Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

BY OUR POWERS COMBINED…?

  Nephilia

Her body was throwing a fit, saying it didn’t want to move anymore. A single step made her flesh and bones cry out. Her spirit was wailing that it wanted to get away from this dangerous place and begging to be far from the goddess. Nephilia coaxed her body through its persistent suit to escape and skip out, and she walked. She really didn’t want to loiter around such a dangerous place, but there was no safe place on this island anyway. Besides, there were lots of things she had to do.

Of the large volume of hidden fruit, she retrieved all the ones she’d told Chelsea and Mary about, leaving the rest and praying it wouldn’t be found. If something happened to Ren-Ren, her magic would be undone. She should prepare for the worst.

She was relieved that the fruit was as they had left it, but she was also disappointed that Ren-Ren and Agri hadn’t retrieved any. Nephilia spat some bloody spit into the brush. The grayfruit that wouldn’t fit into her pockets or the plastic bag in her hand she packed into her hood, and the ones that were still left over she tucked into her bone decorations. She was already fed up by the fruit hairs poking her in the back of the head, but the grayfruit were a greater priority now than her comfort. Taking a lesson from Agri’s stinginess, she didn’t leave even one known fruit behind. The grayfruit were important to keep her transformed on this island right now.

Since she had no idea what the situation was now, it was best to have as many allies as possible. And she didn’t just want people who called themselves allies, but absolute allies who were bound by law and contract. The grayfruit would be needed in order to make those.

And if she was going to make her move, then she should do so as soon as possible, given the situation. There was no guarantee something wouldn’t trigger this into turning into an extreme survival-of-the-fittest situation at some point. If they wound up in some Lord of the Flies situation where you could write off murder by saying “It was to protect myself,” then it would be no time for contracts. You couldn’t make a contract with a beast. Nephilia would request protection for herself, Agri, and Ren-Ren while people still remained people, and she would hand over the fruit as compensation. Now she would leave aside the money that had been their initial goal. She wouldn’t let Agri complain about it, either.

The problem was that Agri and Ren-Ren might be in such a bad state, they wouldn’t be capable of even a single complaint. The grayfruit being left there meant that Agri and Ren-Ren hadn’t retrieved any. Say what you liked about their character, neither of them was stupid. They understood the importance of the grayfruit. If they hadn’t had to change location because Ren-Ren hadn’t undone her magic, then that was fine. If that wasn’t the reason, then things were bad. Things were very bad.

The people they had extorted for money using grayfruit—Clantail and Touta and the others—probably didn’t feel favorably toward Nephilia, and Clarissa and Navi couldn’t be trusted at all to begin with. As for Dreamy Chelsea and Pastel Mary, if Ren-Ren’s magic came undone, their goodwill would drop to the floor. Though she wouldn’t describe this situation as “enemies on all sides,” not many here would feel positively toward Nephilia.

And accomplishing her goal of negotiating with people while they remained people would be very difficult for Nephilia on her own. With her total forces of one battered magical girl, dragging one leg to walk, her prices would get beaten down to the floor. Depending on the goodwill of the other party—or rather, on their ill will—she might well wind up with not a protection contract but a slave contract. If she had Ren-Ren or Agri with her, the situation should improve a little.

Thinking this as she walked, she thought with some self-deprecation that it was like she was looking for an excuse to search for Agri and Ren-Ren, and she swallowed. There was a lot less red in her saliva now.

They had two locations where they’d decided they would meet in an emergency. One was a dip in the hilly section a slight distance from the rocky area, and the other was on the way to the main building, by the spring where they’d run into Navi before. If Nephilia were to choose between them, she would take the dip rather than the spring. Thinking about how their potential enemy could be described as looking like the goddess of the spring gave her no desire at all to go to the latter. Agri and Ren-Ren would be thinking the same thing. Surely that was what they would think, if they were alive.

Using humor and sarcasm to keep herself going, Nephilia made her way along. It was extremely difficult to tell who could be trusted and who could not. She couldn’t say for sure that her wits hadn’t been dulled by her injuries or that she wasn’t confused due to fear, but more to the point, she had no information with which to make any judgments. Agri’s belief that the string of incidents that had begun with Maiya’s murder was all an unfortunate accident had been ridiculously off the mark. But that being the case, how much of this was out of malice from Navi? Or had it really been an accident after all? Even guessing based on the talks they’d had with him and what was in the contract was too much for Nephilia. A lawyer was neither a mystery novelist nor a detective.

A shrill cry made her come to a stop, and then she watched, sighing, as a brightly colored bird took flight. Nephilia didn’t have enough energy to think right now, never mind consider these matters. She pulled a grayfruit out of her pocket and bit into it, then returned to her depressing walk. It was a mental strain to keep herself from breaking into a run when she wanted to. Her injuries just made her sadder.

Since Nephilia had enough good sense left that she wouldn’t race off after getting a scare, she continued to walk along slowly. Having to jump a little every time she heard some noise was bad for her body and mind. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t run around. She couldn’t take the shortest route to where she was going, either, and so she tiptoed along with the utmost anxiety as she chose paths where she could hide behind trees, grasses, and rocks, and when she somehow managed to arrive at the hills that were her goal, her nose twitched. A smell was flowing to her on the wind. It was the smell of something burning. The odds were high that the goddess was rampaging close by. Nephilia had to be more cautious.

She crawled along the ground up a hill, moaning in pain the whole way. She’d been using her scythe as a cane, but now she hid it in the grass. Even just carrying it was a burden now.

Whining of Ahhh, it hurts, it hurts, ahhh, it hurts, ahhh, it hurts looped in her head, and she lamented that she hated herself for doing her best even in this state, and when she heaved herself over the top of the hill to look down, she found one good thing and one bad thing.

The good thing was that Ren-Ren was there. The bad thing was that Agri was not there.

Nephilia crawled over the top of the hill, staying low until her head was lower than the peak, and once she was past that point, she stood up and waved at Ren-Ren. Ren-Ren was holding a sort of handmade torch that was lit—so that was the source of the burning smell—and was sharply alert to her surroundings. Ren-Ren noticed her immediately, giving her a carefree smile and waving an arm wide. She flew up too fast for the injured Nephilia to react, coming to her side to support her. Nephilia breathed a sigh of relief. At ease because she had someone supporting her battered body, Nephilia leaned on her, then flinched a bit at the heat of the torch and moved away. Why was Ren-Ren carrying that around in the middle of the day?

“T…tor…?”

Ren-Ren didn’t reply to Nephilia’s question, grimacing sadly. “What awful wounds!”

“H…ur…”

“I’m sure it must hurt. All I’ve got is a handkerchief, but let’s rest over there.”

With Ren-Ren supporting Nephilia, they walked out toward the dip in the hills. Ren-Ren was glad that Nephilia was in one piece—though Nephilia wasn’t intact enough to call it that. Nephilia casually slung her arm around Ren-Ren’s waist as she listened to her talk. Ren-Ren said things like, “Let’s rest over there, did that magical girl like a goddess get you? Thank you for bringing the grayfruit, what did you do with your scythe? If you left it behind, I’ll go get it.” Agri did not feature among these topics.

Ren-Ren avoided touching on Agri to an unnatural degree, and when she brought up what they should do now, the subject of searching for Agri was not included. She never once mentioned the employer she’d been so attached to—it was as if she’d never been there.

The burning smell became even more pungent. Nephilia’s gaze dropped to the torch that blazed high in Ren-Ren’s right hand. She could hear fire crackling and popping. She looked up. Black smoke was blowing from right to left, and she could see the flickering of sparks dancing in the air. It was all burning—the trees of the forest.

“Thi…fire…”

“Mm-hmm. We have the advantage of having lots of grayfruit. But there might still be lots of grayfruit in the forest, and I figured if they find someplace where there are lots growing, then our numerical advantage won’t be an advantage anymore. But if the whole forest burns, then nobody can find a spot like that anymore, right?”

Nephilia’s eyes widened as she looked at Ren-Ren. Ren-Ren looked back at her with an expression that seemed to say, “Is something strange?” A muffled laugh bubbled up from deep in Nephilia’s throat. Sometimes you had to laugh, or you couldn’t go on.

The doubt that had been budding within Nephilia was turning to a certainty. Ren-Ren knew what had happened to Agri. And, knowing that, she wasn’t going to talk about it. Either her heart refused to touch it, or the shock of it had caused a gap in her memory, but either way, Agri was no longer alive. And the fact of Agri’s death was a spice too potent for Ren-Ren.

Nephilia prayed for Agri and breathed a sigh at her partner, whose mental state was even more dicey than her own, despite her injuries, and set her brain cells to work to consider what to do now. If Nephilia proposed to put out the fire, would Ren-Ren listen? There was no water nearby, so that might be difficult to do. Coming to the conclusion that if it became a problem afterward, they could blame it on the goddess, Nephilia offered up one more prayer—that there would be an “afterward.”

  Ragi Zwe Nento

Chelsea was riding on a star that she’d made by gouging out a rock, Mary was astride a sheep, and Ragi clung to Chelsea as the three of them headed to the place where the grayfruit was stored. They said it was a primitive hiding spot, just a hole dug to pack the grayfruit in, with leaves on top. Ragi’s eyes dropped to Chelsea’s feet. She had to be holding back a little, but, being a mage, he felt they were flying at an unbelievable speed. This was not a carpet, protected by magic power to be absolutely safe, or even an airplane, which had some guarantee based on technology—two people’s worth of weight was being supported by a rock ball one size smaller than Ragi’s fist. Chelsea had to have chosen this method of travel since she was sure of her balance, but having only just met her the other day, Ragi felt nothing but doubt as to whether he should trust her to this degree.

“Hey,” he barked at her.

“What’s up?”

“Why would you choose to make such a small ball to ride on? You have your star decoration. Weren’t you riding on that before? A flat star shape is more stable than a ball-shaped rock. And a magical girl’s attached item will be more durable, too.”

Chelsea gave him a sour look, and Ragi panicked. “Face forward! Just how many obstacles do you think there are in the forest?!”

Chelsea faced forward reluctantly, but her expression didn’t change. “Well, that’s not Chelsea’s.”

“It’s not?”

“That should be obvious. If it were originally mine, I wouldn’t have to put magic clear tape on it. It’s because it’s not mine that I used the tape to stick it on.”

Ragi heard Mary mutter, “I thought that was just the aesthetic.” It was loud enough for Ragi to hear, so there was no way Chelsea couldn’t have heard it, but Chelsea didn’t touch on that and continued.

“It was from a friend of my mom’s, you know, and that generation are all such busybodies. Even though I don’t really need it, she shoved it off on me, saying it’d be convenient to have. I figured I should just dump it in my closet, but my mom nagged me about it so much, saying, like, ‘She got that nice present for you, so make use of it.’”

Ragi could hear Mary mutter, “I think it was really convenient.” Chelsea ignored her.

“Look, Dreamy Chelsea is a cute, fancy, and fantastical magical girl. Chelsea doesn’t want to add in any elements that sniff so hard of real life, like ‘a souvenir I got from Mom’s friend.’ That’s why Chelsea”—she flashed the star decoration and put it back in her pocket—“wants to avoid using this as much as possible. It’s okay designwise, so it’s fine to take it out for posing and stuff, though. Also, Chelsea decided today to use it when things get actually dangerous.”

“So you’re using it in the end, huh?” Mary muttered a little louder than before—she must have thought the whoosh of the wind would make it so they couldn’t hear—but Chelsea ignored that.

When Chelsea was being controlled, she’d reminded Ragi of a cat in heat. But now she made him think of a dog whose territory had been invaded. Either way, she was an animal. Chelsea’s fixations were animalistic and foolish, but plenty of people couldn’t abandon their fixations, no matter how petty they seemed to others. Ragi started to get a flash of insight, and he closed his eyes. Covering his vision made him feel the wind even more. He’d tucked his beard into his clothing, but his hair was still fluttering in the wind.

Fixation. That was it. Some people couldn’t let go of their petty fixations. That was common for magical girls. It was also common for mages. A technical expert praised as a genius might incorporate inefficient formulas, despite how objectively pointless they were, puffing out his chest about their perfection.

Ragi thought of the major research projects Sataborn had produced. He hadn’t been a thoroughly efficient worker at all, and he’d pursued hobbies in some areas. Society would forgive you for being an eccentric if you could produce results. And nobody would deny that Sataborn was a talented eccentric. Even if he had accepted support from the Lab, this place was Sataborn’s estate. Sataborn’s inclinations would be the top priorities.

So that means…

“Ahhh!”

“Huhhhh?!”

Ragi’s thoughts were cut off by Chelsea’s and Mary’s shrieks. When he opened his eyes, the star they stood on had already come to a stop. It seemed that he’d been focusing so hard, he hadn’t noticed that the wind was no longer blowing in his face. Not many young whippersnappers these days would be able to concentrate like that, Ragi thought with a snort as he fluttered his cape like a young man to land on the ground. The shrieks hadn’t interrupted him due to a lack of concentration on his part. They had just been so shrill and painful on the ears.

“What’s the matter?” Ragi demanded.

“What do you mean, ‘What’s the matter?’ All the fruit we hid is gone,” said Chelsea.

“I think…Ren-Ren and them must have taken them before we did,” Mary said.

“Those jerks! Agh! They keep pulling nasty stuff over and over!”

The branches and leaves that had been placed over the hole had been moved to the side, and all that was left was the hole, with nothing in it. It had been plumbed right to the bottom, and not even a single stem or drop of fruit juice was left. Chelsea’s shoulders dropped exaggeratedly like a caricature’s, and Mary sighed sadly.

The width of the hole was one head longer than Ragi’s height, while it was half his height in depth. It was a big hole, so Agri’s group must have stored up quite a lot. They were probably still harvesting grayfruit as they found them, too. They certainly had to think it was a perfectly natural thing to do, eliminating the possibility that the fruit would go to others, while increasing the numbers they held. Ragi doubted that Agri and her attendant magical girls had realized that harvesting more grayfruit sped up the rate of consumption—in other words, that this was strangling everyone on the island. If they were all going to steal from each other and harvest to the very last, they were headed for mutual destruction.

He had failed to make an escape using the grayfruit. What should he do now? Should he push them to procure grayfruit regardless and fulfill his initial objective? Or should he change direction?

Perhaps because he’d been acting like a young man, it felt as if his thoughts were moving faster and more clearly. It was always times like this when good ideas came to mind. But for that, he needed material—in other words, information. If there was going to be a change of plans, then he would settle down to focus on this for now.

“There’s something I want to ask,” he said.

Chelsea, with her shoulders drooping, turned around, hands on her hips, with her cheeks puffed up. “I’m feeling down, so you should console me.”

“This is more important.”

“Okay. So?”

“Tell me what you two saw and learned while you were being controlled.”

Chelsea turned to Mary, who folded her arms and tilted her head.

“Just talk to me,” Ragi insisted. “About anything else. Oh, I know—tell me about when I was unconscious. I may already know, but my memory is vague around a certain time, so just tell me everything.”

“You’re kinda weirdly eager about this,” said Chelsea.

“This is important. It affects whether we live or die.”

The three of them sat down facing each other. Ragi prompted them, Chelsea talked, and Mary corrected. Or Mary talked while Chelsea pointed things out. There was a lot of information Ragi had been unable to acquire because he’d been unconscious—information about the land, magical girls, and events. He estimated just how far Sataborn had pushed through with his interests and how the Lab had interfered, sorting things out in his head. When Ragi prompted the girls to tell him anything they had noticed, Pastel Mary talked about how when she’d been going around to distribute the invitations to the heirs, many had voiced doubts about the conditions for coming to the island—the condition about bringing magical girls, specifically. It was indeed fishy, but Ragi had let it go as well, thinking, Well, this is Sataborn. But it was highly suspicious now. Was this also a part of an experiment for which they had wanted to get a number of magical girls as samples? That was an exceedingly unscrupulous idea, but he also thought the Lab was apt to do such a thing. But since magical girls were so rampantly unique that each one could be called a different type, even if you got a number of samples, you could never make statistics from them. There was no way Sataborn and the Lab would not know that, so it was difficult to imagine that the goal of this summons had been an experiment.

In between bouts of talking, they ate grayfruit, personally experiencing that the pace of power consumption was accelerating. With the fruit harvested, the trees were sucking up power in order to make more fruit. Just how much did Navi Ru know about the side effects of the grayfruit? They said he had passed out as well, but still, you couldn’t say for sure he didn’t know. The girls told him that Chelsea’s violence had caused a lot of fruit to fall from the trees, and it didn’t seem like Navi Ru had had anything to do with that. Regardless, one should not make assumptions about the position or goals of that man. It was best to think anything was possible.

I must not give in.

He didn’t know whom he was up against, or even if it was Navi Ru or not. But he didn’t want to come out the loser. He’d been driven into a dead-end job, and even at that position he’d been unable to fulfill his duty and had information stolen. It was humiliation upon humiliation. His pride as a mage would not allow a third humiliation. That’s what his intellect, that’s what his magic was for.

The discussion shifted to stories of Mary’s blunders. Chelsea avoided her own mistakes as much as possible, or tried to act like they hadn’t happened, but she’d go into detail about Mary’s mistakes. She became particularly emotional when she talked about the time a herd of sheep had swallowed up Navi Ru when he’d fallen to the ground, and he’d been jostled around—or, rather, she talked about it like it was a funny story, while Mary cried out in protest.

“It’s not fair to act like I was the only one screwing things up!” Mary cried.

“But you did make a boo-boo there, right?” Chelsea teased.

Ragi wasn’t sure if he’d heard about this before or if this was news to him. His memories of that time were terribly vague.

“B-but, well, look, it started because of you, right, Chelsea?”

“Ahh, here you go blaming it on others. So you’re that kind of magical girl, huh?”

“Stop forgetting what you did yourself! It’s because you ruined that wall!”

“That wasn’t deliberate.”

“Well, yeah, maybe that’s true…but even if it wasn’t, it’s not like you should just get away—”

“Hold it right there.” The mountain of information parted and light shone through. Ragi waved his right hand at Chelsea. “It started because Chelsea ruined the wall—what do you mean by that?”

“Chelsea destroyed the wall,” Mary explained, “and then Mr. Navi was really disappointed.”

“This is about the main building, correct?”

“A-ah, yes.”

Chelsea made some protest, but Ragi wasn’t listening. Chelsea had destroyed a wall, and Navi had been disappointed. Ragi couldn’t see the connection. This was fishy. Why would he feel regret just from someone destroying the wall of the residence? It wasn’t as if he were going to receive the wall as an inheritance.

Was there something there?

It was something important to Navi. Inheritance. Sataborn’s research. Something Navi would know.

Sataborn was a hard-core research nut who had been so dedicated to his work, he’d never even taken a career position. He didn’t want luxury or a social position. He simply wanted to do research. And on a research farm that had originally been there headed by that sort of idiot—in other words, on this island—he had made a facility where he carried out research that couldn’t be made public. Of course the Lab would know where that new facility was. There was no way Navi Ru would not know. As he imagined Navi Ru getting swallowed up by a herd of sheep, the corners of Ragi’s lips twisted up. Chelsea and Mary had stopped their quarrel, and both of them were looking at Ragi—Chelsea curiously, and Mary with bafflement.

“I see it,” Ragi muttered.

“You see what?” Chelsea asked.

“That research nut Sataborn must have been thinking he wanted to put the research facility in his own living space. Getting there using a gate or carpet would take time. He wouldn’t want to waste even that amount of time. It would also take time to transfer the things he needed for his lifestyle to such a facility. He wouldn’t want to waste that time, either. He had the new facility made in the main building, which was his base…most likely in the basement. If one had an eye for security, one would never build it close to one’s own home, but he had hardly a thought for security.”

“Sorry, I don’t really get what you’re talking about,” said Chelsea.

“It wouldn’t be strange for Navi Ru to know where it is. It also makes sense that he would be shocked to see it fall apart. The facility was right underneath, or the collapse went right over the entrance… It’s gratifying just to imagine how he must have felt.”

Ragi wasn’t certain this was true, but he spoke as if this had all really happened. He had to speak with confidence, or the magical girls wouldn’t follow him. Ragi stood up and struck the ground with his staff. It made mud splash up, but he couldn’t be bothered by that.

“We’re going—back to the main building. There should be a hidden facility. Dig up the area that Chelsea made collapse,” he declared, and he was about to look at their reactions when the girls’ expressions suddenly faded. Not just their expressions—everything faded. His field of view flipped over, and then someone caught him, and Chelsea’s shriek and Mary’s cry made him want to plug his ears, but he couldn’t, and then his vision worsened like pale ink had mixed into it, and shivers welled up from within him. His body remembered these symptoms. Thinking that he had to eat grayfruit, he remembered: Oh yes, I’ve just eaten the last one. Even the sun shining right overhead gradually faded and eventually went out.

  Navi Ru

Since Clarissa had found Rareko, Navi proposed that they meet up with them, for starters. Mana more or less accepted, and though she didn’t hide that she was suspicious, it wasn’t as if they had any other particular plan, and the group just sort of wound up heading in that direction in the end. Navi was walking in the lead. Tepsekemei was bobbing along a foot over his head. Mana came behind Navi, and then 7753. The order was reasonable. If they were going to be walking on an island where there was an incomprehensibly violent person wandering around, placing magical girls with their excellent senses at the front and behind and having the mage in the middle of the line made it easy to protect. Making it so that you sacrificed the mage to let the magical girls live and take advantage of the opening when the mage was attacked so they could act might have actually been the best positioning, but being that very mage himself, there was no reason for Navi to suggest that.

This positioning was decent enough, but the biggest problem with it was that it made it difficult for Navi to make any moves. It was a quiet path, with just the sound of the dry branches and fallen leaves they stepped on, and aside from that, there was just the occasional cry of birds and insects. Having things this quiet made the other senses sharper, and he felt the gaze that was stabbing daggers into his back keenly enough that it hurt. He knew that Mana had her attention on him, but he did also think, She can’t be looking only at me. Did she think that if an enemy showed up, then two magical girls would be enough to deal with it? Or was she thinking rationally about it, that her senses wouldn’t amount to much when she was watching out for the enemy, so she should focus on the dubious mage in front of her instead?

“Hey, Mana,” Navi addressed her.

“Please don’t speak.”

“It’s fine. It’s not the sort of thing that’ll sneak up on you from behind, right? It seems like they’re the type to just go berserk and cause chaos everywhere, right? So then the two of us whispering won’t change anything.”

There was no reaction from Tepsekemei. She was floating over Navi’s head. No reaction from her also meant that his statement had not been rejected. When Navi popped around to look, Mana had a sour expression. 7753, behind her, seemed discomfited, if anything. He got the impression that Mana was jumping the gun a bit.

“Hey, Mana.”

“Like I said—”

“Haven’t we met somewhere?”

“What? Where?” Mana’s eyebrows furrowed like she was seriously considering Navi’s nonsense. It was funny to watch, but since laughing right then would ruin it, Navi also put on a serious look as he waited for her reply.

“I have no memory of that,” she said.

“Oh, really? I feel like I’ve seen your face somewhere.”

“But I have no memory of it.”

“So, then…it might’ve been someone else with a similar face. Like your dad, or something.”

“Ah, if that’s what it is.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “My father is the head of the Magical Girl Inspection Department. You might have met him through work.”

“Ahh, I see. That makes sense.”

The chief of the Magical Girl Inspection Department was ranked equally to the chief of the Magical Girl Management Department, but he was functionally far more important. If you were to express it briefly, it was the difference between the star of the department and the useless old man at the boss’s desk.

Navi stroked his jaw with his right hand. In the roughness of his beard, he felt the passage of time.

Mana’s manner of speaking had not included even the minutest sense of antipathy or rebellion toward her father. Judging from how foolishly upright she was, he could guess that the father was not an unscrupulous corrupt public official, at the very least in his daughter’s view. This was not something Navi would be happy to deal with.

Mana pointed ahead. Navi faced forward and ducked under a thick branch. If he’d kept talking while facing backward for another ten seconds, he would have been hit right on the back of the head.

Even if Mana’s father was also an upright character, if he was the same as Ragi, that would be easy to deal with. But being that the main job of the chief of the Inspection Department was fighting criminals, he would not be easy to deal with at all. It could create a bit of a hassle if he was just as uncompromising as his daughter.

Maybe I should throw a wrench in things.

He wondered if he’d be able to force Mana out, but then he had the feeling that going that far would just invite unneeded intervention instead. The more of an honest mage someone was, the more they would lose control of themselves when it came to family. The head of the Inspection Department had authority. Even being from the Lab himself, Navi couldn’t ignore that. He would not eliminate Mana—he would compromise by giving her an appropriate-looking “souvenir” to make her feel good.

That was how he was thinking he would treat Mana. But he was aware he still felt sort of repulsed by her. Putting it into words to say he didn’t like her or she irritated him sounded immature and unpleasant. But writing it off as just his imagination would be even more immature, so Navi considered the reason behind his feelings.

Nah.

He knew what it was, even without thinking about it. His antipathy was toward law-abiding upright types like Ragi and Mana’s father. They valued ethics, hated veering off the path, and fulfilled their professional duties without ever falling into depravity. Navi felt a distaste for that kind of life. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the rumors about the Lab. And not just the Lab—how many individuals and organizations out there did unethical experiments while claiming it was for the sake of the Magical Kingdom? Ragi would just rage about it and be useless, and even Mana’s father would never be able to expose them all. The backbone of the Lab was one of the Three Sages—organizations like that would never get cleaned up, even if you spent your whole life on it. The most you could do was tell them, “I have my eye on you” to pressure them to restrain their activities, and even if you did that, it wasn’t like you could prevent everything. If they went full tilt and showed no mercy at all, their brutal deeds could be cut down by 30 percent at most.

The deaths would continue. Mages would die, and magical girls would die.

It was because Ragi wouldn’t give up on his fixation on ethics and had stuck to his own path that he had been shoved into a dead-end job. Had he never considered that maybe the damage would have been lesser if he’d remained in the mainstream, even if it meant using methods that weren’t of his choosing, dirty methods, to keep a position where he would have some say? Mana’s father was the same. He just did what he did without caring how it looked, and he was sure to give up if that didn’t work. But just because it was no good when you only ever worked within the rules, did you think that passed as an excuse for those who died, for their surviving families?

Everyone used dirty methods that people would avert their eyes from, trampling even the victims of the same circumstances, but you still had to push forward to accomplish your goal no matter what, smeared in slime with others talking about you behind your back, or you couldn’t call yourself a great mage.

Navi rapped his middle finger on his forehead. Nothing good would come of getting emotional. But how many people in recorded history had ignored their feelings, tried to do the job, and failed? The key to success was not to reject feelings, but in fact to hold them in esteem to please yourself. Considering a number of routes to the place where he was going to meet up with Clarissa, he confirmed that one of them went right by the trash dumping ground. It would be interesting to go that way.

When he turned around, Mana was glaring at him as she stuck a round white pill in her mouth. It wasn’t anything much—just an over-the-counter drug for stabilizing mood. Even if she put on a tough act as a great inspector, she must have taken a big hit mentally. She had no idea where the enemy might come from, and neither did she have an abundance of grayfruit.

Mana and 7753 had both been pretty tightly scrimping in an attempt to make the grayfruit last. The pace at which Mei was eating the grayfruit had clearly slowed down. If he made it subtle enough that they didn’t realize he was taking the long way to buy time, maybe Mana would pass out, or the magical girls’ transformations would come undone. If they did, Navi would stand to benefit. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt or help him. So it was worth trying out.

Perhaps thanks to his deciding what should be decided, his heart, which had been headed in a glum direction, cheered a little.

  Mana

Mana had told 7753 to pay attention to how Navi Ru was acting, but she didn’t know how seriously 7753 was taking that order. 7753 had the habit of getting into denial about malicious people—rather, Mana thought it was kind of a guiding principle in 7753’s life. If 7753 were her underling or coworker, or maybe even her superior, she would have yelled at her, “What’s the point of saying something like that now?! If you want to be that soft, then do it at home,” but 7753 was not her underling, coworker, or superior.

Instead, Mana was the one with thorns stuck in her heart. If she hadn’t brought 7753 to this island, 7753 never would have gotten caught up in this incident. She was taking advantage of her and Tepsekemei’s natures, since neither would say anything reproachful. It made Mana remember that time with Hana. If Mana hadn’t been the team chief, then Hana would never have volunteered for the mission. And if Mana had been saved because of Hana, then wasn’t it also because of Mana that Hana had died? Mana had wondered this many times, and had come to no answers. That was because she was afraid of the answer, and she cut off the thought without trying to take it to the end.

Tepsekemei had been reduced to one-fourth her size, and 7753 had lost her goggles. Mana didn’t have the right to order them to try harder. The two of them had already made sacrifices.

Navi Ru was boldly walking in front as if he were showing off the greasy back of his head. With everything else going on as well, it irritated her. Maybe he was even doing it deliberately to cause her particular irritation. It had also felt sort of contrived when he’d brought up her father. Causing someone stress to draw information from them was a conversational tactic.

I won’t let myself get taken in by him.

There were a lot of mages from the Lab whose names had been noted down as people to watch out for. They weren’t in the same department as Inspection—it was just hearsay going around at the management offices and the Public Security Department—but it wasn’t the way of the Inspection Department to shyly withdraw their hand once it was extended just because there was a fence there.

No way am I going to let him pull something funny, she thought as she glared at the greasy back of his head, and when the face occasionally turned back, she glared at that, too. Mana just kept walking on without ever taking her eyes off Navi Ru. She left it to Tepsekemei to keep an eye out for attack from external threats. Mana really didn’t think she herself could handle those, even if she tried to respond.

She dropped a tablet in her palm and popped it into her mouth. It stabilized her mood. Marguerite was probably not alive. They were up against a magical girl who was capable of killing Marguerite. She felt nothing but regret about having brought Tepsekemei and 7753, but if she hadn’t brought them, she might have been killed without even being able to resist.

Suddenly the tension between her eyebrows relaxed. It was because Mana and the other heirs had brought magical girls that they were in this situation. And the reason they’d brought magical girls was that the condition had been included in the will. That condition was nonsensical and suspicious. There was no reason for the deceased to ask for such a thing, aside from “because he was an eccentric.”

Mana touched a finger to her chin. The will was protected by Sataborn’s magic. You couldn’t rip it or overwrite it. Something bothered her there. It was that—

“Hey, Mei! Calm down!”

She was drawn back to reality. Realizing that she was letting her focus slack as she indulged in speculation, she cleared her throat to cover her embarrassment. She was acting like a senile old person.

Tepsekemei was clinging to a tree about ten steps away. Grayfruit was growing there in clusters. Tepsekemei cut down a fruit and swallowed it in one bite, knocking off the other fruit one after another and catching them with her body.

7753 was about to run up to her when Navi held out a hand to stop her. “Whoa there, hold up. It’s dangerous if you’re not Mei.”

7753 looked down to the ground. Half a step ahead was blackish mud that continued as far as the tree where the grayfruit were growing. It was mud all around—or maybe it was more like a bog. Long things that could be mysterious branches or antennae were sticking out all around it, and rusty cans were floating on it to aggressively generate an atmosphere that said You can’t step in here. The place where Tepsekemei was, for a radius of just six and a half feet around the trees, had escaped the incursion of the bog, like it was floating there pop in the middle, like a separated little island. Then Mei disappeared. No, that wasn’t it. Her transformation came undone. A small tortoise rolled on a tree root to get stuck in the bog and struggle. It was slowly being swallowed up.

7753 cried out. She crouched to spring in a wide leap, kicking off an antenna on the way to land beside Mei, scoop her up, and wipe off the mud with her hand—and then she changed form. She was no longer 7753. She was a human woman in her nightwear. Mana tried to call out across the bog, and right that very moment there was an intense blow to the back of her head and her vision flashed, and she was disoriented. Without even the time to wonder what had happened, Mana lost consciousness.