Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 18 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

THE LIGHTNING TIME

  Ripple

Frederica’s whole body was stuck with shuriken and kunai. The kunai stuck in her throat sent blood spurting up until it reached the chandelier, and Ripple took a half step back to avoid the spray. As Frederica staggered, Ripple took a step forward. She sliced once in passing, then turned around and sliced again, stabbing the fallen Frederica with her katana for good measure.

There were no longer any enemies standing in the room. Deluge dragged her body, going to help up Brenda and Catherine. Ripple was about to rush over to help them, when she stopped.

She had no sense of relief or accomplishment. This felt strangely inconclusive. Ripple had been thinking many more steps ahead. She’d assumed, for starters, that Frederica would use her crystal ball’s magic to dodge the shuriken. She had even considered two or three, four or five moves ahead what she would do. But then this was what had happened. Frederica had been defeated without using her magic.

The sense of something being off grew. It wasn’t that she’d overestimated the enemy and feared the idea more than she actually deserved. Ripple had worked together with Frederica for a long time, and those hateful memories refused to leave her. Even if Frederica hadn’t expected Ripple’s appearance, she would never have gotten so panicked that she would forget about her crystal ball.

Ripple rolled over the body with her toes. The blood splattered off it. Frederica wore a picturesque expression of regret. She was certainly dead. Vertically slicing open her costume in the center with her katana, Ripple squatted down and checked inside—first her chest, sides, and abdomen—to find a little scar on her thigh. There was no bleeding. It was not a scar that had been made by Ripple’s weapon.

Ripple clenched her teeth so hard her molars could break. She had seen this trick many times. Frederica had used her magic rapier to mess with their memories. Ripple only had a vague understanding of how Frederica had done it, but the important part was that Frederica was in no way done for. She had pretended to lose and was continuing the game. Leave her alone, and it would never end.

Deluge had been seriously wounded. Catherine and Brenda were still lying on the ground, unmoving.

Ripple was angry. She knew better than anyone that if she were to abandon herself to anger and chase down Frederica, she would meet a bad end, but it was because she had this anger that she had been able to run, to push forward. That’s why Ripple didn’t try to stop being angry. Her seething, boiling fury had been her weapon since back when she’d been Kano Sazanami.

She could no longer continue as a magical girl, standing at Snow White’s side. She was unfit for that, no matter what sort of excuses she made. But even when she’d tried to place some distance between them, Snow White would come running to her. It would be easier if Ripple just died, but that would just be running from responsibility.

Ripple had been interested in Snow White since before Cranberry’s exam had turned into a bloodbath. She had checked up on the info on the magical girl in white, which Top Speed had pointed out and teased her about.

And as the killing went on, Ripple had thought Snow White was amazing for never getting her hands dirty until the very end, and then after that, when Snow White had become ashamed of herself and started getting proactive, Ripple had felt how dangerous that was for her, felt that she had to protect her.

Ripple had been unable to protect Top Speed. Ripple had thought of her as annoying; she’d only teamed up with Top Speed because she had no choice. It wasn’t until Top Speed was killed that Ripple realized they’d been friends.

She didn’t want to feel like that again. So then she should just distance herself from fighting. That’s what she had believed.

But Snow White was different. Even after the exam ended, the fire inside her never waned, and she longed to fight alongside Ripple.

Ripple had tried and failed to meet her expectations. Under Frederica’s mind control, she had hurt various people, accomplished nothing positive, failing to leave behind a single meaningful thing.

But Snow White was different. She’d made accomplishments in the past as a magical girl and could do more in the future. Ripple understood that she couldn’t force Snow White to be a certain way, but she still wanted Snow White to stay away from danger. She didn’t want her to die.

It was Frederica. Ripple would eliminate Frederica. She had to.

She was the one who called Snow White into danger, the hateful, bitter enemy who had controlled Ripple’s mind and caused misfortune to many. Ripple felt so much regret and guilt in having saved Frederica in a situation where they should have abandoned her. Pythie Frederica was appropriate to have as an enemy for the time being—Ripple would defeat her first, then think about things.

Anger was the most straightforward form of fuel. That was always true. When getting revenge for Top Speed, and when she had been deceived by Frederica, Ripple had been acting in anger.

She would crush Frederica’s ambition, whittle away Frederica’s forces, join hands with Frederica’s enemies, do anything that Frederica would hate, and ultimately defeat Frederica. Ripple could only ever deny her, no matter what. The world wasn’t big enough for the both of them. She was harmful to Snow White, too—there was not a single reason to let her go.

She didn’t want to let Snow White get her hands dirty. Ripple should do this sort of work. She would defeat Frederica before anyone else. Ripple continued in her anger as always, and she doubted her anger was going away any time soon. While she was fighting in this fury, it was best to just act and not think.

Ripple was angry. That would energize her.

  Thunder-General Adelheid

For a while she looked back, stunned, at Princess Lightning, who appeared from down the other end of the hall. Then she looked over at the fallen Princess Lightning, and when she confirmed that was without a doubt Princess Lightning, she looked back at the other Princess Lightning.

A moment later, Adelheid saw more Lightnings. Three of them were lined up in a row, and there were several others behind them.

“What in the heck?” Adelheid muttered, a perfectly apt indicator of the situation.

The Lightnings all carried the same weapon—the sword Adelheid knew. Lightning had always clasped it, wielded it, like in the battle they’d just had.

The first Lightning narrowed her eyes, sizing up Adelheid.

“You’re Adelheid, right?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “‘Thunder-General?’ Don’t you think that’s a little too similar to ‘Princess Lightning’?”

She talks just like Lightning, Adelheid thought. Adelheid would’ve loved to fire back with some snappy reply like, “Too similar? Our names? Y’all literally have the same face.” But she was too shocked to get out the words without stammering, so she said nothing.

These magical girls were more than “like” Lightning. They were Lightning. They had her face and were saying things that she would say.

Adelheid clenched her jaw. She’d just crossed blades with Princess Lightning, a fearsome foe, but the Lightnings who were twittering away in front of her were frightening in a very different sense.

“You’re our enemy, yeah?”

“Of course she is.”

“Hang…on.” This final remark came from the Lightning Adelheid had just been fighting—the one splayed out in the hallway. She lifted her head to face the other Lightnings. “You don’t…need to kill her. I…have to win—”

There was a pleasant thunk as a knife struck the ceiling. Adelheid had repelled a dagger thrown by one of the Lightnings. Adelheid’s military saber clanged as it rolled down the hallway, and she thrust out a hand. It looked as if it had been thrown lightly, but it was heavier than she had imagined. Was that because she was wounded, or because her opponent was strong?

Before Adelheid could say anything, three more follow-up daggers flew from the Lightnings who waited behind. Adelheid rolled along as she knocked down the daggers with her cape, taking the fallen Lightning in her arms.

This Lightning looked up at Adelheid with unfocused eyes, her body trembling a number of times, and then her transformation came undone. Her glossy black hair spread out on the dusty hallway. Her long eyelashes fluttered, and then she slowly closed her eyes.

The Lightnings were talking among themselves. It sounded like the twittering of beautiful little birds.

“She’s not half bad.”

“I heard she’s from the Archfiend Cram School.”

“Ooh, what fun.”

Adelheid stood up. She would clearly die in a battle against this many Lightnings. Even at full health, she wouldn’t beat them—and definitely not now, when she was badly injured. Fleeing was the best move. She should flee. Adelheid thought she understood that, but her feet didn’t move.

“The hell’re y’all doin’?!” she yelled, rooted to the spot.

Right after that, a comical number of daggers were thrown at her.

The blades glinted, and even if she hadn’t been scared, it would have been difficult to look right at them. With the large mass hurtling toward her, Adelheid’s brain operated at full power, searching for a way to survive. Her saber was not in her hand. Her cape was basically a rag now, and on top of that, the bottoms of her shoes were gone.

There was no way she could dodge. She couldn’t even spin around and block with her back. It would’ve been a good idea to try shielding herself with Lightning in her arms, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Time was heavy and sluggish as all that moved were the daggers coming toward her. It was an unavoidable death. Before she could feel any regret, fear, or chagrin, the daggers were right there in front of her—and then, suddenly, the wooden wall to her right burst open.

Her sense of time returned. A figure leaped out from the other side of the burst-open wall. The daggers struck her as she leaped out, making dull sounds as they veered away to the wall, fell on the floor, and hit the ceiling, one of them spinning around to stick into the ground at Adelheid’s feet, about an inch from her toes.

With the dust billowing up around them, the figure turned slowly to the group of Lightnings.

“Who’s that?” one said.

“Ahh, right, she’s that one girl. The one who was in prison.”

“She was in Group Two, yeah? Hey, this is perfect. Let’s take her out together.”

Wind blew in through the hole in the wall. The dust cleared. A school uniform and aggressive accessories. Adelheid could only see her back, but she could tell who it was—Kana. In that case, Adelheid knew what was about to happen, and it was up to Adelheid to stop her.

She placed a hand on Kana’s shoulder and tried telling her to run, but Kana roughly shook her off in a gesture that could be described perfectly as “contemptuous.”

“Don’t touch me, peon,” Kana said, although she sounded different than usual.

Adelheid looked at her in a daze. She couldn’t see her face, but it was definitely Kana’s back. This was the magical girl who always caused trouble for Mephis with her innocently idiotic remarks. Though they’d been told she’d just come out of a prison, she’d had no air of being a criminal at all. While she came off eccentric and detached from the real world, she was also sincere and disliked lying. She would try to save her friends, even if it meant sacrificing herself. Now that dispassionate and calm tone was just cold.

Kana thrust Adelheid away, and Adelheid fell backward onto the ground. Kana turned around and eyed her icily.

“Do not grovel before me, mongrel. It disgusts me.”

By the time Adelheid realized Kana’s leg had moved, she was being kicked. Adelheid slid down the hallway, kicking up dust as she went, letting go of the Lightning in her arms on the way, tumbling and rolling until she hit a mountain of rubble and finally came to a stop.

In the dust, her eyes widened as she watched Kana’s faraway silhouette.

“What on earth? You came here just for a falling out?”

The Lightning who had thrown the first dagger came forward, hands on her hips, and she eyed Kana menacingly. Her collarbone area was exposed; tattooed there was a spade, and a J.

“Aren’t you in the same group? Caspar Faction? You guys are buddies, right? This is so stupid,” she said.

There was a loud pop. The Lightning flew backward, and her fellow Lightnings caught her. She now had blood gushing from her nose. She was already unconscious.

Kana must have attacked her, but Adelheid hadn’t even seen it happen.

The Lightnings’ smiles vanished. The group unsheathed their daggers and went for Kana.

Kana smiled. She laughed loud enough to make the rubble rattle and shake. “No need for a trial! Your whole clan shall be put to death! An apt punishment for your blasphemy!”

While evading the thrust of a longsword, Kana came forward to smack a chest with her palm. One of the Lightnings crumpled on the spot, curling up with a groan.

“If you object, then take me on in battle! Change your future through force!”

Palms up and her arms spread, Kana turned around to indicate everyone. Evading kicks and daggers and even lightning bolts with invisible movements, when a longsword was thrust toward her, she plucked it in her fingers to stop it. From how the part she grabbed crackled with purple sparks, the sword had to be electrified, but Kana seemed to feel no pain or suffering as she roared.

“I shall humor you, peons! If you seek the head Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami, incarnation of Caspar Vim Hop Seuk, then have at me!”

The Lightnings’ faces contorted in shock. Faces all identical to that of Princess Lightning, who had once been their classmate and the leader of Group Three, were looking at Kana like something bizarre. Adelheid figured she had to have a similar expression on her face, and alone in the dusty wreckage, she clenched her teeth.

Kana wove through the Lightnings so fast she couldn’t be seen, and the enemies were blasted away all at once. Longswords flew in the air, and lightning bolts never connected, while just from Kana moving, Lightnings flew off one after another, plunging through the ceiling and destroying the walls. Kana proceeded gradually. She left the area to head to the gym.

“Do not grovel before me, mongrel. It disgusts me”—Adelheid realized that was a line from one of Mephis’s manga. “No need for a trial! Your whole clan shall be put to death!” was from another manga.

That wouldn’t have come up by chance. It was fair to assume this was a message from Kana. She was telling Adelheid that she was Kana, that she had her memories. If she were to express it in a more direct way with her words or attitude, then the Lightnings would have figured it out, and Adelheid would have been dragged into the fight or taken as a hostage. She had acted coldly in order to prevent that, while also letting Adelheid know that she was still Kana.

Frankly speaking, suddenly hearing that stuff about Ratsumu-whatever, all Adelheid thought was, What the heck? That stuff Kana had said about Caspar—did she mean Caspar of the Caspar Faction? The Lightnings wouldn’t know if it was true or false, either. But looking at the godlike way that Kana was fighting right now, it made Adelheid think it might be true. The walls blasted away, the hallways blasted away, and the Lightnings were blasted away by the dozens.

  Sally Raven

It was a terrific shout. Being nearby, it hurt Sally’s ears. But it was far worse for Pshuke, who had been hit at point-blank range. Blood flowed from her eyes, ears, and nose, and it looked like she had passed out.

Pshuke fell slowly. Sally screamed and ran out. At the same time, she sent her crow swooping down between them toward the enemy to hold them back. The villainous magical girl who had her face hidden with the Cutie Panda mask backed up in a low stance like an animal, turning to face the crow. Right before Pshuke fell face-first onto the ground, Sally slid in to catch her, then raced off without looking back.

With her crow cawing behind her, Sally ran. Her throbbing ears were just barely able to catch what sounded like a school-wide announcement, but there was no way something like that would get broadcast now. She figured she must have been hearing things.

The ground burst open. Earth and sand rained down. The ground burst open again. Sally zigzagged as she continued to run, keeping the enemy from fixing their aim on her. But the dirt hit her, the sand rained down on her, and the ground at her feet crumbled. She fell on the spot, and Pshuke was sent rolling to the ground.

While getting to her feet, Sally looked back. She immediately leaped aside to avoid an attack, readying herself once more.

Her crow was safe—rather, the enemy hadn’t gone after it. Cutie Panda waved off the crow with her right hand; in her left were several large rocks. Had she been throwing them?

“Hey, there you are,” someone called out from behind Cutie Panda.

It wasn’t a classmate—this person was wearing a Cutie Zebra mask. This totally wasn’t what Cutie Healer merch was meant for, but there was nothing Sally could do about it. Even if her crow were to attack, there was no opening for its beak to thrust into, and it backed off.

“Having trouble? Want help?”

Cutie Altair showed up, and then Dark Cutie appeared behind her, oozing out of the shadows just like in the Cutie Healer anime.

Dark Cutie swung her leg up. “Cutie Healers don’t bully children,” she quietly muttered before kicking Cutie Altair, who was right in front of her.

Sally’s eyes widened. She couldn’t immediately grasp what had just happened.

Dark Cutie’s sharp strike on Altair’s neck flung her down as if she’d fallen from a great height, and the other magical girls all turned to Dark Cutie at once.

By the time she had kicked Altair, the warmth Sally had definitely sensed from Dark Cutie had suddenly dropped.

Panda jumped on the spot, kicking the beak of the crow as it tried to peck her and leaping backward. Zebra was just a hair late to jump, and she was swallowed in one bite by a shadow snake that rose up from behind her; she shrieked as she was dragged into the ground.

Sally rubbed her eyes. No—that wasn’t a magical girl in a Dark Cutie mask. That was Dark Cutie herself. Dark Cutie in the flesh. Tears spilled from Sally’s eyes, flowing ceaselessly. The real Dark Cutie—one of the greatest villains of the Cutie Healer series, which she had only ever seen in anime—was alive and moving. She was no illusion. Dark Cutie had come to save Sally from trouble.

Readying herself in a low stance like a feline right about to pounce, Dark Cutie muttered, “Save your tears.”

Sally hastily wiped her eyes. Dark Cutie was right. This was no time for crying.

What about Pshuke? Sally wondered.

She turned around to see that Pshuke was gone, leaving blood on the ground behind her. Had she fled? Sally was relieved that she’d had that much strength left in her.

“This is neither the time nor the place for tears from an aspiring Cutie Healer… Face forward, stand tall, and fight.”

Someone who aspired to be a Cutie Healer meant Sally. If Dark Cutie acknowledged it, then it was a definite fact. Sally felt herself walking up side by side with the generations of Cutie Healers: Cutie Pearl, Cutie Onyx, Cutie Vega, and Cutie Altair. She was no fake, imitating just the look. She was the realest of the real. She had to shine most brilliantly of them all.

Giving instructions to her crow, she went for Panda from the opposite direction. Her crow flying through the sky shone dazzlingly, making the black of the shadow animals that extended from Dark Cutie even deeper and stronger.

  Kana

Frederica had been introduced by a certain influential aristocrat of the Magical Kingdom. Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami was always taking breaks from public business, purporting poor health, and out of concern for her, Frederica had been sent in as someone to talk to.

Had that been part of a plot, or had they been deceived by Frederica? At this point, Kana didn’t know. For a villain of Frederica’s caliber, merely buttering up some naive mages would have been an easy matter. It wasn’t that the Caspar Faction overall had been spineless at that time but rather that they had been world-weary. With the higher-ups thinking, Who really cares what happens? even if they didn’t say as much out loud, those below them would get it. They didn’t care even if security became slack, opportunities to take advantage were given, and their leader was mind-controlled.

The reason that their leader—Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami—had lost her energy was due to her own magic. She had asked the question of what the First Mage was doing and where. Her magic had been designed for that sake in the first place, and that question was like the reason for her existence.

Strong leaders were needed in order to save the Magical Kingdom, and so the Puk and Osk Factions had created incarnations worthy of being leaders. The Caspar Faction may have been more fundamentalist in comparison. The ones who had stood in the lead and pressed forward with this plan had thought that a strong leader meant not even one of the great mages, the Three Sages, but none other than their even greater master: the First Mage.

Of course, a worst-case scenario had been conceivable. That the First Mage had not come back did suggest exactly that. They had been prepared for the First Mage to be long gone in creating Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami, and consequently, they had arrived at the truth.

The First Mage was gone. They had been caught in an accident that had happened when constructing the Sage system.

The Sage system had been made to go on forever. As for how the First Mage had been trying to use it, Kana had not been able to find an answer, even with her magic. Assuming there had been some future planned, there was no longer anyone who could understand it. The fact of the matter was that the First Mage had assembled the system and then, before actually operating it, had bungled things and vanished. By the time the disciples, left behind, had regained consciousness, their master had disappeared like smoke.

And without intending it or being aware of it, those surviving disciples had inherited the Sage system. Since the ruins where the accident had occurred had been made by the First Mage, and also because they were simply dangerous, they had been sealed away. Following that, they were supposed to have been appropriately maintained and managed, but no one had known that they had been secretly continuing to operate. Only Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami, who had asked these questions, knew that it was being used for the sake of the Three Sages. The energy needed for that was immense, but it drew what it needed by sucking it up from the Magical Kingdom as a whole.

And so the Sage system itself had brought about the energy crisis in the Magical Kingdom.

The Three Sages, who were supposed to be their leaders, were the cause of the Magical Kingdom’s decline. This unalterable fact had been a devastating blow to Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami. In order to resolve the energy problem, they themselves should disappear. But even if she were to tell such a thing to the other incarnations, she doubted they would agree, and she’d wasted time thinking, We have to change the system or new incarnations will just be chosen. What about the other factions? Is there nothing I can do?

Time passed, and Grim Heart and Puk Puck were defeated. New incarnations were being arranged yet again.

If she stood around doing nothing, then even more energy would be wasted. There was no time to keep worrying about it. She could only know the answer to a question when there was an answer. What should she do? With all these overflowing worries inside her, she had wound up asking Frederica, of all people, for advice.

At that time, Frederica had been fulfilling her role as a confidante. Slowly, as if she were soaking one drop at a time into a desert, while also with an absurd boldness like dumping unneeded articles into magma, she broke in through the weaknesses in Kana’s heart. There was nothing she couldn’t talk about in any genre, starting with the weather that day, followed by poems, performing arts, painting, and carving, and so despite Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami’s dislike of small talk, Frederica had slowly drawn words from her, learning her interests and gaining her trust with an earnest and frank attitude.

Kana should have immediately questioned her to ensure whether she was someone who could be trusted, but that was hindsight. Most likely, Frederica had also known her tendency to be cautious about private questions. What had summoned Frederica above all had been Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami’s sorry state, and then when she had let her guard down, she had been mind-controlled.

She had been made to act as Kana for a long time, and then when the school had been attacked, Frederica had undone her magic, and she had regained her memories as Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami. But it wasn’t as if her memories as Kana were gone. Everything about her days in the magical-girl class had been recorded in her brain. She was both Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami and Kana. The two of them had gotten mixed up, and it was now impossible to separate them.

She remembered every single thing—her first day, when everyone had been wary of her as a magical girl who had only just come out of prison. She remembered that she had hardly been able to accomplish anything during their class recreation time, that she had finished the school lunch faster than everyone so she could gather information, that even when she’d said things in class or raised her hand, Calkoro had pretended not to see. She remembered all the various manga she had read with Mephis, the rules of baseball that Adelheid had taught her, the romance novels that Lillian had lent her, the scribbles that Kumi-Kumi had drawn in her textbooks, the students of Umemizaki Junior High who had been kind to her. She could never forget any of it.

Kana wiped her face roughly with her right hand, clasped the longsword that was thrust at her, kicked its owner, and blasted her away along with the whole group gathered behind her. Her brain was a mess with returned memories, but she didn’t have the time to hold her head and curl up in a ball.

Adelheid was wounded. Was the fallen Lightning the one Kana knew? Kana having managed to barge in before they were killed was the one silver lining in all this misfortune. And just what was going on with their other classmates?

The group of Lightnings crowded around Kana and wouldn’t back off. No matter how she defeated them, they relied on their numbers, gathering to block her way. Even though they had to understand how much stronger she was, they didn’t show even a shred of fear.

They were physically superior to her classmate Lightning. But the way they fought relied heavily on numbers and was crude. The Lightning Kana knew tended to be dirtier and more tenacious. She would take advantage of people psychologically, while also maintaining an odd innocence.

If Kana ran with all she had, then she could peel away from them. But then the attention that was on Kana now would turn to other magical girls. Kana had to draw the enemy toward her. At the same time, she would also confirm her classmates’ safety.

Is Mephis safe?

In the commotion, she asked that question in her mind. Unlike when she had been unaware of her magic’s full capacity due to the spell that had manipulated her memory, now she could know the answer to a question without someone being there to answer for her.

There was no answer. Did that mean that she was not safe, but she was also not dead? There was no time to spare on interpretation. While gritting her teeth, Kana went on asking if her classmates were safe. Relief and fury visited her repeatedly as she raced around, going wild as a storm that seemed to symbolize what was going on inside her.

She kicked a Lightning, punched a Lightning, sent a Lightning flying, putting anger into every single one of her strikes, but even so she was forced to hold back. Seeing these faces that were exactly like that of the girl who she’d had classes with, competed with during rec time, and fought with in the homunculus incident, even if her whole body was burning with anger, she was unable to defeat them crushingly with all her strength. Even though she knew that she should annihilate them without pity or mercy if she wanted to save her classmates, she was unable to strike a face just like Lightning’s with full power in her fist.

Kana howled even though she knew her cry would reach no one.

  Diko Narakunoin

A frightening number of magical girls were attacking, all trying to get into a space that wasn’t all that big—a little smaller than the gymnasium.

At the beginning, they’d let the enemy into the courtyard and been forced to fight within, leaving the beautiful gardens tragically destroyed. The arches had crumbled, the ceilings collapsed, the flagstones cracked, the trees had broken, the flowers had been scattered and stomped on. The one thing that remained intact was the storage shed where the principal was currently holed up.

Though Diko and the others’ efforts had repelled the invaders, they didn’t even get a break before different attackers surged in. Under the direction of the principal and with support from the spells cast on the courtyard, the students that had gathered in the courtyard maintained a defensive line at the entrance, fighting to keep the invaders from getting into the courtyard.

The first to attack were the magical girls in masks. But things must have changed somewhere out there, as they gradually decreased in number, and before you knew it, they were being attacked by a group of Princess Lightnings. Lightning was supposed to have been on Diko’s side, but now that things were like this, she was an enemy.

The Lightnings were surging toward the entrance of the courtyard. Diko, who had the role of defending the courtyard, took it for granted that she was fighting them off.

She was extraordinarily surprised that there were multiple Lightnings. She had no idea why things had gotten like this, and she normally would have been confused. But she was able to fight now. She had to fight—for the principal, for the school. If that had meant she had to fight with her longtime friend Ranyi, then maybe she would have felt a strong psychological resistance to it, but Lightning wasn’t so bad.

Diko was worried basically whenever she thought about Ranyi. She felt uncertain about the way Ranyi sought results beyond her stature, the way she tried to make herself look bigger than she actually was, and the way she would barge into conversations without really understanding things. Ranyi’s desperation to become Lazuline, no matter what, just placed her goal further away from her. But even if Diko wanted to give her advice on that area, Ranyi was so emotionally fragile that having reality thrust in her face would make her shatter just like that, and Diko wasn’t a good enough talker to be able to advise her in a gentle way that wouldn’t hurt her.

An outstretched longsword was about to reach Diko’s cheek when she vanished from the spot, appearing again immediately to strike back. It was no good to be thinking too much in the middle of a fight. She had to concentrate.

“Don’t even bother with her! Come at me!”

Mephis provoked the enemy. When the Lightning turned to face her, Diko charged in from behind, and right before another Lightning could intercept the attack, she vanished and appeared again within her reach, knocking her out with a series of three strikes to the knee, elbow, and shin; and when another Lightning sliced at her, she vanished again. In their one-on-one mock battles in class, Lightning had won more times, but the magic support from the principal was continuing to greatly strengthen Diko’s abilities. She’d been moving with more precision and force five minutes ago than ten, and right now she was even better. And it wasn’t just physically—her magic was stronger, too.

Diko appeared, kicked, immediately vanished, appeared again, punched, and vanished. The speed at which she used her magic was faster than ever before. Without touching the bricks she’d carved with her pickax, Kumi-Kumi made a wall to block Lightnings’ strikes as Lillian hooked her yarn on those objects Kumi-Kumi had made to move rapidly. And nobody could ignore Mephis’s voice—when the enemy drew near, Tetty would grab them even more powerfully than usual, grasping them tightly and crushing them.

With the principal and the girls working together, they were managing to fight. Diko was fried by lightning, healed by the principal’s magic, cut by a longsword, then healed, kicked, and kicked again; she leaped backward. Her wounds hadn’t finished healing, but she still had to stay at the front. They couldn’t let the enemy get any farther into the courtyard. Diko would protect the entrance with her life.

Tetty shielded herself with her mittens as she was struck with a lightning bolt. When a longsword thrust in from the side, Kumi-Kumi covered her, clasping the longsword in the jaws of her dragon. Multiple lightning bolts struck from all four directions, and Diko teleported in to block them. She felt her whole body creak.

Mephis was getting buried in a crowd of Lightnings when she cried, “You ought to watch your back!” to distract them. She put her hands on the ground and went upside down, swinging around her legs and tail. She maintained her speed as she scattered the Lightnings and righted herself again, flapping her little wings to fly and come down to land beside Diko.

Her shoulders were heaving. Her skin had been white to begin with, but now it was so pallid it was like it was transparent. She pulled out the dagger that was thrust in her right side, and the wound was immediately healed. That was the principal’s magic support, reaching them even from the storage shed.

The moment more Lightnings came out front to replace the old, they were swept away by a hammer of sound. The piercing noise made Diko scowl and hunch over, supporting her body on all fours.

“Good grief. Trying to force their way in with numbers—how incredibly boorish.”

She didn’t recognize that voice. It sounded intellectual and calm, but just hearing it sent a sinister shiver down your spine. There was a magical girl sliding through, trying to cut between Diko and Mephis, who had her ears plugged while crouching on the ground. Her long, pointed ears, her musician-style jacket, the rose vines that wound around her legs to bloom at her back and decorate her head—the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, who they had been told about so many times, was there.

It was different from the Cranberry-type homunculus that they had seen that other time. It was Cranberry herself. But there was no way she could be alive. The theory Old Blue had told her about one time that Elvis was still alive was more plausible. But her voice, her appearance, and the sound magic that had blasted away all the Lightnings seemed like nothing other than Cranberry.

A lot of Lazuline candidates would train against the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, as a virtual enemy, since even if Lazuline the First had never told them her bitter story, they were aware of what had happened. But right now, Diko couldn’t bring herself to feel like Ranyi, who had found new strength beyond her fundamental abilities against the Cranberry-type homunculus. Even Cranberry being there wasn’t moving her. In that sense, perhaps Ranyi was more worthy of being Lazuline, but Diko didn’t know if she would ever get the chance to tell that to her and make her happy.

  Rappy Taype

Arlie and Dory quickly went out of sight. All Rappy could hear from Calkoro was her shouting. What sounded like the metallic screech of Miss Ril getting struck continued on and on. They were all too far away to provide backup, and there were tons of enemies packed in between them. They had functionally been separated.

There were just so many enemies. Too many. Rappy had to keep moving, or she would die. She went into a classroom, out into the hallway, returned to the classroom again, using all the walls and ceiling. But if she kept moving, then she couldn’t assemble with the others. She didn’t know what was going on inside the classroom anymore.

She turned aside a thrust from the longsword with her arm, stepping into the enemy’s range, thrusting her elbow up at their jaw. They grabbed her arm to stop her, drawing a dagger that Rappy enveloped with her wrap, yanking it toward her, getting a strike in on the jaw this time for sure, and when the enemy staggered, she struck the knee and solar plexus with her toe, kicking that Lightning back toward the group of more of them that were clumped together in the rear.

The Lightning she had kicked was buried in the group, and the next three new Lightnings stepped out in front of Rappy.

Rappy was on the east end of the hallway, with Snow White on the left, blocking the enemies’ entrance to the area. Going up against numbers limited by the small space, they were somehow managing. If they had been attacked from all directions in an open space, all she could have done was just bundle herself up in her wrap and cower there. She didn’t really understand why she was being attacked in the first place. Was this a different force from the attackers in the masks, or were they allied with each other?

Rappy let out a short breath, repeatedly shredding her wrap and throwing it. Then Tepsekemei blew wind on the pieces. The wrap fluttering in the sky would stick to the Lightnings’ faces, to their weapons, and to their legs. When one staggered because of the clinging wrap, Rappy hit their shins with a low kick. She swung around one of a Lightning’s daggers, with the wrap around its handle like a flail, getting one, two head shots, and when the Lightnings staggered from being struck, Tepsekemei’s wind blew them all away.

And then more came up.

The Lightnings that had showed up to assault them as a group weren’t as strong individually as the Lightning that Rappy knew. They didn’t outwit their enemies by learning their habits or tactics, and they weren’t nasty in taking advantage of openings and then snickering about it. They were also a step or two behind in combat skills. But their magic was just as powerful, and though they were a little clumsy with it, they were physically capable, and most of all, there were a lot of them.

The space was unique: a long, narrow hallway. She’d put the wrap on the windows to make intrusion impossible, so she just had to deal with the enemies that attacked from the front and behind. With Tepsekemei’s backup, her typically defensive magic wrap now zipped through the sky to be useful offensively.

But even with all that, they were getting pushed back and back. No matter how many they defeated, the numbers didn’t go down. Not even knowing why there were multiple Lightnings in the first place, or why they had to fight these multiple Lightnings, they were fighting just because they kept attacking.

Leaping into a storm of wrap, using every sheet as her shield, Rappy grappled with an enemy, swinging her fists at close range. Three hits to the right, she feinted and then got two to the left; one shot got through the enemy’s guard to strike her in the heart, and when the enemy froze with her palms outstretched, Rappy struck again, flinging her back into the group.

Something touched her back. It wasn’t an enemy; it was Snow White. She’d been handling the opposite side and was getting pushed in. Rappy crouched down on the spot, yanking the wrap that she had laid there beforehand. Two of the Lightnings that Snow White was fighting lost their footing and staggered. Snow White used that opportunity to swing her weapon.

She took a big breath in and out, then pointed her blade sharply at the enemy.

She was panting hard. She was tired. Rappy was sick of this, too, but Snow White was beyond that. Even with the support from Tepsekemei and the wrap flying around in the air, she had to be struggling. Rappy’s mental evaluation of Snow White during their rec times was either the best of the worst or midworst, and even if that was when compared with a group of elites, she still wasn’t strong enough to be worthy of the nickname the Magical-Girl Hunter.

Rappy didn’t look back as she wrapped up Snow White’s middle, making that her fulcrum to reverse her and Snow White’s positions. In a flash, their opponents were swapped, and taking advantage of Lightning’s slight confusion, Rappy kicked her in the chest, knocking her back. On Snow White’s end, the sound of metal striking metal rang out multiple times. It was a swordfight that left no time for even a breath.

She heard footsteps up at the ceiling. Her attention was just turning up that way when the blade of a longsword loomed in front of her, making her hastily wrap it. Lightning strikes couldn’t get through her magic wrap.

She heard footsteps from the ceiling again—multiple sets of footsteps. She heard the thumping sounds of striking something, followed by even louder sounds, and then the roof and ceiling all fell together. Snow White rolled to evade, and Rappy held up her wrap overhead to catch the rubble and throw it toward the enemy.

Sun was shining in through the spot where the ceiling had been. Lightnings were looking down on them.

This was bad. This was very bad. If they were attacked not just from the back, front, and sides but also from above, they couldn’t deal with them all.

She heard Calkoro yelling, “Stop it! You cut this out!” but it was far away. She couldn’t see her. She could just barely tell that Calkoro was there because she could hear her voice. And she was getting farther and farther away. They couldn’t rely on their allies, either.

Was that sound of clashing metal Arlie and Dory, or was it Miss Ril? Too pressed to check if her classmates were safe, Rappy leaped, ran, and swung her magic wrap around.

Oh no…

It had been naive of her to think that the enemy wasn’t that strong or troublesome, that she was somehow managing to fight. Rappy and the others were already being swallowed up by the group. Dodging blades, she rolled, then almost got stabbed in the spot she rolled to, which she blocked with her wrap. Then legs surged in to kick her, and she was rolled like a soccer ball from right to left, left to right, and when she somehow managed to get up, she was in front of the teacher’s podium, with the chalkboard to her back, and surrounded by Lightnings.

  Snow White

Snow White couldn’t see Rappy anymore. Her wrap was no longer flying in the air, either. The number of wind blades Tepsekemei was blowing was decreasing. The voices of her allies were growing distant—both their minds’ voices and their real voices.

The enemies’ minds, she could them hear so well it was obnoxious.

Sorting out the information she’d gained from their minds, she learned that the Lightnings were artificial magical girls, here in great numbers due to the use of Shufflin technology. Their roles were different depending on their assigned suit, and their numbers indicated their strength.

The Lightnings that stood blocking the way in front of Snow White right now were the weakest in combat among the Lightning group, the Heart Lightnings. The girls were aware of this themselves, and so they made use of numbers to inch in and corner them.

Snow White’s side had already been divided up. There was no help coming. There were too many voices, and she couldn’t deal with each individual one. The situation was incredibly relentless. She couldn’t erase the feeling that there was no resolving this once it had happened—she should have arranged things beforehand before things had gotten like this.

At the end of the day, she had come to this school to investigate. The plan had been to investigate the incident, investigate the class, and investigate the ruins. She was to see if there were students connected to Pythie Frederica, then follow those threads, and if political groundwork was necessary, she would get help not only from Inspection but also from Magical Girl Resources and Management to prepare things. Looking back on that plan now, perhaps they had been too easygoing about things. Most of all, they should have been ready to be attacked at any time. Frederica always aimed to take people by surprise.

For just an instant, Snow White’s heart flew far away.

Ever since the conclusion of the N City incident, she had worried over and over again whether she could have done a little more. She had considered repeatedly if she couldn’t have done something to change the situation, even if she had been a weak magical girl who was sure to lose in a fight.

The faces of those magical girls rose in her mind, one after another.

She really was thankful that Uluru had come to help her—not just emotional help, like making her laugh and encouraging her and such. She would help with paperwork and odd jobs, too, though she would complain while she did it. But she didn’t know how long Uluru would be with her. The one who had killed Premium Sachiko, her little sister, was Ripple. Even if Uluru knew Ripple had been being mind-controlled, Snow White couldn’t know what would happen once they actually met.

And she knew even less what would happen with Princess Deluge in the future. She was trying to move forward, despite her struggling and suffering. In the darkness, she was fumbling around for a way to deal with the absurdities the Magical Kingdom had foisted on them. Just sharing the same short-term goal as Deluge and being able to work with her, as well as Arlie, Brenda, and Catherine had to be good enough. Snow White did not dislike them.

Snow White felt like it was only lately that she’d finally come to be able to rely on the Inspection Department and Mana. But she wondered if she couldn’t have done a better job. Maybe things wouldn’t have wound up like this if it hadn’t been just her, if she’d done better working with them, even if not the very best.

She felt sadness and regret about the Keek incident. If only I’d been a little faster, she thought. If she had done things more skillfully, smoothly, and even more aggressively, then one or two magical girls—or even more, potentially—could have avoided death.

In the underground artificial magical-girl research facility, she had acted aggressively. She’d avoided talking about their friend’s death and positioned the magical girls as she pleased. The incident had been resolved, but it wasn’t as if she’d had no regrets after that. The voices of the heart that she had heard in that facility would never leave her ears, and even now, she would wonder if there hadn’t been a better way to do things. Maybe she wouldn’t have had to make her childhood friend Princess Inferno meet such a sad end—or have made such sorrowful words her final remarks.

She had nothing but regrets when it came to the Puk Puck incident. All the things she could’ve done instead welled up one after another, continuing to torture her spirit endlessly. But the reason that Snow White was able to worry about these things was because she was alive. If she died, she couldn’t even do that. She wouldn’t be able to move forward. No matter how painful it was, the living had to move forward.

None of these incidents had been properly resolved. Even when they ended, they weren’t over, leaving a lingering discomfort in her heart, and sometimes even more than that. But Snow White was recognized as having resolved these incidents, as the nickname of the Magical-Girl Hunter, given to her by Frederica, grew.

She had never been pleased by that nickname. It wasn’t simply that she didn’t like it—she didn’t think of herself as worthy of the name. There wasn’t a single job thus far that she had pulled off perfectly. She always continued to ooze regrets. She could never abandon her feelings for a clean restart. She had no choice but to carry it all, even if the weight of it made her feet feel heavy.

Even in the magical-girl class, she had regrets. And every time she heard the sorrowful cry of a magical girl’s heart, she was beaten by new ones.

She should have acted sooner. The magical girls in the masks were Frederica’s minions, and the Lightnings had come in order to interfere with Frederica. So then if she’d been able to predict what Frederica would do, things would have been different. Hadn’t there been someone else she could have coordinated with more? Shouldn’t she have been more aggressive about her investigation? It was outrageous for people to die because she’d been considering the power relationships between factions and departments and politics. Could she even face the people who had died, then?

The futures of the magical girls who had gone to school believing in tomorrow were being closed. Even if Snow White wanted to cry, she couldn’t. She had to act, or someone else would die.

A piercing sound rang out, as if to drown out Snow White’s wild thoughts. She broke through the floor to escape from a Lightning’s thunder strike. While covered in spiderwebs and mud, she slid under the floorboards. A sword was thrust at her. A dagger was thrown in. Even one hit would be a fatal wound. Snow White continued to flee.

  0 Lulu

Lulu chanted in her mind that she was an earthworm. She was moving in such a way that she was only allowed to wriggle along, without going too fast.

She’d done well in sneaking into the school ahead of time, but she had wound up hiding herself from the masked attackers, and now she was inching forward to escape the Lightnings that were supposed to be her allies.

Within the nightmarish spectacle of multiple Princess Lightnings running around all over the place, Lulu hid and moved along at a snail’s pace. No matter how impatient she was, she couldn’t rush out in a hurry. She would move forward slowly and certainly, passing under the bricks so that she wouldn’t be found.

She’d been quite boggled to see Lightnings all over the place, but she’d had no choice but to be pragmatic about it and conclude, “That’s just how it is.” With Lightning’s unique lack of worldly sense, anything was possible. She was about equal to a Lazuline in combat capabilities and prized as their final weapon, so actually, a surprise like this was to be expected.

And Lulu had not been told that there were multiple Lightnings. That meant that information had been at a level of confidentiality beyond Lulu.

Lulu tightly clenched the cheap purple gemstone in her palm. Iolite symbolized “showing the way,” and Lulu’s magic would manifest that. A puny stone like this didn’t have a lot of power, but it was far better than nothing—supposedly.

Even if she had cast her magic on it, it wasn’t like it would glow. There was no whisper in her mind, either. Unlike things with physical effects like healing and permanency, or things with mental effects like insight or concentration, with luck effects, you wouldn’t know until you got results. It was no different from a typical good luck charm.

Lulu moved from the schoolyard to proceed along the outer perimeter. She pressed her back to the wall, perking up her ears so that she wouldn’t miss even the sound of a pin dropping, smothering her impatience.

Since she’d been watching Ripple, Lulu had not been expected to be involved with the magical-girl class. That was exactly why she had been shocked to see so many Lightnings show up.

Should she have reported Ripple’s behavior to Old Blue in detail? If she had done that, then the current situation would have been reported, and of course her master would already have known about it, and maybe Lulu would have been able to coordinate with the Lightnings. But Lulu had not done so. She had not made to tell her master about her every thought and action. She’d had the strong feeling that if she did speak up, she would be stopped.

There was no use in stubbornly continuing to worry about the past. She would change course here and move things in the best direction she could.

Focusing every nerve in her body on stealth, she inched forward. Neither could she slack off on her magic. There were many demands on her right now. It wasn’t just about this. There really had been a lot of demands on her ever since she’d been stuck with Ripple. And Lulu wasn’t sure how thankful Ripple was for Lulu’s touching devotion. If she asked, Ripple might tell her, but Lulu was too scared and couldn’t bring herself to. Though Ripple’s attitude was still brusque, she had softened a bit since they had first met—but still, Lulu couldn’t say for sure that wasn’t her misunderstanding.

She felt ready to sigh, but she swallowed it. No pointless sighs were allowed when sneaking. She was also not allowed to get distracted by her thoughts when she was busy doing something else. But it was best to think unrelated thoughts in order to work with your fear and do a job. Plenty of thoughts would come to mind if she was mining grumbling and complaints about Ripple.

Lulu reached right under the classroom, where there was a big hole from an explosion. She sneaked into the wreckage, waiting for a moment when no one was around to creep out of the open hole into the classroom. The desks, chairs, blackboard, and all the various items that were emblematic of a classroom were destroyed beyond recognition, with nothing intact.

Lulu strengthened the magic she’d put in the iolite. As she prayed, Please, please, the cheap gemstone, like a grain of sand, melted away and vanished. How useful had it been, in the end? With Lulu’s magic, the results were very difficult to know.

She moved from one pile of rubble to the next. Evening her breaths and heartbeat, she kept herself concealed. Techniques to control the body were compulsory for a Lazuline candidate. Using techniques she had learned like this made her think she might actually be suited to being Lazuline. That was strange, since there was no way a magical girl like that would be in this kind of situation.

She heard lightning crash. A cry followed.