Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 12 - Chapter 12

Magical Girl Assassination Project

  Snow White

Deep in a dark alley, facing the cement block wall, was a girl in a uniform, hanging her head.

She had one hand in the canvas bag that hung from her shoulder, and she was fishing around inside it. She kept whispering, “I can’t find it,” and “What am I gonna do?” over and over as she continued searching through the bag. There weren’t many people passing by this residential area at night, where the streetlamps barely illuminated anything, and there was no one to help the girl.

Snow White expelled a quiet breath through her nose and walked quietly, as if tiptoeing over wet paper. With silent steps, she approached the girl from behind. When she was practically close enough to touch the girl, she reached her hand into her own bag hanging from her waist and pulled out her weapon, Ruler, before thrusting the butt end into the girl’s pale neck. The girl yelped as her knees buckled, and she dropped her bag.

The contents of her bag spilled out. A pen, a handkerchief, a coin purse, notepad, phone, some kind of key—and then a blackish metal lump rolled over the asphalt with a thud and a clunk. It had a humorous, very cartoonish design, but it was a handgun.

The girl staggered but still leaped for the gun. Snow White moved reflexively, but the girl was slightly closer.

Snow White could hear the voice of the girl’s heart saying, I can’t let her take it.

The girl’s hand touched the gun.

Her heart spoke again: I can’t let her have it, no matter what.

Snow White flung out her leg in desperation. She kicked the girl’s hand and the gun both, knocking the weapon away. Through her boot, she felt the sensation of the bones in the back of the girl’s hand breaking, and she heard her smothered scream. This was a magical girl she was dealing with. Swallowing her disgust, Snow White swung her weapon up. She smacked the handle down on top of the head before her. This time, the girl passed out, collapsing on the road. Snow White couldn’t hear the voice of her heart, either.

Now unconscious, the girl was unable to maintain her transformation, and her magical-girl body returned to human. The glossy black hair that went down her back became a short brown bob. Her clothing didn’t change—she was still in a school uniform. She must have put on a uniform from the neighborhood middle school after switching to her magical-girl form.

Snow White was about to lift the girl up, but after bending halfway over, she stopped. She suddenly wondered if it might be a bad idea to just touch her like this. Maybe she should be a little more cautious. The girl might be an amateur, but Snow White figured she should be careful, just in case she struck back, however unlikely that was.

Snow White gently flipped the girl over with a hup. Her facial features and figure placed her in her midtwenties, and the school uniform looked more like a costume.

After tightly tying up the girl—no, the woman—Snow White tossed her into her bag. She also tossed the woman’s bag and its contents inside her own, and finally, she picked up the gun that she’d kicked to the edge of the gutter.

It was round, like a balloon filled with air, and black like it had been painted all over with India ink, with a decorative snake wrapped around it. It was in the style of a revolver, with magic bullets loaded in it.

The bullets would turn whatever they hit to stone. They would make anything living or inanimate hard as rock and turn it into a stone statue, and of course it would also die. It was simple and easy to understand—and lethal.

The gun she held in her hand was shaking slightly. Snow White took a deep breath into her gut and grunted as she tensed up. Her hand stopped shaking, as did the gun.

She’d managed to learn how the gun worked because her opponent had unconsciously imagined it being stolen and used on her. If, rather than just passively listening to the voice of someone’s heart, Snow White initiated an action to listen in on them, she could acquire even more information. But even simply initiating that action made her feel breathless, and hearing their voices—never mind being breathless, she’d feel ready to stop breathing entirely. Back with Frederica, and this time as well, the voices she’d heard had all, without exception, been frightening. She felt like her spirit would break.

The one who had carried this gun had been earning money by killing. She’d figured that Snow White was a good magical girl, and that if she pretended to be someone in trouble, she’d catch Snow White somewhere, and so had been dangling her fishing line. If she failed to catch Snow White, she’d planned to gradually make more of a scene to draw attention to herself. And if that happened, she had no hesitation or guilt about dragging the townspeople into it, too.

And this wasn’t the only magical girl who thought of human lives as mere pawns. Before catching this gunslinger, Snow White had defeated another magical girl, an assassin who’d tried to take out Snow White after a large bounty had been placed on her head. She had called Ripple, who was out of the prefecture doing work related to the Magical Kingdom, and who had given her strict orders: “I’m coming back right away, so just hide—don’t even think about trying to fight.”

Was that the right choice? Despite her training from Ripple, Snow White was overwhelmingly lacking in real combat experience—in fact, she doubted she even had enough training. It had gone well with Frederica, but she wouldn’t necessarily succeed this time. It was reckless for someone with only superficial knowledge to fight professionals.

But if the town would be dragged into it, then she couldn’t run away. Ripple had been worried about her safety, but Snow White absolutely didn’t want anyone to get hurt, die, or be murdered—least of all by a magical girl. Taking another deep breath, she firmed up her back and knees.

Snow White lifted her gaze to the cloudy sky. She could hear the voices of people’s hearts.

She leaped from a cement block wall up to the roof of a covered walkway, then raced from roof to roof, heading for the Jounan district. It was a red-light district in N City that was particularly lively at night. Around this time of day, the voices of the heart here were louder than in any other part of the city.

Snow White could hear not only voices of the heart but actual voices, too. There were dazzlingly bright lights, crowds of people, and the smell of people and food mixed with alcohol. The Jounan district had once been under the control of Calamity Mary, who hadn’t allowed other magical girls to enter, but now it was under Snow White’s jurisdiction.

After racing up the side of a building to the roof, from there she leaped to another roof, jumping down from a sex business with glaring neon lights to land on one knee in a back alley. She lifted her head and turned her gaze to the street.

She stood up and, as she caught her breath, headed for the exit of the alleyway. With the dust hanging around her lit by the faint glow that peeked between the buildings, she walked straight ahead, then paused. The voices of the hearts in this area were moving strangely. Snow White clenched her fists, struck her knees, calmed her breathing, and steeled herself to step out under the lights of the main road. The bystanders immediately stared at Snow White.

Here they come.

Passing under the arm of a playboy-looking guy in a brightly colored shirt as he reached out for her, she sidestepped to evade the commuter bag that came swinging from a man in a double-breasted suit who looked like an office worker in his fifties—then right ahead a group of expressionless suits surged toward her from either side, and Snow White jumped with only the power of her calves to cross over their heads and stand on top of a guardrail. All of their physical capabilities were typical for humans, and simply evading them wasn’t difficult.

Snow White inclined her ears to the voices. Everyone in the area was being controlled. The voices of their hearts were dull and monotonous. They were only after Snow White, coming for her with no regard for their own safety. Only one person was worrying about their own safety. That heart alone was saying various things—to not let the target get away, to keep its own location from being discovered, to make the control of its magic precise.

Snow White somersaulted to avoid the fist thrust at her from behind, and while in midair, she checked all around. When she saw everyone in sight breaking into a run toward her, she sprinted into a lane to the side of a credit union—and an instant later, a vehicle went over the guardrail and crashed into the building. The zombielike crowd climbed over the vehicle, swarming toward her. In the middle of the lane, Snow White stopped in her tracks. Running away wouldn’t get her anywhere. She raced toward the pack of people coming for her and leaped in, slipping past limbs and bodies. There were a lot of them, and avoiding hurting any of them held her back, but this was easy compared with sparring with Ripple. Before, fear of the numbers might have brought Snow White to her knees. But she wasn’t the same person now that she’d been before. She didn’t slow down, sliding under a stalled vehicle to slip past it.

While running and jumping, she’d been listening closely to locate that voice that was worried about itself. Since the other voices were all in motion, it was actually easy to tell. It was the one that wasn’t moving, staying in place.

Coming up from under the car, Snow White sped up, becoming one with the weapon she held in her right hand as she charged, crossing the lanes to the monument on the sidewalk on the other side—something the mayor had apparently asked a famous sculptor to make for the city—to pierce the statue through with Ruler’s handle, slamming the butt into the stomach of the magical girl hiding behind it.

With stone fragments scattering, she left her weapon stuck in the statue and swiftly circled to the other side. As the girl there was falling, an expression of shock on her face, next Snow White kneed her in the gut to knock her out before kicking the antenna atop her head, breaking it off. Now she couldn’t emit her signal to control people, for the time being. Snow White tied her up and tossed her into her bag, along with Ruler.

The voice of the girl’s heart, which had been talking about how she would use people as shields to take a safe position, how she would manage to escape if her shields were destroyed—just listening had been unpleasant—could now no longer be heard.

Setting her toes on a window frame, Snow White jumped, leaping from frame to frame to stand on the iron fence of a roof to look down. The brainwashed people who’d essentially been made to act as meat shields forgot that they’d almost been used up and thrown away, or maybe they hadn’t noticed, and they were yelling things like “What happened?!” and “What’s going on?!” at each other. Some had their phones out and were trying to record the scene, while others looked like they were calling ambulances or police.

Snow White exhaled all the air in her lungs. More were coming. She couldn’t stick around.

Jumping off the iron fence, Snow White somersaulted to avoid the pale-green cone-shaped objects that came flying at her from behind, spinning her weapon to repel the attacking cones. The tiny cones were about an inch tall, with a base diameter of less than an inch, and they came at her one after another. Not just ten or twenty. Even just at a glance, there were a hundred, five hundred, or maybe more; the cones were practically all she could see. She dodged left and right to avoid the approaching cones that reminded her of a school of fish.

In a string of strikes and parries, part of the stomach of her costume ended up shredded. She restrained her agitation. She couldn’t stop; the cones were keeping up with her. When they hit the iron fence, they ripped it to shreds, and when they engulfed a concrete wall, they dug clean into it. Jumping and leaping, she dodged and evaded.

Maybe this was what skyfish looked like if they were real. The unearthly sight of these cones, which looked a lot like chocolate candies or art objects, swarming through the air was dizzying.

The flock of cones momentarily paused in their pursuit before scattering slightly. They undulated, rotating clockwise high in the air, and each section changed its speed: one part faster, one part at a constant speed, and one part slower, and before you knew it, the flock was separated into five sections. Snow White listened and watched closely, following the movements of one group. Group A was ahead of her, group B was behind, group C was on her right, D was on her left, and E was directly above, each occupying a different position from which to strike her.

As comical as they appeared, these cones were lethal; they could even kill a magical girl. If Snow White made the smallest of mistakes, her life would be forfeit.

The Koyuki Himekawa inside her head was sobbing, I’m scared, I’m scared. Snow White scolded her, telling her, They’re slower than Ripple, weaker than Ripple, not as scary as Ripple, and then she moved. Hopping a half step to the right, she braced her legs, then raced out for the opposite side. The group of cones coming at her from the left side wobbled slightly.

She was managing to move like she had in training. I can do this, she thought as she tightened her grip on Ruler’s handle.

Taking advantage of the moment’s opening when the whole swarm was unsettled, the instant before she made contact with the enemy, she jumped, jumping over the flock to swing her weapon, mowing down the whole rear section of the group with her blade. A shriek like a file scraping along her soul struck her eardrums, and after Snow White landed, she shook her head.

That section of the cone flock landed weakly on the ground, and the surrounding groups gathered in the same way. Filling up the gaps between them, they made the shape of a human figure like a potato that had boiled apart, and it gradually took proper shape to become a fallen girl in a long-sleeved T-shirt packed with English letters, jeans, and pale-brown pigtails—the sort of girl you might see anywhere.

The girl had used her magic to transform her own body into cone-shaped objects, then created a large number of duplicates of identical shape and function and moved them as a mass.

Snow White grabbed the girl by her collar and dragged her up, tied her up, and put her in the bag. Though there had been just one main body in the flock of hundreds of cones, Snow White had heard her voice saying, I’ll be in trouble if my main body is attacked, so I’ll place it somewhere that doesn’t stand out, making it completely clear to her which cone she should attack.

“Snow White!”

The next had come.

She turned to face who had called out to her: a girl with horns, a dragon tail, a toned figure, a knight-themed costume, and, most of all, a large sword. Snow White’s heart leaped violently in her chest. The girl looked just like Snow White’s old partner. Snow White scowled. Weapon in hand, she prepared herself for a fight.

“What’s wrong, Snow White?”

Snow White saw this as nothing more than an illusion, a bit of infantile harassment—this magical girl hadn’t even transformed into Snow White’s old partner; her magic just automatically showed whoever the opponent most didn’t want to attack. When she’d heard the voice of her heart, she’d known this would happen. It wasn’t actually La Pucelle. She told herself this firmly. But though she should have understood that, her body wasn’t listening to her. La Pucelle walked right up to the tip of her blade. Snow White tensed her knees to keep them from shaking.

As the magical girl reached out to her blade, Snow White thrust toward her, and when her opponent backed away right before the thrust connected, Snow White also leaped back. La Pucelle’s expression went from surprise to twisting in a nasty smile, and her form gradually melted and changed into a different shape. Snow White did not avert her eyes, watching. It could never have been La Pucelle. She’d known that to begin with.

“No matter how tough someone is, that’ll still surprise them for a second.” The large sword became a naginata. The knight-style costume transformed into the style of a Sengoku warrior. “Impressive that you fought back, not the least bit rattled.”

She swung her naginata, which was dressed up in floral decorations, and with two sharp swishes of her blade brought the tip to point at Snow White. Snow White did the same, swinging her weapon up and at the ready.

She had felt rattled, and hesitant. She just hadn’t shown it. The Koyuki Himekawa inside her heart was still crying.

“Heh-heh… Well then, let’s fight fair and square,” said her opponent.

“Isn’t it strange for someone who’s been forced to fight because they just failed at a cowardly sneak attack to say ‘fair and square’?”

The samurai girl smirked, and the wing-shaped part of her face mask rattled. When she opened her mouth like she was going to say something, Snow White thrust at her, was knocked aside, then attacked with a succession of thrusts to have her attacks returned, the opponent’s blade swinging at her with a slamming strength. Shredded iron fence, concrete fragments, and exposed rebar were tossed into the sky one after another, colliding between the two of them.

The flower accessory that decorated Snow White’s head was flicked away. The tie at her neck was cut off, and a crack ran near her right elbow and spurted blood. She was listening to the voice of her opponent’s heart, ignoring all her feints and narrowing it down to only her actual attacks, but even then, she couldn’t handle it all. She gradually backed up, but the enemy matched her steps and came forward, preventing her from getting out of range. Her opponent slammed her weapon, and when Snow White just about dropped Ruler, the samurai girl aimed for her shins with a sweep—hearing the voice of her heart, Snow White desperately evaded, only to be met with a rising slice from low up to her chin, and Snow White flung her body back into an arch, leaping backward to somehow avoid it. Had she not heard the voice of her opponent’s heart, she would’ve died at any moment.

Death was closing in. Her head couldn’t handle the voice from her opponent’s heart. Nausea welled up in her.

Since they were using similar weapons, Snow White felt keenly and painfully just how much stronger the other girl was. Unlike Snow White, who had borrowed someone else’s weapon out of necessity—and even now it was difficult to say she managed to use it well—her opponent had wielded the same weapon ever since she’d first become a magical girl.

From each and every one of her moves—thrust, sweep, riposte—her training and combat experience came across stronger and more clearly than the voice of her heart. Snow White could picture her lifestyle: training every single day with the goal of being stronger than her opponents, turning her back to helping people, thinking it a foolish idea and giving it no notice as she immersed herself neck deep in combat. She was strong, fast, intense, flexible, graceful, and had a wealth of experience and a strong heart.

And she wasn’t just strong. She used her magic in order to wrench openings for herself.

The shape of the samurai suddenly twisted and vanished, and now it was a monochromatic Alice in Wonderland standing there. Though she and Snow White were near the same height, she slouched quite a lot, so her eye level was lower. She stared up at Snow White with heavily bagged eyes as, with no windup, she thrust forward with the street sign grasped in her right hand. Snow White backstepped, and her boot heel touched the iron railing. It sent a shudder through the whole fence, making a grating sound. The black-and-white Alice got a slimy smile—one the real one would definitely never have gotten—and swung the street sign vertically. Even though it hadn’t even connected, the concrete was split open. Alice transformed back into the armored warrior.

“So it doesn’t work after all, huh? That’s odd. Normally, it gets to people a little more.”

Her opponent was very calm about this fight. After all, Snow White was weaker than she.

“Word has it you can hear the inner voices of people in trouble…but I wonder about that. It doesn’t seem limited to those who are in trouble. Am I wrong?”

Snow White was lacking in strength, in experience, and in skills. She’d felt the same thing when she’d fought with Pythie Frederica, too. Ripple had been there that time. Ripple wasn’t here now. There was just Snow White. She was scared. This was frightening. She wanted to run away. But she couldn’t. The Snow White who would just cry without doing anything was no more. She had gone. Snow White gritted her teeth. No more regrets.

“Whatever—if we fight until I kill you, then I’ll find out, whether you like it or not.”

“Would you please stop running your mouth?” Snow White asked.

The armored warrior laughed, face guard rattling. “Yeah, fair enough. Pardon my manners.”

“Are you like this when you talk with Kenichirou, too?”

The expression covered by the face guard of the helmet stiffened up for a moment. The armored warrior hurriedly dodged the concrete chunks Snow White kicked up. That movement was lacking her earlier calm. Snow White swung her weapon to follow up by flinging three concrete chunks at her, then charged straight ahead with all her strength—or so she made it seem, before she ran in the opposite direction. In other words, she ran away.

The disquieted voice of her opponent’s heart was dumbfounded for a moment before it all converged in one direction: anger, toward Snow White. With a short curse, the samurai girl gave chase.

They leaped from building to building. Despite being in heavy armor, the enemy ran faster. Gradually, the voice of her heart drew closer.

Along with the urge to vomit came the understanding of just how effective it was to use someone her opponent cared about as a tool to shake her heart. Just by listening to the voice of her heart and casually bringing up his name, she’d made the enemy lose her presence of mind. She was now a dark coalescence of murderous intent in pursuit of Snow White.

That voice of the heart was close. Now was the time. Jumping off a round water tank, Snow White slid along a rain gutter to drop to a roof, going flat down on the spot like a frog. A heartbeat later, a ray of light streaked past, and Snow White rolled to the right. The armored warrior thrust out with her naginata, but Snow White evaded that by a narrow margin as well, and her hair was only slightly singed by the beam of light, with no actual damage done.

A taunt flew at her. Leaping from one building over, coming over two metal fences, was a magical girl holding a shining sphere the size of a human head. When she landed, the semitransparent spheres that decorated her whole costume clinked together and rang. In contrast with the light, bell-like sounds of the balls, her expression was twisted up in an expression of utter irritation. What Snow White could hear of the voice of her heart wasn’t much different from what came across from her expression and taunt. It wasn’t pleasant to listen to, but it was thanks to clearly hearing the voice of her heart that Snow White had been able to lead her to this place.

Under her left arm, she held a large sphere that was three times larger than the decorations on her costume as she made an exaggerated shrug. The little spheres clinked with the motion, ringing again. The costume underneath the little spheres was purple, and the ribbon on her head was green. She looked like a bunch of grapes. “Just what kind of reflexes do you gotta have, avoiding that?”

The armored samurai retrieved her naginata, sending concrete chunks flying toward the grapes magical girl. A succession of light rays fired from the large sphere to meet the chunks midair, turning them into a line of smoke. Grapes girl huffed, and the armored samurai indignantly pointed the tip of her naginata at her. “You vicious cur.”

“What?” grapes girl shot back.

“Don’t interfere. This is my target.”

“Oh, bullshit. It’s obviously first come, first serve.”

“In that case, the one who found her first gets priority.”

“Moron! Obviously, the one to kill her first takes all, ass-for-brains!”

“This target knows too much, and she opened her big fat mouth.”

“Nobody cares about your stupid reasons, you rusty museum piece.”

The armored samurai thrust her naginata forward, blade pointed upward. The sphere rose, swaying in front of the grapes girl as if it were blocking the way. It made an equilateral triangle with five-yard sides that included Snow White, but both the samurai girl’s and the grapes girl’s attention had been distracted from her.

Though Snow White tried to smother her fear, there was a limit to that. Pouring further fear over it, telling herself she had to move or she would die without becoming the magical girl she wished to be, she made it fuel to propel herself. Using the voices of their hearts, gazes, the movements of arms and legs, everything as material, she searched for the narrow route that would lead to her victory.

…It’s here.

A hair before the heightened tension between the two other magical girls was ready to explode, Snow White leaped backward. Her left hand was on the handle of her weapon, while her right thrust into her bag.

The armored samurai raced for Snow White, and at the same time, the large sphere flew through the air.

As it flew, it changed shape. The sphere swelled and twisted, its tip becoming pointed and sharp. It made a soft-looking heart shape. As it transformed, it gathered light. In midair, the armored samurai turned the other way, twisting her body around. Snow White tugged the pin out of the fire extinguisher she’d pulled from her bag.

“Blazing Ray of Love!” the grapes girl cried. A flash of light followed.

Snow White sprayed white powder over the whole area. She felt the sound of a collision. There was a smothered shriek, followed by a shrill yell. Then a rising smell of something burning.

All sound vanished, as if time had stopped. Snow White silenced her breathing and waited patiently. The powder scattered. Then cleared.

The white powder that had filled her whole field of vision thinned, and two magical girls appeared.

One had fallen on the ground. There was a yoroi-doshi sword thrust into her stomach. She was moaning, her hands pressed against the place where she’d been stabbed, trying to stop the bleeding. It was the grapes girl. The object that had been in the shape of a heart returned to its original form as a sphere to weakly roll on the ground. It was now a bland gray color.

The other girl was standing. She was tilted diagonally, on the verge of collapse, but she was still on her feet. Black smoke trailed from spots all over her body, her armor was sooty, and her right shoulder guard in particular was melted. Of course, the flesh underneath would not be unscathed, and even just the parts that were visible seemed pretty badly burned. The voice of her heart was just about screaming.

But still, she clenched her teeth and would not fall. The armored samurai tried to lift her naginata to point at Snow White, her eyebrows coming together. She was confused. Of course she was. Snow White was inside the cloud of white extinguishing powder with an invisibility cloak over her shoulders.

And there was one more thing.

From underneath the cloak, Snow White had raised a black, rounded gun. With the gun pointed at the enemy, her fingers were on the snake decoration to support it. She pulled the trigger. At just about the same instant as the gunshot, the armored samurai moved, crouching down to hold her left hand up in front of her face. She blocked all five bullets with the back of her gauntlet and her breastplate.

The shots had been fired by an invisible enemy, and she’d moved, reacting to the sound, but she’d made it in time anyway. That was the sort of enemy she was. She could even take being shot at—and it was precisely because Snow White had understood it wouldn’t kill her that her finger had been able to pull the trigger. She tossed away the gun and took Ruler in hand again in one smooth motion.

The armored samurai crushed concrete underfoot as she stepped forward, swinging down with all her strength.

But the armor covering her torso had been petrified, and, failing to keep up with her movements, it shattered. Stone flakes scattered away. Her gauntlets peeled off. Her breastplate broke open. With her center of gravity suddenly changed, she lost her balance but still didn’t drop her weapon. She took in a breath, then swung her naginata.

Looking up at the naginata coming down toward the top of her head, Snow White took half a step back. The force of the air coming from the blade alone made a vertical slice in her invisibility cloak, and blood spurted from her forehead, a few shredded hairs dancing in the sky. If the enemy had stepped even a few inches closer, Snow White’s face would have been sliced open. But the armored samurai was too off balance to make it those few inches forward.

Snow White let her opponent swing through her missed face strike, knocking aside her weapon during her evasive movement, slicing at the enemy in her forward stance to hit her shin. She cut through the shin guard, which was exhausted from being heated, and with that one strike reached the bone.

Anticipating a push inward and using it to slice at the opponent’s shins was a move that she’d learned from the voice of the enemy’s heart. Normally, a technique that she’d just learned without practicing first would not have succeeded. After throwing everything at her—the sphere-using magical girl who’d been lying in wait, the invisibility cloak, the magic gun, her ability to hear the voices of hearts, and her training with Ripple to fight Frederica—only then had she finally bought these few inches and landed a hit.

Turning the blade of her weapon backward when the enemy pitched forward, Snow White struck her once, twice, three times in the back of the head and kept beating her on her helmet. Once Snow White was no longer able to hear the voice of her heart, she finally stopped her battering, drew back her weapon, thrust it onto the roof, and leaned on it. It was a struggle to even stay on her feet. But she couldn’t fall yet.

She could hear the voice of a heart. It was racing toward her at intense speed. She turned in the direction of the voice. By the time she saw the magical girl leaping toward her from above the building, she was already right in front of her. She was frighteningly fast.

The magical girl had a pair of steel fans hanging from her waist. Her eyes were so cold, you couldn’t sense any warmth in them at all. Even just looking at her, Snow White felt a penetrating chill in her heart, and a shudder rose from her feet. There were absolutely no weaknesses in the way she moved. At a glance, Snow White was certain: If they fought now, there was no way she could win.

The magical girl with the fans approached one step, two, and with the third step, two yards away, she stopped. Whether running or walking, she always maintained a balance with her whole body. The voice of her heart was a calm one, too. “I’m Fan Lit Fan, from the Inspection Department. I take it you’re under attack.”

Snow White could tell from the voice of her heart that this was the person who had rushed over because a connection of Ripple’s had made a report to that place called the Inspection Department. Snow White let out a deep sigh.

Sliding her gaze to the magical girl who was pressing the blade thrust into her stomach and moaning, then to the magical girl who’d had a dent beaten into her helmet, Snow White dropped her eyes to the bag at her waist and patted it. “These two aren’t the only ones. There are four others.”

She wished this magical girl with the Inspection Department had arrived a little faster, but she kept the thought to herself. This was a thousand or ten thousand times better than the time with Cranberry, when she hadn’t even known whom to report to.

She pulled out several more detransformed magical girls: the girl who turned into cones, the girl who could control people, and the girl with the gun, and then, finally, a girl in a tracksuit. This last one—the magical girl with bear ears—had been the start of it all.

She had attacked Snow White as a giant bear. Snow White had somehow fought her off, and then, by hearing the voice of her heart, she had found out that there was a bounty on her head, and so she’d contacted Ripple, outside the prefecture.

“Before arresting them, they have to be treated with first aid, at least, or they’ll be in trouble,” said Snow White. “Do you have that sort of magic?”

“No, but I do have a magical first-aid kit,” Fan replied.

“I’ll help.”

“Let’s treat you first.”

“I’ll be all right. The one stabbed in the stomach is wounded the worst. Start with her.” A little sigh slipped from Snow White’s lips. She’d prioritized someone hurt worse than she. She felt as if this was the first magical-girl-like thing she had said that day.

Taking a swing at someone from behind, knowing a car was going to crash right there and doing nothing about it, knowing there were people inside a building as she selected it as her site of battle, attacking the illusions of La Pucelle and Hardgore Alice, using someone an opponent cared about to upset them, cutting the flesh and bone of magical girls with her blade, and engaging in bloody battle were all things she didn’t want to do. She didn’t think magical girls should be doing things like that. But even so, she had to do them. And she would have to do them in the future, too.

Even before she’d fought with Pythie Frederica, Snow White had gotten the feeling that after fighting, she’d gotten stronger. And she felt like she was stronger after the fight today than she’d been before it, too. Maybe it was her imagination. But if it was perhaps not her imagination, then she would have to fight still.

Hearing a cry of surprise, she looked beside her. Fan Lit Fan’s expression hadn’t changed, but she couldn’t smother her inner voice.

As Snow White restrained the limbs of the moaning magical girl, she tilted her head. “Is there something surprising?”

Though Fan was a little embarrassed by Snow White’s sudden remark, she didn’t let that show on her face. Maintaining her “It’s nothing big” pose, she replied quietly, “Well…there’s some famous outlaws here, so a bit.”

“Famous? Really?”

Eyes running over the fallen magical girls, Fan nodded. “Lycanis, Head Shokko, Merun, Muleina…Lady Kajin, A-Grade Grillette. Anyone from the Inspection Department would think, That one, huh? just from hearing any of their names. Some are even members of antiestablishment factions or Archfiend Cram School dropouts. When I heard you were the Magical-Girl Hunter, I was still fairly skeptical about it, but…”

“The Magical-Girl Hunter?”

Fan’s brow wrinkled for just an instant before she quickly returned to her original expressionless mask. But no matter how she tried to smooth it over, Snow White could hear the voice of her heart. She could also hear how the term “Magical-Girl Hunter,” which had been used by Pythie Frederica, who was under investigation, was being used in the Inspection Department.

If that was how it was, it made some things clearer. When Snow White considered who might be pleased to see a bounty placed on her head, slotting in Pythie Frederica made the most sense. Making her fight and making her stronger. Having her called the Magical-Girl Hunter Snow White, the one who took down magical girls, and making her out as someone to be feared by the wicked.

Snow White had thought before that if there was a culprit, it would turn out to be a Cranberry sympathizer who resented her, but it seemed now that was not the case. Snow White didn’t know if Frederica had managed to extend her influence in spite of her capture, or if she’d arranged for it before her arrest, but she figured Frederica had done it.

A-Grade Grillette, the magical girl whose bleeding was being stopped, moaned in pain, but Fan paid that no mind at all as she poured liquid medicine on the wound. Even without hearing the voice of her heart, Snow White could tell that Fan was thinking she should suffer a bit. It seemed like Fan Lit Fan could be trusted somewhat.

Snow White removed her right hand from the girl, and with her left, she used her magical phone. After sending Ripple the brief message I’m safe, the person from the Inspection Department has come, she snapped her phone shut. “Fan.”

“…What is it?”

“The magical girl who was the agent for the request for my assassination… I’m referring to the person who has been managing one of those illegal websites to make money.”

There was an employment assistance website that operated under the pretense of helping magical girls who’d been driven out of work and had even been made with the financial support of aristocrats of the Magical Kingdom. Under the surface, it was also an illegal dark web site for paying members who made magical contracts with the operators. That site had become a social hub for those magical girls who would take on dirty work for money—or so she had heard.

“We have identified her,” Fan replied. “We’ve mustered all the forces of the Inspection Department and are chasing her down.”

“It sounds like you haven’t found her yet.”

“…I’m not at liberty to speak about it with someone outside the department.”

Even if she wasn’t able to say, Snow White still heard the voice of her heart. A troublesome criminal had been continuously outwitting the Magical Kingdom. Rumors said she had some kind of patron who helped her, and there was nobody better when it came to running and hiding. She’d given the Inspection Department grief many times.

“Snow White,” said Fan.

“What is it?” Snow White responded, face still turned down. She was thinking about what she should do next. She didn’t try to hide that her mind was elsewhere.

That must have gotten across to Fan, but her tone never changed as she continued, “Ultimately…”

“Yes.”

“If a magical girl is considered capable, then she will have dangerous missions forced on her, and she’ll trip up somewhere along the line. If you don’t want to trip up, then you shouldn’t make a show of your competence. Being modest and quiet is fundamental to being a professional magical girl.”

Snow White looked up. Fan did not make to look toward her, pushing the gauze down hard over the wound. Snow White continued to look at Fan’s face for a while before quietly lowering her head. “Thank you very much for the warning.”

“I’m not warning you out of kindness, so any thanks are unnecessary. If I tell you to settle down, then if you do something reckless, I can at least say that I told you off.”

Snow White didn’t respond. She felt as if saying anything more in reply to Fan’s kindness would be crude. Not putting it into words made her squeeze the arm she was restraining harder, making A-Grade Grillette moan in pain.

Fan’s advice was reasonable, but Snow White would act how she chose regardless. If the Inspection Department of the Magical Kingdom couldn’t be relied upon, then she had no choice but to somehow manage on her own. She had nothing but distaste for the nickname Magical-Girl Hunter, but if no one else would hunt, then Snow White had no choice but to be the one. She was not going to let this culprit continue to get away, under the protection of some aristocrat.

After considering this far, Snow White suddenly raised her head. In the distance, she could hear the voice of a heart. It was Ripple. She was worried sick about Snow White. While Snow White felt apologetic, the corners of her lips also relaxed slightly upward.