Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

SET FIRE TO THE HEART

  Nephilia

Everything was lit in orange. Nephilia once again looked up at the flame before her eyes. The phrase “heaven-piercing” seemed apt for the pinnacle blazing up high. It went over grass and over trees, and it had to be many times Nephilia’s height. It extended over a wide range, with the wind blowing to spread its force even farther. When she touched her own face, it was hotter than body temperature, and she reflexively drew her hand away. When she touched her eyelashes, they’d hardened and were warping backward. Maybe she had been too casual about this, since magical girls were resistant to fire. She turned away from the fire to get a little farther from it.

“Little…furth…,” Nephilia murmured.

“Yes, yes,” Ren-Ren replied.

Nephilia buried her face in Ren-Ren’s chest and clung to her, and by the time she felt that sensation of her insides floating, the fire was already far away. She put her chin on Ren-Ren’s chest, and while getting a sense of comfort and ease from the softness that seemed to suck her in, she gently looked up at Ren-Ren’s face. She was looking ahead with a serious expression. Her eyeballs were moving around rapidly. She was staying alert as she flew perfectly without Nephilia even asking, maintaining a low altitude and weaving among the trees.

Ren-Ren was mentally unbalanced. Nephilia had been thinking that she had to take care of her, even though she was wounded herself. But Ren-Ren was doing well enough that you could send her anywhere as a career magical girl and it wouldn’t cause embarrassment. This had always held true—after the fire, before Agri’s death, and after Agri’s death. Ren-Ren was still Ren-Ren. That was a very frightening fact. While feeling the heat beneath her chin, Nephilia considered. If Ren-Ren had tried to deceive others, then maybe Nephilia would have noticed. But the one Ren-Ren had been deceiving was not others, but herself. That was why Nephilia had failed to notice it, and now Ren-Ren was still being Ren-Ren. Nephilia’s nose had judged her “just right” as a nasty person, but just what about her was just right?

“…Ng…ah…”

“You don’t have to force yourself to speak.” Ren-Ren stroked Nephilia’s head. That had to be a way of saying, “I understand even if you don’t say everything,” but it made Nephilia shiver. It wasn’t that she was cold from the oncoming wind she felt when flying through the sky. This was different from the chill that came up her sleeves and skirt while she skimmed the trees at high speed, making her hair stand on end. The chills she felt right now came from enjoyment.

The fire was narrowing the range in which living creatures could survive. The magical girls were also being pushed into a small area of land. With the trees being burned down, the grayfruit currently circulating would be the last of it. All of this would be convenient for them. This was their opportunity to negotiate. Since they had caused this situation for themselves, they would use it themselves. There was also the possibility that a safety system or something on the island would start up to put out the fire, but seeing as how the fire had spread this far, at the very least that was not a given. If there was a system, it would put out the fire manually, and if they were to use it, then it would be at the main building.

“Main…,” Nephilia said.

“The main building, hmm.”

The main building was near the center of the island. It would take some time for the fire to get that far. If a rational mage was alive—in particular Ragi, who had investigated the systems—then he would try to head to the main building. What would Clantail do? What did she think about Ragi? How were the seeds Nephilia had sown growing? There were lots of things to look forward to.

There was a cracking pain in her back that made her body spasm. It wasn’t really that there were lots of things to look forward to. It was more accurate to say that she had to find even some small joys, or she couldn’t go on.

  Clarissa Toothedge

Clarissa had a priority ranking for what to do. Number one was securing Rareko’s safety, with protecting Yol very slightly behind that, and in an “if possible” position was eliminating Touta. She did think, I’m not enthusiastic about doing stuff to a kid, but that was no reason to oppose Navi Ru’s will. She actually felt favorably about how thorough he was in removing anything that might get in the way. What was needed for success was neither mercy nor pity, and that was the truth.

After leaving the main building, she went off the path and cut across the forest. She chose to gracefully run among the tall trees, careful to keep from being found. Not just from Clantail. Even if it were someone else, having them say, “Let’s stick together” would be a real hassle for her.

Fortunately, nobody found or questioned her, and Clarissa discovered what she was looking for. She always knew where Rareko was, after all. No matter where she went, the radar in Clarissa’s head would tell Clarissa her position. While mentally cursing the damn girl for running around for no reason, Clarissa started calling out, “Hey wait” to Rareko’s back as she was rapidly striding around the forest. Precisely speaking, she was only able to get as far as the “Hey.” Clarissa’s claws scratched at a transparent thing that whizzed through the air at her, which turned out to be the decoy for the stick thrust at her, which she evaded by a hair. Bending backward, she put her right foot forward and her left foot back, even putting her tail on the ground to support herself, maintaining this awkward position as she turned just her face to the other to glare at her and protest, “What’re you doing?”

Rareko’s tense expression contorted like “I’ve screwed up,” and she hastily folded up her staff and put it back in her sleeve, bowed at the waist, put her hand behind her head, and bobbed another bow. “I’m sorry… I thought I was being attacked.”

“It’s fine to carry a sense of tension, but, like, you’ve got to make sure to distinguish between enemy and ally.” Clarissa ran a finger along her cheek to find a small amount of red fluid oozing there. If I’d been careless and taken that hit, I’d be going to the hospital, she thought, thanking her own reflexes.

Rareko chanted, “Sorry” as she reached out to the tree beside Clarissa and pulled out a lens—even if the glasses were part of her magical-girl costume, she’d cracked a lens from using it recklessly—and gave it a stroke. Just that little touch activated her magic, repairing the crack, and then she stuck it back in her glasses frames. She breathed a sigh. “I honestly am so sorry.”

“Watch out next time, okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Li’l ol’ Clarissa will give you directions and advice, so make sure to do what you’re told.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I was just frightened… Um, it’s, you know. I saw fighting. I thought there was no way I could win, and I was wondering what if I was attacked.”

When asked, Rareko said that she had seen Chelsea and Francesca fighting in the area and that then she’d left Yol, saying she was going to go save Chelsea. Now Clarissa knew that one of the magical girls who had fought Francesca had been Chelsea.

“What happened to Chelsea?” Clarissa asked.

“It looked like she ran away. I wasn’t able to watch until the end, so I wouldn’t know what happened after.”

Telling her “Watch them properly” would probably make Rareko depressed, so Clarissa just said, “I see” and nodded. Rareko was usually mentally fragile to begin with, to say nothing of the current situation. If you were going to use her, then you needed to take that into consideration. It wasn’t like she was completely useless. Her relating that Dreamy Chelsea was one of the magical girls they’d have to keep an eye on scored her a point. Clarissa decided to offer her some safety guidance—not necessarily as thanks for the information, but mental care and physical protection would be included. She was a little too unstable for Clarissa to order her to go back to Yol and protect the miss, so it would be best to have her be good and stay where she was.

Clarissa told her with an air of kindness that the magical girl costumed like a goddess would not attack a person inside a hole.

“Um, is that really—is that really true?” Rareko asked.

“What would be the point of Clarissa lying?”

But Rareko was still frightened and badgering Chelsea with questions. “Will that be okay?” “Is there really no problem?” Clarissa soothed her as she dug a hole in the ground with her claws and Rareko’s staff and somehow got her shoved into it.

“This is okay, here? This is okay, right?”

“Clarissa told you to believe me… Hm?”

Rareko sniffed. Recognizing that weird scent was a burnt smell, Rareko immediately made a strange face and sniffed. Before long, a thin line of gray smoke came flowing in, and Rareko panicked and leaped out of the hole, and Clarissa glared in the windward direction. The volume and thickness of the smoke was rapidly increasing. Her excellent hearing even captured the crackling sound of branches bursting. This wasn’t a fire in the middle of the wilderness. It was an island fire. It did sound kind of silly compared to an ordinary forest fire, since there was lots of water all around. But it was no joke at all for the victims who were caught up in the smoke and running around. The sound of the flames came even closer, and there was lots of smoke rising up, too. No matter how long a magical girl could hold her breath, enveloped by smoke while curled up in a hole, she would soon be a goner. Was Francesca the cause, or was it the magical girl she had attacked? Either way, they had to immediately abandon this safe spot that they’d made by digging up the earth. When Clarissa told Rareko that, she unsurprisingly panicked. She kept muttering under her breath things like “What’s going on?” “Is this okay?” “Why is this happening?” Clarissa couldn’t even tell if the questions were for her or not anymore. Rareko was looking restlessly around the area, head twitching around so much she was ignoring her footing. She stumbled over a root and started falling, and her own fall must have startled her, as she cried out and started to flee.

Clarissa hastily grabbed at the sleeve of her robe and reeled her in. “Calm down!”

“But! But this is—!”

Rareko really was pathetic. She was so incapable of adapting, you felt bad for her.

Her teacher had been so capable, she’d used events as an excuse to knock out a total of over a hundred people from the Archfiend Cram School, students and graduates. She’d had such a loyal and true character, she’d even get called a knight or a samurai, and she’d been showered with compliments in the vein of diligent, upright, sincere, steadfast, and so on. So naturally her master had held her in high regard, and she’d been entrusted status in the household beyond that of a magical girl. Even Navi Ru hadn’t been able to lay hands on her so easily, and if he hadn’t used the pretext of the will to call her over and set the experimental subject on her that had almost become a Sage incarnation, then her removal would have been difficult—she was just that remarkable a figure, and an imposing challenge as an enemy.

Yet as her disciple, Rareko had tragically failed to inherit her master’s more abstract traits. She had so many things going for her: a powerful repair magic that Clarissa envied, staff and martial arts skills taught directly by Maiya, physical abilities that had been trained up, and an eye for tactics, and she wasted it with her personality. She was underhanded and cowardly and made others do everything for her, blindly following their lead. An opportunistic weather vane who firmly maintained that good things came from her own effort and bad things were other people’s fault, she was cold to the weak, flattering to the strong, cynical, and a whiner. Clarissa hadn’t known her for long, but even she could make out a long list of nasty things to say about her.

She really was impressed that Maiya had been able to deal with her. Would Clarissa be able to control Rareko perfectly right now? She felt like she could not. She told her to calm down and soothed her and stroked her back, and then she ran off in the lead to just get away from the fire for now. The sound of Rareko’s footsteps followed.

Clarissa flicked a glance backward to look. Rareko was still glancing all around as she ran, and behind her, speckles of smoke were spreading in pale and dark gray. Clarissa faced forward again, and with the claws of her right hand she cut down a branch. She did it out of concern for Rareko, thinking that if she ducked under the branch to avoid it, it might hit Rareko behind her, but there was no word of thanks from that certain someone who was running scared behind her.

What do I do?

Beyond the mental burden of Rareko’s presence, Clarissa really couldn’t help but think that she was a bomb in the physical sense. To put it in Navi terms, this one could pull anything if she got freaked out. Even before the fire had started, she’d been so on edge, coming to attack Clarissa after hardly looking at who she was. Now that there was a fire, she had to be even more freaked out than before—was it a good idea to have her as an ally at this point?

Clarissa asked herself, Is this an emergency? and answered herself, Yeah, it’s an emergency. Maiya was gone, and it was a good time to escape, once they’d had Rareko do her job. The only person you could say was definitely dead was Shepherdspie, who had gone completely still, and they couldn’t read the situation on anyone else, which was a little scary. If Francesca continued on her spree, then fine, if the tables were unexpectedly turned on her, then fine—she’d done her job at this point. When you considered the number of grayfruit left as well as the pace of consumption, they couldn’t be standing around doing nothing.

Clarissa bounced up to a ledge at a good tempo and casually avoided a branch that was jutting out in her way. Right after that, she heard a smothered shriek from behind, and she finally made up her mind. Rareko was dangerous. This magical girl trained under the devil instructor Maiya was so worked up that she couldn’t even dodge a branch.

Clarissa started running again and looked back. The smoke was growing distant. The smell was distant, too. Rareko was the same.

Clarissa leaped over a tree root and changed direction to the left to leap again. She was headed for the main building.

  7753

7753’s heart was hammering so hard, it almost made her believe it was jumping up and down, but it gradually settled. Though she’d been feeling like her body and mind were too much to handle, now she finally had them back, and, still carrying the tortoise, she pushed herself into a sitting position. The goddess had been there until a moment ago, crossing over the bog, and Kotori had made use of that to escape from the middle of the bog. That had not been a hallucination. The footprints that continued from the bog indicated it was a fact. Kotori moved over the grass on her knees and brought her face close to the footsteps. The mud had still not yet dried.

She stood up and shook her head. Since suddenly turning back to human form and being so occupied panicking, freaking out, and cringing in fright, she couldn’t quite remember what her surroundings had looked like. But she had to know which way Navi went or she wouldn’t be able to meet up with him.

Kotori quelled her fear and examined the land around her once more. It was fair to call this a unique place on the island. A very toxic-looking swampy land spread out over the whole area, with a little islet all alone plop in the center that had one sad-looking tree and some grass growing around it. No matter which way she turned, all around the bog were rows of trees of varying sizes. Frankly speaking, it all looked the same.

On her first step, she trod on a pebble, cried out in pain, and held her foot. She should have at least put on some sandals. She’d taken it seriously and not doubted it when Mana had said a professional magical girl would never undo her transformation, and this was the result.

Wait, wait, no, no. Don’t think that.

Give her a moment, and she was trying to make this someone else’s fault. Was that because of her weak human heart? Or was she just shifting the blame for her own personal weakness onto all humans in an attempt to escape responsibility?

Kotori tensed her stomach, opened her eyes wide, and bit her lower lip to keep from missing any signs. With a will that it was fair to call decently strong for Kotori, she restrained her fear, her regret, and all other such negative emotions. It was kind of strange, but she felt like she’d gotten a bit of confidence. Up against the fearsome goddess who had made even strong magical girls like Marguerite and Tepsekemei flee, not only had Kotori touched her, she had tackled and clung to her, and yet she was still alive. She had managed to protect Mei. So she should also be able to protect others.

The forest unfurled over on the other side of the bog, and she caught sight of a bit of an area where the earth was exposed. That was the place. When they’d been walking on that path, Tepsekemei had found the tree in the center of the bog and had flown over to take the fruit. After that, Kotori had been left behind on the little island, and Navi, who had been talking with her, would have been basically around there, and then he’d turned exactly 180 degrees to head off into the forest, carrying Mana. In other words, wouldn’t that mean the goddess had come from the direction in which Navi had headed? Though the goddess had ignored Kotori and Mei and they’d gotten through the situation without incident, she would not necessarily overlook Navi and Mana—no, she wouldn’t overlook them, would she? Kotori didn’t know what the goddess based her judgments on or what her sensory abilities were, but you didn’t have to compare them to a powerless human and a tortoise—she probably wouldn’t go ignoring mages.

Kotori ruminated on these facts she’d just realized, and as she came to understand just how fearsome this was, her face stiffened up, her shoulders trembled, her knees trembled, and she crossed her arms in front of her to hug Mei tightly to her chest.

Oh no!

Kotori started running off with Mei in her arms but immediately stopped. A slimy feeling caught her feet; they felt horribly heavy. When she looked at the ground, wondering what was going on, she was buried up to the ankles. She panicked and leaned backward, dragging her ankles out of the ground. She brought her face close to the ground to see what it was and found that the color here was slightly different from the place where her feet had been caught. When she tried touching it, the difference became even more clear. The place where she was standing was soft earth, while the place where she’d been caught was claylike bog.

She looked ahead. The trees and foliage kept her from seeing the ground, so she shoved some plants aside to bring her face close to it. When she touched the ground around here, it felt not much different from mud, but it was different from the bog. Plants grew from it, and it didn’t look like mud at a glance, either. But it was nastier than mud that looked like mud. You couldn’t tell from its appearance where you would sink.

Kotori stood up and looked around the area. She couldn’t go over there in a straight line. She took a slightly different path, figuring she should take a bit of a roundabout route, and then stopped. She squatted and looked down under the thickly growing leaves. The stems of the greenery before her were dense, with long, sharp thorns. Even if she did suck up the pain and keep going, she wouldn’t be able to walk anymore with ripped-up feet, let alone run—though as a magical girl, she could have ignored these thorns and walked on.

Agh, good grief!

Even a roundabout route was fine; she just had no choice but to go. It made her really antsy, but right now the long way was the shortest route. Kotori walked the opposite way from her goal. If she could just reach the path, she could return to comparative safety. She prayed to God and to Navi that they would hide themselves from the goddess and somehow make it through.

She sucked up all the things that would have been better if she were just transformed into a magical girl—the worries that someone might die, the fear that she might be killed, the way her heart asserted itself just from running, the blaring sun, the gross feeling on the bottoms of her feet—and, telling herself that she could do this, with the hem of her pajama top fluttering, she ran as hard as she could.

  Navi Ru

There had been a number of accidents.

The first was running into Francesca briskly striding along. This wasn’t a big deal. Navi knew how not to be attacked by Francesca—he knew how he should reply to her question. He wouldn’t want anyone else hearing it, but fortunately Mana on his back was unconscious. No one was listening. With a few words, he got past Francesca, who was now harmless to him. Seeing her feet dirtied with mud, her mussed hair, and the burn marks on her toga, he thought with some sarcasm, Sorry to cause you trouble, and, seeing the little hole that had been dug in her forehead and the red body fluid oozing from it, he wiped away cold sweat, wondering, What kind of monster did that? Even just getting burn marks on her and cutting her hair was pretty impressive, but someone making her bleed was even more outrageous than what Clarissa’s report had said. Francesca should have been able to take an attack that would cause a regular magical girl’s face to fly off, shatter her skull, and turn her exposed brains to chopped meat. Francesca’s skin would block it, and she’d take no damage. Navi hadn’t been directly involved with her development, so he’d just memorized what numerical specifications he could, but he doubted the researchers at the Lab would write down the wrong numbers.

The world was really big. But this island was small. If he continued on down the path like this, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t run into someone, just as he’d encountered Francesca a moment ago. And there was no guarantee it wouldn’t be the magical girl who had injured Francesca. If said magical girl was alive, she would have to be pretty on edge from fighting with Francesca. If he ran into her, accidents might happen. That would be a problem.

After some walking, Navi took a turn into where plants and shrubs lay thicker, then walked thirty paces and hid himself in a thicket, bit into a grayfruit, and cast a spell. The soft earth warped like it was peeling up, ripping the roots of grass to make a big hole. Decently satisfied by the size, which was big enough that an adult man could sit in it holding his legs, he tried to lay Mana down inside the hole. He couldn’t go throwing her in roughly; she might break something. He held her gently in a princess carry and slowly lowered her in. He gingerly and carefully laid her down in the hole, and, with a snort, thinking this was just like playing with dolls, he wiped the sweat off his forehead, set a hand on the ground, and stuck up one knee.

There was the sound of the wind rustling in the leaves and the cry of a bird in the distance, but nothing else. He raised his head more cautiously than when he’d lowered Mana and looked over the thicket to the path. Nobody was there. He breathed a sigh of relief, but of course this wasn’t over yet. He pushed through the thicket and returned to the path, then went back the way he had come. He was stepping faster now that he’d unloaded one girl’s worth of burden. He went off the path and returned to the bog where the stench wafted, and right as he was thinking, Okay, what am I gonna do about 7753? his brow furrowed. He narrowed his eyes and looked around the area. He could have sworn there’d been a tree growing on the island where 7753 and Tepsekemei had been stuck. Now dots of mud were splattered at the edge of the bog, and not just that—prints of bare feet in the mud continued into the forest—the opposite direction from the one Navi had come from—to disappear.

What had happened? What did this mean? If these footprints were 7753’s, then that meant she’d gone across the bog and moved on, though he didn’t know why. But that was impossible. Navi scratched around his eyebrows with an index finger. Even just touching them with his nails, he felt that they were greasy. He put his hands on the ground, and on all fours, he glared at the footprints that went across the bog. Not only were they in the mud, but they also went in deep. There had been force in the steps. These were not those of a human. These were from a magical girl—a particularly strong one.

Francesca?

7753 in her human form had been barefoot, but Francesca’s costume didn’t include shoes, and she was also barefoot. Navi recalled the position and the distance at which he’d encountered Francesca. She wouldn’t have been just going single-mindedly in a straight line, but from this close, well, you would come to the bog. And those footprints had to be from Francesca coming out of the bog. When he looked closely, there were also broken trees and brush that had been kicked aside.

It seemed to him that being sunk into the bog by Francesca would be a fair ending for 7753. But even if 7753 was dead, Francesca lacked the consideration or care to finish someone off without spilling blood. From what he could see, not only were there no scraps of clothing, there wasn’t even any fresh blood from the victim—wasn’t that strange?

He stood up, and after he rubbed out the wrinkle between his eyebrows, something vibrated at his waist. It was his magical phone. On this island, there were limited ways to use the magical phone to make contact. Navi pulled his magical phone out of his pocket and confirmed that the caller was Sataborn. The punch line here was not that someone dead was calling him, or that Sataborn was actually alive.

“This is cute li’l Clarissa.”

“Why is cute li’l Clarissa over there?” Navi asked her.

“Clarissa got Rareko to fix the place that Chelsea destroyed and went into the underground room.”

A transmitter was installed in the underground lab that was far more powerful than the handheld type. Even if you couldn’t communicate between magical phones, you could communicate from the transmitter—just like Clarissa was doing right now.

“You don’t see any smoke?” said Clarissa.

“Oh, that.” Trees arched overhead, hiding the sky from him. Navi took three steps back and looked up. There were more streaks of smoke than he had seen before. There were two. And one of those was thicker than before.

“D’you know the cause?”

“Nah. I figure it’s either Francesca or her opponent, though.”

“Clarissa got caught up in that smoke, then it seemed like it was probably a bad time to be hiding.”

“True, there’s no helping that, huh? But that’s no reason to go to the main building.”

“Clarissa figured I’d get Rareko to do her job right away. Clarissa made her repair the entrance to the underground and also lowered the carpet you sent up high to have her fix that thing.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s more than you can do without consulting with me. Does the good little girl Clarissa pull that much on her own discretion?”

“It’s ’cause Rareko was freaking out so hard about the fire that she could pull anything. Clarissa’ll have her do the work we really need her doing for starters, and then get her to be quiet and toss her in somewhere. Isn’t that the best way to solve things?”

He could easily imagine Rareko cringing in fear. Just as Clarissa said, you didn’t know what she might pull, and that was risky. If something funny happened before he’d accomplished his goal, this would go beyond unforeseen and into failure.

Eliminating Maiya had gone well. Now there was nobody to get in the way of him getting close to the next generation of great nobles—to Yol. And then, if his second major goal went well—to acquire the relic of the First Mage from the inheritance and have Rareko repair it, then Rareko’s job would basically be done, too.

There had been two full-time magical girls employed at Yol’s house. Maiya and Rareko would both often attend the young lady while she went out. If you added, “Come bringing two magical girls,” that would generally lead to Maiya and Rareko coming with her. That was exactly why Navi had added such a condition to the will. It was absolutely impossible to falsify a will that had been bound by magic, but just sticking on a transparent film that had been developed in the Lab to add additional conditions that wouldn’t contradict the others would not generate issues. He’d made the transparent film as thin as possible so that no magical girl or mage would notice, no matter how sensitive. He had invited Maiya in order to eliminate her. Rareko he’d invited in order to have her repair the gear on the island.

“…Fine, I get it,” said Navi. “I get how competent you are. Make sure to put away that gear. It’s not for me to use. A far, far greater idiot…whoops, honored personage wants it, so we can’t have any dust or nicks on it. It’s a special package going up.”

“Aye, sir.”

“So how are you gonna quiet Rareko down?”

“Clarissa whacks her in the head from behind and kicks ’er down, and then strangles her or whatever to knock her out, right? Then Clarissa ties her up and tosses her underground.”

“Don’t kill her by accident or something.”

“Clarissa is making her finish the job first, so it’ll be okay to kill her by accident.”

That was logical. Navi did basically warn her, saying, “Don’t kill her if possible. There’ll still be ways to use her, even after leaving the island,” and Clarissa answered, “I know that.” She probably did actually know. But there had been a lot of unforeseen events in these past two days.

“Oh yeah, things have been tough on my end, too,” said Navi. “I dug a hole near the waste disposal area and put Mana in it. 7753 and Tepsekemei are probably dead, but they might be alive. They have some grayfruit, but it seems like they’re bad or poisonous ones, so don’t take them and eat them.”

“…What happened?”

“Lots of things happened, okay? Lots.” Navi put a hand to the back of his head. It really did feel oily.

  Touta Magaoka

It was very hard to tell Yol that he couldn’t trust Rareko. And what was more, given Yol’s level of trust for Touta, actually winning her over would be really difficult. Yol and Rareko had an accumulated history together that Touta didn’t know, and all Touta could say were things like “I thought this” or “I felt that,” and he had no tangible proof. He couldn’t be all cool and resolute like a boy detective and say, “She’s the culprit, and here’s why.”

So Touta took action. Rather than hiding where their meeting place was, behind a square rock standing right at the foot of a little hill, he probed around the area under the pretext of checking things out. He looked around, searching to see if anyone had left signs, or if there was something that could be a hint as to what to do.

While returning to Yol, he expanded the range of his search, and when he came out by the side of the river, he leaned out over a big rock to look around the area, and when he happened to look at his palm, it was wet. On top of the rock he’d just been placing his hand on, there was a wet spot in the shape of a circle. It was a little ring. When he considered about what size it was, it hit him that it was the size of the 350-milliliter plastic bottles they sold at the convenience store, and he cried out a little “Ah!”

It was the bottom of a plastic bottle. Someone had put a plastic bottle here, and it was still wet. Which meant that not much time had passed. He looked around once more and confirmed that no one was around. But the person shouldn’t be far. If they went now, maybe they could catch up.

Touta went back and explained. A magical girl would not have to eat or drink, so they wouldn’t need a plastic bottle, either. The one who had placed the bottle on that rock would be either a mage or a magical girl who was detransformed, so it couldn’t be a bad magical girl who was being violent.

“It was still wet,” Touta said. “Not much time has passed. Let’s follow them.”

“But Rareko’s still not back,” Yol said, sounding very pained. Touta could sense her feelings, and his expression became pained, too. If Rareko had beaten the bad magical girl and saved Chelsea, then she would have come back already—since magical girls were very fast to fight and to move. But he couldn’t say that.

“Couldn’t we—? I know…how about we leave something? We make a mark so she knows we came this way. If we do that, then if Rareko follows us, we can meet up.”

Yol still seemed pained. But they couldn’t miss this chance. They didn’t know where the person they had to follow was headed, and that person was getting farther and farther away.

That was when a pungent burnt smell wafted their way, and by the time they noticed it, a thin line of smoke was trailing toward them. It was a fire. Most likely, the bad magical girl had set it. Touta panicked, and Yol panicked, too. This was very bad. He’d heard more than enough during fire drills that it was bad to inhale smoke. And he didn’t need anyone telling him that it was bad to get burned by fire.

“Hey, are magical girls strong to fire and smoke?” Touta asked.

“They won’t get burned by just a little bit of fire, and I don’t think they can get carbon monoxide poisoning or things like that…but they do breathe, and they do need oxygen, so it’s not as if they can survive in the smoke.”

“Then that means…”

“Yes. Even a magical girl will try to run from fire and smoke.” Yol wore a very pained expression.

Touta thought his expression had to be similar. Each of them could tell what the other was thinking. If magical girls needed to run from fire, then that bad magical girl would also run from the fire. And then Rareko wouldn’t come to the place she’d promised—behind the square boulder that stood conspicuously at the base of the hill. Touta poked his face out from behind the rock and looked up at the sky. He felt like the smoke was closer than before. He felt like the burnt smell was getting stronger. If they kept hiding like this, they might get caught in the fire.

He pressed his chest. Bearing with the burnt smell, he took three breaths in and out. He took the biggest breaths he could. But he still breathed out slow. Yol took a bite out of half a grayfruit, then wrapped it in paper and tucked it into the pocket of her robe. She had been eating only bit by bit, saving what she had, and when they had come here, they had found three whole grayfruit. But despite that, now there was just half a fruit left. The speed at which Yol ate them kept accelerating. She’d noticed it herself. But there was nothing they could do about it. Touta didn’t know why it was happening. There was just nothing for it but to eat so that she didn’t keel right over.

“…I don’t think we’ll be able to stay here,” Yol expressed, like it was painful to say.

Touta was privately relieved to hear that. Even if he wanted to be the one to say, “Rareko isn’t coming back, and it’s hopeless to stay here at this rate, so let’s just go,” that would be hard to say aloud. Even as he felt relieved, he silently apologized for his relief and nodded. “Yeah. I think we’ll really be out of luck if we get caught up in the smoke and fire. Like I suggested before…how about we leave a mark here that Rareko would recognize?”

With a feather pen and red ink, Yol drew a figure on a plain card that she said was “a crest passed down for generations in our family” of a circle, triangle, and square combined, and then she set the card on a rock and cast a spell. The rock dented in with a cracking sound, and that figure was carved on its face. An inch away, she also carved an arrow that indicated the direction in which they were going. Touta cried a sincere “That’s so cool!” and applauded her. Yol seemed shy as she urged, “Let’s hurry and go.” Maybe the magic was simpler than Touta thought.

Touta considered whom they could rely on most right now. That seemed like the most important thing for him and for Yol. With him alone, or even the two of them together, it was difficult to protect themselves. Touta wanted to be cool and say he’d protect Yol, and he did mean to do what he could to protect her, but he doubted he would be able to do that if an enemy showed up. He figured his aunt would say, “If you can’t do it even if you try, then there’s no point.”

“I think…I’d like to meet up with Marguerite,” said Touta.

“That’s the magical girl who accompanied you here, isn’t she?”

“She’s really strong. I’ve heard she’s beat up lots of bad guys.”

Yol went, “Hmm,” touching just the index finger of her right hand to her chin. “Rareko might look unreliable, but she’s strong, too.”

“Oh, um, I don’t mean at all to speak badly of Rareko in saying this. Um, I mean I can trust Marguerite.”

“We can trust Rareko, too.”

“Ah, yeah…”

“And if you’re talking about trust, we can trust Uncle, also.”

“By ‘Uncle,’ you mean Navi?”

“Yes. Our families know each other, and he’s always treated me well.”

“Ohhh.”

“It was just for a brief time, but there was apparently talk about making him a fiancé.”

“A fiancé? For who?”

“For me.”

“…Huh?!”

“Surprising, isn’t it? It’s such a large age gap, one would normally refuse. But you know, he was so considerate of me, saying, ‘Only if you’d like.’ Since he’s such a kind man.”

“Uh, yeah…oh…mm-hmm.”

Yol chuckled, putting her hands to her hips and lowering her head to peer up at Touta from below. There was a mischievous smile on her face. “My late great-grandmother and Maiya were very against it, so the talk evaporated, but… Ahhh!” Yol cried out and ran.

She didn’t hear Touta’s call of “Watch out!” trying to stop her, either, and she did a baseball slide into the thicket. Touta tried to follow her, saying, “What are you doing?” but then as she was coming out, her forehead struck his, and Touta arched backward. That had been a pretty loud clunk. But he sucked it up somehow, touching his hand to his forehead as he looked at Yol.

Yol wasn’t bothered by her reddened forehead, her eyes on what lay in her palm. There were four grayfruit.

“Four?! What the?!” said Touta.

“I could see they were growing right close to the ground on the other side of the brush.” She seemed happy.

Touta was also glad. He was glad, but he paused a moment to consider. He tried looking around the area again. Touta had also gone by here on the way to the river. But he hadn’t been able to find any fruit. He considered, hmm, hmm, for a little while and realized, Yol is shorter. So then if she’s crouched down, moving slowly as she pays close attention, she’d find fruit somewhere you wouldn’t find it just from normally walking around with your eyes up high.

It’s important to look at things from a different point of view, huh? he thought with a little embarrassment as they kept going, reaching the river. Though it had dried a little, the mark that looked like it was from a plastic bottle was still there.

“But…,” Yol wondered, “which way did they go?”

“Well, you know. We find that out now. We don’t have time, so let’s do it quick.”

He’d thought that it would be hard, but they easily found signs of people. There were a lot on the opposite side of the river—shattered boulders, pebbles blasted away, exposed ground—whoever would do this was probably the one on a rampage. They had to have been stomping hard, as they’d left many footprints in the shape of bare feet, with even the shape of each individual toe made clear. The toes were pointed downstream, in the opposite direction from the fire.

Touta considered. The one who’d left the wet plastic bottle and the violent one were probably different people. There were no signs at all of destruction on this riverbank. It was very strange that the plastic bottle had been set down gently, while on the other side there had been a lot of violence. If they were different people, what would happen then? What would they do?

The one they wanted to follow was the one with the plastic bottle. The violent one, if anything, they wanted to avoid.

Touta narrowed his eyes. He would change the way he thought. He would change his point of view. If the person with the plastic bottle had headed upstream, then after seeing this smoke, they would have turned back the other way. But they hadn’t come back. Had they headed someplace with no connection to the river, or had they gone downstream, or neither way? It was worthwhile to proceed downstream.

The problem was that the person on a wild rampage was also headed downstream. But from how the one who had left the plastic bottle wasn’t lying here and from how there were no marks of blood anywhere, you could tell it wasn’t like something had happened to them right away. It wasn’t like something had suddenly been dangerous.

Touta shared his thoughts with Yol. She gave a, “I see, I see,” as she listened, but when he suggested they go downstream, she tilted her head. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

“But if you look at it from a different angle, I think it might not be. If she’s doing all this while traveling”—he glanced at a boulder that had been completely smashed—“then she’ll be making a lot of noise, right?”

“That’s true.”

“So then if we sneak along quietly, then even if she does notice us, wouldn’t we notice her first? So long as we don’t slip up and pop out in front of where she’s headed, I think it would be safe to follow.”

“Magical-girl ears are good, but…it’s true, you have a point.” Yol looked at a fallen tree and nodded. “I actually think perhaps we should run in the opposite direction.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But in the other direction is a fire.”

“Yeah, huh.” To use a sort of adult expression, he thought they didn’t have many options. Touta thought that if they were to choose from the few they had, then this was a good one.

Yol waffled a little and then bit off a third of what was left of her half of a grayfruit and nodded one more time. “If the time comes, I’ll protect you.”

“Hey…I’ll be protecting you.”

They looked at each other and both burst into giggles at the same time.

  Rareko

Rareko had spent her life worrying about what other people thought. To someone who lived at the bottom of society, such observation skills were a lifeline. Without them, you would die. That was why she polished them. No matter how Clarissa tried to cover it, Rareko noticed that she was agitated about the fire. Clarissa had tried to hide it. She’d acted like it was nothing and put on a smile like it wasn’t a problem at all. And Rareko had panicked.

She couldn’t let it show. If Rareko were to go against Clarissa because she couldn’t count on her anymore, then Clarissa would think of her as disadvantageous. If someone who operated based on what was most advantageous to themselves were to consider her disadvantageous, then she’d get cut off. Rareko operated based on what was advantageous to herself, so she was sensitive to subtleties like this. Even if she was a mess inside, she would make sure to follow Clarissa’s instructions. Clarissa was still her only hope, just like before the fire.

But despite assembling such logic in her head, she couldn’t stop her illogical areas from getting upset. Navi should have been able to keep a handle on this mess—Rareko had done all of this because she’d assumed he would. So if they were going to tell her at this point that he didn’t have a handle on things, she was stuck thinking, What do I do?

Clarissa said they were going to the main building, so Rareko followed her, watching that small back run in the lead. She was so focused on that, she failed to dodge a branch, and it hit her in the forehead, and she got even more upset. But nevertheless, they somehow got back to the main building and, following along the outer wall from the front entrance, they circled to the side. They headed thirty yards to the right and came up to the wall that Chelsea had brought down. Since she had completely destroyed it, you could see the hallway from the outside.

Clarissa stood in front of the broken wall and muttered, “I think it was here,” then spread her arms wide and stared upward. Rareko wouldn’t say she was imitating her, but she looked up, too. Clarissa muttered a spell, and a little dot gradually became bigger, and by the time Rareko realized it was a carpet that flew in the sky, it had already come down to within arm’s reach.

Clarissa picked up the wooden box that was placed on top of the carpet and handed it to Rareko. Rareko accepted the rectangular, face-sized wooden box on her upturned right palm, and Clarissa undid the purple string with just her index finger and thumb, gingerly opening the lid to show her the contents.

“Put this back how it was, ’kay?” said Clarissa.

“This gear, you mean?” Had she noticed Rareko’s voice was trembling?

Rareko narrowed her eyes right up until she almost couldn’t see anymore, then slowly opened them and looked into the box. The gear was old, old enough that she couldn’t tell how old, snapped in two and sitting diagonally in the wooden box. Rareko swallowed. She was feeling overwhelmed by a mere object, and a broken one. She wondered what it was, but she clenched her teeth, thinking it was surely a bad idea to ask.

She timidly reached out and touched it. It just felt like metal. But goose bumps stood on her skin. She wanted to let go of it right away, but she also felt like she wanted to keep touching it forever. With a single stroke of the two parts, Rareko repaired it. She let out a big sigh. She didn’t even need the time to blink before the old junk was the original gear again. “Your magic is amazing, no matter how many times I see it,” Clarissa said, but Rareko didn’t know how to react to the praise, and shook her head vaguely.

The gear that had been repaired with magic went back into the original wooden box to be sent together with the carpet high into the sky. It shrank into the distance with a muttered spell from Clarissa, just the opposite from how it had arrived. Rareko felt lonely to see it go, flying into the air, and that feeling frightened her. What was that, really?

After the gear, she repaired the crumbled wall. She didn’t feel any spiritual pressure from this task. But there was earth stuck in between some places, and she had to properly sweep it clean so that it wouldn’t get in the way. She had Clarissa help as well, and they got the earth and dust out of the way. She prodded the wall with the end of the broom used for cleaning, and with a clunk, the crumbled wall was reassembled in an instant. The hallway that had been visible from the outside was hidden, and the wall was safely back to how it had been.

“Here, this is your reward for now,” said Clarissa.

“Oh, yes, thank you.” Five grayfruit were rolled toward Rareko, which she hastily accepted.

As for why she had to bother to fix the wall, Clarissa showed her the answer to that question. She muttered a spell just like before and shoved at one brick in the wall, and then the ground swayed. The grating sound of rock rubbing against rock rang out. As was her obvious right, Rareko panicked, readying her staff as she looked all around, and then her eyes stopped at the ground at Clarissa’s feet. A spot that had just looked like ground shuddered and opened up, splitting right to left, making a square hole of about two and a half feet by two and a half feet, and then the shaking and sound stopped. Clarissa’s lower body dropped into the hole. Though Rareko was so shocked her heart could stop, Clarissa slipped on inside without explanation. From inside the hole, she called out, “Wait right there!” and Rareko timidly approached and looked down. Inside was dark, but a magical girl would be able to see. The walls of the hole were not natural, but smooth as if they had been filed down after being cut. There was a metal ladder that went downward.

Rareko wasn’t sure if she should follow, and then, as if reading her mind, a voice called to her, “Clarissa’s gonna contact the mister, so keep watch!”

Rareko turned her face to the sky and blew out the breath she’d kept stored in her chest. It wasn’t like she didn’t feel dissatisfied about being put on watch after having been used for all that, but maybe it was better than being ordered to follow Clarissa into a suspicious underground room.

She turned away from the underground entrance. Since the forest was right there outside the main building, it wasn’t like there was a pleasant view. Rareko did not let up in her mental readiness to leap into the hole immediately should anything show up, and, while standing there, she bolted down one of the grayfruit she’d just received, and then another without a pause. Breathing a sigh of relief, she stuck up a finger to lift the arm of her glasses and fix its position.

She sighed again and looked up at the sky. It was shining bright. She didn’t want to have to do work that required standing outside in this weather. She vaguely thought, If they’d made the entrance inside the building, then I would have been able to keep watch indoors. Though there was smoke rising beyond the forest, it was far away. She was physically distant from it, and also psychologically distant. Now that she was more at ease, she felt like she’d become able to see herself more objectively.

She was scared of fire. Smoke was frightening. The mysterious magical girl was even more scary and frightening. But she was preferable to Navi Ru. That man was really scary and terrifying. She’d thought so all over again when she’d been shown that incomprehensible but incredible gear. Why had Maiya died? How had Clarissa gotten the information that said magical girls couldn’t attack people in a hole? If you considered all of that as well, it became clear that it would be best not to oppose Navi Ru. Hugging herself, she happened to look up.

She thought she’d heard something. Should she tell Clarissa? She had to tell Clarissa. Rareko turned around, and she was face-to-face with Clarissa, who had her fist raised. Before she could even be surprised, Clarissa punched her. Rareko twisted around and took it on the shoulder—she tried to pull out her staff, but Clarissa’s tail was wrapped around her sleeve, keeping it shut. Clarissa restrained her other wrist as well, and Rareko struggled, trying to keep from falling over. Then Clarissa wrapped her arm around Rareko’s neck, and without even the time to think, Oh no, she was about to be strangled.

Someone yelled out, “What are you doing?!”

Something flew across the corner of her vision. Clarissa bounced off Rareko’s back to leap, and Rareko rolled on the ground, coming out of her roll at a run to race toward the main building. Whamming her shoulder into the wall she’d just repaired, she destroyed it and stepped into the main building, then repaired it with her magic without stopping and kept running without even looking at the wall behind her, which was right back to how it had been. She raced through the hallway at full speed and came to the courtyard, where she still didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. She was confused. What had happened? Clarissa had attacked her. Had someone saved her? She’d just heard a voice—a girl’s. A magical girl’s voice? She felt like she’d heard it before, but also maybe not. If they were going to save her, then shouldn’t they save her? But she didn’t know just how much they could help. Navi Ru was a fearsome man. There was no way Clarissa would try to kill Rareko based on her own judgment. Obviously Navi Ru had ordered it.

She was confused. She had to rely on someone, but she didn’t know whom to rely on. She couldn’t trust anyone. She threw herself into any walls or doors that were in her way to destroy them, and then, after passing through, she instantly fixed them. She wouldn’t let anyone follow her. From hallway to room, room to hallway, the bottom of the stairs, the kitchen, all she could do was just run. She couldn’t stop anywhere. She had to get someone to help her. She could no longer hear the voice of the one who’d barged in on the scene, or of Clarissa.

She broke a wall and fixed it, continuing to run through the main building in a zigzag pattern, and then she thought, Oh as Yol came to mind. If Rareko was out of luck with Navi, then she should just go back to her. Was Yol still waiting at their meeting place? Rareko was still confused. Her feet didn’t stop. After breaking through a number of walls she’d lost count of, she took a step into bright light and reflexively narrowed her eyes. Sunlight. In other words, she was outdoors. Had she cut through the main building and emerged outside? After running around aimlessly all this time, even Rareko didn’t know where she’d wound up.

“Is the one you dropped the golden ax?”

She turned her head to the right. A magical girl who carried a giant ax in each of her hands was standing at the rear entrance. She smiled at Rareko—she was ten yards away, with a voice that carried well. Rareko felt like her knees would crumple, but she desperately recovered her stance to face the magical girl. Rareko had watched from below as she had pursued Chelsea. Just seeing that little bit from a distance, she’d thought, No way.

Clarissa had said that Rareko wouldn’t attack if she was in a hole. But after being attacked by Clarissa, Rareko’s reason to believe that was gone. She didn’t even have the time to dig a hole in the first place. She pulled her staff out from her cuff. With a rattle, she slid out the three sections, extending it from a little over twenty inches to one yard long. It was very portable compared to a normal staff, which made it more of a hidden weapon. It wasn’t as strong, but it was strong enough that she could cover for that by using her repair magic. Rareko swung the extended reinforced alloy rod to smash a wrecked wall, sending into the air fragments that she smacked at the enemy, three shots in succession.

Rareko let out a short breath and backstepped, retreating inside the main building, then stomped on the floorboards to break them, thrust up to bring down the ceiling, and readied her staff horizontally—it was a defensive stance called “the eight-armed stance” in magical staff arts. She let out another short breath and struck the wall to send fragments flying.

The magical girl leaped to the side to evade the remains of the wall with a balletic turn, and when Rareko shot more rocks at her, she struck them aside with her axes. Rareko broke the door with her back and bottom, backstepping to escape into the room behind her. She kept her eyes on the enemy and never faltered.

Taking the most fundamental stance, she looked down the staff at the enemy and let out a short breath. She had completed the full course of her combat breathing routine, which was for concentrating the mind. All confusion was already gone from her heart. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the situation—she sincerely didn’t want any of this—but she was ready to fight.

“Or is it the silver ax?”

She stopped breathing. Her body temperature dropped. Her heartbeat slowed. Rareko was standing inside the main building, at the entrance to the room. The enemy was standing in the area that had been opened up from the wall being destroyed. The sun was at her back.

The enemy magical girl went from a turn to a leap, closing in suddenly. Rareko immersed herself in a mire of concentration. She looked at her opponent. There was a tangle of information. She had killed Maiya. The way she moved was freewheeling and hard to figure out, and also too fast. It was the most Rareko could do to just follow her with her eyes. She couldn’t even see the swing of her axes. She wasn’t much different from colored wind. Rareko immediately came to a conclusion. If she allowed the enemy to attack, she would die. Rareko couldn’t block the attacks, and even if she dodged, she’d lose an arm.

Maiya had been strong. A strong magical girl would impose her own strength and try to win. She would throw her trained skills, her physical strength, magic, everything at the opponent in an attempt to wrest a victory from her. Rareko was different. She wasn’t as strong as Maiya. If she did the same thing, she would just die. If she really wanted to be victorious, then she had to win, to kill with cheap, cowardly tricks. It was kill or be killed.

The magical girl stepped on the crumbled floor, and Rareko focused on timing it just right. The moment her opponent’s body weight was on the floor, Rareko repaired the broken floor without even a split-second lag, making the place where the magical girl had stepped out no longer crumbled footing but good as new, capturing the enemy’s foot below the ankle in the floor. At the same time, Rareko closed the distance between them, coming into range before her opponent could right her stance.

When chasing Chelsea through the air as well as in their current fight, the enemy had shown an abnormal fixation on moving acrobatically. So then Rareko would stop her first.

Rareko brought her left hand in for a honte uchi, or normal strike, followed by a pulling-hand sweep in which she moved the staff over her palm and made use of centrifugal force for a hit to the left knee; from there, in a basic hanmi stance, she struck the top of her enemy’s foot with the return swing in a “dropping snap.”

Those were the fundamentals, a combination that was in her katas. “Foundations are important” had been one of Maiya’s mottos, and she had never allowed Rareko to slack off in her practice of katas. Rareko stayed in motion through the attack, flowing with sliding feet from the enemy’s left hand to diagonally behind her. Rareko further combined her magic with her staff work, repairing the fallen remnants of the ceiling in the hallway, and the fragments of ceiling banged into the enemy’s body and face as they shot up to their original positions, and when the enemy staggered, Rareko kept on striking at all her joints. The sensation in her hands was not that of flesh. It was far harder than that, thicker. Her hands on her staff just about went numb. And forget hurting the enemy; her exposed bare feet weren’t even red, and hitting her thumbnail didn’t even crack it. The enemy was unfazed by Rareko’s attacks, swinging up her axes to hit the floorboards.

She was too resilient. Her physical capacity was on another level. It would be impossible to grapple with her for a clinch or to restrain her, and if Rareko tried hitting her with her hands or feet, she was bound to hurt herself. The technique that Maiya had taught her, the technique her body had absorbed, made the optimal choice on its own.

Rareko canceled the repair of the floor and undid her magic. The floorboards that had been catching the enemy’s feet as they tried to restore themselves suddenly lost force, and, as she lost her support, the magical girl’s upper body was flung backward. Rareko moved behind the enemy at the rightward diagonal. After moving, she used a “pull-down” that spun her staff around the axis of her own knee to strike the enemy’s ankle, and then, after spinning the staff in a half turn, she raised it vertically and thrust it into the ground. Her other hand moved like a different creature to pull out the second staff tucked into the back of her robe. It was colored like a bad joke, with stripes in passion pink, white, and blue, and was not to Rareko’s taste. But for destruction in particular, this staff was more reliable than anything else.

Rareko pulled the staff close, lowering and widening her stance. Maiya had been in the habit of saying that all staff arts rested on how smoothly you could handle the weapon in your palms. Even if the skin of her palms tore and spurted blood, Maiya had not called an end to training, and Rareko had cried as she drew in her staff. Now Rareko’s palms moved like running water over the staff Maiya had loved. She clearly felt the presence of the staff, Maiya’s presence as she became one with the weapon. The enemy was still unable to face her. Rareko’s awareness was heightened. She would focus on the single point of the staff in her hands. The basics of her staff technique were in capture and suppression, and it was one of the few techniques with the goal of destruction. It had been named from how it had pierced one and a half of Archfiend Pam’s wings. Rareko threw her whole body into this “Fiend Piercer,” going for the end of the enemy’s chin, which she’d just gotten a glimpse of diagonally, and to the right at her rear.

There was the satisfying sound of a knock on her jawbone. The enemy whipped her head around to face the other way, as if she’d been repelled. If this were Maiya’s Fiend Piercer, then it wouldn’t have just taken her jaw, it would have blasted away everything over the neck. But this was fine. Rareko had already calculated that it wouldn’t be as strong as Maiya’s. If she knocked her opponent out, then it would be the same thing in the end. Rareko swung up the staff and retreated a step for the finisher, and at the same time, the enemy swung her ax.

Huh? Rareko thought. She had struck clean through her jaw and rattled her brain. You couldn’t block that just from being tough or hard. No matter how solid a magical girl she was, it wouldn’t prevent a concussion. On top of that, she was still facing away. Rareko had moved into her blind spot, so there was no way the enemy could instantly know where she was like that. There was no way, but the ax in her right hand flashed. Rareko couldn’t see her face, but she felt like she was being looked at. She could tell that the enemy who hadn’t been trying to see her until now was clearly looking at her.

The ax was coming closer. Strangely, it looked like it was in slow motion. But she knew she could absolutely not avoid it. She suddenly understood why the enemy had seen her. She’d had her attention on the floor and ceiling, and she’d turned it to Rareko instead because she’d judged that Rareko’s attack, the strike that had gone through her jaw, was more of a threat than the floor and ceiling. That was why the enemy had looked at Rareko and attacked.

Rareko cursed Navi Ru, Clarissa, and the ax-wielding magical girl in order, and when finally Maiya’s face rose in her mind, she cursed her with “Damn woman, teaching me garbage staff technique that isn’t useful,” and then her world went dark.