Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 8 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

  Puk Puck

Had Premium Sachiko returned?

Or had she been captured or killed?

Puk Puck wanted her to come back safely together with Uluru and Snow White. Puk Puck may have wound up abandoning them surrounded by enemies, but still, she sincerely wished for their safe return.

The ceremony was very, very important, and that was exactly why the Osk Faction was trying to interfere with it. Sachiko was essential to raise the odds of the ceremony’s success. Without Sachiko, it would be far worse than one death. With Sachiko, they could keep the losses to just one.

It truly was a shame that the Osk Faction had found out about Sachiko. Puk Puck didn’t know who had informed them, but once she found out who had, she would have to give them a scolding, maybe even go so far as to withhold their meals for two days.

She would have liked to send Sachiko help, if possible. She liked Sachiko, and she understood that her presence would make the success of the ceremony easier, but she couldn’t watch Sachiko only. This ceremony was very important, and she had to prepare many different parts. Sachiko was ultimately just one of those parts. She was a very important part, but it wasn’t like the ceremony couldn’t be done without her.

The one Puk Puck was about to go pick up now was a necessary part. Sachiko was an important part, but without the necessary part, they wouldn’t be able to carry out the ceremony in the first place. The Osk Faction was careless, so they wouldn’t realize that difference. Necessary and important were completely different.

While all that kerfuffle was going on in W City, Puk Puck had been following the whereabouts of this necessary part using all her resources save for Uluru, Sorami, and Snow White. She’d disappeared from the place where she should have always been, so Puk Puck had had to struggle to find her. After investing all her people, magic, and money, at last, she’d managed to find her.

Locating this girl was the job of Puk Puck’s subordinates, while escorting her away was her own job. Both of these were necessary. As a result, there were no more personnel to go save Sachiko. Maybe it was her selfishness in saying she wanted both of them that had kept Puk Puck from finding her. An important person back in the day had once said that the first step of success was to focus on what you really needed, then go for the challenge. It wasn’t good to get greedy.

Thanks to everyone investing their efforts in the right direction, Puk Puck would soon acquire this girl who was the key part in the ceremony. Now, they could finally hold that ceremony. Puk Puck was very excited, and everyone was glad.

Those who’d said the ceremony was too difficult and those who’d smugly said that they still didn’t know everything about the device were all wrong. Those who said she was just trying to score points, and Osk, who didn’t want anyone else to score points and was getting in her way, they were all wrong. Everyone had to understand that it was way past time for that.

But if they could just properly understand that the Magical Kingdom didn’t exist anywhere anymore, then the only option they could choose was the activation of the device.

Had Sachiko made it back? The question weighed on Puk Puck. She was such a crybaby; once she’d returned, Puk Puck would have to soothe her. Uluru might be angry, but if Puk Puck were to praise her for her hard work, she was bound to cheer up. If Sorami were there, she’d have joined Puk Puck in reassuring the two of them, but Sorami was gone now.

They’d arrived at their goal, so Puk Puck got out of the car.

Restraining her sorrow, Puk Puck smiled brightly. This was the first in a long while that she was using her magic at full power. It didn’t matter that these were new-model demons or artificial magical girls. Winged demons prostrated themselves before her while a magical girl with a sword and another with a canon went to their knees. All of them were looking at Puk Puck, who was supposed to be their enemy, with love and respect. They would make every accommodation for her sake.

After she had the guards open the front door for her, the demons guided her in, and Puk Puck went down the stairs. She was headed to meet the girl she’d been so eagerly awaiting. Puk Puck never dialed back her magic; this girl had to become her friend, too. A demon put its hand on the door and turned the knob. Puk Puck beamed past the door that slowly opened.

“I’ve come to pick you up, Shadow Gale.”

  Pythie Frederica

Though Snow White had grown significantly as an individual, there was still some naïveté left in her.

But that naïveté wasn’t a bad thing.

A single magical girl had an existence full of dreams and prayers and hopes along with any feelings other magical girls had entrusted to her. To weigh that against the danger that such a magical girl might cause, and agonize over which girl to select, was a beautiful act beyond Frederica’s own capabilities. The sort of magical girl who agonized over how killing one person might save ten thousand lives but questioned whether you should kill that one person when nothing had happened, was incredibly close to the ideal magical girl.

Frederica wanted very much to respect the future the girls chose, but now was the critical moment where everything could go to waste, or hope would still remain. If killing would allow hope to remain in the future, then Frederica would do the dirty work.

Right palm facing upward, Frederica indicated the coffee cup. “Please, have some. It’s a special blend.”

“The Frederica special? There isn’t any hair in it?”

“Goodness, hair? I wouldn’t dream of doing something so wasteful. If I were going to mix anything in, I would rather it be poison.”

“I see. True enough. Then I’ll have it.” So prompted, the magical girl reached out to the coffee cup and lightly touched the handle, whereupon there was a shrill, sharp noise. Looking over, Frederica saw the handle had broken off the cup.

“Pardon me,” said Frederica. “I’ll get you a new one.”

“No, I’m quite fine with this.” Taking up the cup with a gesture too graceful to be called “grabbing,” she brought it to her lips. Magical girls were also resistant to heat. Mere hot coffee was nothing to them. “This is delicious.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Such a lack of modesty is very like you.”

“I’m often told as such.”

“Might I have the recipe?”

“I’ll get it for you.”

In this environment of concrete flooring and water-stained ceiling, where air freshener battled with mold, the only fine things here were the furniture, utensils, and the coffee. There were two identical white rocking chairs of the same type as a famous American writer had once had, and a wooden table of the same brand was sandwiched between Frederica and a magical girl all in blue as they enjoyed coffee together. The blue of her costume was overly vivid and hurt to look at. It wasn’t quite to Frederica’s taste. Frederica preferred more modest, refined colors. Her own costume was neither. People want things precisely because they do not have them.

“But wouldn’t you say it’s symbolic for the cup to break?” asked the magical girl in blue.

“If it means anything, I’m sure it’s a bad sign,” replied Frederica.

“This has been nothing but miscalculations.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“We really ought to have noticed earlier.”

The both of them—though one of them with a cup that had lost its handle—sipped their drinks.

“Just eliminating Premium Sachiko was the most we could handle, after all,” said the magical girl in blue.

“It was.”

“Though we did accomplish our initial goal, as things have turned out, it’s difficult to say our plan was a success.”

“Indeed.”

“How ironic that Shadow Gale, whose capture was intended as a diversion, was in fact Puk Puck’s true goal.”

“A diversion?”

“Was it for something else?”

“No… If you say it was a diversion, then I’m sure that’s what it was. I know you’re not the sort of magical girl to tell petty lies, Lapis Lazuline.”

“Your praise is greatly exaggerated.”

The true goal of Frederica and the other individual present—the first-generation Lapis Lazuline—had been to kidnap Premium Sachiko in order to stop the Puk Faction’s planned ceremony. Ideally, they wanted her alive; however, if that wasn’t possible, then they were willing to kill her. To that end, they had prepared one unit to cause a ruckus in public—Deluge—and one unit moving from the shadows—Ripple. They’d involved Pfle since they figured best case they could drag her in while she was in the weakened position of having lost her memories.

Though they had accomplished their major initial goal, considering the facts that had come to light following that, they had to admit this plan had failed, after all.

Frederica tilted back her cup.

The magical girl seated before her—the first-generation Lapis Lazuline—wasn’t a partner she could fully trust in the first place. Their alliance was a temporary one since their interests happened to align for the moment. Frederica could keenly sense, however, that Lazuline was not revealing her true intentions.

Though that was true for the both of them.

Frederica held Lazuline in high regard but not in the area of things such as trust, confidence, sincerity, or honesty.

“Regardless, there’s no helping now how things wound up. I really must applaud the Sage’s incarnation. Sachiko must surely have been an important pawn, too.”

“Her elimination will reduce the ceremony’s rate of success.”

“Even if the odds of success are somewhat decreased, I’m sure she’ll force it anyway.”

Frederica thought she should have realized earlier just how suspicious it was that there had been no backup from the Puk Faction, even after Premium Sachiko had been discovered.

And then there was how they’d been distracted from what was really to happen during this ceremony.

The ceremony involved operating a device left behind by the First Mage. But they were not going to use a lifetime’s worth of luck generated by Premium Sachiko to operate the machine. This ceremony would use Shadow Gale, who had acquired a lifetime’s worth of luck generated by Premium Sachiko, in order to modify the machine. Therefore, the key player was not Sachiko— It was Shadow Gale. With Sachiko gone, it was simply that the odds of success would fall, but without Shadow Gale, they wouldn’t be able to carry out the ceremony in the first place.

Even if Frederica were to ask how far Lazuline had gone in considering Shadow Gale’s value, Lazuline wouldn’t tell her, and neither would she say if Frederica asked, either.

“So Puk Puck used Sachiko as bait to cleverly capture Shadow Gale,” said Lazuline.

“Actually… I do wonder about that myself.” Frederica spread her hands and offered a slight smile. “She put surprising trust in her subordinates, and in Snow White as well, didn’t she? It wasn’t that Sachiko was a decoy, but rather that Puk Puck thought only a few people would be enough to pull it off. In any case, she was fully occupied with Shadow Gale and couldn’t spare any others.”

Lazuline clapped her hands. “That’s a new theory. I’ll take it.”

“I think possessing such a human softness gives a Sage incarnation a certain familiarity.”

“I agree.”

The both of them sipped their coffee.

“But still…was it okay to do that with Ripple?” asked Lazuline.

“It was for the best.”

“Was it?”

“She was useful to me, and I was also able to teach her various things. I feel we built a good relationship, but things couldn’t remain as they were. I couldn’t hope for any further growth in her if she was purely under my control.”

Frederica pulled a thin sword from her sleeve and held it up to the light that poured through the window. “Using this sword on someone else would undo Ripple’s brainwashing, and then she would leave me. The time when I must use this sword is approaching. The only difference was simply parting with Ripple sooner, rather than later.”

“Isn’t there such a thing as timing?”

“Timing?”

“It’s rather in poor taste to undo the magic the moment she killed Sachiko, of all times.”

“Oh, that’s just a bit of mischief on my part.”

Snow White could hear the thoughts of people in trouble.

Frederica had Ripple attack Sachiko with Snow White present. Once Frederica started thinking about what would happen with Ripple and Snow White after the former came to her senses the next moment, she couldn’t stop herself.

It was a bad habit. A very bad habit. But Pythie Frederica was a magical girl who had been built by bad habits. It was too late for self-loathing now.

She got a thrill imagining how Snow White would feel once she heard Ripple’s innermost thoughts, what Ripple would do once she came to her senses after having been under Frederica’s control. Right now, Snow White was being polished by a whetstone. Depending on the manner of polishing, she could well break. Finishing off her work, Frederica made adjustments to avoid that.

It wasn’t good to be self-centered like Dark Cutie. Snow White didn’t exist for Frederica’s sake—Frederica existed for hers.

“Don’t come crying to me if you bring about your own end through your mischief,” sniffed Lazuline.

“Thank you very kindly for the advice.” With a flash of the rapier, Frederica slid it back into her sleeve, and the two of them sipped their beverages.

Ripple had been glad when Frederica had petted her head, and Frederica had enjoyed the sensation of Ripple’s hair—the benefit was mutual. The same went for the relationship between Snow White and Frederica. Both parties benefited. That was why Frederica couldn’t tear herself away. Even if Snow White tried to leave, Frederica would follow.

Frederica would hold on to whatever was useful until it served its purpose. Whether she would keep it in her possession any further depended on the thing in question. Should that something prove useful right now, if it was clear it would come back to bite her down the line, then perhaps it was best to discard it while it still served its purpose.