail had no resupply.

In a flowing motion, the goddess went from the throw into a bash. Clantail slithered her snake tail to swipe at the goddess’s feet, and the goddess did a little jump to avoid it. Marguerite threw broken branches at her from up in the trees, and the goddess repelled those branches in midair. Clantail whipped her snake tail at the goddess from behind, and the goddess brought her right ax behind herself to block it, but Clantail was cut by the blade of the ax, still making to strike her back.

The black snake tail became grayish-brown, and its shape changed as well. Large fins moved as if trying to swim in the air. Yet again the goddess swung her ax, and blood flew, slicing open gills. And then a shudder ran through the goddess’s body, and she stopped moving for just a second.

Clantail had transformed from a snake into an electric eel, sending an electric current through her.

The goddess landed from her jump. Marguerite leaped down after her, and Clantail transformed again.

A scorpion’s giant pincers went for the goddess’s legs. The goddess kicked away the right pincer, scattering shell, and stomped the left into smithereens, meeting the poison stinger with a head-butt that shattered its shell as well, knocking Clantail far into a back arch. When the goddess was about to swing her ax at Clantail, Marguerite thrust in, aiming the weapon toward her overhead.

But Marguerite had no intention of attacking or being attacked. Her thrust was a feint. Before the ax could swing, she tugged on a vine with her right hand to soar back into the trees above.

The ax swung down. Even though it just cut through air, the pressure of its wind and the shock wave blasted away the trees, branches, and Marguerite. Clantail switched her transformation, turning from a scorpion to a bee to spray poison from the end of her stinger, but the goddess brought the flat of her ax in front of her like a shield to block it.

As Marguerite was being blasted away, she grabbed a branch and slid down the tree trunk. Weaving between the trees, using the Inspection Department style of walking to cross obstacles, she aimed for the goddess’s back.

Clantail transformed into a tiger, leaping backward to land, then went down on her knees like all strength had left her. Putting her right hand on the ground to support her body, she somehow managed to avoid going face-first into the mud, but, unable to get up right away, she looked at her palms with disbelief.

She was looking at a human girl. Her transformation had come undone. It hadn’t lasted.

  Navi Ru

The broken gear that was a relic of the First Mage had been managed by the Magical Kingdom, along with the ruins where it had been enshrined, but it had been lost to tomb robbers.

Sataborn had acquired it through a dubious pawnshop. If this became public knowledge, there would have been an obligation to return it. Sataborn had not reported it, and neither had he let go of the item, using it as research material.

Some scholars would call this the height of blasphemy, or at the very least a matter to report to the authorities. But the one to acquire the relic had been Sataborn. In the face of his research, any faith or reverence for the First Mage was trash.

Navi Ru had only recently learned that Sataborn had this gear. If not for a bunch of small strokes of luck—Sataborn’s carelessness, his ignorance in the ways of the world, his cooperation with the Lab, Navi Ru’s position, which enabled him to visit the island frequently—he would never have found out about it.

If the presence of the gear was made public due to Sataborn’s death, the gear would be retrieved and it would be over. There would be nothing to be gained then.

Navi sought out gain. That was his specialty.

He could hear the intense sounds of destruction. Navi Ru stopped his casting for a moment to look toward the main building.

Clarissa had a grasp on Francesca’s patterns of behavior as well as that sword he’d brought out from the treasure vaults, so she wouldn’t lose. Things would work out better if Navi Ru’s accompanying magical girl would eliminate Francesca, rather than his having to use commands to stop her. Since he couldn’t kill everyone on this island, he would make events unfold here as naturally as possible.

Sounds of destruction followed. A shaking in the ground came up from the bottoms of his shoes.

The waves surged toward him, and, after spraying the smell of salt and white bubbles, they receded.

He felt strangely unsettled, like something unforeseen was about to happen. In his head, he carefully examined each piece of information and came to the conclusion that there should be no problems, but that uneasy feeling still wouldn’t go away. Navi Ru rubbed a grayfruit with his sleeve and took two bites. The juices started to dribble from the corners of his mouth, and he wiped himself with a paper napkin he had on hand before balling it up and tossing it into the reef, but the wind blew the trash back at him to hit his shin and fall to the ground. He clicked his tongue, scooped up the garbage, and shoved it in his pocket.

He turned to the south side of the island. Trails of black smoke hung in the sky.

There was more than a little that was unforeseen going on. It had started with not being able to use the spare gate anymore, and the fire popping up for some reason had been another thing, and the situation where they had to keep eating grayfruit to keep from passing out was another. There were more survivors than he’d anticipated. That boy Touta Magaoka had made friends with Yol, and Nephilia had come to negotiate with him—the fingers of one hand wouldn’t be enough to count it all up. But he was still keeping things under control.

Navi heard a moan and looked over toward it. Mana, lying on the ground, wore a pained expression as she stirred. Her presence had also been unexpected.

“She’s tough,” he muttered absently to himself. She wasn’t an investigator in the Inspection Department just for show.

Her eyelashes fluttered up and down, and, gradually, her eyelids opened. Navi knelt down beside her to give himself the air of “Look, I saved you,” and, once she was conscious, he brought a grayfruit to her mouth. Before long, Mana’s eyes opened and she moved her face from side to side, and as soon as she noticed the grayfruit, she bit into it. Just like an animal.

She finished eating the grayfruit, then put a hand on Navi’s knee to raise herself into a sitting position. “How… What happened…?”

The ground rocked again. The two of them looked to the main building.

  Nephilia

Of course there were emotional reasons that she had tried to nurse Dreamy Chelsea, but it wasn’t just that. Nephilia—rather, freelance magical girls in general—would always and at all times seek to benefit themselves. Dreamy Chelsea was someone she could use.

While feeding Chelsea grayfruit just like a mother bird feeds its chicks, Nephilia considered.

The first time Nephilia had run into Navi Ru on this island, the man had been sitting on a magic carpet that floated in the air. Since then, he’d generally come as a set with the magic carpet, but when she’d seen him earlier, he’d been walking on his own two feet. Despite having the added burden of Mana, he hadn’t been using the carpet. He hadn’t even been carrying it.

There was some reason Navi Ru had let go of the magic carpet. Nephilia didn’t really get the sense that it had been due to a sudden accident. There was no dirt on his robe, and she couldn’t sense any panic in him, either. And, combining that with Rareko’s final words, Nephilia started to understand something.

Coming to the conclusion that he’d used his flying carpet to send some kind of item he needed high in the air to use the sky as a safe, Nephilia realized what she should do. Nephilia could not fly in the sky. Ren-Ren could fly, but she was with Clarissa. It would be difficult to get in contact with Ren-Ren right now and get her to get the item.

So here she had Dreamy Chelsea. This crazy magical girl could make star-shaped objects fly and could even ride on top of them to fly herself. In order for Nephilia to acquire that thing Navi Ru needed and stand in an advantageous position over him, she needed Dreamy Chelsea’s ability to fly.

Chelsea raised herself on her elbows and reached out for the grayfruit, grabbing one to put into her mouth herself. Her color was a lot better than back when she’d been entirely a corpse. She was in magical-girl form, and the strength had returned to her eyes as well. But still, these were serious injuries that would ordinarily have sent her straight to the hospital—but these were not ordinary times.

After that, she devoured five more grayfruit before coming to sit with her legs to the side and letting out a phew, and after Nephilia wiped the grayfruit juices off her hands and mouth, Chelsea looked ahead and cried out in surprise, pointing at Nephilia. “You… Why… Huh? Could it be you saved me?”

Nephilia giggled. If she understood, that would make things faster, so she explained.

She told Chelsea that she had been dying—in actuality, she’d definitely been dead, but since if she started talking about that, things would go on too long, and it wasn’t as if Nephilia fully understood it herself, she just made it like she’d been dying—and Clarissa and Ren-Ren had headed out to beat the goddess magical girl.

At this point, Chelsea tried to leap up, but Nephilia wrapped her arms around her waist to stop her. “If you fight…you need…”

“Where? Where is it?”

“Probably…hidden…sky…”

“Then I’ve got to go get it! We have to go, now! Show me!”

Clarissa would finish off the goddess. There was no reason Chelsea had to work so hard. But just like there were no hairs on Navi’s head, there were no reasons to tell her that.

  Pastel Mary

They got more people. First, there was a woman in her pajamas and a little tortoise, 7753 and Tepsekemei. When they made the tortoise lick some gargling medicine, she transformed into a dancer-style magical girl. But she was two sizes smaller than when Mary had seen her before. Making a fuss more than a hundred times louder than the tortoise as she plugged her nose to somehow drink down the gargle medicine was 7753, who seemed to be lacking something. Her motif was a school uniform, so with her school cap and gakuran, you wouldn’t think anything was missing, but for some reason, it didn’t feel right. But Mary couldn’t remember what the missing component was. She had the feeling like it was important, but also like it wasn’t.

Anyway, she didn’t have the time to be worrying about it. Even at the best of times, using her head took up time. When things were busy, she should just do her work, and if she got some spare time later, she would think.

They’d also added the two mage children on top of that. Now Pastel Mary could avoid the absolute worst, that she would have to be the assistant in some ceremony. She understood herself better than anyone. It wasn’t an issue of confidence. Pastel Mary was startlingly unsuited to a situation where errors would not be permitted. She knew she would absolutely blow it.

She did feel like that was pathetic of her, at a time like this, but it wasn’t like she could change herself right away. Mary would do what she should do. In other words, she would continue to draw and draw sheep to set them to work, and she would make them shields if needed.

She shut out all the discussion being had around her and the sounds of explosions she could hear from the forest and put her energy, strength, and magic into drawing sheep so that she would have no regrets, even if her life as an artist were to end here, and when she had a spare moment, she drank the hair growth formula or the cough syrup and stuff. She ignored the taste, how it felt going down, everything.

After drawing a particularly large sheep, she happened to look up. She had a feeling she could hear Dreamy Chelsea’s voice. She immediately shook her head and resumed drawing sheep. She could remember Chelsea later. Right now, she should do her best to make it so there would be a “later.”

  Dreamy Chelsea

She was made to wander all over the sky, like “Maybe it’s over here, maybe it’s over there.”

Normally, carrying Nephilia on her back as she rode a little star-shaped rock flying through the sky would be an easy task. But right now, Chelsea was not the usual Chelsea. She’d been sliced open so bad, her cuteness had been dramatically reduced. It was really the most she could do to just move. And on top of that, the higher she got in the sky, the colder it got. Chelsea wasn’t cut out for going up high right now.

But Nephilia pushed her hard anyway. And though she acted full of confidence, like she totally knew where it was, when it actually came down to looking for it, she got lost. This caused problems.

Nephilia pointed like “Maybe it’s over there,” and Chelsea complained as she headed over there, and then Nephilia pointed like “Maybe it’s over this way,” and Chelsea whined as she went over that way, and after repeating that a few times, they finally found something that seemed like it. The one to find it was not Nephilia. Chelsea found it. Nephilia was really not useful. She was very close to a villain to begin with, and if Chelsea hadn’t owed her for saving her, she’d have been fine ignoring her.

But Nephilia had found her, and that changed things.

On top of a carpet that floated above the clouds sat a little wooden box. Opening the lid, Chelsea cried “Wow!” in mixed surprise and joy.

At a glance, it looked like just a gear, nothing special about it. But the clear cuteness hidden within did come across. It was such intense cute-pop, equivalent to that of a few dozen magical girls who’d gotten made into anime. Chelsea’s cheeks had gone white from lack of blood and from the cold, but now pink rose in them.

Nephilia laughed. Maybe that ksh-shh sound could be considered cute.

  Miss Marguerite

The half-beast magical girl who had been fighting head-to-head with the goddess was gone. A small-statured girl in a tattered school uniform was clenching her teeth at her own powerlessness, holding to her chest the rage that she was no longer able to put in a swing, her breaths coming weakly as she knelt in the mud.

Marguerite let out a long sigh. This wasn’t the absolute worst outcome she’d imagined. In fact, this was on the better side. If Clantail’s transformation had come undone right in the middle of a bladed exchange, or even when she’d been racing or fleeing, then at best she’d be heavily wounded, and worst case, she’d have become mincemeat.

The goddess twisted her body toward Marguerite and pointed the blade of her ax at her. This killer could not perceive magical girls who could no longer transform. In a sense, you could say Clantail had escaped to a safe zone.

Marguerite bit into a grayfruit and leaped backward. The axes swung in pursuit, blasting away trees and dirt, and the girl in the school uniform who was behind the goddess was also flung away. Even if it was just the wind of the strike, a human wouldn’t be able to stay on her feet after getting hit with that. There was nothing for it but to pray that her landing would be soft enough that she wouldn’t die.

Marguerite finished the rest of the fruit in one bite, shaking off the juices that were stuck to her right hand.

The goddess still wasn’t able to fight at full power. She was injured, she only had one ax, and it was slick with mucus and hard to hold. But even so, it would be incredibly difficult for Marguerite to win on her own.

Marguerite dealt with each tree-breaking attack carefully, one by one, and in the process her skin was peeled off, flesh shaved away, and bones broken, her fighting capacity gradually eroding while the enemy was gradually regaining hers. If Marguerite fought without a plan, then she’d just repeat what had happened before.

The more time she spent on this, the greater a disadvantage she was at. She just had to go.

Marguerite held her breath. While stepping to the right, she tensed and released—

“Hold it right there!”

Marguerite staggered, and the goddess’s head turned to the voice.

Even with the branches and leaves in the way, she could still be seen. She was hovering about thirty feet off the ground, riding a misshapen starlike object about six inches in diameter, hand on her waist as she looked down from her imposing stance. “Repeated unfairness and violence! I absolutely won’t forgive you now!”

“Stop,” came halfway out of Marguerite’s throat, but she held it back and swallowed it. Even from where Marguerite was standing, having surpassed her limits to fight while smeared in blood, the way Chelsea looked, it was hard to believe she wasn’t dead. She’d bled so much that not just her face but even her limbs were pallid like the terminally ill. Her costume was shredded and awkwardly repaired with rocks as pins. The flesh underneath was probably also in shreds. Her face and her attire all the way to her socks was dirtied in dark red, and her bangs were stuck flat to her forehead. She wasn’t carrying her wand, and her shoes were gone.

“Leave it to…” She paused a full ten seconds, using that time to raise up one leg and put her hands together in a pose. “Dreamy Chelsea!”

The goddess’s mouth contorted. Was that a smile, or was that a sneer?

The star at Chelsea’s feet hummed as it started to turn, then plunged straight at the goddess.

The goddess raised her foot a couple of inches to stomp on the ground. The shattering force made the ground shake, and Marguerite lowered her stance to withstand it. Next, the goddess spread her right ax to the side like a bird about to flap, then immediately drew it in, held the handle with both hands, and readied it vertically in front of her face.

Grimacing from the wind of the ax’s movements, Marguerite groaned at the explosive impact that came next. The color of the ax blade was deepening endlessly. It was a black that drew the eye. Marguerite had seen this before. It was Archfiend Pam’s wing.

Chelsea blew up dust and blasted away trees as she dived in. The goddess readied herself in a high guard, stepping so hard that her feet sank in the earth to the ankles. She was bracing to block.

It didn’t look like Chelsea had a plan. The star rotating at her feet just looked like a makeshift, handmade object, and overall she seemed like someone at the end of their rope going out of control. As the goddess’s stance widened, the ax spread as well, becoming even blacker, wriggling and writhing as if it would swallow everything. With stickiness, sharpness and sturdiness all together to make destruction, this was exactly like the wings Archfiend Pam had used to pulverize her enemies.

Caught right in the middle of a situation where things were moving with dreadful speed, Marguerite felt her sense of time was strangely relaxed as she thought about what she should do.

For the goddess, this change of the ax, the form that could be called a morph of the Archfiend wings, had to be part of a special move she couldn’t use all the time. She hadn’t shown it even once in all the fights she’d had with Marguerite. If she had, then Marguerite would not be standing here now. In other words, there was a reason she hadn’t used it.

Did she have some fixation on not using it on weak enemies? No. Having seen the goddess repeatedly copy and reproduce moves in a wild frenzy all this time, Marguerite didn’t at all think she would have a strong fixation like that.

Did it have some kind of backlash? But the goddess was reckless enough that she would fly by causing explosions with her two axes, so why would she fear damage to herself?

Was it because it consumed too much energy? On this island, magical girls already consumed power fast, and if they used it all, they could no longer maintain their transformations. The level of power consumption had to be different for turning her axes into things like iron and gunpowder than for making them into Archfiend Pam’s wings.

It seemed the most likely thing was that the goddess wanted to avoid energy consumption. If that was the case, it was highly likely that right after clashing with Chelsea, the goddess would be completely exhausted. If they attacked her then, maybe they could land the fatal strike.

Despite all of this, Marguerite’s lungs and throat were crying out, “Chelsea! Stop!”