Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 6 - Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

WALKING ON A RAINBOW

  Toko (Time remaining: ten hours, thirteen minutes)

If Archfiend Pam would just die, there would no longer be any magical girls here capable of beating Rain Pow. Even if the middle school group were to all get together, Rain Pow would still be able to defeat them easily—and none of the others would get together in the first place.

After coming to this conclusion, Toko corrected herself. That wasn’t quite true.

Archfiend Pam had not been beyond Rain Pow’s ability to deal with. Rain Pow had managed her by cutting into the battle between Pam and the unknown magical girls, and as a result, Rain Pow had killed Archfiend Pam. She’d totally gotten back at her for all those slaps.

“Dealing with” someone didn’t always mean doing it through direct force. Rain Pow had tricked Pam by making her think she was just a harmless middle school kid, purely a victim, an innocent new magical girl. Even Archfiend Pam, with her long career, immense combat experience, and wealth of magical-girl knowledge, could be deceived. That was the magical girl Toko had raised: She would betray and deceive, and she would trust nobody. Toko trusted Rain Pow, but even she didn’t know if Rain Pow trusted her.

The magical girl before them…was Pythie Frederica. Why was this scoundrel who was supposed to have been in jail right here? Rain Pow would get her.

“Now finish her, Rain Pow!”

“Got it.”

Toko dived into Rain Pow’s shirt. It was warm here and the easiest place to be. Rain Pow extended her rainbows toward Frederica, all of which were equally sturdy, regardless of size. They were hard enough for magical girls to run on and sharp as razors—and Rain Pow was capable of deploying far more than just one or two at a time.

Frederica slipped under the first rainbow and sidestepped the second. She charged forward, empty-handed.

Frederica dodged rainbow after rainbow. The third rainbow, she mounted and leaped off, and the fourth, she repelled with her right hand without noticing it was a feint. The fifth rainbow appeared in the shadow of the fourth, aiming right between her eyes. But the moment before it could connect, a shuriken came flying, repelling it. The rainbow’s trajectory changed, instead just skimming Frederica’s forehead.

“Hmm?”

A shuriken? Whose? It hadn’t been Frederica’s.

There was a ninja—a ninja whose left eye was crushed, her left arm missing—standing atop the guardrail, red scarf fluttering.

You’ve gotta be kidding me, thought Toko.

  Ripple (Time remaining: ten hours, twelve minutes)

Ripple immediately regretted throwing that shuriken. She’d ended up saving someone whom she’d rather see dead. Ripple believed there were some people the world would be better off without. Some might say there was no justification for killing, no matter who it was, and that even criminals should be judged in a court of law rather than killed, but once that criminal escaped and killed some more, that shot those arguments down, didn’t it? If saving this one person resulted in the one she’d saved killing ten or twenty, then saving her wasn’t worth it.

Ripple had raced here with the intent to back up Archfiend Pam, but now that she’d arrived, she didn’t see her. There was a perfectly circular hole in the center of the road that looked like it had been carved out by some sort of machine, and at its edge was Pythie Frederica, a human collapsed in a puddle of blood, a small, trembling postal delivery–style magical girl, another girl with a rainbow on her back, and a little fairy. There was also a crushed compact car and a foreign car run up on the shoulder of the road. The former was familiar to Ripple. It was the one they’d used earlier to lead the enemy away from them.

It seemed Frederica and the rainbow magical girl were fighting. Whose side had that dead girl been on? The hole was deep, and Ripple couldn’t see the bottom. If Archfiend Pam was around, she had to be down there.

She’d met the girl with a rainbow on her back last night. But she seemed completely different now. She smiled just like the fairy popping out of her shirt did, and under her cuteness lay something dreadful and repulsive. She looked at Ripple not with the eyes of a girl in flight but with the eyes of a girl coming to capture and devour. The cowboy-style magical girl who had worn a tilted ten-gallon hat rose in her mind, and Ripple’s mental evaluation of this girl changed from “someone who seems antagonistic” to “definitely an enemy.”

Ripple tossed a kunai to repel the rainbow that arced toward her. That girl was using her rainbows differently today, too—not as a running surface but as weapons. The strength she’d used as a foothold before now became the hardness of the weapons that extended toward Ripple.

The rainbows moved in a linear fashion. The flip side of their strength was simplicity. Ripple read them and dodged them easily. She sank her mind a level deeper into the space between herself and her enemy. Her concentration heightened. The sounds of sirens in the distance, approaching them, quieted. All other thoughts, like about how she’d saved Frederica, disappeared. She focused all her five senses on the fight, and now, there was nothing else.

  Rain Pow (Time remaining: ten hours, ten minutes)

Kaori Ninotsugi was good at hiding her true feelings. If not, she probably wouldn’t have survived her mere thirteen years.

Kaori lived together with her sister, who was significantly older than her. Her sister said their parents had died in an accident, but Kaori didn’t know if that was true or not. She didn’t even know if her sister was actually related to her in the first place. She called herself Kaori’s sister, and the people in the neighborhood, who had known her for a long time, acknowledged her as the oldest girl of the Ninotsugi family, but despite this, Kaori didn’t feel they were related.

The story went that after their parents’ accident, her noble sister had been forced to drop out of college and work herself to the bone in order to take care of her little sister. Kaori, however, just couldn’t accept that as the truth. Maybe she’d dropped out of college because it didn’t suit her or because she didn’t have enough credits. Maybe their parents’ death had been planned. Maybe she’d taken in Kaori because she wanted a toy she could treat however she liked. Kaori couldn’t help but think these things.

Her sister put up a good front, but inside the home, she was a tyrant. If anything displeased her, she would take it out on Kaori. If something unpleasant happened at work, she would take it out on Kaori, and even if nothing in particular was wrong, she would find fault with Kaori.

Her outer demeanor meant she didn’t let anything leak out. She never did anything that would show on her face. She would stab Kaori with sewing needles, since they were small enough that they wouldn’t leave a mark, make her take cold baths in the middle of winter, pull her hair, smother her with pillows and not release her until she’d just about suffocated, persistently torment her in a quiet voice, grab her tongue with pliers and tug at it, withhold meals, or beat her just gently enough that it wouldn’t leave visible bruises. This sort of thing went on two or three times a week, and when it was bad, every day.

It all depended on her sister’s mood. She had to put her sister in a good mood. If anything annoyed her, it would all come back at Kaori. So she couldn’t fall behind in her studies. She couldn’t be bullied. She had to get through school without a hitch, but she couldn’t be too exceptional, either. Her sister was very jealous and didn’t like it if Kaori was too highly esteemed. When Kaori won special selection at an art competition, her sister ripped up the certificate and rewarded her with a fist, telling her not to get too full of herself, ordering her to pretend she’d lost the certificate. The only certificates Kaori was allowed to have were “no cavities” and “perfect attendance.” With everything else, she would be barely safe at third or fifth place, but depending on her sister’s mood, even that was out. Acclaim was a threat to her sister, so it was best not to accept any.

Kaori hid what she felt inside and made sure no one knew the truth. It was no simple feat to evade her deeply suspicious and observant sister’s gaze, but she acquired this skill in hiding who she was in order to survive.

Never making it too blatant, she would placate her sister, avoiding standing out in school while simultaneously maintaining a status there where she would not be tyrannized—and it was no exaggeration to call her position at school a “status.” She’d made an effort to win it—and in the position she’d won, she cleaved to the majority, showing few faults but also few virtues, taking care not to look like she was just following the crowd or doing whatever it took to get ahead. She spoke in a muted tone when greeting her neighbors. Her sister wanted to be the competent elder sister and for Kaori to be the somewhat lacking younger one.

Kaori’s efforts continued into the second semester of her fifth year of elementary school—and ended there.

“You have magical talent. I’m gonna make you into a real magical girl!”

The fairy Toko made Kaori into the magical girl Rain Pow. Before long, a chance “accident” caused her sister to fall down the stairs and twist her ankle, and she missed three days of work. Following that, she never touched Kaori again. She didn’t even talk to Kaori at home. She always looked at her little sister with terror in her eyes, and every time Kaori felt that frightened gaze on her, she basked in joy.

Kaori was free. She bought the clothing she wanted, bought video game consoles, bought accessories with real gemstones, and went to a private middle school, and there was no one who would attack her for it anymore.

Toko said Kaori could become her ideal magical girl.

“Sly, dirty, mean, unfair, and calculated. That’s the magical girl I’ve always wanted.”

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment. You’re totally dissing me, aren’t you? Like, are you trying to start a fight with me?”

“That’s a compliment, for real! I’m saying I’ve got mad respect for you!”

Sly, dirty, mean, unfair, and calculated. Those are all words that fit Toko, she thought. Toko was two-faced—in fact, she could easily pull three or four faces. She made sloppy reports to the Magical Kingdom with nothing but praise for the magical girls she scouted and lived a life in service of her own benefit. Unsurprisingly, she had a terrible reputation.

After doing job after job for Toko, Kaori came to realize something. She was smiling and joking around naturally. Was this what having fun felt like? Toko lied to everyone. The one exception was Kaori—Rain Pow. She revealed everything to her, be it her fraudulent modus operandi or the foul way she conducted herself. Toko seemed to enjoy herself, and Kaori was enjoying herself, too. Just conning people on its own wouldn’t be this fun. It was having someone with you to enjoy it that made it great.

Toko’s ideal magical girl was someone similar to herself, maybe because that was the sort of partner Toko wanted.

Toko’s training made Rain Pow stronger. Through many scams and battles and much practice, she polished her skills and cultivated her strategic intuition.

Archfiend Pam had conveniently finished off the magical girl who had been fighting one-on-one with her, and Rain Pow had killed Archfiend Pam. She’d also killed the girl who’d been spraying music notes from outside the hole, and Frederica would follow her soon enough. Her one mistake had been letting the fencer escape, but if her weapon was a sword, she wouldn’t be someone Rain Pow couldn’t fight due to poor compatibility. That fencer could swing her sword all she wanted, but Rain Pow would do fine just shooting rainbows at her from a distance.

And everyone left were either allies, or wounded, or enemies who weren’t a threat. She would kill this ninja first. She was one of those cooperating with the inspection team—Ripple, huh?

Rain Pow pointed five rainbows at the ninja, extending them in straight lines, then manifested three more behind her and four more above.

  Weddin (Time remaining: ten hours, nine minutes)

She ran from alley to alley, fleeing. She didn’t know what had happened in that hole or why Pukin had undone her magic—she just kept on running.

The haze that had clouded her mind had cleared even more suddenly than it had appeared. Violence never seeks permission to begin or end.

Though she’d been in a vaguely dazed state of mind, as if her mind were filled with fog, she could remember everything clearly. She’d waited upon Pukin—revered her, never questioning it, feeling it was an honor to be by her side. She’d been proud of it.

Now that the magic was undone, she couldn’t understand English anymore, but she still remembered what she’d seen and heard in Japanese. The memories were very bitter. She’d never tried to stop that group from killing, and whenever Pukin’s sword had stabbed someone’s chest, she’d trembled with the joy of serving someone so great.

It was nauseating. If she weren’t a magical girl, she would have puked right there.

Weddin was self-interested and calculated and was satisfied as long as she had something to gain in the end, and she liked that she operated based on such ideas. Even when she’d become a magical girl, an ally of justice, she’d figured she could use her magic for her own purposes. She’d thought that it was no big deal, as long as she didn’t get found out. You obeyed the law because people in power made you obey it. If there was no overwhelmingly powerful figure to punish you—if you were an overwhelmingly powerful figure yourself—then you stood outside the law, and you could live more comfortably.

Looking back on those thoughts now, she knew she’d just been putting on a tough act. Being thrown in among those who actually did crush the weak, for the first time, Weddin had come to know her own ethics. Even this cynical middle school student did in fact hold justice in her heart. She never wanted to experience something like that, ever again.

Once the spell was undone, Weddin’s immediate priority was to protect herself, so she quickly escaped to an alleyway. Her sense that she had to meet up with some others intensified. Spending time with Pukin’s party had earned her a lot of information. Their party had infiltrated the city in order to capture an assassin. There was also a legitimate inspection team aside from Pukin’s group, and they were chasing after the assassin, too. And the assassin’s cooperator was the fairy, Toko.

That meant that Toko had been using them all. The assassin was either one of their own or it was someone else. Pukin and her allies had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t Funny Trick. They’d also said Captain Grace was dead.

Weddin clenched her fists. Her nails dug into her palms, but she kept squeezing, hard.

In her mind, Weddin had looked down on Umi Shibahara, famous at school for being a problem child. Even after they’d become magical girls, they’d clashed more than once. They’d competed over the vote to be leader. Weddin had been averse to Grace, and Grace probably hadn’t felt very positively about her, either.

But thinking about Grace now filled her with frustration and regret. Grace had been the strongest of all their allies. Weddin had made light of her, seeing her as ultimately just a muscle-brain and not leader material, but she now felt like, in the end, she had relied on Grace. It had been the same back when Bunny Ears had been chasing them. Captain Grace had been the one to come save Weddin and Tepsekemei, who had just kept running.

Oh.

Bunny Ears. And the ninja. They were the official inspection team Pukin’s group had talked about, weren’t they? They had been different from Pukin’s crowd. And there was Archfiend Pam, too. She’d saved Bunny Ears, who’d been beaten to a pulp. So those two had to be allies.

From the way the ninja had pinned her down using her kunai, Weddin could tell she hadn’t meant to kill. And Bunny Ears had tied her up, too, and Weddin had never feared for her life.

They were different from Pukin’s group. Their side was different from those who killed for their own benefit, enjoying it and smiling over it all the while. She would be able to cooperate with them.

She should not only be meeting up with her allies. There might be other people on that inspection team, aside from Archfiend Pam, Bunny Ears, and the ninja. If she were to cooperate with people like that—Weddin thought as she ran, and nearly got hit by a car. Startled, she dodged it and darted back into the alley. She was breathing a sigh of relief when she raised her head and her eyes met with someone else’s.

It was a magical girl wearing a stage magician–style costume. She must have been following Weddin, because when Weddin suddenly turned around, they were face-to-face.

“Funny Trick?” Weddin called out to her questioningly without a second thought, but Funny Trick spun around and tried to run away. Panicking, Weddin called out to stop her. “Funny Trick! Wait!”

Funny Trick stopped suddenly, right on the spot. Her knees were shaking. Was she perhaps trying to run but couldn’t? Now Weddin knew her magical ability to compel people to keep promises was still active. The promise they’d all made before to obey their leader’s orders when the time came was keeping Funny Trick from moving.

“That magical girl Pukin had me under her control. Either she’s dead, or she cast her magic on someone else. Either way, I don’t know, but I’m no longer under her spell. You don’t have to worry. Also, um, I was personally unwilling about it all, though that does rather sound like I’m making excuses. I’m sorry I didn’t save you.” She bowed her head. She spent several seconds staring at a weed growing from a crack in the concrete, then lifted her head again. Funny Trick was still facing the opposite direction, but her knees weren’t shaking anymore.

“I know this is all quite sudden, but I’d like to ask you a question. Please tell me the truth. Are you the assassin Pukin’s party is chasing?”

Funny Trick’s head moved. She shook it. Weddin had ordered her to tell the truth, so this meant Funny Trick wasn’t the assassin. She turned around, and Weddin held her breath. Tears were pouring from her eyes, running down her cheeks to drip off her chin.

Taking one firm step after another, Weddin approached her, spread both arms, and wrapped her in a tight hug. Weddin heard a tiny sob—Funny Trick was crying, too. The two of them continued to sob as they embraced each other.

“It’s not going to end like this… I won’t let it end like this,” Weddin declared—to herself as much as the other girl.

  Rain Pow (Time remaining: ten hours, seven minutes)

She was at a loss as to how to continue. This really wasn’t good.

Ripple had dodged the rainbows that came at her from behind with a leap and kicked the ones that appeared from the ground before smacking away with her sword the ones that shot out from above. Meanwhile, Rain Pow kept handling incoming kunai and shuriken with her rainbows.

Countless rainbows and shuriken crisscrossed every which way—so many that they buried the space between them, knocking into one another. The two magical girls maintained a fixed distance from each other as they continued the two-way barrage, either preventing the other from approaching.

Rain Pow had fought this ninja once before, during the attack on the apartment. Rain Pow had been fleeing atop her rainbow and burdened with Postarie, too. Back then, the ninja had thrown plenty of kunai at her and she’d kicked them all down, but now, the throwing weapons were coming much harder and faster. Before, Ripple must have just seen Rain Pow as a middle school kid who had been deceived by Toko, but now, she was a dangerous criminal.

She wasn’t at all humiliated that Ripple had held back with her. She was angry at herself for being so naive as to assume that was the enemy’s full strength. Her opponent was handicapped. She was missing an arm and an eye. Rain Pow had seen her not as a victor but as a survivor.

She beat down the kunai that flew at her with her rainbows, which couldn’t be chipped. Their strength was absolute. Their stability, however, was proportionate to the size of the rainbow. Smaller rainbows would waver just by being hit by kunai, but the larger ones she used to defend herself would block her field of vision, so she had no choice but to use multiple thinner ones. And since Ripple’s kunai flew along extremely irregular trajectories, Rain Pow couldn’t block them all just by placing static shields. She had to generate a continuous stream of multiple rainbows and always be moving them around.

The two of them ran around the giant hole that Archfiend Pam had created, firing rainbows, throwing kunai, always in motion and never stopping, going so fast it was hard to breathe, never mind getting any time to rest.

Some forms of magical-girl weapons were unlimited: bows that would always have more arrows in the quiver, no matter how many you fired; sunflower seeds that never disappeared, no matter how many you ate; or throwing knives that were never exhausted, no matter how many you threw. Ripple’s shuriken and kunai had to be like that. Although she kept throwing more and more of them, there was no sense at all that she would run out.

The trajectories of her shuriken and kunai were infinite in variation, too, and all Rain Pow could do was block them manually. Rain Pow’s rainbows did not manifest suddenly in their completed form, so in order to use them to attack or defend, they had to be stretched out. That caused a delay. Her rainbows could only extend in a mostly straight line or at most a gentle curve, but they couldn’t make sharp curves or turn at a right angle, all of which made their movements easy to read. They emitted no heat or sound, and that lack of a giveaway was their strength, making them the best weapon for assassination, but it was harder to make good use of them when fighting head-to-head.

Rain Pow was gradually being pushed back, and Ripple’s movements grew fiercer. Rain Pow had assumed Ripple’s left side would be a blind spot, but when Ripple dodged attacks from that side just the same as she had from the right, that assumption was torn apart. Ripple flawlessly compensated for her blind spots with her speed. The way her vision caught sight of everything around her was phenomenal.

Her left arm was missing, which basically meant that she had only one or two ways of guarding, maybe even fewer. She was compensating for it by using shuriken thrown from her right hand. Right when a rainbow aiming for her left side manifested, she would throw a shuriken at it to slow its generation.

Ripple had clearly been dealing with this handicap for many years and had devised a way of fighting based around her capabilities.

The road was being buried in shuriken and kunai. At this rate, Rain Pow would be outpushed. The number of her rainbows was unlimited, but the brain that controlled them only had finite capacity. Ripple’s shuriken put her on the defensive, forcing her to let up on offense. Doing this gradually drove her into a vicious cycle where even more shuriken came flying at her. She couldn’t run. Rain Pow was willing to sell her stubbornness or pride at half price, but she wanted to avoid flight, since she could well be chased down into a constricted space like a residential or urban area. The easiest place for her to use her rainbows was an open space. It was better to fight here than to be pursued by homing shuriken in a more complex environment.

Toko stirred, and Rain Pow gently pushed her down from over her clothing. It was okay. She still had options. If Ripple was a good magical girl, then Rain Pow would still have a card to play.

Rain Pow would drag someone in—it didn’t matter who. It could be an ambulance, or a police car, or some rubberneckers coming to see what was going on. If some normal person came strolling along, Rain Pow would attack them. If that upset Ripple’s assault, then Rain Pow would have this. She could also push someone into the hole. Ripple would have to jump into the hole in order to save the good citizen, and Rain Pow would be free to use that moment to attack or flee—whatever she wanted.

Toko stirred again. “Rain Pow, this is strange. It’s been quite some time, but there are no police cars or ambulances coming.”

Rain Pow had assumed the fight had thrown off her sense of time, when in fact, it seemed time had indeed passed. Quite a lot of it, actually, even since she’d first thought someone should be coming soon.

Rain Pow realized that Pythie Frederica was gone. She’d figured Frederica didn’t matter. It had seemed she wasn’t going to use her magic, and she wasn’t on Ripple’s side, either, so she’d let her be. But would she have just run and left it at that?

Crooked recognized crooked.

Someone had figured Ripple would hold back if regular civilians arrived, and so this person was getting in their way, making sure police, ambulances, and civilians would not come. That someone was the crooked type who didn’t mind killing people as long as it would get in Rain Pow’s way. They would probably do anything to slow her down.

Rain Pow realized her mistake. She should have finished off Frederica immediately. Unlike Ripple, she’d had no way to deal with so many rainbows flying at her simultaneously, from all directions. Rain Pow should have dealt with her quickly to prepare for a one-on-one fight with Ripple.

She had been arrogant. After Sonia died, Rain Pow had killed Pam and badly wounded Pukin. She’d become drunk on her own strength. She’d not taken Ripple seriously, and she’d taken the ability she’d seen when they’d fought at the apartment at face value. Now she could accept it: Ripple was a notch above Rain Pow. She was another who, like Archfiend Pam and Sonia, Rain Pow would have to set up, perfectly and properly, before finishing her off.

Ripple flew through the air.

—No, that wasn’t right.

It was her kunai. She’d changed the trajectory of her kunai so they flew like boomerangs, throwing them to return to her and then hopping atop the kunai as they came back to move through the air in order to dodge rainbows. What sort of training did you have to do to be able to pull something like that?

Toko had said Rain Pow could become her ideal magical girl—not that she was currently her ideal magical girl.

In other words, it still wasn’t enough.

Rain Pow manifested a rainbow shield, but the shuriken traced a V-shaped trajectory to avoid it. Instantly, Rain Pow shot a rainbow from her other palm to smack them down. All the while, her feet were constantly in motion as she ran atop another rainbow.

Suddenly, she saw something creeping along the ground in the corner of her eye, and while running, she gave it a glance.

It was Postarie. She wasn’t trying to run away. She was moving around the hole, crawling like a worm to avoid the shuriken and rainbows that crisscrossed over her head. Rain Pow had assumed that even if she could use Postarie as a hostage against the middle school group, she couldn’t do that with Ripple, so she’d just left Postarie alone. What was she trying to do?

Postarie was streaming tears as she wailed out loud, crawling along pathetically with a huge pile of shuriken and kunai in her arms. Ripple gave her a puzzled look.

At that moment, every one of the shuriken and kunai that Postarie held grew wings.

Ripple had seen this magic more than once. She must have realized what Postarie was trying to do.

Ripple threw three shuriken and five kunai all at once in Postarie’s direction, but her bewilderment made her throw weak. Her tools were repelled by rainbows and never reached their target.

The winged kunai and shuriken flew for their owner all at once.

Holding her ninja sword in her mouth, Ripple grabbed and threw shuriken with her right hand, and even tried to throw her geta in an attempt to intercept them, but there were just too many shuriken and kunai flying back in her direction.

Those winged shuriken and kunai, which wove through the ninja’s net of interception, pierced her cheeks, jaw, shoulders, sides, and chest, one after another. One stuck in her throat, making her stagger wildly. She was no longer able to intercept or avoid any more attacks; her whole body was decorated like a pincushion. Finally, her transformation evaporated, and she turned back into a girl in a coat, falling into the pit.

  7753 (Time remaining: nine hours, fifteen minutes)

Mana restarted the healing magic ritual they’d been in the middle of. However, it didn’t succeed.

The hand in 7753’s grasp gradually grew cold. She squeezed it, rubbed it, and called out to the girl, but the warmth did not return. 7753 tried looking through her goggles, to see if she could find some kind of hint, but couldn’t bear to see every number value falling before her eyes and turned them off. Hana was too badly wounded, had lost too much blood. No longer able to withstand it, she returned to human form and quietly passed away.

7753 sobbed, still holding Hana’s hand. Hana had been wounded, but in spite of that, she’d gotten to her feet. Judging that 7753 and Mana wouldn’t be able to escape, she’d resisted as best she could and focused the enemy’s attack on herself. If not for her, both 7753 and Mana would’ve been killed.

The instructions from 7753’s boss had backfired. Who could have predicted that the place they’d carried her to where they could safely heal her would be somewhere Pukin would coincidentally come by? It was too cruel.

In death, Hana’s face was peaceful. She had to be in her early teens. There was a calmness to her, even as a magical girl. She’d supported them all in various ways, going through all the members of the inspection team—soothing the emotional Mana and showing consideration to 7753 and Ripple, the outside help who’d come butting in.

7753 wiped her tears with her sleeve. She wasn’t in the sort of position where she would be allowed to just sit there and cry. Mana would obviously be grieving more than 7753, who had only just met Hana the day before. Mana had cried and gotten emotional simply over losing contact with Hana. So now, 7753 had to support her. 7753 turned back to Mana, ready to try to soothe her, even a little, and she wouldn’t even mind getting punched if that was what it came to—and discovered Mana was suddenly in her underwear. Her long, faint-pink camisole was bare of ornaments aside from a small ribbon. It was wholesome and cute, and it made the bizarre image of a girl undressing in a back alley stand out all the more particularly.

7753 reached out a hand, about to ask just what she was doing, and stopped. Mana’s face was serious. She wasn’t grumpy. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t even grieving. Her expression said she was thinking seriously about what she was about to accomplish.

From her bag, Mana pulled out her magical school uniform and black cape, silently fastening the buttons and hooks, then put on the large three-cornered hat, and finally took up the twisted staff. 7753 watched without a word until Mana was done getting changed. 7753 was spellbound. It was so natural for a mage to be putting on a mage’s costume, but this felt truly right. The phrase “dressed to kill” popped into her mind, and then she realized that in this case, that may have literally been the goal, and her voice shook. “U-um… Mana… Where are you—?”

“I’m gonna kill her.”

7753 didn’t need to ask who. She just spread her arms and stood in front of Mana. “Didn’t you see how good she was? Even with my help, we’d just get killed regardless.”

“Move.” Mana’s eyes were glassy. The inspection team chief who’d said she wouldn’t let them kill the criminal, that they would ensure she was judged under the law, was gone. All that stood there was a girl who meant to get revenge for her friend through vigilantism.

Mana pointed her staff at 7753 and, overwhelmed, 7753 staggered back. Mana was muttering something under her breath. Her free left hand was forming a series of complicated sigils. Was she going to remove what stood in her way by force?

7753 placed her trembling right hand on the end of the staff and gently moved the tip away from her. Her hand wasn’t the only thing trembling. Her voice was, too. But she had to say this. “Why do you think Hana volunteered for this job?”

Mana was more stubborn than rock, and 7753 had assumed she wouldn’t listen to a word she said, but now, she gulped. That interrupted her spell, and 7753 blew a rather deep sigh.

“How did you know about that?”

“Hana told me, when you went to go shopping at the convenience store.” This was a lie. Hana hadn’t said anything like that. This information was all brought from her boss and displayed in her goggles.

Hana had not originally been assigned to this job. When she’d found out that Mana, who had only three inspections’ worth of experience, would be in charge, she had volunteered. Mana’s father had been the examiner who oversaw Hana’s magical-girl exam, and she’d had a connection with their family ever since becoming a magical girl. It was also Mana’s father who had given Hana her magical-girl name, Hana Gekokujou. So he was like a godfather to her.

7753 could see it, somehow. They must have been like sisters. The elder went to help, unable to abandon her inexperienced younger sister, who was irritated but, privately, also glad. From how he had given her the name Hana, a name so similar to Mana’s, 7753 could tell how Mana’s father had seen Hana.

“If you try to kill her, you’ll be the one who ends up dead. You can’t win.”

“So I can’t win. So what?”

“If you can’t win, then you’re dying for nothing. It would make Hana’s…sacrifice meaningless. She tried to protect you. That was why she volunteered for this, wasn’t it?”

Mana opened her mouth and started to say something but then closed it again without a word. She scrunched her big triangle hat in her fist, then threw it on the ground. She cast her gaze downward, shoulders trembling.

7753 was taking advantage of Mana’s feelings for Hana. But she just had to convince her. She honestly didn’t want Mana to die. Hana had tried to keep Mana alive. 7753 wanted to make sure that, at the very least, her attempt didn’t go to waste.

7753 was about to continue when she saw a message displayed in her goggles, and the words died in her mouth.

Archfiend Pam is deceased.

An impact ran from her head to her toes, as if she’d been beaten with a hammer. Her knees felt ready to crumple, but she stiffened them and endured it, somehow.

Her death was confirmed by a recording device installed on her person by the Department of Diplomacy. Trends within the department are leaning to treating this as a level-one magical crime. I’ve also heard tell that there is a proposal to deploy a weapon of mass destruction once the barrier falls in order to bring the situation under control.

A weapon of mass destruction. If they were to use something like that, it wouldn’t just be the magical girls in the city—even normal citizens would be indiscriminately slaughtered. Was something like that even allowed?

They were counting on Archfiend Pam, and now that she’s dead, the Department of Diplomacy is running off the rails. They’re bound to act recklessly and in desperation. I want you to do whatever it takes to resolve the incident before the barrier falls. If you can just subdue the assassin and the prisoners, then the department will be unable to see their plan through. If you don’t have enough combatants with you right now—

Combatants… Oh, that’s right. Ripple.

She had gone to save Archfiend Pam. If Archfiend Pam was dead, then what had happened to Ripple? If Ripple was in danger, 7753 wanted to save her. But just how much help would she and Mana be?

7753’s thoughts were swimming. She didn’t know what she should do or think. She was just obeying the instructions displayed in her goggles.

“Just the two of us alone can’t win. It’d be impossible for us to catch the assassin or defeat Frederica’s party. We should propose a united front with the middle school group Toko tricked…with Kuru-Kuru Hime and the others.”

  Kuru-Kuru Hime (Time remaining: nine hours, forty-five minutes)

Since she couldn’t call for an ambulance and had no way of resuscitating him, Nozomi did nothing. She just sat in front of her father. She could tell by looking that either choice would be pointless anyway. Her father’s head had been severed from his body.

He was in his pajamas, his body collapsed right outside the bedroom, facing the front door. Maybe he’d noticed a noise and had gone to see what was up, figuring Nozomi must have come home.

He had been taciturn and unsociable, and Nozomi had never really known what he was thinking, even though she was his daughter. He’d never proactively tried to communicate. Whenever Nozomi spoke to him, he would give the minimum necessary response. He’d been curt in everything.

Even when they had gone on outings together to tourist spots or amusement parks or other places to spend “family time,” her father had never particularly seemed as if he were enjoying himself, dispassionate at all times. When Nozomi and her mother waved at him from the merry-go-round, he would turn to look but nothing more.

By contrast, her mother had been a lively person. She was the one who’d encouraged Nozomi when she had shown no indication of growing, despite being the age she was. Her mother was the one who had watched TV with her and laughed together with her.

Her mother had been close with their neighbors and had worked on the neighborhood association, since apparently nobody else wanted to do it. When Nozomi came home from school, it was commonplace for a neighbor to be in the living room, chatting with her mother. Her father never brought over anyone from work.

As their daughter, Nozomi couldn’t have helped but be concerned about whether her parents were getting along, as a couple. How had they ended up married? At the very least, she thought it couldn’t have been an arranged marriage. Or had either of them—or both of them—been faking it up until they’d said their vows? It wasn’t like they had any big fights, but they didn’t seem like passionate lovebirds, either. The two of them had led very normal lives with no great mishaps, until eventually her mother became bedridden with illness.

That was when, finally, Nozomi discovered that her father did love her mother, and she was able to reaffirm that she loved her parents, too. It was ironic that she only found that out once her mother was so sick.

She’d assumed that next, it would be time to take care of her father. But now, that time would never come.

The blood soaking her knees was already cold. The light flowing in through the window told her that night was turning to dawn. Kuru-Kuru Hime forgot Pythie Frederica might be after her and just sat there in front of her father, not keeping an eye out for a hand that might suddenly appear from behind. Just how much time had passed? Her smartphone, which she’d wrapped in her ribbons, rang. She answered out of habit.

“This is 7753. Kuru-Kuru Hime, is that you? Are you all right?”

“My father was…murdered.”

On the other end, 7753 was shocked silent. Saying it out loud finalized it, and now Kuru-Kuru Hime was struck by the feeling that she couldn’t put things back the way they had been. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look at anything.

“I’m sorry…” 7753 seemed to be forcing the words out. Kuru-Kuru Hime squeezed her eyes shut even harder.

Everything about this had been awful. Not a single good thing. It would be so easy if I could close my ears as well as my eyes, she thought.

“Has Frederica attacked since then?”

Kuru-Kuru Hime shook her head, then realized 7753 wouldn’t be able to see that and replied, “No.”

  Pythie Frederica (Time remaining: nine hours, thirty-five minutes)

Frederica was the most trustworthy ally as far as she was concerned. She was servant, master, comrade, and friend. Frederica always worked in service of her own desires, and she understood herself best.

Frederica understood herself and commanded her. In her search for the ideal magical girl, the first one to catch her eye had been Frederica herself, the closest magical girl at hand. Through continuous research, Frederica had sucked herself dry and had quickly bored of her.

Frederica had given up on Frederica. Although she’d always viewed herself through a dispassionate, objective eye, she could not become the ideal magical girl in her own mind. That led her to seek out her ideal image of a magical girl in someone else.

Sonia had been killed, Archfiend Pam murdered; Pukin had fled; Ripple had been stabbed a hundred times over and fallen into the pit; and Rain Pow and Postarie, who had survived, had also fled, leaving just Frederica, who finally emerged from hiding. She searched all over, checking to see if her crystal ball had been dropped somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found. She even searched Tot Pop, but all she noticed that was different about her was that her magical phone had been equipped with a camera. She must have been using that to continuously provide images to her financial backers. Nothing else here seemed useful, so in the end, Frederica departed the battlefield.

But even in dire straits and fleeing a battlefield—a rare experience for her—Frederica’s cheeks were flushed and her heart was pounding. Her excitement laid bare, she jumped from the roof of the hospital.

As Frederica ran along the tiled roofs of private residences, she was racked with excitement. Maybe this could be a revival of her plans of happiness, once abandoned, believing that was not to be for her. The emotions she’d felt when facing off against that rainbow magical girl had opened new possibilities to her. She’d been unable to control herself, neither fleeing nor deceiving but attempting to fight, even without her crystal ball! Lost in the anger! That had never happened to her before. Enraged over her student’s death as she faced a powerful opponent… That was just like a good magical girl. The anger she’d felt over Tot Pop’s death was already gone, now transformed into joy.

She had thought of this job only as a springboard to freedom, but it could become a major turning point. This job might change Frederica.

She had to get out of this alive, no matter what.

First, she would retrieve her crystal ball. Without it, she was essentially helpless. She couldn’t perform any reconnaissance, orchestrate any kidnappings, get backup from the outside, and most of all, escape this town.

Funny Trick had to be the thief. Frederica could retrieve her crystal ball by negotiation or theft, as long as she got it back.

Frederica descended from a tiled roof to a parking lot, ran up the wall of the apartment they’d used as their base, and clambered up to the veranda of one of its rooms. Curtains covered the window. It should be open, since she hadn’t locked it when they’d left before. She reached out to it, then stopped. She retreated by half a heel, then pushed aside a planter overgrown with weeds.

“Are you well, Your Excellency?” she called through the curtains.

After a full thirty-second pause, there was a reply. “Why did you hold back?”

“Hold back? Whatever are you talking about?”

“You didn’t use your crystal ball against Archfiend Pam. Why not?” Frederica could sense her anger through the window glass and curtains. The room was filled with a murderous air.

She was aware of the tendencies of Pukin’s character. No matter how she herself might fail, she would find some external source of blame. And on this occasion, Frederica was not in the position to make much of an excuse.

If she were honest and revealed that her crystal ball had been stolen, Pukin would attack her for not having mentioned it before, and that would also inform Pukin that they could no longer escape the city. Would Pukin forgive that now? Most likely not. And since Tot Pop and Sonia were dead, Frederica no longer had anyone to take her side.

If Frederica were to say she’d chosen not to use her crystal ball, that would be an acknowledgment of her sabotage. That would give Pukin no reason at all to forgive her.

Frederica had anticipated either comforting Pukin over Sonia, or swearing revenge, as fellows who’d both had their partners killed, or reworking their strategy, taking their diminished numbers into account. But Frederica’s supposition that she would choose how to start this conversation based on how things looked in the moment had been naive. If Pukin was beginning by questioning why Frederica hadn’t used her crystal ball, that essentially meant Pukin was not going to forgive her.

Was Pukin angry over having lost Sonia? No. She was angry at herself for having run away. It had been the best option at the time, yet in spite of that, it was incompatible with Pukin’s pride. She was angry at her own choice and looking for a lamb to be her sacrifice—a lamb that could be used for her excuse, to say, “It’s her fault.”

Frederica cleared her throat. “There was a reason for that,” she said, then instantly jumped backward over the railing of the veranda and down, as simultaneously, the glass of the window was shattered. On the other side of the tattered curtain was that handsome face—though her nose was horribly crushed—Pukin, twisted in rage. Frederica’s calculations had been correct. Pukin’s position in the room, her distance from Frederica, the speed of her thrust, the timing: Frederica had read every single element, and she evaded the attack. Pukin’s lust for blood was laid bare, and her motions were rougher than when she’d beheaded those two gas-masked girls in the prison. The additional force and speed behind her thrust made it just that much easier to read where she was going.

Faster than Pukin could lean out from the veranda and look over it, Frederica slipped down onto a different balcony, two floors below.

From here on out, she was on her own. At this point, even that seemed fun.

  Weddin (Time remaining: nine hours, three minutes)

“Please calm down and listen to me. First, take some deep breaths,” Weddin ordered, forcing Funny Trick to inhale and exhale deeply. Funny Trick’s eyes focused properly again, and the color returned to her cheeks. Her voice regained some feeling as well.

This promise, which she’d bullied them into making with the impure motive of possibly using them once the evil mages were driven back, was turning out to be useful. But the only one who could calm Weddin’s heart was Weddin herself. Thinking, considering, and guiding was her role as leader. It was nothing like being the class representative. This role was heavy and painful, and she would’ve thrown it away if she could. If she’d have discarded it ten hours ago, then Captain Grace would gladly have become the leader. But Captain Grace was gone now. Weddin couldn’t get rid of her responsibility.

Weddin took the lead, running toward the mountain, and once they were in a thicket at the mountain’s foot, she slowed down. She tied her bouquet to the end of a tree branch about as thick as a human arm and thrust it out ahead of them as she walked. After about fifty-odd yards of walking, the bouquet bumped up against empty space.

This was the barrier. Tepsekemei had said she’d touched it, too. To test it, Weddin picked up a rock and tried tossing it underhand. It rolled without any particular resistance beyond the copse of cedar trees. The barrier blocked anything magical—in this case, the bouquet, which was a part of Weddin’s costume.

Funny Trick pulled out the plastic bag she’d brought. It wasn’t one of the municipal garbage bags, the see-through kind, but an opaque white plastic bag with a supermarket logo on it. Inside was just an empty can, and the bag was firmly tied shut.

Funny Trick threw the bag. Since it had no magical properties, it went through the barrier with no interference to fall atop the dead leaves. Next, Weddin handed over her bouquet. Funny Trick took off her cape to cover up the flowers.

Now the bouquet was hidden from view. The empty can had been out of their view in the first place, in the plastic bag. Funny Trick knew its contents and its position. This fulfilled the conditions for her magic’s use. When she whipped away her cape, what had been a bouquet was now an empty can. And from what they could see of what was inside the plastic bag, the can had transformed, too. It was the bouquet now.

The experiment had been a success. Weddin offered a handshake while Funny Trick held out her hand for a high five, and coming up with mismatched reactions in their hastily constructed partnership, the two of them hugged joyfully instead. Using Funny Trick’s magic, they could even get magical things through the barrier. They’d already proven with Postarie that this ability could be used on a magical girl, so now they could escape from the barrier.

The joy of we can escape safely! was reduced to the galling realization that they would have to leave Pukin’s party behind in order to escape. Funny Trick herself didn’t know if they could escape via this method until they tried, and there was still something they were missing.

“The question is, how do we get in contact with the others?”

“Yeah… The magical phones aren’t getting through, are they?”

If Weddin were to calculate the profit and loss as she always did, she would get the answer easy enough. As her leader, all Weddin had to do was order Funny Trick to place her outside the barrier with magic. That would guarantee her own safety. She could do it, but she didn’t feel like it. Captain Grace was still in her mind, kicking up a big fuss and saying, “We don’t need that kinda irresponsible leader! If you’re gonna be like that, then let me be leader!” And even as she thought Grace had been such an aggravating person, when the faces of the other magical girls rose in her mind, she just couldn’t bring herself to want to escape alone—even though she understood that, considering in terms of what was most beneficial to her, running would unquestionably be the more advantageous choice.

She bitterly regretted that they’d never decided on a meetup spot in case of emergencies—though even if they had picked one, that in itself could have been disastrous. If Weddin had spilled that to Pukin, all of them may have been rounded up at once.

Captain Grace had been killed. Remaining were Rain Pow, Postarie, Tepsekemei, Kuru-Kuru Hime, and Toko. The whereabouts of Rain Pow and Postarie had been unknown since the attack on the apartment building, and Frederica had said Kuru-Kuru Hime had been captured by Bunny Ears and was now working with the inspection team. Frederica had some of Kuru-Kuru Hime’s hair, so she would spy on her or kidnap her as she pleased, which was also concerning. And Funny Trick told Weddin that when Pukin’s party had attacked them, Sonia had attacked Tepsekemei, too.

“Is she…all right?”

“It looked as if she got away…”

“Mei is strong.”

Weddin looked toward the voice, immediately wary. In the corner of her eye, she saw Funny Trick doing the same thing. Theirs was a hastily constructed partnership, but it wasn’t as if they couldn’t work together smoothly.

The Arabian dancer magical girl was there, sitting upside down underneath the thick branch of a cedar tree.

“Tepsekemei!”

“What?”

“Don’t what me. Just where have you been? What have you been doing?”

“Watching lots of things from the sky.” Tepsekemei spun around on the branch, using the pull of gravity to turn right side up. “It’s very hard.”

“Hard…? What’s hard?”

“Mei doesn’t really understand who’s an enemy and who’s a friend.”

That much Weddin could agree with.

  Rain Pow (Time remaining: eight hours, thirty-seven minutes)

She’d sliced up Archfiend Pam and cut down the magical girl whose name she didn’t know, but the fencer and Frederica had escaped her. The naïveté of her expectations had led to Ripple cornering her, but with some unexpected help, Ripple had been turned into a pincushion.

That unexpected help was now kneeling on the roof of the building where they’d moved to keep out of sight, hanging her head. It wasn’t as if Rain Pow had ordered her to sit on her knees. Though night had turned to dawn, even just looking at her kneeling there on a roof in November made Rain Pow feel cold, but the girl had taken up that position of her own volition, so there was no helping it.

Looking down at Postarie, Rain Pow quietly asked Toko, “What’s she thinking?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask her.”

Postarie had saved the very one who’d nastily threatened her, saying, “You’re gonna be my hostage later, so I’ll let you live for now,” and had killed the righteous ninja who had been fighting to save her. Rain Pow couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand the meaning of this, nor could she get a read on what Postarie wanted, and frankly, it was a little scary.

“Hey, Tsuko. Why’d you save me?”

Postarie glanced up at Rain Pow before immediately looking down again.

“…’Cause.”

“Hmm? What?”

“’Cause…we’re friends.”

Postarie said she’d saved Rain Pow because they were friends.

Earlier, Rain Pow and Toko had spoken with provocation, a challenging edge to their words. Objectively speaking, Rain Pow thought they would clearly have looked like bad guys. And on top of that, “I’ll let you live now so I can use you as a hostage later” was not something an ally of justice would say. Even the protagonist of some picaresque novel wouldn’t do that sort of thing.

In other words, it was obvious Rain Pow was a villain and that the ninja who’d fought her had been one of the good guys. With her intent to make Postarie her hostage, there would be no reason Postarie would want Rain Pow to win.

About six months earlier, Toko and Kaori had figured they should get themselves another magical girl who would back up Kaori if the time came. Another student from Kaori’s school was preferable, if possible. Rain Pow would use her as a shield, keeping their real business a secret and treating her kindly as a normal magical-girl friend, while in emergencies, she could use her as cover. This had been the idea when Toko had begun surveying girls, and she’d found about five people in the school with magical talent. Tatsuko had been one of those.

Of all the people whom Toko deemed to have talent, Tatsuko was the only one who had seemed like she would refuse to be a magical girl. Kayo Nemura was rather logical by nature, but Kaori could easily see Umi Shibahara dragging her into it. As for Nozomi Himeno, if Kaori were to make a request as a student, having a sense of teacher’s responsibility, Nozomi would accept. But Tatsuko would be the easiest for Kaori to use, since she was the only one in her same grade and class.

And so Kaori had approached Tatsuko Sakaki, deciding to befriend her before making her a magical girl. However, Tatsuko had been even more introverted than she’d imagined, and it had taken time to build their friendship. Right when Tatsuko had finally opened up to her, Toko and Rain Pow’s pursuers had caught up to them. And so Toko and Kaori had ended up kick-starting their plans while still in the half-organized stage.

Even if Tatsuko did feel Kaori was her friend, Kaori revealing her true nature would have exposed that befriending Tatsuko had all been an act to use her.

Rain Pow gazed down at Postarie, who looked embarrassed, somehow. Did she really understand why things had ended up like this?

Rain Pow gave Toko a look as if to ask “What should we do?” and Toko shook her head, a complicated expression on her face. The way Toko dumped responsibility for things on others was such a pain. Rain Pow waffled for a while, but no matter how she looked at Tatsuko, she didn’t seem to be plotting anything. Rain Pow concluded that although she didn’t understand it, it seemed Postarie was just an idiot.

Rain Pow reached out to Postarie and pulled her to her feet. “Yeah… Thanks, Tsuko. You saved me.”

It was best just to leave it at that. She didn’t get what was on Tatsuko’s mind, but it was clear that Kaori could use it. She just had to suck her dry and throw her away. She could still use Postarie.