Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 18 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

AND BEYOND.

  Mana

The attack on Umemizaki Junior High three months earlier had exposed details about the ruins that had been preserved underneath the magical-girl class, sending the Magical Kingdom’s upper echelons into utter confusion. But it wasn’t enough to cause much of a fracas for underlings like Mana. The big shots weren’t actively revealing the facts; the only information was rumors at most.

To ordinary mages, the Three Sage incarnations were like deities. It wasn’t unusual to never see one in your entire life.

About 40 percent of people surveyed weren’t worried at all. They figured it was common enough for a Sage to be absent; one would surely revive again. Another 40 percent were concerned about what had happened to the Sages. They wondered why there were only rumors and no official announcements. The remaining 20 percent of people had other reactions.

Normally, Mana would have been the type to stay away from any hullabaloo, but being directly involved in the incident and having found out a mountain of facts that it would be better to not have known meant that there were way more things she had to do. An extremely busy month passed by in the blink of an eye, and now she was on Sataborn’s island.

As for why she came to a remote spot like this while things were busy—that day, she was engaged in separating a magical girl who had wound up fused with some island flora. The way this tree worked, sending roots out all over the island to suck up the power around it and generate grayfruit, was very much like the system of the ruins, which had sucked up power from the Magical Kingdom in order to create its seeds. Ragi, who was engaged in this task of separation, made use of his position of being more or less treated as Osk Faction leadership to look up details of the ruins system, calculating backward from that in order to successfully construct a formula to save 7753, the magical girl who had wound up fused with a tree—so Mana had heard.

Either Sataborn had learned about the ruins somehow and copied them or he had coincidentally wound up constructing a system that resembled them—they couldn’t know from the materials left behind. Ragi had said, “They say that geniuses sometimes receive their ideas from God. I would not be surprised if Sataborn were granted some divine revelation from the First Mage,” but Mana didn’t really get that. She’d be grateful so long as they could save her friend.

Piled up around the tree that 7753 was inside was equipment that she had never seen before. It was extrication equipment shared from the Lab, which had offered its aid. Not only that, many white-coated robes had begun to gather. The whole thing felt dubious, but Mana would never have been able to cover the expenses with her own meager savings, and even adding in what Ragi had and the Management Department’s safe, it wouldn’t be enough, so there was no helping this. A mage from the Lab who Mana knew smacked the now-sizable sum and smirked. “It’s like an apology,” they said, but Mana couldn’t trust that. Right now, however, she had to use even things that she couldn’t trust. Even the stubborn old man Ragi, who had once refused to accept anything improper, was now bending the conviction that he had never bent for many years, so Mana didn’t have the right to butt in.

“I wonder… I wonder if this will be all right,” Mana fretted.

“Don’t worry; apparently, they’re following every safety measure to a T,” said Ragi.

“The way you put that does not inspire confidence in the safety.”

Tepsekemei, now about half her previous size, flew over with a bag packed with magic gems, and Ragi yelled his instructions. Mana connected cables with hands unused to the task. The voices of the mages got louder. Chants overlapped. Steam shot out. The area was filled with light, and gradually the voices chanting grew quieter, the light faded, and the steam vanished.

Someone cried out in astonishment. A vine grew from the plant, and a giant grayfruit was born. It was dozens of times larger than the grayfruit that Mana knew. The fruit twitched, the skin broke open, and juices spilled out. The tear gradually grew larger, and then a hand came out of it and it burst open.

A magical girl appeared from within, soaked in juices. She coughed and took off her hat and goggles.

Mana looked at her in a daze. It looked like 7753, but it was not the original 7753 herself. The details were different. Most of all, her whole body was sparkling brightly. Ragi groaned, and the mages of the Lab all whispered to one another.

“That…”

“Looks very similar…”

“An incarnation…?”

Some were tearing up, and others fell on their knees, seemingly overcome with emotion. At this rate, some were bound to start praying.

Unrelated to the reaction from the gallery, the magical girl’s coughing got worse and worse, so Mana hastily rushed up to her and wiped her with a big towel. The magical girl looked up at Mana with a weak smile on her face.

“Whew…I thought I was going to die this time, for sure.”

Her miserable smile, her withering voice—they were both so categorically 7753. Relieved, Mana rubbed 7753’s head, looking up at the ceiling to hide the tears that threatened to overflow. The tiny Tepsekemei whirled around and around expressionlessly.

They’d struggled a lot to get this far. Tepsekemei must have been glad, too. She’d caused quite a lot of trouble, but complaining about that now would be very tactless.

That reminded Mana of one more magical girl who had caused her trouble: Uluru—formerly of the Puk Faction. Mana treated her the same as Tepsekemei. Uluru and Mana had been seeing each other practically every day for a while, but ever since the incident, Uluru was nowhere to be seen. Still aggressively rubbing 7753’s head, Mana wondered where Uluru was and who she was causing trouble for. 7753 groaned.

  Uluru

Amid the multitude of “appropriate” merch—paper garlands, stuffed animals, shelves lined with figurines, a poster for an anime currently on air, posters from decade-old and two-decade-old anime—sat several girls dressed up as characters Uluru didn’t know. They were having a tea party.

This was Magi-magi Cal-cal, the café where transformed magical girls met up pretending to cosplay. This place famously served tea to magical girls while not in their civilian forms. Uluru could eat cake in magical-girl form there, and nobody would get angry at her. And the magical girl sitting in front of Uluru blended in even more than she did. Magical girls and humans alike kept asking, “Can I take a picture with you?” roughly every five minutes, which was annoying.

“So.” Uluru waited until a fifth person finished asking for a photo, then placed her fork on her plate. She found the resulting clink irritating. “Why were you stalking Snow White?”

Dark Cutie, the magical girl who had just taken a photo with that fifth person, looked offended. “I wasn’t stalking her.”

“Then what were you doing?”

“Gathering intelligence.”

“What?”

“I’d figured that the final battle with Snow White was nigh. I sensed it in my blood. That feeling never leads me astray. So then I had to prepare for this battle. It’s the proper thing to do for a protagonist.”

Uluru had regrets—calling Dark Cutie here, asking her that question, inviting her to tea (though Uluru wasn’t footing the bill). Ask a magical girl who lived in a world outside of common sense a question, and she was going to give you an answer from a world outside common sense. Uluru had been wasting her time on something pointless.

“Now for my question,” said Dark Cutie.

“Huh? What?”

“Why are you helping Snow White?”

“She would have a tough time on her own. Uluru isn’t so irresponsible that she would give this her all and then call it quits.”

Uluru didn’t want any more magical girls winding up like her sisters, sacrificed for others. Uluru was helping Snow White because she thought that she might make a world where magical girls wouldn’t be used up and thrown away. But she hadn’t been able to say something so embarrassing to Snow White herself—even if Snow White would hear her thoughts with her magic—and she really didn’t want to talk about that with some crazy magical girl.

“One more thing,” said Dark Cutie.

“What the heck? Uluru only asked one question, and she didn’t even get a decent answer. Some deal this is. You’re not being fair.”

“I killed your sister.”

The mess of thoughts in Uluru’s head was all cleaned up without a sound. It was simple inside now. Dark Cutie had killed Sorami. Uluru knew this. She had seen it.

“…So?” she said.

“You don’t want to get revenge?”

“Uluru does want revenge. But not right now.”

“I see. I don’t know when that will be, but I’ll look forward to it nonetheless.”

Uluru stood up and raised her hand. “Another chocolate cake!” she called to the staff before sitting back down.

Dark Cutie recrossed her legs and pointed to the menu. “They don’t have chocolate cake.”

“Yeah they do. Uluru was just eating some.”

“That’s Princess Chocolat of the Cream Kingdom. The name is important. Use the right one.”

“Agh, so annoying! You’re just talking nonsense! Oh yeah—Uluru told you two things, but you only told Uluru one. So Uluru’s gonna add one more.”

“Yes?”

“Letting you go unchecked would be dangerous, so we’re gonna share information. Tell me your MINE username.”

Dark Cutie looked back at Uluru, then averted her gaze. Uluru wondered what she was staring at—it was the Cutie Healer poster on the wall.

  Sally Raven

There had been a lot of fun in the magical-girl class. But at the end of the end, once it was over, things had wound up being sad. Now that things were like this, there was no helping it. Even if she remembered the fun times, things had come to a sorrowful conclusion in the end.

Fighting together with the real Dark Cutie and giving everything she had to defeat the enemies may have been the memory of a lifetime, but while Sally had been engrossed in fighting, her classmates had lost their lives, the magical-girl class had come to an end, and those who had survived had all gone their separate ways. She had been unable to keep her promise with Pshuke, too. If she had been alive, she would have let Sally have a storm of verbal abuse, but now there was none of that, either.

Could she even say that she’d done well? She felt like she’d only ever been saved by others. Ultimately, she had clearly had someone else protecting her.

Her life goal had been to become a Cutie Healer. Her going into the magical-girl class had also been to advance in her career. Doing well there, trying to get along well with her classmates, wanting everyone to get along, wanting to do well during rec time, wanting to make detours after school to eat something nice, and wanting to have a whole bunch of customers at the ramen stall during the cultural festival—all of it was supposed to have been for Cutie Healer, but now that it was over, it didn’t feel that way anymore.

Being at Lightning’s whims, being consoled by Ranyi, sharing a look with Diko that said, “We both have it tough, huh,” and nodding at each other, letting the cursing that overflowed from Pshuke in one ear and out the other—it didn’t feel like any of these things had been for her future or to become a Cutie Healer. Even the most terrible memory, having been attacked in the mountains by a group of homunculi, now she could look back on as a great adventure that hadn’t been so bad at all.

The magical-girl class had been shut down. The principal, who had secretly been doing biological modification on the students, had lost her life during the outlaws’ attack, and the ruins, where something wild had really gone down, had also been sealed away. Young magical girls would again gather in the same place.

The magical-girl class was over. It was gone. For about a month, just remembering it had made her cry. Now she was able to think back on what Dark Cutie had told her, and she could cheer herself up by saying, “How can a protagonist do nothing but cry?”

That was when Sally received an unexpected job offer.

After graduation, talk of Cutie Healer had ended with the closure of the magic class. Right as she had been renewing her determination to start from square one as a candidate, she was invited to work on an anime. Unfortunately for Sally, it wasn’t Cutie Healer. It was a magical-girl show meant to outsell the Cutie Healer series, a new anime project that aimed for one cour and then an entire season if that went well.

Before, Sally would have rejected that in a second as an outrageous offer. But now she wound up thinking—was she okay being a magical girl who believed in Cutie Healer, clung to Cutie Healer, and made Cutie Healer alone her righteousness?

Cutie Healer was just so big. There was no way they could beat it. How would anyone even achieve that? Figuring she’d just hear it out for now, and if it couldn’t win her over, then she could just refuse, she headed to Conference Room Three at Headquarters on the date of her appointment.

The amazingly talented magical girl they had found who was introduced to her as a unique beauty—if it was made into an anime, she would be Sally’s partner—was a magical girl who Sally knew. Momentarily ignoring the producer, who was speaking in a very flowery manner about this girl, Sally spoke to her.

“Um…why?” Sally asked.

“Why? They came to talk to me when I was walking down the street. I thought they were hitting on me at first. There’s a dinner after this, right? Apparently, there’s gonna be sukiyaki, sushi, yakiniku, and shark fin soup—is that true? Is there a restaurant where you can eat all those things together?”

Then, she added, “It’s nice that you seem well.”

Princess Lightning sandwiched together five cookies and brought them to her mouth.

This wasn’t one of the many Lightnings from before. She was the Lightning Sally knew. It was the very Princess Lightning who had put her group members on the spot with her crazy remarks, who had captured their hearts with her looks and attitude, who had been the leader of Group Three and the problem child of the magical-girl class.

There were things Sally wanted to say to her—so she thought, but the words wouldn’t come. Princess Lightning scarfed down cookies just like she had when she had been in the class, then tilted her teacup back in a calm manner that said that was all completely natural.

Lightning was a difficult magical girl to understand. She had been just as difficult to understand back when they had been going to the magical-girl class, too. But that was precisely why Sally had made an effort to figure out what she was thinking. That day, she was comparatively easy to understand. She had come for the food and to meet Sally. The anime was secondary. Most likely, she would just eat what she could, with no intention of working.

Sally had more than 50 percent intended to refuse—about 70 percent. She just couldn’t help but feel resistance to the phrase “outselling Cutie Healer.” But seeing Lightning’s lips, she reflexively drew closer and grabbed her shoulders.

“Let’s do it! Together!”

Lightning looked back at Sally with a cool expression, and with no particular reply, she inhaled another cookie. The producer was quite overjoyed to see Sally’s attitude. Sally still didn’t know yet whether she could count on this person. If anyone could actually convince Lightning, it’d be Rappy Taype. Sally thought someone had mentioned that Rappy had been recommended by the Magical Girl Resources Department. And that department was known for hearing things before anyone else, so such a well-informed person might know more about Lightning.

  Rappy Taype

The meeting was over. She heard the steps of the participants coming out of the room, and only the department head Juube, her vice chief Puppeta, and Rappy, who was serving tea, were left behind in Conference Room Two, which was about the size of a classroom.

Rappy was very well suited to this activity. She could serve fresh, hot tea at any time by storing it with her magic wrap. The baked sweets wouldn’t get soggy, and the red bean sweets wouldn’t go bad. And she was not purely a tea-server—she also faultlessly managed tasks like writing on the whiteboard and handing out documents. It was very convenient to have her around at a meeting.

So she would have wanted them to have her exclusively attached to meetings forever, but unfortunately, since she also faultlessly managed things other than serving tea, that meant she was sent out to various jobs, especially dangerous jobs.

Right now, she was standing beside the department head and vice chief, listening to them talk.

“7753’s separation was a success, apparently,” said Juube.

“She should still have her position in Magical Girl Resources, right?” Puppeta replied.

“I hear they brought her back in an interesting way. The people at the Lab are apparently making a big fuss over her. Others outside the organization are curious, too.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re saying lots of things, like she’s a new incarnation, or a revived incarnation. Some mages are even prostrating themselves and worshipping her. This might be the birth of a new religion in the Magical Kingdom.”

“I feel bad for her, then… That’s rough… But won’t the Lab be even more reluctant to let her go now? She could be misused.”

“That would be a problem.”

“I mean…you think so…?”

“I do. If possible, I’d like to have her with us. Even if she doesn’t plan to stay with the Resources Department, she’ll have to submit a letter of resignation or something. That’s just protocol.”

“I see. So that’s how you intend to do this. Wouldn’t it be a real problem if it ended up looking like we were snatching 7753 from the Lab? I’m against it, personally.”

“You’re getting way ahead of yourself. I wasn’t even thinking about asking you.”

“You weren’t?”

“Nope. It’s not only the Lab. Word has it that the Inspection Department also wants to get a hold of 7753 to keep her from being used in illegal experiments. The Management Department chief was the main figure in her separation. That old man… Pardon me, Master Ragi is the picture of a stubborn old man… Ahem. I hear that he has rather firm convictions, and you’re not good with the elderly. This mission requires communication skills, not simple force.”

“Yes, yes, forgive me for being so socially awkward. So who are you sending?”

Juube turned her head thirty degrees to the right—at Rappy, who’d figured things would wind up like this. She wasn’t particularly shocked.

“Rappy,” said Juube.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Extracting you from Lazuline’s gang took precious time and money.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Off you go, then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

While she was nodding at everything she was told, Rappy’s mind was already on the new job. Specifically, about 80 percent of her head was working on her new job. Twenty percent was remembering past work. Lately, that ratio had decreased. A month ago, and no matter what she did, she had been at 50 percent remembering.

It was nothing but painful memories of the magical-girl class. While she’d played the bright and fun magical girl, inside, she’d felt desperate. Even while wondering just why she had to mingle with middle schoolers at her age and pretend to be in middle school, she hadn’t been able to oppose the upper ranks.

Eventually, she’d come to enjoy even the acting and had gone to school like a real middle schooler, and then the magical-girl class had gone away.

She could consider herself lucky just for surviving. More classmates had died during that turmoil than had remained. But she could also think of it the other way. If Rappy had tried a little harder, if she had not been quickly dragged away and had been able to say, “I’m going to help, so please leave me behind,” then a number of people might have been saved. Considering what-ifs disqualified her as a professional magical girl, and thinking about what if she had jumped into a situation where she might have died was just as much of a disqualification. But she still couldn’t stop thinking about it, and that was surely because the middle schoolers had been fun people.

It was the iron rule of the Magical Girl Resources Department that you’d say whoever was gone had been a good person, and leave it at that. If she were to think on and on about the people who were now gone, then she would be the next one gone. Rappy thought about the friends who had remained to the end—was Miss Ril still able to smile so kindly?—and she reduced the remembering from 20 percent to 10 percent.

  Calkoro

Once upon a time, the Management Department had just a single room. Now it had four. Since the addition of rooms had been carried out by the department chief using magic, it had cost no money. Two magical girls, Calkoro and Miss Ril, were standing talking in one of the new rooms, one that was used as a storage space.

“Yes, that’s right. There’s been talk of going somewhere new to do a magical-girl class. A purer and cleaner one this time,” said Calkoro.

“Purer and cleaner?” Miss Ril repeated.

“It sounds like it’ll actually get off the ground, too. They’ll form a watchdog agency made up of various experts. Even the slightest impropriety won’t go unchecked.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Also, there’s, um…just one thing I’d like to ask of you.”

“Yes?”

“You see, the department had me under restraint until just recently.”

“That must have been tough.”

As Halna’s trusted retainer, Calkoro should have been disposed of without an investigation, but there must have been some pressure from somewhere, as she had been acquitted from a report based on proper investigation and facts. But it had still taken three months until her release, and even after that, she was entrusted to the Management Department, and not allowed to walk around freely. Not only that, apparently some secret agent was also keeping watch over her. Calkoro herself hadn’t noticed at all, but the chief of the Magical Girl Resources Department, who was Rappy’s boss, had advised her of that through Rappy.

“I still have eyes on me, even now,” Calkoro said.

“None of it was your fault, though.”

“Thank you, but, well, there was some question of my competence… At the very least, I couldn’t prevent the incident from happening.”

“Anyone would have struggled with that.”

“Oh… Also, given the delicate position I’m in, I never thought this sort of offer would come to me…but I’ve been asked to be the new magical-girl class’s assistant teacher.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“You think so…?”

“I do. Last time…all sorts of things happened, but you had things you wanted to do, too, didn’t you?”

Calkoro had made for a very apathetic teacher. Miss Ril must have known that, but she nonetheless encouraged her in earnest with a smile.

“Things I wanted to do…?” said Calkoro.

Calkoro wanted to refuse by any means possible. She didn’t want to be involved in a magical-girl class anymore. It would inevitably become trauma. A normal mage would be laid up in bed for years. If they were weak of heart, then they would never leave the house. Because she was a magical girl, she was now able to stand here and talk during work like this. But right after the incident, she’d been in such a state, she hadn’t wanted to see anything or believe in anything.

“I suppose…I did have my own desires.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But things were so tough… I caused trouble for everyone… I was always burdening Tetty… I really was.”

Perhaps Calkoro had been burdening the class head, Tetty, in order to avoid trouble herself. Tetty had always seemed to be struggling, running around between her classmates, but now that she thought of it, Calkoro had the feeling that she’d been strangely enjoying herself. Was that just nostalgia glasses, though?

Calkoro hadn’t told Miss Ril about the magical-girl class because she wanted encouragement. She’d been thinking to go through Miss Ril to have the Management Department chief mediate, to either deftly refuse or make it like it had never happened. But she was being encouraged. And looking at Miss Ril’s smile, she kind of wound up feeling like she could do it.

“It’s strange…,” said Calkoro.

“Pardon?”

“No, nothing…”

The door opened audibly. The sliding door was flung open so hard it bounced back to half-shut, and the person who had opened it put his hand on it to open it once more. There stood the Management Department chief, Ragi Zwe Nento. Face red and twisted in anger, he even gave the sense like his beard was somehow standing up.

“Enough chitchat! How long does it take just to bring three books over?!”

Calkoro hastily bowed and apologized. When she timidly looked up at Ragi, he still seemed to be angry. But Tepsekemei was mimicking him behind his back. Calkoro couldn’t help bursting into laughter, which made Ragi even angrier.

  0 Lulu

She hadn’t been able to go back. Or rather, there had been no going back. Unlike the other magical girls, Lulu had been the one person operating against the will of the organization. Even though she hadn’t caused it, she’d been without permission in the place where her master had lost her life—at the magical-girl class.

So there was no going back. It was even iffy if there’d been a place for her to begin with. At the very least, she couldn’t bring herself to just sort of go back with a careless smile on her face.

She hadn’t become too good for it. Neither had she become more conscious or aware. She’d just come to feel that doing things like that was embarrassing. Lulu wasn’t going back because she was embarrassed. She convinced herself that was fine.

But the world was not made so that magical girls with no backing could live on without doing anything. Whether they be human or magical girl, in a world where money rules everything, those with no earnings were not qualified to live. She’d considered wandering around to train herself, but that wouldn’t ever work.

“Waaaaaaaaaugh!”

Lulu cried out and leaped. A blade of flame passed by her back that she just barely managed to avoid. She landed and then kicked up dust as she ran along the wasteland. When she glanced at her back to check, it was smoldering with flame, so she hastily beat it out. She hadn’t managed to avoid it entirely.

This time three blades of flame flew at her. Lulu cried out, slid, rolled, ran around, and yet again just barely evaded. There was only so long that she could keep dodging in the middle of a wasteland with no obstacles. Looking at her back, it was smoldering again, so she beat it out.

“Hey! Over here! Over here!”

When she looked toward the voice, there was a hole in the ground. Lulu slid in without so much as a by-your-leave. This time she really did evade the blades of flame by just a hair, and she tumbled down into the ground, landing on her butt, which she rubbed as she proceeded through a tunnel, coming out to a slightly bigger space about the size of a room.

Two magical girls were waiting there. The one in a yamabushi-style costume was jangling a khakkhara. She pounded the ground with it. “Hey, what the heck is the meaning of this?”

Lulu tilted her head with a vague smile. “Uh…I got taken by surprise.”

“Don’t give me that, you dunce!”

“Listen here.” The other magical girl, who looked like a many-tailed fox, fixed Lulu with an icy stare that seemed to be smiling but wasn’t smiling at all. “We hired you because you said you can bring good luck.”

“Well, uh…we managed to avoid the absolute worst luck. Like, normally someone would have died, but we somehow got away.”

“Are you done with your excuse?”

“Hey, hey! Next time! Next time for sure!”

The mercenary business was tough. Next time I’ll have Miss Ril come, too, she thought. Then Lulu’s magic could manifest more wonderful powers.

  Mephis Pheles

Mephis had heard from her seniors in the Elite Guard just how frightening the Lab was. She’d heard various rumors: that it was the final stop for magical girls who blew it, a place divorced from law and ethics despite being a public facility, that you could have an easy death that was on the better side, and much more, but that wasn’t what she found scary about it. She could only think of it as very far away from herself.

Most likely, if she were told she was to be taken away by the Lab, even Mephis might have been pathetically terrified. But where she was actually taken, a few days after when she tried asking, “Oh yeah, so what the heck is this hospital?” she was told, “the Lab,” and she was deeply impressed, thinking, It actually makes it scarier that you’re there before you know it.

While the Lab was doing who knew what in the shadows, at the very least to Mephis, it was a big boring hospital. Every single day, she’d have blood or hair or flakes of skin or whatnot taken for tests she didn’t really understand, and her meals were typical bland hospital food.

She didn’t see her classmates. Fortunately, they didn’t take her phone away from her, so she managed to keep in contact with Miss Ril and Rappy on MINE, at least. Also, Dory alone occasionally popped her face in.

Mephis had had her body remade without her permission. Her mind had also been controlled. Since the crazy elf, a.k.a. the principal, was dead, things had worked out for her mentally, but it seemed the body part was difficult. At this rate, her lifespan would be short. Life in the fast lane was the iron rule of delinquent manga, but getting your body modified without permission and your lifespan shrunk was like science fiction.

There was no way the Lab was treating her as an act of charity. It was quite possible that she had unwittingly become an experimental subject. But according to what Dory said (which was difficult to understand), they wouldn’t be that reckless. They were apparently treating her as a guest entrusted to them from the Caspar Faction, and someone important was checking every few days.

Did they think she was Kana’s friend? Or was this a repayment of debt or something since she’d been taking care of Kana? She hardly thought that Kana had given detailed instructions to “take good care of Mephis.” Thinking about back then, there had been no time at all for that.

People tend to think too much when they’re at loose ends. While looking up at the ceiling of the hospital, Mephis thought about nothing but the events of that day. Even after falling, Tetty had saved Mephis. In her fading memories, she had the feeling like Kana had said something to her. She had probably saved her, too. Even after something unthinkable had happened to Kumi-Kumi and Lillian, they had helped her. If not for Snow White, Mephis wouldn’t have survived. And Adelheid had fought to the bitter end elsewhere—to her death.

Mephis had heard that the ones who’d come to save her and the others deep in the ruins had been Dory and her friends. They had said that it was because the activation had been canceled, but even then, no matter how many times she thanked them for coming into a place like that for them, it wouldn’t be enough. Rappy and Miss Ril must also have been struggling and suffering, but they tried to support Mephis in various ways. Dory showing up also had to be her own way of demonstrating consideration. And there had been a call from Calkoro recently, who apparently had gotten her contact info from Miss Ril. She had apologized very earnestly.

She was suffering the whole time, the first few days after being saved. After that, it was like a hole had opened up. She had wanted to become a magical girl who could save people. She’d been in such a temper about not wanting to become someone who would be saved by Tetty, and then in the end, Mephis had survived because everyone had saved her. She still wanted to say things to Tetty, and Tetty would surely have wanted to say things to her, but they could no longer speak.

Their other classmates would obviously have wanted to survive, too. Diko, Ranyi, and Pshuke must have joined the magical-girl class with dreams and things they wanted to do.

She felt like she should have a mission and do something, but she couldn’t dredge up the energy to do anything, and so she read the manga that had been gifted her. She read genres she liked, and those she didn’t, all of it. The romance that Lillian would have liked, the standard shonen manga that Adelheid would enjoy, the isekai reincarnation fantasy that Kumi-Kumi liked, the delinquent manga she had recommended to Kana—all the manga she read were connected to memories. Even manga that wasn’t connected made her think, I bet she’d like this one, or This might’ve made her angry.

Was it simplistic to assume that Lightning would enjoy a foodie manga? It was a sure thing that Sally would read the manga adaptation for Cutie Healer. Tetty would surely read a magical-girl story, saying that it would be educational.

Placing the manga magazine she’d been reading on the pillow, she sighed. She would no longer have discussions about how this manga was interesting, or that manga would definitely be to your taste. Just counting manga she wanted to recommend to Kana alone, there were too many to carry, but she couldn’t do that anymore.

She sighed one more time and then rolled over on the bed. She sat down on a chair, and her eyes met with Dory’s, staring right at her. More accurately, Dory was looking not at Mephis but at the manga magazine.

“What? You wanna read it? Huh? You don’t know how to read it? That’s no good, c’mon, sit down here. I’ll show you right now. A life where you can’t read manga has got to be miserable.”

Two magical girls—one in white and one in black—were running side by side over the rooftops. Kicking up tiles, blowing away sheet metal, they never slowed down.

The white magical girl glanced behind her, grimacing, and then looked forward again.

The black magical girl glanced at her partner out the corner of her eye. “Are they still there?” she asked, concerned.

“Yeah. Still there.”

The black magical girl grimaced just as much as the white one had. “What do we do?”

“This is no good. Let’s go from below.”

“Different directions?”

“Actually…we shouldn’t split up. Fewer fighters is just what—”

The white magical girl didn’t finish what she was saying; the cry that escaped her lips sounded like a squished frog. Roof tiles struck the back of her head and shattered into dust as she rolled down the roof, damaging it in the process. The black magical girl turned around, slowed down, and met the enemy’s attack. However, she failed to block the few, then dozens of tiles that came flying at her in succession. Her battered body tumbled off the roof after her companion.

As the pair groaned, a red magical girl landed right in front of them. She pointed her naginata-esque weapon at them like a spear.

“Noir Mii. Blan Key,” she began. “You are hereby charged with fraudulently demanding fabricated charges from magical girls and blackmail, extortion, violence, and more—”

Before she could finish, the black magical girl—Noir Mii—threw a knife whose blade was just as black as her costume. Everything about the throw was flawless—the timing, the speed, the smoothness—but the red magical girl easily caught the knife between her fingers, twirled it around, and threw it back. The blade struck Noir Mii’s exposed shoulder, and vivid red blood spurted out.

The white magical girl—Blan Key—panicked and raised her hands in defeat. “I give, I give! You got me! I surrender.”

“Drop your weapons,” the red magical girl demanded.

“I will! I will! I don’t wanna get hurt!” Blan Key tossed aside her weapon and that of her partner, who was holding her shoulder and moaning. The white magical girl looked up at the red magical girl like a frightened puppy. “Please, please have mercy.”

“…Never mind that. As long as you don’t resist, I won’t—”

“But they say the Magical-Girl Hunter even beats up people who don’t resist… Oh, uh, that’s just a rumor, though. Sorry, sorry.”

The red magical girl sighed to herself. Nothing had changed; that horrific nickname and the groundless rumors blowing her reputation out of proportion were still following her around.

Meanwhile, Ripple spoke to the red magical girl with a smile:

It’d be nice if they surrendered before putting up a fight.

“I wish they’d stop calling me the Magical-Girl Hunter, though,” the red magical girl replied quietly so that the other two girls couldn’t hear.

I get where you’re coming from…but it’s a lost cause now.

“Maybe I can come up with a cuter nickname for myself and spread that around.”

Better quit while you’re ahead. It’d be really embarrassing if people found that out.

After that exchange, she glanced down at Blan Key. Whenever the red magical girl had these internal conversations, she tended to look like she was zoning out and letting her guard down.

Sure enough, Blan Key hastily shook her head and said, “Of course I would never stab you when you have your guard down! I wouldn’t dream of it!”

“…Aren’t you telling on yourself?”

“No, no, no! Not at all! I swear I’m innocent! I mean, the Magical-Girl Hunter, Snow White… Oh, sorry, you have a different name now… Um, Snow—”

“Snow Blood.”

“Yeah! I could never pull anything so outrageous against Snow Blood!”

In her desperate attempt to assert her innocence, Blan Key was coming off as a joke. Noir Mii, still gripping her shoulder, stared tepidly at her partner.

“It’d be so much easier if all we had to deal with was petty villains like these,” Snow White murmured quietly enough so that no one could hear.

But we have to deal with people who are even bigger trouble, Ripple replied.

“Trouble, huh…? That’s true.”

Snow White had managed to save Ripple. When Ripple was on the verge of death—as she’d intended—Snow White had given her own body to fuse them. Now they had become Snow Blood, two magical girls as one. They had the physical prowess of a fusion, and their combined powers—throws that always hit their targets and the ability to hear others’ thoughts—made them an even better inspector than before.

Snow White didn’t know what had happened in the depths of the ruins. She just felt like she’d sensed some sort of intention. An intention to save Ripple and Snow White. She’d also felt an energy that wrapped them in an embrace. By the time the power of the ruins had waned and Dory had come to the rescue, the only ones lying there were Mephis, barely alive, and an unknown red magical girl.

“But it’s not over.”

Yeah.

In the Magical Kingdom, the era of the Three Sages had ended, and the next phase was just beginning. There was still no telling whether things would lead in a good direction or a bad one. There was even harder work ahead, and further sacrifices, and yet still more to do—but as painful as that might be, things could have been worse. Marika would grimace and say that it was ridiculous to be happy about being busy, but that was exactly how she felt about her work at the school.

Was Snow Blood about to move to the next phase? Even with her new look, what she was doing wasn’t much different from before. But for some reason, it wasn’t as painful now.

All this time, every magical girl she had encountered and parted ways with thus far had been pushing her forward. Snow Blood wanted to become a magical girl who wouldn’t bring shame to them. She wasn’t at that point yet; maybe she didn’t even know exactly what it was that she really needed. Maybe she was just being stubborn. But still—

“I’ve always…”

Mm?

“…been dreaming.”

Mm.

“And I’ll keep on dreaming.”

Mm.

“If I keep on dreaming until the very end, I’ll win…don’t you think?”

…Maybe.

Ripple’s voice was quiet, but very kind. They could talk to each other, but Snow White couldn’t hear Ripple’s thoughts—just like how Snow White couldn’t hear her own. And that made her happier and more grateful than anything.

She would continue to worry. She’d accept that there wasn’t going to be an answer. She understood that she was far from her ideals, but she nevertheless worked to get close to them. She would do that before she had any regrets—or even after the regrets came. As long as Ripple was with her, things would surely be okay.

  Lazuline the Third

Lazuline moved swiftly down the hall, but since this Western-style estate was made to be larger on the inside than it appeared from without, it was a ways. Since there was no one there to call her to task for it, she ran down the hall, opening the door of the room that was her goal. Here, in a room of this estate that was Deluge and her crew’s hideout, in a linoleum conference room that would be unimaginable from the old exterior, sat two magical girls.

One of them was the master of this place, Princess Deluge, and the other was her right-hand woman, Arc Arlie. Placed at Arlie’s side was a portable cannon, and a sword was hanging from her waist.

Deluge eyed the clock hands on the wall with a mischievous look. “You’re five minutes late.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Lazuline said. “Um, lots happened.”

“The new leader has a lot of new struggles?”

“Stop calling me the new leader.”

During the magical-girl class incident, the homunculi had gone out of control, and it had all wound up the Lab’s responsibility. After that, various things about the principal Halna had been exposed, leading to the question of whether that incident had also been because of Halna, and the Lab had apparently managed to clear their name. But who cared about that? The problem was multiple magical girl–type homunculi. Lazuline had business with one of them.

The Lab and the R&D Department were irreconcilable enemies. Their relationship was such that you could not normally ask and have them accept. The security was also such that you could not simply steal them. In order to acquire them, they really had been put through it. She wanted to compliment herself for having worked that hard for the sake of a plan she couldn’t even be sure would pan out.

Arlie must have picked up on Lazuline’s exhaustion, as she made some concerned squeaking noises, and Deluge, sitting at her side, smiled weakly. She had experienced the same exhaustion.

“Well then, for the twenty-second…or was it the twenty-third debriefing?”

Lazuline also sat down, and then they put their heads together at the folding desk and the debriefing began.

The mysterious device that Shadow Gale had made—it resembled an old TV—had started correspondence with something from somewhere. Though they intermittently heard the sounds pon…pon, nobody knew what that meant. It wasn’t particularly anything useful. It was placed on the corner of the desk, without anyone touching it.

They said that Snow White had changed her name to Snow Blood and resumed activity.

“Snow White…,” Deluge muttered, and narrowed her eyes. That gesture had once made Lazuline think of Old Blue, but since saying so wouldn’t please her, Lazuline stayed silent. With nostalgia, sadness, and fear, she watched Deluge.

Arlie had saved Snow White and Mephis from the ruins, but they lost their memories of her and believed that Dory had rescued them all on her own. Arlie was apparently disappointed about this, but she had no choice but to suck it up. It wasn’t just Arlie—Lazuline had removed their memories of Deluge, Catherine, Brenda, and Lazuline herself saving them. That was because they no longer needed it. It was more convenient for Lazuline for them to forget that they had temporarily been together, and it was safer for them as well. This was best for everyone involved.

Lazuline had already been discussing with Deluge about “after Old Blue.” Their conferences had started at Magi-magi Cal-cal, then switched location to concept cafés, karaoke rooms, meeting rooms, and saunas and continued, firming up the framework of a plan bit by bit. Putting together the R&D Department’s accomplishments and Pfle’s legacy, they would be able to have a great influence over the current magical-girl system. Depending on how things went, there had even been the option of causing a coup d’etat against Old Blue. While removing memories, Lazuline had been moving things along in secret, but at this point, she wondered if maybe she had been noticed.

To Old Blue, even those she cared about were no more than pawns. And even she herself had been included among those she cared about. If the culture, information, presence, concept, and all the other elements of Lapis Lazuline were carried on, then Lazuline would not die. Maybe that was what she had been thinking.

Having closely examined Pfle’s legacy—the information, technology, connections, assets, and everything else—from the sheer complexity of it, Deluge had reached the conclusion that it was too much for her alone. Even adding in her ally Lazuline, it still wasn’t enough. That was precisely why what would happen next was needed: the technology to make actual magical girl–type homunculi that they had taken from Halna, the memory candies that Lazuline had, and Shadow Gale. If they put all those together—

The two of them talked that day, too. With occasional opinions shared from Arlie, they continued to talk. Naturally, they became thirsty, and so she was standing to go make tea when a crackle ran across the monitor of the mysterious device that was placed in the corner of the desk.

The three magical girls all looked at it at once. The crackling on the monitor jumped, and spread, and took form as a black-and-white sphere.

“I finally managed to transmit to you, pon! This is Fal! Right now—”

With an abrupt crackle, the power turned off.