Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 12 - Chapter 10

The Archfiend Cram School’s Hell Survival Games

A magical girl in a snappy all-black suit picked up her microphone, while the magical girl sitting beside her, whose costume was also all black—and extremely skimpy—cleared her throat quietly.

“And now! It’s finally begun!” said the magical girl in the suit. “The Thirty-Sixth Archfiend Cram School Survival Games! Reporting live on the scene is me, your announcer, Pammy! And commentary will be provided by the woman everyone knows, Archfiend Cram School commander in chief, Ms. Archfiend Pam! Pam, thank you very much for today.”

“Yes, and thank you…,” said Archfiend Pam. “Introductions aside, there’s no such position as commander in chief at the school—”

“Anyway, they say even demons wouldn’t dare try their hand at the Archfiend Cram School’s famous Hell Survival Games! This time, for the thirty-sixth games, I hear we’re taking things in a very different direction.”

“I wouldn’t say that demons—”

“Yes, yes, I understand! It’s supposed to be an educational event for learning about your own strengths and weaknesses and self-improvement. But society sees these events much more cynically. And there are very much indeed people who think of this as a wild brawl for scary people to vent their stress. That’s precisely why we have to emphasize that this event is not only for the purpose of wild violence.”

“That’s right, and so—”

“Yeah, you’ve got it! We’re putting a spin or two on the usual event. Secondly, the venue has been expanded to accommodate increased capacity. Normally, the arena would be the size of a small village, but this time around, it’s been scaled up to a space large enough for a whole big city to fit in, with all the combatants thrown in together, kicking and punching to determine who will be crowned the strongest. And then the third change is that the games will be recorded on video, and fourthly, it will also have announcing and commentary added! Fifth, and this is the best part: There is a prize for the winner. All these new features have never been present in past games. Since they were only exercises, after all. And this means that a lot of participants have come aiming for the prize money…whoops, pardon me, for the glory.”

“About that—”

“The video recorded during this Survival Games will be edited and put on sale following the event. All participants, and everyone who wanted to join in but couldn’t due to circumstances, as well as any other magical girls with an admiration for strength, please do make the purchase! For the first-run limited edition, as a special bonus, we will be including a collection of interviews with the participants filmed before the start of the event. Oh, even the extras are lavish!”

“…It’s a good deal.”

“And as for the rules, they’re quite simple. All participants carry one flag, and they steal flags from each other to gather as many as possible within a limited time and area. And that’s it! However, this is the Archfiend Cram School, the club that makes even demons shriek and devils cry. Students and graduates won’t just be gently taking flags from each other. The scene of this game will become a hellscape that some call a modern Colosseum.”

“We’ve taken safety precautions.”

“Ten minutes after the starting signal, and it looks like some magical girls have begun fighting already!”

The survival training held by the Archfiend Cram School is known for its intensity. I’ve heard rumors—though I couldn’t say if they’re true or not—that even the strongest fighters will run crying, and that the lucky ones escape, while some will fail even at that and lose their lives.

You need to sign a contract to participate, and apparently it stipulates stuff like, “No matter what might happen to my person, everything is at my own risk, etc. etc.”

Being as it was such a dangerous event, those working to host it were extremely tense, too.

You had a bunch of strong fighters packed in close quarters. It wouldn’t seem like the right place for an assassin’s methods: giving them the knife when they let their guard down. But I’d chosen this day, and this place. I was convinced that I could do it. Archfiend Pam couldn’t move around freely during the broadcast. That was an opportunity I could take advantage of.

I’d already cleared stage one. Archfiend Pam was commentating and hadn’t realized she was in reach of an assassin after her life. Well, to be precise, I guess she wasn’t doing much commentary at all. Well, that didn’t matter. Whether she was just nodding along or commentating, my job was the same.

I would wait some more. I’m good at waiting. Those who are despised are used to patiently staying still. If I ever make the wrong move and get found, I get hit with a slipper or a rolled-up newspaper. The world is always cold to the outcasts all in black. Well, I’m vermin, so there’s nothing surprising about that.

“…These two,” said Archfiend Pam.

“Ohhh, these two!” Pammy repeated. “The most notorious pair of the Archfiend Cram School have suddenly made contact! So let’s autoswitch the cameras… It’s this camera, right?”

“The first one is Marika Fukuroi, the Flower-Seller Girl.”

“This one…the magical girl with the flower on her head, huh? She’s rather quick to throw a punch and she’s got a big mouth, so she has a lot of enemies, but you can’t deny that she’s strong…is what it says here. The documents I have here also recount other fearsome episodes, but I hope you’ll forgive us for leaving them aside for now.”

“And then this one…”

“This is Cranberry, Musician of the Forest. There are two possible ways to graduate: to be acknowledged by Archfiend Pam or to land a strike on Archfiend Pam, and she’s the only magical girl to have achieved the latter, isn’t she…? Archfiend Pam, is this true? If it is, that’s amazing, isn’t it?”

The vegetation looked as if it had never once been trimmed, growing wildly everywhere. They were evergreen trees. Their needles were wide and long, growing like splayed-out baseball gloves. Tall, with thick trunks, they had hard bark that ran in vertical strips. Dozens of types of plants grew in the thick underbrush, in all sizes, large to small. The tallest were enough to cover a human below the belt, and the leaves of the upper canopy let in only the odd spot of sunlight. No birds or beasts could be heard in this forest where two magical girls stood at the ready, about ten yards from one another.

“It’s been a long time, Musician of the Forest.”

Marika Fukuroi never smiled to be polite. She smiled only when she was having fun, and then she’d smile from the bottom of her heart. Perhaps it would be most accurate to describe her grin as that of a wild beast about to pounce on its prey.

“I’m glad you seem well, Fukuroi,” Cranberry replied.

Magical girls were, without exception, lovely and beautiful to look at. Cranberry’s apparent age was around twenty—comparatively on the older side, but she was no exception. Her facial features were balanced and pretty, and her smile was quite elegant.

But the fact that Cranberry could wear such a beautiful smile in a place like this spoke of her exceptional strength. Just how many magical girls out there could turn aside a threatening look from Marika Fukuroi with a smile?

“I should have made sure to pay my respects to you,” Cranberry said.

“Hey, you don’t have to be all respectful with me,” Marika replied.

Marika’s right foot took one step forward through the underbrush, and at just about the same moment, Cranberry came forward, too. The cool breeze blowing from the mountains rustled the leaves on the trees and made the underbrush murmur. The roses on Cranberry’s shoulders swayed, and the rose that topped Marika’s head trembled.

The announcer went “Oh-ho!” in a way that suggested being impressed or surprised. “The two of them actually get along, huh?”

“I wouldn’t—”

“I see, I see, I see. So it’s not quite that they get along, huh? I can tell from looking at these documents I’ve put together on the Archfiend Cram School, but these two haven’t really had much contact, careerwise. Since Cranberry’s time in the cram school was so brief… But considering that, they’re having some lively conversation, huh? Perhaps this means that working for the Magical Girl Resources Department, Cranberry knows how to be social.”

“It was my fault you couldn’t give me a proper greeting,” said Marika. “I was away dealing with some obligations. I just never thought anyone would graduate that fast, you know.”

“Obligations?”

“An interview for a prospective husband.”

“A marriage interview! My, my…”

“And now things have turned in a more private direction,” said Pammy.

“Hmm.” Archfiend Pam nodded.

“Does this mean Marika is a young woman of about that age bracket?”

A marriage interview.

Though she was a magical girl, she had a life as a human.

Archfiend Pam thought back. That reminded her that once, on some whim, Marika had brought cheesecake as a gift to the Cram School. She’d said she’d made it from flour and sugar refined from the plants she created with her magic, and Archfiend Pam had eaten some of it. Pam remembered. It had been very good.

It was surprising that Marika, who was feared as a mad dog even within the Archfiend Cram School, which was all about fighting, and who had caused problem after problem with her straight-out violence, actually had a domestic side. No matter how powerful a magical girl might be, 99 percent of the time, she was a girl or a woman pretransformation, so it wouldn’t have been that strange for her to have attended a marriage interview. Had it gone well? Or not? What sort of situation had it been? What sort of partner had it been?

“Well, whatever her situation is, we’ve gotta give her a graduation celebration at least, right?”

“Let’s make sure to have a nice celebration for her.”

Even as they were thinking about the marriage interview, Marika and Cranberry were gradually coming closer to each other. Archfiend Pam felt ashamed for allowing herself such vulgar curiosity about the romantic affairs of a pupil. This was the Survival Games venue. What was needed here was not gossip, but battle.

“Well, then,” said Cranberry.

“Uh-huh.” Marika dropped to the ground. She disappeared, hidden in the weeds.

Cranberry raised one leg. Both her arms were raised in front of her chest.

The underbrush went down all at once, and then, a heartbeat later, bounced up again, topsoil and all. A sound that seemed to rip through ears became a hammer that struck the whole area. Using her magic to control sound, Cranberry had generated a shock wave.

The sound went over the volume transmission limit, making the microphone crackle loudly. It made Pam and Pammy slap their hands over their ears, and then, the moment the ringing sound cleared, the play-by-play and commentary resumed.

“First strike from Cranberry! As per her title, it’s an attack via sound! Archfiend Pam, that blow looked pretty powerful.”

“It wasn’t very good.”

“It wasn’t good? Really?”

“She didn’t announce her move.”

“She didn’t announce it? Oh yeah, they say that all the magical girls of the Archfiend Cram School make sure to announce their moves by name when they use them, huh?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“A magical girl can strengthen her body and magic through strong emotion. And giving a name to a move and saying it out loud helps to envision it more strongly…is what it’s for, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I see… So then why did Cranberry not announce her move?”

“She graduated before I could tell her the importance of mental images…”

“Ohhh, she was only a member for a brief time, huh? Oh well.”

Cranberry spread her hands. The audio feedback from the microphone pierced everyone’s ears, while simultaneously, the area around her burst open. It wasn’t just the grass and the earth. Even the trees with roots buried deep down failed to withstand the aural battery, roots ripped up, branches flying, and trunks thick enough that an adult man’s arms couldn’t wrap all the way around snapped off.

The sound generated by Cranberry’s magic would destroy any object, human, or magical-girl body. Given the nature of sound, the scale of the destruction was not a point, but an area. The magic spread at the speed of sound and couldn’t be seen with the eye, with a wide area of effect. It was powerful enough that regular magical girls would all be mowed down as a mass, knocked out with blood flowing from their ears.

With scattered earth and grass fluttering downward and destroyed trees falling one after another, Marika Fukuroi was braced on the ground on all fours and had not moved one step from the spot.

“Has Marika Fukuroi been immobilized by the damage…?”

“No…”

Marika lifted her head. She was smiling.

The rose atop her head had changed shape to become a cross-shaped ax that had supported her body with its weight, its durable petals working as a shield that had guarded her from the attack. But still, she was up against sound. She couldn’t completely protect herself from that. Part of Marika’s costume was torn, and there were bruises on her exposed skin.

Blood dripping from her head and face, Marika tilted her head. “What about the move name?”

“…Oh, pardon me,” Cranberry replied. “You’re supposed to do that, hmm? I’ll take care the next time.”

“Hey, anyone can slip up.”

“She got told off by her senior, huh?”

“Marika may seem like she does whatever she wants, but she actually sticks to the things she should stick to.”

“Whoa now, Marika is charging forward!”

“Forte.”

“Rosenkreuz!”

As grass and earth danced in the air, the flower petal ax brushed it aside by spinning violently, and while guarding herself from the impact, Marika quickly closed the distance between the two of them. The first forte came just after Marika leaped out, breaking up the earth, while the second burst open at her back—but it wasn’t enough to stop her, and before Cranberry could fire the third, Marika was right in her face. Cranberry’s forte was an area attack and hard to evade, but used at close range, it became a double-edged sword that would hit her as well.

Blood spewed. The rose cross ax sliced open Cranberry’s shoulder. But it didn’t make it to the bone. In a low stance, half sliding on the ground, Cranberry made a grab for her, which Marika met with her knee—Cranberry pushed her knee aside, and Marika kicked up that hand, but responding to the low-altitude attack made Marika lose her balance, and Cranberry immediately swept her pivot leg out from under her. Having been off balance to begin with, Marika’s body lightly flew through the air. Cranberry readied a spear hand to strike her in the air, but right when she was about to thrust it forward, she froze.

Marika had stopped in midair. Rose vines extended from her head in every direction, wrapping around the trunk of a broken tree or piercing a bare rock face with their thorns to support Marika’s body. After a breath’s pause to shift the timing of her fall, Marika dropped, driving her fist out at Cranberry’s spear hand, which came too late—then, without missing a beat, Cranberry switched to a roundhouse kick, which Marika blocked with an elbow.

“She was knocked back in midair, in a situation where she couldn’t evade,” explained Archfiend Pam.

“So she made her rose vines wrap around obstacles in the area. And by doing that, she changed the timing of her fall to evade Cranberry’s attack, is that what you mean?”

“If Marika had attacked directly using her rose vines, Cranberry would have been able to handle it. And even when getting hit with an unorthodox attack—”

“And now they’re face-to-face! It’s a flowery face-off in hand-to-hand combat!”

Marika tried to wrap her arms around Cranberry’s leg, but was pushed away, the push followed up by a backhand, which was turned aside, then the rose cross ax—blood flew, a knee locked a right hand, a leg grappled, yanked in—flipping who was on top at a dizzying rate, they rolled through the thicket.

Cranberry had her left leg wrapped around Marika’s right, holding Marika’s cross ax back with her bare hands. The moment Marika’s attention shifted to her rose ax, Cranberry used their locked legs to flip them over, gripping Marika’s torso in her thighs from either side. Cranberry was on top, straddling her.

“Cranberry got the upper hand! Is Cranberry superior in a ground fight?!”

“She’s making use of their difference in size.”

Though they were both magical girls, Cranberry’s apparent age was around twenty, while Marika was comparatively younger and smaller. Cranberry had reach. If she secured a position of advantage and kept Marika from using the flower on her head, then none of Marika’s attacks would reach.

Cranberry’s fist aimed for Marika’s jaw, but Marika turned to take it on the cheek and shoulder. Marika tried to twist her body around, but Cranberry’s legs held her firmly in place. Cranberry’s left hand kept the rose ax from moving. Though both Marika’s hands were free, she couldn’t reach Cranberry, positioned above her.

Cranberry landed a flurry of punches, right right right right right right, striking swiftly to keep Marika from grabbing her arm and also to prevent counterattack. Marika guarded her face with both arms, but Cranberry heedlessly battered her over her guard, and then, with a blow, blood flew.

“First blood! Marika is gushing blood!”

“…It’s the other way around.”

Blood was dripping from Cranberry’s fist. It wasn’t splatter from Marika. It was her own blood.

“Rosenschlange!”

Rose vines extended from Marika’s head, tangling around her arms. The vines were densely populated by sharp thorns. By wrapping the vines around her arms as she blocked, she’d wounded Cranberry’s fist.

Noticing her own bleeding, Cranberry paused for just an instant. Marika wasn’t one to overlook such an opportunity. With Cranberry still straddling her, she kicked up with her knees to land an attack on Cranberry’s back. As Cranberry was knocked off balance, the rose vines slid around her arms, entangling them.

Cranberry was bigger. But did she have more muscle strength? Hardly any magical girls in the Archfiend Cram School could beat Marika Fukuroi in a contest of pure strength. Overall size affected reach but had nothing to do with strength. There were magical girls out there who were toddler size but could still sumo a magic tank.

But Cranberry still resisted. She tried to pull back on the rose vines to drag Marika Fukuroi toward her, but she’d lost her balanced stance. Marika’s second knee strike made her elegant smile twist in pain, and before the third strike landed, the rose vines reached Cranberry’s chest.

“Now this is getting painful! What will the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, do? She can’t resist a thorny whip dragging her upper body forward!”

“…Here it comes.”

Caught in the vines’ grasp, Cranberry was pulled in, and her position with Marika Fukuroi underneath her was reversed. Now Marika was the one straddling her. Marika’s grin was getting bigger and bigger, and Cranberry, who’d been showing her pain, now wore a small smile on her lips.

“Forte.”

There was the sound of an explosion. The violent impact mowed down trees. Marika dropped herself down over Cranberry, while Cranberry burst up from below to grab at Marika’s hair and yank her up, shoving her thumb into her eye socket in the same motion, but Marika slapped her forehead against Cranberry’s finger—

“Forte.”

Just as the two foes collided, the second sound blast came. Marika bent her body backward, and Cranberry aimed for the eye again, fingertip skimming her right eyeball. The Rosenschlange that had been wrapped around Cranberry was ripped away, and Cranberry was torn up all over, blood spurting everywhere. Marika kicked her, trying to get away, but a single rose vine was still wrapped around both their arms.

“Forte.”

The third hit.

“A suicide attack! She’ll get hit with her own magic attack in order to escape a tight situation!”

“No, that’s not it. This is—”

“So that’s what’s going on! Cranberry has been firing her forte always behind Marika’s back. Even if Cranberry is within range of the shot, with Marika on top of her acting as a shield, it doesn’t hit her directly. So this isn’t a wild, desperate attack, but a calculated move, is what you’re saying?”

There was no way Marika could continue to bear being made a shield. She gritted her teeth and withstood the shock, but you could still plainly see she was in pain. The Rosenschlange that had captured Cranberry had now become her own shackle, keeping her from evading or defending as the third forte hit her undefended back. The back of her costume was torn to ribbons, the skin split open, with muscle exposed in places, too.

“Wow, that looks painful. You are actually taking safety precautions, right?”

“We’ve taken precautions, but they vary, depending on the person. With these two, it’s generally fine.”

Marika ripped off the final rose vine by hand and kicked at Cranberry.

“That final vine was the only one she tore off,” said Pam. “That wasn’t her Rosenschlange.”

“What do you mean?” Pammy asked.

“In other words—”

“So that’s what was going on! Part of Cranberry’s costume is the large roses on her shoulders and rose vines wrapped around her legs. So she used one of those rose vines, huh? She sneaked it in with Marika’s Rosenschlange so that it wouldn’t be used… And by sneaking in her own vine, she delayed the release of Marika’s restraints on her by half a move…! Even watching here from the commentary seats, I didn’t notice at all!”

When Marika tried to back away, Cranberry grabbed at her from below. Her long, white, graceful fingers reached out to Marika’s cheek to stroke it.

“Sforzando.”

Marika’s head wobbled like she was spasming. Blood spurted from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

“What was that move?!”

“That was a directional destructive sound wave.”

“I see, I see. Being directional, it’s not as powerful as forte, but by touching her directly, Cranberry made the sound reverberate inside her opponent’s body. Seeing Marika was looking to run, Cranberry didn’t miss a second taking a strike at her in retreat. Nasty, a truly nasty way to fight.”

Blood gushed from every orifice in Marika’s head, and she moved as if she were writhing. She kicked Cranberry in the gut, and Cranberry crossed both arms to guard herself. The pair rebounded against each other to leap backward, placing distance between themselves once more to face off. Marika spat blood onto the ground.

The camera angle switched, moving to capture Cranberry’s right hand, placed on the ground. Her index and middle fingers were broken, both pointing in the wrong directions.

“Her fingers! Cranberry’s fingers!”

“Ultimately, reaching out to Marika’s head to use her magic entails that kind of risk. When she was going for the eye before, she combined it with forte and it seemed to go well, but it’s not necessarily going to work out every time,” Pam explained.

“What do you mean?”

“With a quick shake of her head, Marika broke her enemy’s fingers with her cheekbone. The move is just like a head-butt. It’s a couple beats faster than using her mouth to bite her fingers off. As a way to deal with attacks to the head such as poking out eyes, ripping the mouth, crushing the nose, et cetera…you could call this one application.”

“Cranberry must have done that with the certainty that she could finish her off with that move, too… It seems Marika Fukuroi still has energy to spare.”

“A normal magical girl would have vomited blood and fallen on her face.”

“Right, huh? With her eardrums blasted to bits, I doubt even a fairly tough magical girl would be able to stay on her feet.”

With her right eye still closed, Marika dropped into a low stance. Cranberry’s torso was upright as she knelt on one knee with a hand on the ground. Both of them were still smiling.

Archfiend Pam put a hand to her own cheek. The corners of her mouth were upturned.

“This is fun, huh?” said Marika.

“Yes indeed,” Cranberry agreed.

“How about we have more fun?”

“I’m blessed to have such a wonderful senior.”

There was blood flowing from Marika’s eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. It was doubtful she could see at all, let alone hear.

The places where Cranberry had been restrained by the Rosenschlange were ripped open. She was still dripping blood.

The rose cross ax on top of Marika’s head rotated, digging into the ground. Cranberry rolled away to evade, and as she was getting up again, she struck the rotating ax from below with a knife hand, knocking it upward. The impact made Marika stagger, and blood spurted violently from Cranberry’s hand, but she ignored it. Dropping her heel on Marika’s knee, she made Marika pitch forward and stagger, and then in preparation for her next attack, Cranberry took a step forward hard enough to make the earth shudder, while at the exact same moment, Marika’s rose swelled with a pfwoo—

“Rosenseufzer!”

Having swelled into a bulb, the rose cross ax gushed white powder, then withered all at once. Cranberry, who’d been watching out only for the rotating blade, was taken by surprise.

With powder spewed all over her face, Cranberry coughed and hacked, and as she was writhing in pain, the beads of her tears scattering, Marika leaned her body weight on Cranberry, forcing her down. She got a firm grip on her opponent’s head and slammed the back of it into a rock while simultaneously smashing her own forehead into Cranberry’s nose. She hit Cranberry with another head-butt for good measure, and all the while, her rose vines were slithering around Cranberry’s body.

Cranberry’s once-beautiful face twisted—more so than it already had been twisted by the damage taken from the attacks.

Her expression was not one of fear or pain, but one of joy.

“Fortissimo.”

The screen went dark.

“Hmm?” said Pam.

“Oh,” Pammy replied, “I think her magic had a wide area of attack, and the camera got hit as well. Oh dear. I was told it’d work on auto.”

“It must be difficult for the cameras to evade attacks while also catching what the magical girls are doing.”

“Right when things were really getting good! We can’t have this. Let’s switch to the aerial camera… Ohhh, there’s a big crater there, like a meteorite just hit. That must be it.”

“Though it seems like the both of them have disappeared…”

“Oh dear. And filming from above, the trees get in the way… Pardon me, please switch over to another camera.”

Receiving that instruction from the announcer, the screen displayed different locations one after another before stopping on the fifth camera. The screen was filled with red. A blaze powerful enough to scorch the sky was burning high.

“There’s a forest fire, hmm?” commented Pam.

“We’ve received a report,” said Pammy. “That’s Zone F68. A fire has broken out. It’s caused by Lake of Fire Flame Flamey’s Death Flame. Five people have suffered burns.”

“I’ll send one of my wings over for first aid.”

“Do these sorts of accidents happen often?”

“No, not at all.”

The Archfiend Cram School Survival Games were held every year, and this was the first time the school had accepted nonmembers as participants. Furthermore, in order to attract as many competitors as possible, it had arranged for a cash prize of five million yen for the victor. The Department of Diplomacy had been the one to decide to accept outside participation, and it was also the sponsor putting up the prize money.

These days, the Archfiend Cram School was essentially under the jurisdiction of the Department of Diplomacy. People spoke as if it were Archfiend Pam’s private enterprise, but even back when it had just been a club, it had never been in her possession.

Though their relationship was that of teacher and students, the student was not the possession of the teacher. Just as Archfiend Pam would teach what she knew, there were things that she gained from her disciples.

Some of Archfiend Pam’s peers were cynical about having apprentices. Some said that the stronger you made your students, the more you’d decrease your own relative worth as a magical girl. Some barked that students were ultimately nothing more than guinea pigs for testing out techniques, and if you needed experimental material, you should go out to the battlefield, and you’d find any kind of magical girl there. Some would quietly speak of how just imagining shouldering responsibility for every single student was suffocating. There were any number of reasons for them not to need students.

Archfiend Pam thought differently. Precisely because a warrior was an isolated creature, it was best to have allies. It was more fun to train diligently in friendly rivalry against many peers than to work on self-improvement alone. Giving the rougher magical girls spiritual training or transmitting magical-girl combat techniques was ultimately just a pretext. That was her opinion.

Everyone getting along to become stronger. With this as her motto, Archfiend Pam had befriended magical girls who shared her views, which had led to the Archfiend Cram School’s expansion, but then it had expanded too much. The Department of Diplomacy, which Pam worked for, provided powerful backing to the school, but the upper echelons of the department were now a parent body to it, making it so that even the school’s chief, Archfiend Pam, could not easily step in on the management policy of her own creation.

That was true for this matter as well. This survival exercise involved magical girls stealing flags from each other within a fixed area, and whoever gathered the most flags before the time was up was the winner—so it made a great game, and there was a fun side to it, but there was also danger involved. Violence was allowed, magic included, so of course it would be dangerous.

Those who managed this exercise were quite familiar with the combat abilities of the Archfiend Cram School people, so if it were just those people, it would be easy to draw a line and say, “Up until this point is safe.” However, management had not listened to Archfiend Pam’s insistence that accepting outside participants would take them over capacity. The department’s idea was that it would draw in participants with the prize money, scout the strongest of them for the school, and then, after graduation, have them work for the department. Basically, the department planned to use the new personnel to scale up the Archfiend Cram School and expand the powers of its sponsor, the Department of Diplomacy.

Archfiend Pam was aware that she was being used by political forces. She had too much power to operate purely on her own ideas. There was no way a magical-girl weapon whose name was prefaced with the statement “capable of mass destruction” should be acting of her own accord. So she recognized her place as a tool, operating as the department ordered, restricting her own power, and fine-tuning things. This was what it meant to have a civilian body control the military.

It was much better for people smarter than she to use the power of the Archfiend than for Pam herself to wield her power arbitrarily. But even saying that, there was a minimum level she would not concede. She’d preached the dangers of the survival exercise, insisting that the department should screen the participants through interviews, at least, and had made those magical girls who did not possess the minimum level of combat skills step away. The department was taking safety more seriously than in previous years, and she’d also explained clearly to students and graduates that they were not to be reckless with the guests who were joining them. She had stationed monitors/first-aid workers in every zone. She’d also reduced the time that participants were allowed to go outside the arena boundary lines during the game from the regular thirty seconds to five seconds, and she was taking more care than usual to ensure that absolutely no damage was done to the outside.

In addition to handling announcing and commentary, Archfiend Pam also had to manage the staff at the headquarters. If a problem cropped up, she would give instructions to the monitoring staff. Or she would send a wing.

The alarm rang three times, and she switched her magical phone to talk mode.

“A combatant has caused acid rain. The cameras from that area have been damaged.”

The alarm rang three times, and she switched her magical phone to talk mode.

“Five combatants have become oxygen deficient due to Flamey’s Hellfire.”

The reports came in one after another.

“While we have some serious situations, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no need for concern,” said Pammy. “We’ve arranged it so that no matter what damage is done to the land—plants and animals included—it will go back to how it was before once the exercise is concluded. However—well, if a large fire breaks out, that does mean some participants will drop out if they get caught in it…and at that point, you have to wonder what’s the purpose of this exercise anymore, right?”

“We’ve assigned our monitoring staff and first-aid team magic fire extinguishers, and they’ve been sent to fight the fire. I’ve also sent one of my wings. We’ll have the fire put out in quick order…probably.”

“Reports from the scene indicate that some combatants are helping fight the fire. That’s heartwarming to hear.”

“I’m thankful.”

While she was giving instructions and commentary, Archfiend Pam let her thoughts turn to that fight.

Had the battle between Cranberry and Marika reached a conclusion? Or were they still going? Sunset was soon, so that might put Marika at a disadvantage. But Marika knew herself. If there was no sun, she would probably bloom a flower that didn’t need sunlight to fight. Just how would Cranberry respond to that? Pam had assumed the Magical Girl Resources Department had distanced itself from active combat, but Cranberry’s display just now had been quite splendid. There hadn’t been even the slightest hint of decline in her technique or readiness for battle. She must have continued training diligently, even after having begun working in Magical Girl Resources. Even if Cranberry had been a student only for a short time, she had quite perfectly inherited the ethos of the Archfiend Cram School.

“Whoa there, the alarm’s going off again,” said Pammy. “What’s happened this time?”

“This is…”

“It seems three individuals have been injured from getting caught in the fight between Cranberry and Marika Fukuroi. One with broken bones. I’m told they’re requesting emergency support… Pam, a wing to act as relief personnel.”

“…I’ll send one.”

For the survival exercise that year, the department had reserved a national park of a certain nation for its exclusive use. It was a vast stretch of land. The department had promised the area would be completely restored via magic once everything was over, but just how many of the participants understood what a blatant show of the Department of Diplomacy’s power this was, negotiating with a nation and getting its agreement for such a huge contract?

I understood it. I would never have accepted this job if I hadn’t understood just what it meant to stir up trouble with a target this powerful. No matter how generous the reward is, in the end, your own skin is the most important thing. No prize is worth it if you’re dead.

The assassination of Archfiend Pam.

I knew how strong Archfiend Pam was. I’d memorized her chief accomplishments, and I’d also gotten to see those fights of hers that have been recorded. Her four wings were incredible in every aspect: universality, durability, and destructive force. No magical girl in existence could challenge her in a straight fight and win. Even if Archfiend Pam were to wind up in a fight against all other magical girls, she might just win. I figured she would.

That was what I was going to be killing. It was a formidable job. It would go down in magical-girl history. But my name would not. The names of JFK and Oswald are spoken of as a set because Oswald got caught. Even if the assassination succeeds, if the assassin gets caught, that means they blew it.

I’m a professional. A professional doesn’t blow it.

I was going to kill Archfiend Pam, and then I was going to make it home alive. My client had laid enough preparations for me to get back alive. And besides, if anything, I’m actually better at running than killing. I’m not so self-sacrificing that I’d lay down my own life to complete the task, and I was under no obligation to go that far, either. I’d accepted the money, so I’d do what that money was worth. No matter how much you get paid, it’s not worth it to die for it. I’m a career assassin, not a suicide bomber.

The way you live is more important than the way you die. That’s priority number one. It’s not like I want to pass away quietly in bed without anyone knowing about it. I don’t want commendation or recognition. I don’t want my name going down in history, either. But a difficult job is worth doing. I’d gone through training and more training, plus lots of real combat, in order to perform a task that not just anyone can manage—something only I could accomplish.

So far, the plan had been a success. Archfiend Pam was within arm’s reach. The problem was her wings. If I could just get her wings gone, I could kill her with my abilities. There were so many people participating in the exercise that year, Archfiend Pam wouldn’t be able to just sit around. She’d use her wings. And she actually had just sent some to fight the fire and treat the injured. Somewhere along the line, the perfect moment would come when her wings were gone. That was what I was gunning for.

“This is a dizzying amount of action, huh?” said Pammy. “Does the middle stage of the games always turn out like this?”

“It’s unusual to have this much going on,” Pam replied.

“Are the outside participants having an effect on things after all? Even as a professional commentator, I can barely keep track of it all. Battles are breaking out all over the place.”

The guests’ brave fights were drawing attention.

Some of the monitoring staff wore serious expressions as they whispered to one another things like, “The Archfiend Cram School has declined,” and “If outside participants win the moment the school starts accepting them, it’ll be humiliated.”

As Pam crossed out with double red lines the names of those on the register who had dropped out of the running, she found it was true that a lot of the guests were still in the game. Since figures connected to the Archfiend Cram School had names like “Cranberry, Musician of the Forest” and “Lake of Fire Flame Flamey” to awe their enemies, and also with an eye to the importance of image management, a lot of the names were longer than those of regular magical girls, and you could find them at a glance on the register.

The announcer was looking for the names of those who were earning the most flags, but it wasn’t going well, and when Archfiend Pam took over operation of the announcer’s magical phone it made a strange noise, so she was forced to request that Cranberry’s mascot, who was on standby on the headquarters desk, search for her. The magical phones of the participants were piled up in a mountain on top of the desk, and in one of them the mascot Fav was bobbing about in his hologram, repeatedly complaining and griping, and the majority of his complaints were now turning toward the announcer and commentator. Pam was just about at the limit of her ability to ignore him. He kept going on like he wanted them to hear, saying things like, “Archfiend, pon? Psh. What an arrogant title.” “Both announcer and commentator being all in black is totally lacking in class, pon. Mixing in half white like Fav is cooler, pon.” “I’ve never heard of a magical girl called Pammy, pon. If you’re gonna have an announcer, bring in someone more relevant, pon.” “Agh, you’re too loud, pon. Be quieter with your little make-believe commentary, pon.”

It made her think that maybe having him do some work would shut him up.

“Agh, why does Fav have to be your slave, pon?”

“Oh yes, I’m very sorry for making such an impertinent request,” said Pammy. “I just heard that the digital fairy–type mascot characters are proficient when it comes to electronics. Right, Pam?”

“Well, basically.”

“Cranberry said she joined in because it would be good reference for her exams, but then she left Fav behind, and Fav isn’t happy about this at all, pon. Fav’s got nothing to do, pon. It’s boring, pon. In the first place, if you’re calling this survival, then you should introduce more exciting, hardcore rules, pon. This game is too soft, pon.”

The black-and-white digital fairy continued grumbling away. To him (or her?), participation in this exercise at all was apparently cause for complaint. Archfiend Pam felt bad about it, but she couldn’t have him continue to get in the way. She would wind up having to do major edits in order to produce the Blu-rays.

Fav must not think well of the Department of Diplomacy or the Archfiend Cram School.

Fav worked for the Magical Girl Resources Department, which wasn’t fond of fighting, and it thought contemptuously of the Department of Diplomacy’s methods, with its reputation of making use of force to get its way, and called it barbaric, anti-intellectual, and antiquated. The cyber fairies in particular, being a crystallization of the best of technology and intellect, had to see a world where violence spoke loudest as beyond out of the question. Pam could understand his desire to make a complaint or two.

When she got Fav’s cooperation, she had the digital fairy shift the camera to the highest point scorer. There, in addition to the combatant that she was looking for, was one other magical girl. One combatant had rabbit ears paired with traditional Japanese-style clothes: Hana Gekokujou. The other participant wasn’t a member of the Archfiend Cram School, but she was known to it. She had the motif of a beautician. Her name was Styler Mimi.

“According to what it says here,” Pammy said, “Styler Mimi quite often works together with Marika Fukuroi, the one who was giving us that wild and violent show just now. Her style coordination magic makes it possible for unusual-looking magical girls to look just like ordinary people out in town, and the Archfiend Cram School sometimes has her help out with its activities as well, huh?”

“She’s helped us a lot.”

“And this bunny-eared magical girl…Hana Gekokujou. That’s a very strange name.”

Styler Mimi’s expression was hard, her eyes harsh. The cold look she had fixed on her enemy would make a timid magical girl do an about-face, while if you were like Marika, you’d be pleased and go, “Ohhh.” The air about her, like a sharp, naked blade, was her usual.

Hana Gekokujou looked right back at her, straight in the eye, unflinchingly, at the ready in a relaxed, natural position. You could get a sense of her combat experience and the confidence that lay behind it. You couldn’t sense any eagerness to fight in her, either. Her gaudy appearance belied the impression she gave of being a veteran magical girl.

“She’s not from the Archfiend Cram School, huh? It says she currently holds the most flags—how do you see her, Pam?”

“She seems quite strong, from what I can see.”

“Right then, so about Hana Gekokujou. She’s apparently a member of the Inspection Department—a new ace who’s distinguished herself only recently. Are you aware of this, Pam?”

“We’ve even been hearing the rumors that she’s the new ace of the Inspection Department at the Department of Diplomacy.”

“Sounds like we can expect a lot from her!”

The Department of Diplomacy and the Inspection Department had built up something of a relationship. Perhaps because it would be unbearable to have conflict with Inspection and get reported for all sorts of things, true or false, you could say Inspection was the one department that Diplomacy was on good terms with. They were friendly enough for it to be like, “We’ve got an event coming up. And we’re scouting for participants now.” “Then maybe we’ll send some people over. There’s some lively newbies lately, you know.”

“And they’re glaring at each other now!” said Pammy.

“There they go.”

Mimi broke into motion. She closed a couple dozen feet in a single bound, wielding three razors sandwiched between the fingers of her right hand. Their sharp trajectories sliced through the spot where Hana was, but Hana had already moved from that spot.

“She’s fast! Even the cameras moving via magic motion detectors can barely keep up!”

“She’s not just fast. She’s used to fighting opponents wielding blades.”

Hana threw a kick at Mimi from behind, and as Mimi turned to face her, she struck back with large hairstyling scissors. But before those blades could land, Hana drew back her leg, backing away to kick up earth to blind her opponent. Mimi dodged the spray as she tried to circle around to the right, but Hana was already out of range of a follow-up attack.

“Her moves are frighteningly fast,” said Pam. “And I would say they’re logical, too.”

“She’s staying cautious of Styler Mimi’s weapons, keeping a certain distance away as she fights. She doesn’t move like she enjoys exchanging punches and kicks, but like her goal is to swiftly silence and secure an enemy. That makes her a type you don’t see much of in the Archfiend Cram School, it being a gathering of combat addicts.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s a gathering of combat a—”

“But it’s correct to say you don’t see her type much in the school, right?”

“Well…yes.”

“I might assume she acquired this way of fighting due to the nature of her work. The employees of Inspection work to manage crime. And the enforcement team of which Hana Gekokujou is a member could be called a symbol of that. For them, the priority is to apprehend the enemy before them—anything but successful capture of the enemy, even if it takes foul or unfair means, is unacceptable. Letting the enemy get away will lead to further crime—a situation that must be avoided at all costs.”

Mimi quietly clicked her tongue. With her scissors and razors at the ready, she circled in a fan around the enemy. This put a large tree between them, where Mimi disappeared—or so it must have appeared to Hana Gekokujou.

“She disappeared?! Styler Mimi completely disappeared behind that tree! Just where did she…?”

“She can use her magic to apply flawless style coordination to herself.”

“You mean that she specializes not only in fashion for city life, but also in camouflage for outdoor activities…? But camouflage…camouflage…? Isn’t this more than camouflage?”

“Well, it’s magic.”

“I see, magic… So this is a visually undetectable method of concealment, virtually making herself transparent. Then you’d need unique senses in order to not be deceived by it. Like hearing sharp enough to pick up on the sound of a heartbeat, or the ability to sense body heat, or a magic that could visualize life energy.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay then, so now we’ll set the cameras to infrared mode. Oh, Mimi is there.”

Following the instructions of the announcer, the camera changed modes. Having camouflaged herself, Styler Mimi was passing in front of the thicket, circling wide to head toward Hana.

“She’s keeping her stance low, since her camouflage is patterned after the thicket, huh?” said Pammy. “Staying low while also paying attention to Hana Gekokujou’s angle of view, she’s moving to keep the thicket at her back at all times.”

“She moves like an expert with mastery of her magic.”

Slowly, with featherlight steps, Styler Mimi moved along the thick roots of a tree. She made no such blunders as snapping branches underfoot or leaving footprints on the ground as she steadily closed the distance between herself and the enemy. Once Mimi was a little over a foot behind Hana, with her razors raised over her head, Hana moved. While turning, she took a step directly toward the invisible Mimi and kicked low. Mimi, with her weapons raised overhead, couldn’t react in time, and she took the kick to the ankle, her expression turning to one of anguish as a cry slipped from deep in her throat.

“She read her move! She totally figured out where Hana Gekokujou was, and what her attack would be!”

“It seems like…”

“According to my documents here, her magic is to sharpen senses. She must have strengthened senses like hearing or smell to avoid being deceived by the camouflage, just like those examples we brought up before.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“That low kick was also frighteningly powerful.”

“No, I don’t think it was strength… She’s probably using her magic for that, too.”

It had looked like a very light low kick. But Mimi had reacted like she’d taken a heavy blow.

Hana kicked low again, and this time Mimi somehow blocked it with her shin. But Mimi was still clenching her teeth in pain. Looking like she was ready to fall to her knees, she backstepped, but Hana wouldn’t let her get away. She came forward, keeping within range as she moved to finish Mimi off. Low kick, low kick, and then right after focusing on the low range, she went for the middle. Mimi just barely managed to handle the combo, blocking with her knee, then arm, and each time she looked as if she was in more pain than the damage merited.

“Gekokujou’s magic is to sharpen the senses,” said Pam. “Does her magic only work on herself?”

“What do you mean?” Pammy asked.

“If her magic can be used on others as well, then Mimi’s reactions would make sense. Hana’s swift, sharp attacks are specialized to connect and aren’t aiming to do damage. It’s only to connect. When her hits land, she sharpens her opponent’s sense of pain to make them feel agony.”

“Sharpening her opponent’s sense of pain… She can even do that?”

“It seems her magic has broader applications than you might think.”

Mimi scattered razor blades ahead of her. The razor blades danced in the air between the girls, flashing under the light of the moon and stars, and before they even hit the ground, Mimi was racing off in the opposite direction. After the blades fell, Hana finally gave chase.

“Gekokujou moves quickly and with fine control,” Pammy said. “It’s incredibly difficult to avoid her attacks, made purely with the intention of connecting, huh? The right answer might be just to not let her attack in the first place. By tossing out a whole bunch of razor blades to fill the area, Styler Mimi obstructed her opponent’s movement.”

“If she fills the area with blades, then her opponent can’t follow. It buys her time and distance.”

“Time and distance?”

“It looks like Gekokujou can’t use her magic from any distance. The area of effect is somewhat limited. In that exchange of blows just now, Mimi must also have figured that out.”

Mimi pulled out glass bottles with both hands, spraying the contents at the enemy hot on her heels. They were perfume bottles.

“To put a scent on her?” Pammy mused. “Or no, does she mean to keep her from smelling?”

“Perhaps she thought the reason her magic camouflage didn’t work was her opponent’s sense of smell.”

“Doing that makes you wonder a bit, huh? Why did she see smell as special? Hana Gekokujou has those ears, so wouldn’t you naturally assume hearing?”

“It’s true she does appear that way…”

Mimi raced into the thicket, simultaneously using her style coordination magic for camouflage to disappear into the underbrush. Hana chased straight after her. Her rabbit ears made all sorts of subtle twitches, indicating just how she was grasping the enemy’s position.

“She can’t escape,” said Pam. “Running in a thicket, she’ll inevitably make noise.”

“So that means it’ll be easy to pursue her, huh? It looks like Hana Gekokujou is gradually catching up.”

While getting closer and closer to her target, Hana passed by a tree, but then right as she was jumping over a boulder, her expression distorted in shock.

Behind the boulder, seven hairstyling scissors had been thrust into the ground, blades pointed up.

“A trap! She laid a trap with scissors!” cried Pammy.

“She’s good,” Pam commented.

Hana twisted her body in the air, pulling a kimono sash string out from her sleeve pocket to hook it beyond the boulder, then using the stretched-taut sash as footing for a second bound. All the while, she never took her attention off the enemy. When three razor blades whizzed toward her, she caught them between the fingers of both hands, landing soundlessly to resume her pursuit.

Sweat beaded on Hana’s forehead. It seemed she hadn’t anticipated that the enemy would lay a trap as she was fleeing under cloak of invisibility.

“Hana Gekokujou has wonderfully evaded the trap!” Pammy cried.

“Gekokujou is the type who excels more in speed than physical strength. Even if she’s not completely hobbled, injury would halve her fighting abilities, or perhaps worse.”

“That was a close one, huh?”

“I understand what Mimi was doing now. She was making sure that she wouldn’t be detected by smell.”

“What do you mean, making sure?”

“Gekokujou saw through her camouflage and also was able to make Mimi suffer a sharp pain that would normally have been impossible. From those two things, she figured Gekokujou’s magic might be to strengthen any sense, and based on that, she sprayed perfume on her to create a situation where she would be unable to rely on her sense of smell.”

“I see! If Hana Gekokujou were only using her hearing, she wouldn’t have been able to detect that trap. But with smell, she might have been able to get a whiff of metal and notice that the trap was there.”

“But she made it through the trap. Now this is going to get tough for Mimi.”

Rushing through the thicket, Mimi came out into an open area. There, Hana took a step to the side before chasing her further.

“Wasn’t that an odd move for Hana Gekokujou to make?”

“She was avoiding a tree.”

“A tree? It looked as if she took a step sideways in a place where there was nothing, though.”

“As Mimi was moving on, she used her style coordination on a tree to camouflage it.”

“You mean there was a tree ahead of Hana Gekokujou that had been camouflaged? And if she had kept running straight ahead, she’d have crashed into it? So she can even put makeup on a tree, huh?”

“Her magic can be applied to any living thing.”

“I see! Impressive that Hana Gekokujou could avoid it, though.”

“Since there was that trap earlier, she’s more cautious than before. It was probably from reflected sound… I couldn’t say for sure, but she must have used some sense to avoid it.”

The traps Mimi had painstakingly laid had been useful only in slightly rattling her opponent’s composure. Archfiend Pam was certain. Hana Gekokujou was strong. It was fair to say the Inspection Department had been correct in its assessment and in sending her to this exercise. She achieved a high level in all areas: physical abilities, combat experience, levelheadedness, and powerful magic.

The cameras moved onward to follow the two magical girls. They lost track of Mimi once but found her again in under a minute. She was in a ready stance, facing her pursuer, just barely in front of the red line that indicated that beyond was out of bounds. If you went past that line for five seconds, you were instantly disqualified, all flags forfeit.

“Styler Mimi has been backed into a corner!”

“She can’t run any farther.”

“Just like a rabbit chased by a fox, she’s been cornered at the edge of a cliff with no place to run! But this time, the rabbit is the one doing the chasing!”

Mimi charged at Hana, simultaneously throwing razors and scissors. Though Hana dodged or knocked aside all the blades, somehow Mimi managed to swap their positions. The two of them ran by the line, repeatedly attacking and dodging all the while as they kept racing at full sprint. While passing by, Mimi flung out a kick, which was turned aside, then threw scissors, which Hana calmly dodged. Hands never stopping, Mimi scattered blades, sprinkling dye powder like a smoke screen. She used whatever special items she had on hand to just keep her opponent from getting close, but Hana avoided and dodged all of them, making use of swift footwork as she moved.

As their fight at the edge of the boundary continued, they moved down another five hundred yards before switching back to return the other way. Swiping with blades, kicking, swinging out with fists, and returning to their original position, Mimi moved away from the line. There, backing up toward the forest, she raised her scissors and razors and came to a stop.

With the line at her back, Hana lowered her stance. Now Hana would probably try to make her approach. But before Hana could make her move, Mimi tossed away her weapons and spread both palms, raising them to eye level.

Hana narrowed her eyes, retreating with a hop backward. Nothing of her expression or movements showed any carelessness. At the ready a half step in front of the boundary line, she examined Mimi.

Mimi’s hands remained spread as she addressed Hana. “If…I were to propose…that I yield half my flags to you…what would you do?”

“Surrender… So she’s given up, huh? True, looking at their fight this far…it seems like it’s rather unlikely Mimi would win.”

“Hmm.”

“Well, but…this is surprising. So making an offer of negotiation is also an option, huh?”

“It is.”

“If you stay in the game, you’ve still got a chance, while if you’re knocked out, you don’t. Can we take this to mean that from where Styler Mimi stands, getting through this with just a loss of flags is better than dropping out of the running?”

“That’s right.”

“While from how Hana Gekokujou sees it, even if she beats Styler Mimi, when she resists in a final struggle, Hana might be injured. Since this survival exercise is a long game, being injured in the initial stages is equivalent to defeat—so there is actually merit to this, for either party. Though it’s not all that exciting for the recording.”

“Momentary victories are important, but the number one thing is being able to continue until the end. Being aware to act to avoid injury is also vital in this survival exercise.”

“Cranberry and Marika Fukuroi were going hard at it right from the start, though—what about that?”

“Those two are unique cases. They’re really not to be emulated.”

The corners of Hana’s lips tilted upward slightly. She seemed to understand her opponent’s intentions. Her stance relaxed, and she shrugged. “If you’re giving them over anyway, I think it would be the better deal if I took all of them.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I won’t be yielding any flags.”

The smile disappeared from Hana’s face, and she gave Mimi a questioning look. Mimi clapped her open palms together and muttered, “Since now I’ll be undoing the magic.”

Hana’s expression turned from questioning to shocked. The boundary line had changed position. The line that was supposed to have been half a step behind Hana was now positioned one and a half yards in front of her. In other words, Hana was now standing out-of-bounds.

“What’s going on?! The position of the line has changed!”

“Ahh…she got Gekokujou.”

“What do you mean?”

“Styler Mimi changes appearances with her style coordination magic. Her ability isn’t limited to humans or magical girls. She can use her magic to change the appearance of anything, whether it be trees, flowers…or grass with a line drawn on it.”

“I get it! So she erased the original line, then disguised the fake line as the real one, huh? And her fake line was farther outside the boundary than the real line…so Hana Gekokujou never realized she’d gone out-of-bounds.”

“Using a trap that she’d laid beforehand, she gained some distance from Gekokujou during the chase, while in the meantime, she used her style coordination on the boundary line to change where it was drawn.”

“And that final surrender was all part of the plan, too, huh? In a magical-girl battle, five seconds is a long, long time, basically an eternity—so by making her opponent move to just the right spot before making that offer of negotiation, she earned that five valuable seconds.”

Styler Mimi snorted smugly and looked at Hana. Pam wouldn’t say it was necessarily due to Marika’s influence, but Mimi never acted modestly toward people she’d only just met. She would be arrogant, as if to say, “I’m the stronger one, so I’m more important.” Archfiend Pam did think that if she were to lose brutally to someone, she might actually turn meek, but Mimi had gotten this far without ever knowing such a bitter loss. She was just that strong.

Hana’s expression turned from shocked to “Oh, too bad,” as her rabbit ears drooped, scratching her head. “Well…you got me. Oh, this has been educational.” And she bowed her head courteously.

Mimi said, “Oh, no…thank you very much,” her manner not at all sounding sincere, then turned away and raced off.

She did display minimal politeness, despite her arrogance, so in that sense, she was somewhat more sociable than Marika.

“That was a fairly painful move for Mimi as well,” said Pam.

“Was it? It looked as if she pulled it off wonderfully, though.”

“When a competitor drops out due to going out-of-bounds, they have their flags confiscated.”

“So even though Styler Mimi was effectively the one to force Hana Gekokujou to drop out, by the rules, she disqualified herself…and even if Styler Mimi won their exchange, she won’t get any flags.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“After all that effort, not getting any flags out of it… Hmm, it doesn’t seem very efficient. And it’s even worse when Hana Gekokujou had gathered enough flags to be vying for the top spot, huh? Ohhh, that’s tough. I can’t help but get the feeling, watching Styler Mimi race off, that you can sense more frustration than joy at having defeated a tough enemy.”

The camera zoomed in on Hana Gekokujou, who remained behind. After having the rug pulled out from under her by the prey she’d been one step away from cornering, and withdrawing because of the rules, she looked mysteriously refreshed. She was muttering something under her breath as she swung her right index finger right, left, up, and down, walking away from the area.

She must have been looking back on her fight with Mimi and everything leading up to it—considering what she’d done and if it had been the best, or if maybe there’d been a better way. She was like a skilled old battle veteran, but this side of her was fresh like a young fighter.

Watching her, Archfiend Pam thought that was the one area where she had room to grow.

Archfiend Pam was right there in front of me. She was commentating with a self-satisfied expression. If I just reached out a hand, I could touch her.

But not yet. My opportunity, the moment for me to make my move, was not right now. I’m good at waiting. I once lay in wait for three days underneath wet fallen leaves without moving a single muscle. You needed to be tough for that job. And I needed to be even tougher for this job now.

Two of Archfiend Pam’s wings had flown away. They hadn’t come back. Those wings are the source of her power. As long as she has those, she can wield her power as “the magical girl capable of mass destruction.” I wouldn’t say she’s weak without them. She’s an incredibly strong magical girl regardless.

I’m a pro. I don’t let my guard down. I don’t get prideful. But I don’t get scared, either. I get an accurate grasp of the enemy’s strength as well as my own, then go for it at a moment when I can win.

A few hours had passed since sunset. The voices of insects, the sounds of the wind, the screams of magical girls, and the sounds of destruction rang out here and there. The exercise had passed the halfway point and was moving into the latter stage. The number of participants had been shaved down to one-quarter, and the flags had been gathered in a handful of places. Since one person could carry many flags, if one girl beat another, it wasn’t unusual for her to shoot to the top of the ranking.

“According to the data from previous years,” said Pammy, “this is the point where fights tend to become more intense. And it says this is when the type of magical girl who lies in wait until the last moment, then joins in the fight once the flags have been gathered up, will go on the move… Would you call that, say, hyena-like?”

“Well, that’s not untrue.”

“So then, actually…in your view, Archfiend Pam, would you want them to avoid choosing such…how should I put it…crafty methods, let’s say?”

“I couldn’t blame them for optimizing their behavior, within what the rules allow, in order to achieve victory.”

“But still, it’s an exercise, at the end of the day, right? Isn’t this exercise nominally supposed to be held to uncover your own problem points and used as material for self-improvement? It’s an educational event, right? Then the problem becomes, just how much of that can they accomplish when they have that unwavering fixation on efficiency in their strategy?”

“Well, I suppose.”

Archfiend Pam had in fact given strict orders to the Archfiend Cram School people to avoid bringing shame to the school in their fights. But since she didn’t have the right to give orders to the guests, she wasn’t going to force on them a tacit acknowledgment of unwritten rules. So if they did lie in ambush until the final stage, that was all up to them.

“So then does that mean you want them to fight directly, head-to-head, after all?” Pammy asked her. “And you’re not a fan of making teams to fight, either, right?”

“Well, there’s no problem with forming teams, either. Combining the magic of multiple magical girls can give you tens, hundreds, thousands of times more power.”

“Ohhh, you’re just talking about making teams, huh? So then, in other words, things aside from forming teams could pose a problem?”

“…No comment.”

The screen switched over to show a magical girl kicking down trees to make her way forward.

“Oh!” cried Archfiend Pam.

“Is she from the Archfiend Cram School?”

“No, she’s not.”

“But from your reaction just now, it seems like you know her.”

“She works for the Department of Diplomacy.”

“Ohhh, I see, so she’s a colleague.”

“…Yes. She’s a colleague.”

After wondering about how to explain her relationship with Lady Proud, Pam settled on “colleague.” But she was actually less a colleague and more a friend. Or at least Pam thought so.

There were few people equal to Archfiend Pam. Everyone at the Archfiend Cram School was her student, so she didn’t have a relationship of equals with any of them. Even at the department—since it had started prioritizing graduates of the school for hires, it had wound up being nothing but Pam’s own students, so there were no equal relationships there, either.

There was no longer anyone the same age as Pam who was still in the magical-girl business. Never mind the same age—there weren’t even any five years younger. It was no wonder Marika Fukuroi treated her like an old woman.

But despite how things were at the Department of Diplomacy, it wasn’t as if every single person there was from the Archfiend Cram School, and if they were not from the school, then she would be able to associate with them as an equal.

“According to the documents I have here,” said Pammy, “her name is Lady Proud. Her magic can change her own blood to any liquid she chooses. She works as a unit leader at the Department of Diplomacy, and she also comes with a guarantee from Archfiend Pam that she’s good at her job. She not only excels in combat, but her ability to coordinate others when in the role of unit leader is unbeatable, compared with those magical girls who devote themselves entirely to fighting. That’s a compliment, huh? Just what you’d expect from the Department of Diplomacy! You might call it the north pole of talent, where the top elites gather!”

“It’s not really a gathering of only the top elites.”

“And right now, she carries…one flag?”

“One? That’s odd.”

“Maybe the count’s been done wrong.”

“There’s no way it could be wrong, pon,” Fav cut in.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Um, it seems it’s not wrong,” Pammy corrected herself. “So then what does this mean? Does this mean Lady Proud has only just started to make her move? Like that hyena sort of thing?”

“No, she, of all people, would never do that.”

Archfiend Pam knew the way Lady Proud conducted herself.

Once, the two of them had traveled together to do a preliminary inspection for a job training trip. After riding a civilian bus to go to the dojo they’d be looking over, they had stayed over one night. They’d shared alcoholic drinks made from Lady Proud’s blood and exchanged opinions about the state of the department as well as their lives as magical girls. Pam had thought Lady Proud was normally tight-lipped and rigidly overserious, but when she got drunk—since the alcohol made from her blood was magical in nature, it would work on magical girls, who would normally nullify poison—her lips got surprisingly loose, her cheeks going pink as she voiced her complaints about and dissatisfactions with the Department of Diplomacy. On top of that, she’d also declared that she would one day conquer Archfiend Pam and stand at the top of the department. Right in front of Archfiend Pam’s eyes. Never before had there been a single magical girl like this.

Even now, Archfiend Pam would think back on that from time to time. That had been fun. It might have been the first time since the field trips of her student days that she’d enjoyed traveling.

The next day, Lady Proud had returned to her usual polite attitude. Her being able to cleanly switch on and off to conduct herself the way a magical girl should made Archfiend Pam feel even more favorably about her.

That day, Lady Proud was off her game, but she was the embodiment of on. She strode through the forest with a dignified posture. She stepped on a stump and broke it. She kicked a boulder, shattering it. She tore up thick roots that ran deep and tangled. If a large tree got in her way, she punched it down with a swing of her arm. She did away with all obstacles.

It looked as if she was making quite a lot of noise as she made her way along. Participants tried to avoid standing out in this survival exercise. It would alert enemies and draw them to their position. Enemies persistently tracking her who knew where she was while she didn’t know their positions would produce immeasurable strain, even for a hardy warrior.

“Enemies here!” said Pammy.

“There’s a lot of them, hmm?” Pam commented.

As expected, their attacks focused on Lady Proud.

The magical girls who were hiding behind trees in an attempt to ambush Lady Proud were kicked down as they waited for her to go by, trees and all, while the magical girls covered in tree leaves who leaped down on her from the branches above were struck back in the air—one with a double kick, one with punches, another with kicks, yet another with throws. Lady Proud acted as if the difference in numbers was nothing.

When a destructive light beam was fired at her from behind, she evaded it with a shake of her head, hopping back with her eyes locked forward to fire a back kick that followed through the solar plexus of the enemy and knocked her out with one strike. Grabbing the lasso thrown toward her, Lady Proud pulled, yanking its owner toward her to strike the heel of her palm into her assailant’s jaw and knock her out. And when needles that could hardly even be seen were spat at her, with a sweep of a tree that she’d ripped out of the ground, she blocked them all, letting the momentum of her spin take her around to toss the tree at the enemy and knock her away.

At just about the same moment Lady Proud threw that tree, the sounds of an engine and things being sliced apart and something being crushed into the ground approached from behind, and Lady Proud turned around to stop the oncoming vehicle. Her palms split open, blood spurting out. It was a miniature tank armed with countless blades, like a chariot used in ancient Rome. A magical girl with a gardener motif rode atop it, holding down levers as she laughed madly. Lady Proud was slowly being pushed back by the tank’s advance, her feet leaving ruts in the earth. Since she was holding back the rotating blades with her bare hands, the wounds were pulled open farther, and she was bleeding a considerable amount.

Lady Proud held back the miniature tank as it pulled in tree roots, earth, rocks, and everything, slicing and crunching them to scatter dust and shreds of foliage and push forward, but she was being overpowered.

“Umm, according to the records I have here, that’s not someone from the Archfiend Cram School. Mina Acre, a.k.a. Madgardener. It says she uses a speedy magic killer lawn mower.”

“Ahh, so that’s a lawn mower.”

“Normally, she’s gentle and reserved, but when she gets on her lawn mower, she gets carried away by a powerful impulse to destroy, and will fight on and on like a berserker… Should she be allowed to participate?”

“Well, she seemed gentle in the interview…”

Mina’s shrill laughter rang out through the late-night forest and then eventually began to fade. Mina, caught up in her frenzy, was quieting down, as was the lawn mower she drove. Mina kept shoving the levers down over and over, but the lawn mower was grinding to a halt.

“It’s not moving! For some reason, Mina’s lawn mower has stopped working!”

“Look. The wheels and rotating blades.”

A cloudy, white, hardened substance was jamming up the wheels and rotating blades of the lawn mower.

“What is that…?” asked Pammy.

“That’s adhesive. The principal ingredient is probably a type of epoxy. It’s a mixture of two fluids, with some other hardening agent mixed in it as well.”

“So then, you mean…”

“Lady Proud’s palms were torn open, and her blood gushed out onto the wheels and rotating blades. It seems she transformed that blood into a powerful adhesive.”

“Kind of doesn’t seem like it’ll move anymore, huh?”

With a high-pitched shriek, Mina pushed at the levers. But the lawn mower wouldn’t move. There was a nasty creaking sound as black smoke rose from the vehicle. Bluish-black blood vessels rose up in Lady Proud’s arms. Mina’s shrill yell turned into a wail. The killer lawn mower was rising off the ground.

Lady Proud flung her upper body backward, going into a bridge pose. She threw the lawn mower like she was doing a suplex, tossing rider and all behind her. The lawn mower flew away, breaking trees as it went, disappearing along with Mina’s shriek into the darkness.

“Even the killer lawn mower is no problem for her! She’s strong! Lady Proud is strong!”

The magical girl who appeared as if swapping out with the killer lawn mower was different from the foes who had come before her.

There was no affectation or eagerness to fight in her manner as she approached like she was going for a stroll in the forest. Her whole body was covered in a costume with a metallic luster, and she had a sort of atmosphere to her. If someone with an eye for it were to see her, they’d grasp it with an “Ahh”—she had just that sort of air.

“And here comes a new foe. She’s apparently also not affiliated with the Archfiend Cram School. Um, her name is Metallie. She holds twenty-eight flags.”

“…She’s strong.”

Metallie didn’t stop walking, maintaining a fixed pace as she strode ahead over trees, grass, rocks, and the magical girls who’d been defeated by Lady Proud. Lady Proud was standing still. The bleeding from her palms had already stopped.

Though she must have been fighting continuously, Lady Proud showed no signs of exhaustion. The breaths coming from her nose were always uniform and calm. You could even detect a quiet excitement in her breathing. Water vapor rose from her body, wreathing her in a ghostly atmosphere. It was an unbecoming amount of sweat for a magical girl.

With her hair in disarray, she’d become like a monstrous hag in a fairy tale. The accessory that was her symbol, the garlic hair decoration, had been knocked askew in the fight. Her fangs occasionally flashed from her mouth, and when they did, words slipped from her lips. “For a magical girl, feeling is everything…”

Archfiend Pam nodded. Things were coming along quite nicely.

“Lady Proud seems a little odd…doesn’t she?” said Pammy.

“This is her secret move. She only uses it when facing a powerful opponent.”

“What do you mean, secret move?”

“Lady Proud can turn her own blood into the fluid of her choice. Using this magic, her nerves—”

“Ohhh, I see! So by exercising full control over neurotransmitters and intracerebral narcotics, she pushes her combat skills beyond her limits. And that offers her many benefits, such as dulling pain, sharpening her senses, and muscle strength, huh? Oh yeah, her palms have stopped bleeding—so was that also from manipulating the components of her blood, then?”

Each magical girl understood the other’s capacity. The one with the metallic luster—Metallie—created a hammer from her right hand and a javelin from her left. Lady Proud noticed this and leaped into the air.

With a midair turn, she reversed her body to face the other way and leaped to the thickest of the nearby branches, using it as a foothold to pounce on the enemy. She tangled her cape around the javelin that was thrust toward her, diverting its momentum as she kicked her opponent, but her leg was blocked by a large shield.

“It says that Metallie’s magic is to create metal items from inside her body.”

“She constitutes them with exceptional speed. She’s fast.”

Lady Proud landed, cape fluttering up. Strapped underneath it were rows of test tubes, all of them filled with Lady Proud’s blood.

“She can turn her blood into any sort of dangerous liquid, huh…? Gasoline, nitroglycerin, liquid nitrogen, lava, synthetic opioids, isopropyl methane fluorophosphonate. But, well, I dunno, is all that going to be all right?”

“All the safety precautions are in place.”

Lady Proud plucked three test tubes in her fingers and scattered their contents. The red of her blood faded in the air, instantly turning white.

“That’s magic liquid nitrogen,” said Pam. “If it touches her, it will be worse than frostbite.”

“So what will Metallie do?!”

Metallie did not try to dodge the attack from the fluid, which would be difficult to avoid, charging straight forward instead. As she moved, she changed the shape of her body—rather, she created a thick knight’s armor from her whole body, purging it the instant the liquid nitrogen touched her to leave what was inside completely safe and come within a half step of Lady Proud. This close, never mind throwing the test tubes, she wouldn’t even have the time to pull them out.

Lady Proud swiped out with her nails, and Metallie brought out a long metal skewer to block them, piercing Lady Proud’s hand through from the palm to the back.

“Oooooowie! That looks like it hurts!”

“Pain aside, it will inhibit her movement.”

Metallie followed up that attack with a fist that gradually increased in size, and by the time it reached Lady Proud, her knuckles were covered in brass. Lady Proud repelled the short hook aimed at her side and then turned aside the strike that came toward her chest as she broke off the skewer through her palm by clenching her right hand—Metallie flowed right into a combo with a strike at her cheek next, and in response, Lady Proud opened her mouth wide.

Lady Proud’s fangs crunched down on the approaching brass knuckles as if they felt no resistance at all. Metallie was already withdrawing her fist. All that had been shattered in Lady Proud’s teeth was the brass knuckles. She spat the metal chunks back out at her enemy, which Metallie swiped aside with the back of her right hand with a yell. Metallie didn’t miss a beat, slicing at her opponent with a longsword while she simultaneously threw a knife, but Lady Proud repelled both. Metallie somersaulted backward, scattering something in midair. Those things rolled over the ground, pointing their sharp spikes in every direction.

“Caltrops, hmm?” said Pam. “There are even barbs on the ends of the points.”

“Lady Proud has raised a foot over the caltrops! She’s going to just keep going?!”

“She’s prioritizing attack over everything else right now.”

“So you mean before any situational judgment about what will happen if she steps on the caltrops, she’s just moving forward right over them in order to take advantage of the opening the enemy provided when she pulled a pointlessly showy move like an aerial somersault? Meaning even if this hobbles her, she won’t regret it?”

“That somersault is most likely…inviting her.”

Lady Proud was about to take a step forward, heedless of the caltrops, but before she could take that step, she slipped on something stick shaped. Without even the time to be surprised, Lady Proud gave the stick-shaped thing a light kick and moved forward, striking Metallie with a front kick the moment before she could land.

Metallie tried to create a shield, but Lady Proud’s kick came too fast, and she didn’t make it. There was the sound of bone breaking and impact on flesh through her guard. She spun to the side as she dove into the thicket, and Lady Proud ran after her.

“D-direct hit! What a sound that made! That’s gotta hurt! Really hurt!”

“Something just happened.”

“Umm, rewind the video, rewind… I’m sorry. Doing anything complex with the cameras, aside from just switching between them, is a little difficult from our end. It’ll break if you mess around with it, so. Ah! Fav, sorry for the trouble, but can we ask you to handle this?”

After much complaining, Fav rewound the video for them. He also put it on slo-mo to replay, and they checked the stick-shaped object that had been thrown at Lady Proud’s feet.

“…Is that an umbrella?”

“It’s an umbrella.”

When they canceled the rewind and slo-mo and returned to the live feed, there was a magical girl… After Metallie and Lady Proud had vanished, she had showed up. A magical girl wearing a yellow raincoat picked up a stick-shaped something from the grass, saying, “Oh, there it is”—the object was, in fact, a closed umbrella. The girl in the raincoat muttered, “I’ve got to have her win a bit more,” then ran after Lady Proud.

“That magical girl is…Umbrain, huh? She’s currently in possession of twenty-one flags,” said Pammy.

“She’s from the Department of Diplomacy.”

“Oh? So she’s another colleague of yours, Pam?”

“She’s one of Lady Proud’s subordinates… Just what is she doing?”

“According to what it says here, Umbrain’s magical umbrella ignores the mass and speed of objects and is able to block them gently.”

“She must have kept Lady Proud from stepping on the caltrops by throwing that umbrella at her and blocking her foot. So then is she supporting Lady Proud?” Pam wondered.

“Fav, pardon me, but please rewind to where Umbrain was.”

They switched around through various cameras. Umbrain was inspecting a fallen magical girl. She pulled a folded flag from the girl’s pocket, then tucked it away in her raincoat.

That fallen magical girl looked familiar. She was the lasso-wielding girl Lady Proud had just defeated. Archfiend Pam considered. Lady Proud had been carrying only one flag. And then there was what Umbrain had just said.

“Is this sort of thing allowed?” Pammy asked.

“…It’s not forbidden by the rules,” Pam said.

“It’s not at all a bad thing to do, in the sense of a subordinate offering backup to her superior. But why doesn’t Lady Proud go to retrieve the flags herself? Doing it like this, no matter how much she wins, she’ll wind up ranking low…”

Archfiend Pam recalled that Lady Proud had been making quite a lot of noise as she went through the forest. Had that been her playing decoy, in order to attract enemies? It was a division of labor, with Lady Proud being the vanguard/decoy and Umbrain acting as retrieval/support.

Ultimately, such a division of labor would place Lady Proud in danger, and on top of that, Umbrain was the one getting the flags in the end. Lady Proud wouldn’t benefit at all. But putting herself on the line for her subordinate’s sake without any consideration for loss or benefit was very like her. Archfiend Pam smiled.

I drew in a long breath, then exhaled long. My heart calmed. There were fewer people. It was only the hyenas left, or the strong. Hyenas were fine. Strong ones were even better. I just wanted them to go on a big rampage. Cause trouble for Archfiend Pam. Take the wings from around her.

I remembered how I’d seen Archfiend Pam before, from a distance, before this exercise began.

For my preliminary investigation, I’d spent a few days looking into Archfiend Pam’s affairs. It wasn’t like I’d never thought I could do it then and there, if I had the chance, but when I actually saw her myself, I dropped that idea. She had a different air to her. It was impossible. The wings. The wings were the problem. I’d seen videos of the way Archfiend Pam fought. If only the wings were gone, then I’d have no problem. So an ambush, then. No matter how strong a magical girl is, if you attack her unawares, you can get her easily. I’ve finished off many just like that.

My opponent was a magical girl who had showy fights on a public stage. I’m a magical girl who sneaks around in the background. Even if the both of us wore black costumes, that’s a difference of heaven and earth. Archfiend Pam was respected, while I was held in contempt. I was fine with that. That was exactly what had given me this opportunity. The stars that shine in the sky pay no attention to the bugs skittering and scuttling around on the ground. To her, I may as well not have existed.

There wasn’t much time left. I calmed myself, telling myself not to rush. If I had an opportunity, I’d make my move. If there wasn’t, I would not. That was all it was. There was no need to be hasty.

The calls of bugs. The calls of birds. The sound of a snake slithering along the ground. The voices of people talking. The sounds of moans. A first-aid tent for the injured? It wasn’t anything strange for it to be near the headquarters tent.

It didn’t matter what sort of magical girl was nearby. I would make sure to finish Archfiend Pam off by force before anyone else could interfere.

“We have the totals,” said Pammy. “Currently number one is Lake of Fire Flame Flamey. She’s currently located in…”

“Area D-51.”

“Whoa there. You’re fast, Pam.”

“I have a wing on standby in the area, so I know where it is.”

“That reminds me—didn’t she cause a forest fire? So she’s a problem child, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that… It’s more that she gets easily heated up, or easily influenced.”

“I see, so she’s on fire for this exercise as well, huh?”

With her crimson hair in disarray, the magical girl clad in a fire-colored dress flew along, weaving between the trees. She was not jumping. Her feet never touched the ground as she flew.

“Flamey’s power is fire,” Pam explained. “She makes it possible to fly by combusting the air and forcing its expansion to make it jet out.”

“She didn’t originally have the ability to fly?”

“It’s entirely an application of her magic power.”

“That’s amazing…but isn’t that dangerous when flying at such low altitude?”

“Carelessly flying too high would make her a target for competitors with ranged attacks.”

The cameras switched from one to another. Flamey flew far faster than a strong-legged magical girl could run through the forest. And Flamey was a master at flying at low altitude while weaving in between obstacles. By flying so low, Flamey was endangering not herself, but her surroundings. Since she blasted out so many sparks to propel herself, the risk of starting a fire always followed her. Currently, one of Archfiend Pam’s wings was trailing her.

“Ohhh, she’s looking quite heated up, huh?”

“Flamey is the head of the Archfiend Cram School Six Volcanoes.”

“The Archfiend Cram School Six Volcanoes! That sounds pretty amazing.”

“She also holds positions in the Archfiend Cram School Twelve Demon Generals, Archfiend Cram School Three Heavenly Princesses, Archfiend Cram School Pentagram, Archfiend Cram School Four Absolute Fists, and the Archfiend Cram School Seven Lucky Gods. It means she’s capable enough to receive such invitations from many groups.”

The corners of her lips were pulled up all the way. Not only that, but occasionally sounds slipped out. They sounded high in pitch, somewhere between a yeek and a squeak. Lake of Fire Flame Flamey was laughing.

“It feels like she’s really into this…”

“She’s the type to get easily swept away.”

“Whoa there, and now Flamey’s taken a turn! Has she found some prey?!”

The corners of Flamey’s lips drew up at an even sharper angle. The camera switched to a different one. Another magical girl appeared on-screen, and there wasn’t even time to blink before Flamey leaped for her. The girl rolled forward to evade, and when Flamey came back to her in an instant U-turn, the girl created a giant soap bubble between herself and Flamey—but it was pointless against Flamey’s charge. The soap bubble popped without slowing her one bit, and, unable to evade Flamey’s charge, the magical girl in the overalls rolled over the ground.

“It says here she’s Uttakatta. A freelance magical girl. In the interview, she just said straight-out that she was after the prize money,” said Pammy.

“So she uses bubbles?” said Pam.

“It seems like bubbles have pretty bad compatibility with fire.”

“That depends on her magic.”

“It says Uttakatta’s magic bubbles are elastic and can’t be easily destroyed, even by magical girls…but it doesn’t say they’re heat resistant. From what I can see, the instant that bubble touched the flame, it burst. If she can’t use her bubbles, that will make this a pretty tough fight for her.”

The fire spread through the foliage, the flames illuminating their surroundings in bright red. A particularly large flame burst upward, then took human shape. The human shape melted into the fire and disappeared, then appeared in a different flame, then did the same again. Each time, tongues of fire licked at the flora, spreading the fire outward.

“Flame Flamey moves inside fire,” said Pam.

“So you mean that a fire scene is the optimal battlefield for her? That’s trouble for the rest of us, huh?”

“We’re fully prepared to extinguish any fire.”

The magical girl in overalls with horns growing on her head, Uttakatta, put her straw in her mouth and blew a breath. With a single puff, she blew out a bunch of bubbles that were individually about a tenth the size of the massive one earlier. Perhaps seeking to avoid fighting in the fire, she used those bubbles as footing to flee higher into the sky.

Flamey fully materialized from inside the flame, spiraling upward into the sky. Uttakatta created one step after another, aiming upward, but she swayed unsteadily. The bubbles under her feet were swaying. It made her react too slowly.

Flamey had reached her. Uttakatta was too off balance to guard. Her expression twisted, and she jumped off her bubble, arching her posture to backflip and just barely avoid Flamey, but there was no footing underneath her. She fell to the ground.

“Flamey created an updraft,” Pam explained. “She used it to destabilize those bubble steps.”

“It looked as if she was flying like that just to show off, but there was a proper purpose to it, huh?”

Before she could crash into the ground, Uttakatta blew a giant bubble. The big bubble enveloped her body, floating lightly, but Flamey was already looming right in front of her. Inside the bubble, Uttakatta couldn’t avoid her. The corners of Flamey’s lips lifted at an even sharper angle, and Uttakatta narrowed one eye and smiled sardonically, sticking one hand into her overalls.

Right before Flamey charged, the bubble went cloudy white, shielding Uttakatta, inside, from view. A heartbeat later, a scream went up. The two magical girls fell down onto a rocky zone away from the area that was on fire—one of them did a turn in midair and landed on her feet, while the other fell back-first and hit hard. Without breaking her fall, holding both arms against herself, she rolled over the rocky area before fainting in agony.

The magical girl who had landed on her feet—Uttakatta—slowly rose, smiling with only her lips.

“What just happened?! Flamey, the attacker, was the one to get hit! That looks painful! That looks really painful! What the heck just happened here?!”

“Look at the area where the two clashed. There’s white powder scattered around, isn’t there?”

“White powder… Yes, there is. What is that?”

“Fire-extinguishing agent.”

“Extinguishing agent! Oh yeah, the inside of that bubble went white right before they made contact… Was that Uttakatta sprinkling extinguishing agent inside the bubble?”

“Flame Flamey is, as her name indicates, composed of flame. Regular extinguishing agent is one thing, but magical extinguishing agent is a powerful poison to her.”

“Wow, that’s incredible!”

“It’s extremely difficult to spray Flamey with extinguishing agent when she’s fast in flight. But if you arranged it as a trap and lured her in, then it wouldn’t matter how quickly she’s flying.”

“But magic fire-extinguishing agent…? Bringing in such an item…”

“It’s forbidden to bring in any sort of equipment, excluding things refined from your own costume and magic. Of course, you are not allowed to bring in fire-extinguishing agent.”

“So then was this against the rules?”

“No… If my memory serves me, Uttakatta was one of the participants who helped with the firefighting earlier. I think she most likely pilfered some extinguishing agent then.”

“Is that allowed, rulewise?”

“It’s a very gray area, but it’s not formally against the rules.”

Rolling over the rocky area, groaning, yelling, crying, Flamey expressed her pain in every way imaginable, but nevertheless she picked herself up in less than ten seconds. She was shuddering wildly, teeth clenched, drool running from the corners of her mouth, her breathing ragged. Somehow holding up her spinning head, she looked up at the sky with unsteady eyes to gasp.

Countless cloudy white bubbles filled the area around her.

“Wai—”

She wasn’t able to finish. The rush of bubbles popped one after another, with Flamey in their center, white powder sprinkling upward as a shrill screech ripped through the night, then eventually faded away.

“Lake of Fire Flame Flamey is out! Uttakatta has jumped to the top!”

“No, it doesn’t look like it.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Since the upper-ranked competitors are taking each other out, the scores are fluctuating quite intensely.”

“So at this stage, we really don’t know anymore, huh?”

“For now, I’ll send in one of my wings to help fight the fire.”

Flamey did good work for me, in the end. Well, though I’m sure she never imagined that what she pulled would lead to her master being in trouble.

I probed the area to see if anyone was around.

Archfiend Pam’s wings were now gone. They had all left the tent.

The mascot was grumbling to himself as he was forced to work. Archfiend Pam was doing her commentary, and the annoying announcer was doing her announcing. The mascot and announcer were no problem. At most, I would wish for them to bemoan their poor luck for getting hit along with her.

Archfiend Pam looked at the clock. It was just about over. There had been a lot to worry about with the exercise this year.

She was aware that this was because she was doing something that she wasn’t used to doing. She would have preferred to avoid doing this kind of work if she could, but since it was an order from the Department of Diplomacy, her hands were tied.

She hadn’t heard that Marika or Cranberry had been knocked out of the running. They were both attention-getting people, so if either was to lose, it would come up in conversation. If Pam hadn’t heard about it, maybe they were still swinging at each other. She envied them a bit.

“And now, finally, the rankings near the top appear to be in a state of chaos,” said Pammy.

“Since only those who have gathered many flags are left. You can aim to turn the tables just by defeating one person.”

“The totals have been counted, pon.”

Perhaps Cranberry’s mascot Fav had gotten sick of waiting so long, as he’d been managing the flag count to kill time. It seemed he didn’t really care how his own master was doing right now.

“Current first place: Uttakatta,” Fav said.

Line after line of letters and numbers came up on her magical phone. Fav periodically beat his wings, making golden powder scatter each time. Eventually, there was a shrill synthetic call of “Pon,” as the lines of characters and Fav paused at the same time.

“Ah, first place switched, pon. With a lead of three flags, Styler Mimi—”

“And here comes Styler Mimi!” Pammy cried.

“It’s changed again. With a lead of one flag, Umbrain—”

“And now Umbrain is racing ahead!”

There was no prize money for anyone but number one, and there were no certificates of honor or trophies awarded, either. Not only that, since second place and below wouldn’t even be announced, even if you tried to brag about it, it wouldn’t be anything but your own word. So the majority would aim for the top by whatever means possible, making the competition for first place intense.

“It’s an absolute free-for-all, pon. The high scorers are…Umbrain, Duchess, Twin Stars Cutie Altair, Blue Comet, Uttakatta, Sanae Utatane, Maiya, Barter Ranko, Moru-Moru Morgue, Styler Mimi, and Puchi-Devy. That’s everyone who seems like they could make first place in the end, pon.”

“Who will win first place?! The countdown to the end has already begun!”

Archfiend Pam touched a fingertip between her eyes. Her brow was knotted.

The Archfiend Cram School crowd wasn’t doing as well as expected. The only one in a position to aim for first place was Cutie Altair, and the names of the other students and graduates weren’t even coming up.

Even if it had been inevitable that the top two most talented candidates—Cranberry and Marika—had clashed at the beginning, everyone else was a problem. Amy and Monako had finished up early and then gone to fool around in the first-aid tent. Right as Archfiend Pam had been yelling at them, saying that if they had so much spare time, they should go help out the first-aid team, they’d disappeared. Pam had not received word that Amy and Monako had joined up with the first-aid team. And it wasn’t much different with the other students and graduates, either.

Archfiend Pam wondered. Maybe it was her own fault. Telling them not to be reckless with outside participants was tantamount to saying to go easy on them. So then it wouldn’t be odd for them to have interpreted that as, “You don’t have to get serious. You can slack off.”

So long as the strongest won, Pam was fine with it. She was fine with it, but with the end now in fact nigh, she did find herself wishing just a few more Archfiend Cram School people were in the running.

Even if she didn’t show her bias, she couldn’t lie to her heart.

Archfiend Pam took her left hand, pressed it between her eyes, and placed it on the side of her head. She felt feverish.

The Archfiend Cram School crowd, Pam included, had underestimated the outside participants. Don’t be reckless with the guests? Just who did she think she was? These were not people to be underestimated. Even Pam, who’d been the one to interview the candidates, had failed to notice. This was the result of her misplaced concern that she had to weed them out and make sure they had only those with a minimum level of combat ability.

I’m the one who should be reflecting on her own behavior the most.

Archfiend Pam sank deeper into her chair and looked up at the ceiling of the tent. Her spine crackled, and Pam shot up from her chair, readying herself, facing the desk. Fav hadn’t noticed. The announcer was facing the monitor.

There was a magical girl here. Her face was covered with a thick gas mask. She wasn’t one of the participants. She wasn’t someone Archfiend Pam knew. She’d slid out from underneath the mountain of magical phones. Her costume was all black, and the hair flowing to her back was also black. On her back were two insectoid wings with a black luster, and two long feelers grew from her head. She was a cockroach.

Archfiend Pam understood at a glance that she was an enemy. Pam took a step forward and kicked. She pulverized the desk, sending the magical phones scattering all over in a shower of wood fragments and metal fittings. But the magical girl had already vanished. Archfiend Pam’s excellent eye for movement had caught her motion. The black, cockroach-like magical girl had dived under the magical phones once again, faster than Pam could touch her with her fist. The table was destroyed and the phones scattered everywhere, but the magical girl was not there.

The announcer kicked her chair back and stood. Fav was yelling something.

Archfiend Pam turned around while simultaneously kicking out. The magical girl in black slipped into the crack between the tent and the ground to evade her attack. Was her magic to be able to enter any crack?

Next, she appeared on the other side of the tent. She was a ways away from Archfiend Pam.

The magical girl in black had a metal lump in her right hand. A cable extended from it, and there was a row of some kind of switches on it. It seemed to be some kind of device, but with Archfiend Pam’s meager knowledge of technology, she had no idea what the thing was for. The one thing she did understand was that it was dangerous. Her spine made that sound when something dangerous approached her in a peaceful moment.

If it was a bomb, and it was set off this close, the magical girl in black would certainly be caught in the blast as well. She didn’t have the fanatical bearing of someone who would choose a suicide attack. The air around her was tense and dry. She felt like a professional. If that gas mask was not a decoration, then she was probably going to spray gas. Would it knock Pam out, or paralyze her, or would it be instant death?

The right arm of the girl in black swung down, and she was about to slam the device on the ground. Pam could easily imagine what sort of thing would happen when the device hit.

Even if she blocked it, that would still cause an impact to the device. It wouldn’t necessarily keep the device from activating.

From this distance, if she attacked the magical girl, she wouldn’t make it in time. And even if she did land a hit, the device would still hit the ground.

If she tried to kick the device away, whatever happened on impact would probably be the same as if it hit the ground. She didn’t have the time, the composure, or the knowledge to disassemble and disable it. She also couldn’t run away alone. There were first-aid tents all around.

In other words, no matter what Archfiend Pam did, the device would get hit. And that was just what the magical girl in black had been aiming for. She’d been guiding Archfiend Pam’s movements, placing herself far enough away that Pam wouldn’t make it, in order to accomplish her ultimate goal.

The moment the device was about to fall, someone else moved.

The announcer slid in and caught the device, simultaneously transforming and changing color to become a black, cloth-shaped object, wrapping up the device and the magical girl who had thrown it, then instantly becoming a spherical shape. A sound boomed from deep inside it, followed by a shock that made the black sphere tremble fiercely.

“…What happened, pon?”

“Just a bit of an accident, don’t worry. More importantly, the totals, please,” Pam said to Fav.

Bringing out the wings from her back, Pam examined her surroundings warily. She didn’t particularly get the sense that anything would happen. The magical girl seemed to have been a solo culprit. She hadn’t disappeared from within the sphere, either. Archfiend Pam’s guess that she couldn’t run away if there was no crack for her to slide into must have been correct.

When Pam had been asked to do announcing or commentary for the recording, she’d easily decided on commentary. But all the magical girls who were capable of keeping up with a rapidly changing battle situation to announce along with Archfiend Pam’s commentary had applied to participate in the exercise, so there wasn’t anyone left who could be the announcer. And Pam wouldn’t get in the way of someone who wanted to fight. So, left with no choice, she’d figured she would handle both announcing and commentary herself, and so had transformed one wing into the shape of a magical girl and controlled her, performing both roles by herself. This made it so the announcer was able to keep up with Pam’s swift commentary, too.

Pam had really been laughing at herself for it, thinking it was a very silly thing to do, but it had turned out to be a good idea.

Her attacker must have assumed she was nothing but a commentator. Archfiend Pam stayed on guard as she heard the ending buzzer, and before long, there was a loud and excited crowd outside the tent.

“Results in, pon. With a one-flag lead, Twin Stars Cutie Altair.”

For just a moment, Archfiend Pam thought, I somehow managed to maintain my reputation, and then she was ashamed of herself for it.