Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

STARS AND A GODDESS

  Dreamy Chelsea

A pitiful-looking corpse lay in the main building, in the hallway—where the hallway had once been. Beside it lay a staff that looked like candy. Part of the wall had been destroyed, there were holes in the floor, and the ceiling was dangling down. If you looked from the broken wall to outside, a tract of earth of roughly seventy square yards had been dug up, probably with an ax. Grasping the whole scene in a glance, Chelsea decided on a theme.

She evaded the blade’s trajectory on a zigzag path, doing a little jump on top of her star decoration as it rotated at high speed—bringing her elbows in, she flapped her open hands like a little bird—by doing this, she made it past the second ax. The sound of cutting through air reached her ears long after the slice. Ten hairs were torn off her head, and it hurt as they flew off. It wasn’t that she’d been cut by the blade. The pressure of the wind had pulled them out by the roots.

But Chelsea still maintained her stance on tiptoe. As they passed each other in midair, she locked eyes with the goddess magical girl. She was beaming a smile at Chelsea. Chelsea didn’t even have enough time to smile back. After that momentary crossing, she leaped to avoid the slice that came at her as she was flying away, then clapped her hands twice under her chin to the right. It wasn’t a provocation. She did it to get in a rhythm.

Spinning more and more, she moved her star right and left. Red spray flew through the air. She noticed the pain half a beat later. She’d failed a dodge, and some flesh had been shaved away. It was a little over her right elbow. It hadn’t reached bone and tendon. It had also missed the thick blood vessel. Chelsea covered the damage and fear with a smile and clapped her hands.

Dreamy Chelsea’s fundamental concept was “freewheeling,” and she wouldn’t change that, even if her mother pushed her on it, using snacks as a shield. But she did often settle on a direction before she did anything. She would choose a theme depending on the moment and situation, like courage, or purity, or the good old days of the Showa era. Her freedom was not chaotic; rather it gave her a flexible universality.

The theme this time was rhythm and tempo. She would add charming movements on top of that.

Her mother had scolded her about rhythm and tempo. She said that her movements became monotonous, and it made her easier to read. And then, to prove her point, she’d taken Chelsea by the wrist and thrown her down without any struggle, locking her elbow joint to push her to the ground. When Chelsea tried to kick her away, her mother got that leg in a lock as well, and when she tried to struggle with her shoulder and head, those were held down, and she was kept from moving at all. With her arms and legs all tangled up, she had no idea what was going where anymore. There was nothing but pain and suffering. Caught in an original joint technique that was less magical girl and more superhuman pro wrestling, Chelsea had wailed in protest that “this isn’t like a magical girl,” which her mother had coldly disregarded, saying, “So then, do it properly.” That wasn’t something a mother who’d forced her daughter into an unwanted sparring match should say.

Since then, Chelsea had stopped making rhythm and tempo her main thing.

Now she was breaking out the focus on rhythm once more.

As she landed, she stomped the ground forcefully. Countless pebbles bounced up from the impact, from which she picked out a number that she could accept as stars, poking at them with her fingers to send them circling around the area. Chelsea jumped atop them, bounding off one pebble star to jump to another, evading an attack as she clapped twice under her chin to the left, and, judging that it was all right to add in something a little uncouth as an accent, after somersaulting, she cutely smacked her own bottom at the enemy a couple times. The important thing right now was just rhythm and tempo, and evasion by means of that.

The goddess was different from her mother. Unlike her mother, who would restrain her and try to quiet her, the goddess would follow Chelsea’s movements. And just as the goddess read her, the goddess did as Chelsea had foreseen.

With her first condition being avoiding any serious wounds, Chelsea moved around, just barely treading that line. She had already verified that kicking and hitting would hardly hurt the goddess at all. On the other hand, one touch from the ax and Chelsea would be fatally wounded. Right now there was nothing for it but to continue to evade while getting chills in her heart over each and every swing. Chelsea was sure she was right to judge that she wouldn’t get anywhere with a frontal attack.

The goddess’s ax cut through the sky to slice fiercely into the earth. The body that was probably Rareko’s bounded like a broken marionette. The goddess used the momentum of her swift dodge to move into a roundhouse kick, and Chelsea relaxed her whole body like liquid to grab that leg, only to be shaken off in an instant. When the goddess’s toe was thrust at her, Chelsea evaded by bending into a back bridge, then, after bouncing up again with the strength of her neck, she hopped from one rock to another at a good tempo. She clapped her hands over her head to the right and left, then crouched down for some cute continuous bunny-like hops. She didn’t let you feel even a hint of the sweaty straining implied by this particular exercise, and was actually observing the movements of her body calmly. Her right pinkie finger joint had been crushed. It had broken when she’d gone in to grab the goddess’s leg and been flung off just from the speed and momentum. But her right hand would still move.

Her hands went from imitating a bunny’s long ears to her waist, and while still bent over, she shifted gears to comical movements: wiggling her butt to the right, then to the left, then she turned around and stopped. Chelsea was in the upper position, the goddess below her. Looking down, Chelsea smiled. Thanks to fixing rhythm and tempo as her main axis, she had somehow managed to keep avoiding hits. Frighteningly enough, the marks the axes had made ripping through the earth had drawn the pretty shape of a star. Of course this was not a coincidence. The goddess had made it look as if she were wielding the axes haphazardly, while she was actually expressing creativity over the earth. She’d done better than Chelsea, who’d had her hands full with running.

Even though privately, Chelsea was in a cold sweat, she never let her smile falter. If she lost her composure, she would also lose the rhythm.

When she looked closely at the star drawn on the ground, she saw there were six inches missing on the last side. She made one of her stars fly out to dig into the earth and connect the two lines to complete the pentagram. As the dug up soil was tossed into the air, the goddess’s gaze never left Chelsea, a smile on her face.

The goddess stood on her hands and swung her legs around as in capoeira or break dancing, then spun vertically in the air three times to land in the center of the star she’d drawn. Then she spun to the side, carving into the ground with the axes in both hands, drawing a circle all around the star to make a pentagram. It was just like a magical sigil. Looking up at Chelsea with her hands spread, the goddess looked proud. Chelsea stuck up her index finger in front of her face to reply with “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She was telling her that it still wasn’t enough while also ticking out the rhythm with her words.

Chelsea leaped onto her star decoration.

She clapped her hands twice under her chin to the right, and twice to the left, and the goddess answered that by smacking her axes together with a clanging sound. Chelsea ordered the star decoration she stood on to fly at full speed toward the ground. The goddess readied herself. So much earth had been dug up, the smell of earth hung over the whole area. The burnt smell of the fire started to join that scent as the star ripped through the air. Chelsea could feel the heat below her feet.

She dived in from high in the sky, then came to a sudden stop with the dust sweeping up around her before immediately jetting off again. With both axes raised overhead, the goddess approached rapidly. Even just the aftershock from the axes swinging would send Chelsea flying—worst case, she’d die. And if the aftershock was that bad, then a direct hit would shatter her whole body, crushing her into ground chunks in meat sauce. Chelsea smiled wide. She approached the limit, close enough that any more and she would be out, and then turned at a sudden angle. The goddess’s axes pursued her but didn’t hit. She resisted the pressure of the wind, turning the path of her star at a right angle. She changed direction in an attempt to get the goddess from behind, but the goddess twisted her back impossibly to meet Chelsea’s strike as Chelsea was just getting behind her, and Chelsea leaped down from her star and cartwheeled over to step on the broken floor of the main building. While watching from the corner of her eye as her star decoration kept going to fly into the forest, Chelsea readied herself for escape using her own body. Her rhythm was coming faster and faster, indicating that the final stage was approaching.

The goddess swung down, swung up, swung down, swung up, swung down, and swept horizontally. Her combination looked like a sphere with the goddess in the center, attacking Chelsea, and the walls, door, and roof of the main building were torn to shreds. Chelsea leaped and jumped, and the bottom of her right shoe was torn open and blood spurted out, and the flesh of her cheek was gouged deeply, and the hem of her skirt was ripped. She ignored all the pain with the utmost focus on the goddess as she continued to move. Occasionally she clapped her hands or struck her heels on the floor as in a tap dance, all while humming her Dreamy Chelsea original insert song, Fancy and Brave, and the goddess’s axes followed her with their rhythm and violence. As if she were a giant white termite eating wood as it went along, the goddess’s destruction carved a large hallway through the main building.

Thus far, Chelsea had emphasized rhythm and tempo to the utmost. Just like an ensemble playing off a single score, the goddess and Chelsea combined and overlapped to create a harmony. Of course, the goddess was reading Chelsea’s movements. Chelsea was falling into the state her mother had described—her movements becoming monotonous and her aim easy to read. When Chelsea’s fingers touched a frying pan, she whipped it at the goddess, and the goddess struck down the lump of iron that came flying at her at high speed without even a glance. A little pause passed between them, just briefly, for less than a split second. In the half-destroyed kitchen, the two magical girls glared at one another.

Chelsea felt a cold stone wall at her back. Mingling with the smell of the powder from the shattered stone wall, the familiar scent of soup reached her nose. It was the soup Shepherdspie had made for them.

Mr. Pie…lend me just a bit of strength.

Chelsea thrust her hands in front of her. Sticking out her fingers, she touched her middle fingers to her thumbs. The goddess swung up her axes. There was a little pause there. Was she wary because of this new gesture from Chelsea? Or had some working of her mind considered the opponent with whom she’d been making this melody and hesitated because of the thought that this attack would be a waste?

The axes swung down. Chelsea’s eyes widened. Everything started lagging like it was in slow motion. She leaped to the right along the wall, snapping the fingers of both hands at the same time. The ax destroyed the wall, blades turning to Chelsea and coming after her. Chelsea set one hand on the traditional charcoal stove and leaped up, flipping around to put her feet on the ceiling, and ran. She dodged the axes as they pursued her but failed to avoid the rubble and took a hit on the rib. Hearing a rib cutely cracking, she jumped back to where she’d been before and faced the goddess. With the wreckage thudding down around her, she hit the timing perfectly. Her rhythm was also flawless. The ideal actions for Dreamy Chelsea in her mind overlapped with those of the real Chelsea.

She’d learned from Shepherdspie that when you snapped your fingers in the main building, things would come flying in from somewhere.

The goddess’s smile twitched. She sliced at the plastic gas container that came flying at her from behind to knock it away, and clear fluid with a strong scent scattered around her. Next, a stool came flying, which she knocked away with the other ax, but by the time she was facing Chelsea again, it was already too late. Chelsea had taken a soundless step forward, without giving notice of her presence, to touch the goddess’s wrist with a casual gesture. The way this girl advanced without revealing any rhythm or tells brought trouble. There was no malice in it, and it was crazy and sudden, her body acting on its own before her brain could think, so it couldn’t be predicted at all, and nobody could stop her. It was just the way Pastel Mary moved.

In her head, she said to the goddess, Shepherdspie’s magic is amazing, right? Things come flying just by snapping your fingers. The way May-May moves is amazing, right? Even Chelsea can’t stop her.

With incredible strength and speed, the goddess tried to peel off her hand, but Chelsea wouldn’t let her. With her mother’s techniques, she could even overcome someone stronger than herself. With rhythm, tempo, timing, and a little force going from her palm to the goddess’s wrist, Chelsea got the goddess off-balance and staggering forward.

The number one reason Chelsea had placed the most emphasis on rhythm and tempo was in order to avoid attacks. The second reason was to make the rhythm break down at the very end and land an attack.

With entirely calculated, perfect timing, she broke the window, and her star decoration flew into the room. It had separated from her right before she entered the main building and left the goddess’s view, and Chelsea had given it enough of a run-up and enough acceleration, as well as spin on the max setting. This was the result. Spinning with intense momentum, the star zoomed past the goddess’s side to destroy the wall, breaking it to bits and going about ten yards too far before stopping. Chelsea let go of the goddess’s wrist and, with a combination of backflips, cartwheels, and somersaults, leaped over what was left of the wall, and, with a final three and a half twists, she landed in the air atop her stopped star decoration.

The goddess tried to swing up her axes, staggered, and stopped. A second later, her neck, which had been sliced open in passing—the wound was so large you’d want to avert your eyes!—fell open, and then it spurted blood like a broken faucet, high enough to wet the ceiling.

Chelsea could never have beaten this opponent on her own. She had been able to win because she wasn’t alone. By borrowing things like Shepherdspie’s magic, the way Mary moved, and her mother’s technique, she’d finally managed to win.

Thanks…everyone.

Chelsea leaped down from her star decoration, spread her legs shoulder-width apart, and lightly clenched her right hand and put it to her waist while she thrust her right hand forward to stick her thumb in the air. The goddess was still spraying blood. She swayed to the right, to the left, and then, after a beat, she slowly fell forward.

  Navi Ru

He had the feeling there was even more trailing smoke. Was there really more, or did it just feel that way? If it was the former, then the fire was getting worse. If it was the latter, that meant Navi was feeling pressured by the fire. Either way, it was a problem.

Turning away from a puddle of rising steam, he did up his belt. Lately he’d been wearing it a notch or two looser, mostly because of aging, but now he stuck his buckle in one hole tighter than usual to get motivated again. He couldn’t forget that he had to brace himself in a situation like this.

He pushed through the thicket, and when he came out to where the sunlight hit, Clarissa was alone there, waiting for him. To be more precise, Mana was also there, on Clarissa’s back, but since she was unconscious, it wasn’t like she was waiting.

“It must be nice to be a magical girl. You don’t need to spend time on this stuff,” said Navi, gesturing toward his clothes.

“You mean like it takes too long when you get old or something?”

“Oh, stop it. I don’t wanna talk about that stuff.” Navi casually glanced around.

Clarissa seemed to notice that, as she raised her right hand and said, “If you’re looking for Nephilia, she went flying off with Ren-Ren,” then breathed a little sigh.

“Where are they?”

“Moving toward the main building, cautiously but clearly. She wasn’t lying.”

Clarissa had put a bite mark on the bottle of medicine that he’d handed the pair. She had their locations precisely. In other words, that meant that Nephilia’s offer to work together to eliminate Francesca had been sincere.

With a “Righto,” Navi took Mana back from Clarissa and put her on his back, and then he nodded at her. Clarissa smiled at him and nodded back, then turned around to run off, leaving a cloud of dust as she went out of sight.

Francesca was a magical girl made to be an incarnation candidate for the great Chêne Osk Baal Mel. But things were different now. She was not an incarnation, just a vessel. Navi understood and had a grasp on her specifications and abilities. So long as they had the proper preparation and Clarissa to use it, that would be enough to deal with Francesca. And there were other magical girls helping out, so that was more than enough.

It was fair to say that his initial goal had basically been accomplished. Though there were a few remaining people he wished would disappear, he wasn’t so fixated on it as to put in the labor and take on the risk to finish them off while on this island. Yol would be a stepping stone down the line, and he wanted to make Ragi a public-facing vehicle for his advancement, so their safety should be prioritized over the elimination of such people. While walking, Navi spat on the side of the path.

Had Ragi seen the underground facility? Though the important parts of the service manual had been removed, Navi wasn’t happy about this at all. If matters were resolved while Ragi was searching the area, then it shouldn’t turn into too big a problem, but it seemed quite possible that the old man would figure out what Francesca really was and try to come up with a way to deal with her. Even if the old man looked as if he were out of the scene, he was still in service. All the rumors Navi had heard said the old man was possessed of a rebellious spirit unbefitting his age, and there were some researchers who would be gladdened each time they heard that. Whether Sataborn or Ragi, a talented eccentric would have a lot of fans unbeknownst to him.

Navi wanted to put out the fire. He was already done with Francesca. Though the kid and the old man would be safe if they just went quietly into some holes, neither of them would settle down. Given the circumstance, it was fair to call Nephilia’s offer a boat when he was at a river. That was how it looked from Navi’s end, at least.

As they talked, he’d been observing all Nephilia’s movements, all the way to the littlest gestures and trivial turns of phrase. Her eyes were on the dry side, and it looked like she was swallowing a lot. She was aware her situation was critical, but despite that, her core, her heart never bent. That girl was taking a gamble. Nephilia had come to Navi prepared for the possibility that they still needed Francesca and that they would casually finish off someone like Nephilia on sight and figure out what to do with her then.

He thought she had quite a lot of guts to do that when she’d had the crap beaten out of her, but he also felt she could be dangerous. It was in her eyes. She seemed like she was zoning out, yet focused. Her gaze wouldn’t let you figure out what she was fixed on—though it was the most crucial thing to know what she held dear.

He’d be glad if she would be a capable underling for him, but if she wasn’t that, she might be an avenger with no consideration for danger. This was one thing that he would have to figure out while he was on the island.

  Dreamy Chelsea

The thumbs she’d stuck up gradually lowered before being tucked into her fists. Chelsea put both her fists together to place them under her chin and tilted her head cutely.

Though she needed to hear the thud of falling, she couldn’t. She narrowed her eyes. The goddess had clearly been defeated. But she couldn’t hear that sound. It was baffling. Chelsea bent at the waist, putting her hands on her knees and lowering her head. Bending her head over to peek at her from below, she cried out, “Ah.” The goddess had not fallen. She had stopped flat four inches over the ground, only her hair dangling to touch it. It just looked as if she’d fallen.

Before Chelsea could wonder why, the goddess rose suddenly as if yanked by an invisible crane and invisible wires. The blood that had been gushing out so dramatically had now come to a stop.

Why…?

Brown earth was piled over the wound on her neck. The earth was connected to the handle of her ax, which was swinging, dangling off it. Realizing that she had turned the blade of her ax into a fast-drying, sticky earth to stop the bleeding, Chelsea went on guard.

But then the goddess thrust out a palm at her. “Please wait one moment.”

That single remark became a frightening amount of information that inundated Chelsea’s brain. Various thoughts rose at once, like So she can say things other than that stuff about gold and silver axes? or Why would she think I would wait in this situation? or Why is she so calm? and her head basically went blank, and by the time she figured she had to do something, the goddess had pulled out a plastic case and rolled what looked like medicine into her palm.

As if in response, Chelsea pulled out a grayfruit and took a bite. She picked up the pot that was sitting at a diagonal over the broken charcoal stove, tilted it over her mouth, and swallowed it with an audible gulp. Next she bit into the grayfruit, and though both should have tasted good, she didn’t taste anything at all.

While she took one bite, two, her gaze never left the goddess. The goddess was entirely unmoved, boldly putting the medicine in her mouth as if confirming that Chelsea would not attack in the middle of this act. Her throat, covered in cracked earth, undulated, and you could tell from the outside that she had swallowed down the medicine.

It was just the briefest moment in real time, no more than a few blinks long, but as felt time, it was long enough for Chelsea to experience enough hesitation to grind her teeth and writhe around as she let her chance to attack go by.

She knew she could not let this person get away. That was why Chelsea had done things that were not magical-girl-like, why she sought un-magical-girl-like results. But her limbs just would not move. The goddess believed that Chelsea would not attack. To attack then without a word would not be Dreamy Chelsea.

She stretched, bending her knee joints. She’d taken many attacks so far, but no direct hits. The total damage wasn’t beyond what she’d anticipated. She somersaulted and landed on her star decoration. Spreading her legs to the front and back, she crouched and lightly spread her hands like a surfer on a surfboard. Her opponent was incredibly tough. Even after gushing blood from her neck, she didn’t pass out. You had to fight with the intention of popping her head off cutely, or you wouldn’t be able to take her out of the fight.

Chelsea considered. She couldn’t use rhythm and tempo anymore. But even if she had closed the wound, it wasn’t like the blood would come back immediately. Bleeding that much would slow you down. And now, since she was using her weapon to stop the blood, she only had half the axes to wield as weapons. And since she’d piled a whole bunch of earth on herself, she looked ugly, too. The enemy’s fighting power, cuteness included, was way decreased.

…All right, let’s do it by force.

Chelsea remembered what her mother had said. Feelings would make magical girls stronger. Chelsea was forced to agree with that. If she hadn’t been able to defeat the goddess, even after borrowing power from Mary, Shepherdspie, and her mother, then she would get more feelings. First she would add in Ragi, who had preached to her about how a magical girl should be. There should be lots of other people you should add to Chelsea’s camp, too.

Just from a shared look, she and Miss Marguerite had acknowledged each other’s cuteness. They were basically frenemies.

Ever since Nephilia and Love Me Ren-Ren had been fighting over Mary, they’d been working together as allies. The same went for Navi and Agri. Those relationships were kind of like something out of a shoujo manga.

Her connection with Tepsekemei was something of a cat-and-mouse game, like a thief and a detective. That sort of thing could be a bond stronger even than friendship, at times.

That meant it was fair to treat Clarissa the same way, since she’d just run away from her. And that would make Clarissa’s boss Navi Ru the same.

Rareko and Maiya had been killed by the goddess. They would have died feeling regrets. They would be cheering Chelsea on, telling her to “Do your best, don’t give in.”

The two kids were Chelsea’s friends—since children were always friends to magical girls.

She could go ahead and count Mana as a child, too. And 7753—yes, she’d been in her pajamas, so they were friends. She’d been standing in basically the same position as Chelsea in a bathrobe. They were sleepwear friends.

One more, yes: Clantail was an animal. Magical girls and animals were highly compatible. If you counted her as a mascot character, then she would fit in the partner position.

The goddess readied her ax in her right hand. Her left hand was lightly open, idle near her chest. Chelsea readied herself as well. She drew in a deep breath and blew out another. Power circled to each and every hair, crackling as they rose around her. It would be okay. She was the greatest magical girl. She gradually backed up her star decoration, securing the distance for acceleration.

“Here I go!”

The bottom of her star decoration skimmed the floor. It scattered rubble. She made her star run in a low-altitude flight that was inches from an accident. Chelsea was not alone. She had accepted everyone’s feelings. Ragi, Marguerite, Nephilia, Ren-Ren, Agri, Tepsekemei, Clarissa, Navi, Rareko, Maiya, the two kids, Mana, 7753, and Clantail stood at her side. Pastel Mary and Shepherdspie were firmly pushing her from behind. A mysterious energy welled up from the pit of her stomach, her body temperature rose, and the feelings she’d jumbled together by force became a power that enveloped her.

The goddess’s free left hand came to sit alongside the handle of her ax in a natural movement, and she raised her ax in a stance pointing toward the eyes. In terms of just her bearing, she looked like a master. It was a dramatic way to hold the weapon after swinging it around too much with just one hand. Then the goddess laughed clearly, in a voice like tinkling bells. Chelsea had never heard the sound before. But it was cute. She felt the power. It gathered at one point. The blade transformed, shifting smoothly to become a giant battle-ax with a blade five feet long and over a foot wide. Maybe it was too crude to call a battle-ax. Chelsea would believe it if you said that this weapon was going to be carved into the shape of an ax.

Chelsea narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t just the size and shape. The color of the blade was dark, and it had become black. It was not a black originating from a mineral. It was a black deeper than black and shadow. Chelsea had seen this before. Her mother had once had a friend with multiple wings that were a color like this. She remembered that person because her mother had used polite language with her, though a lazy version with casual language mixed in it—something indescribable ran down Chelsea’s spine, something that made her shiver that you couldn’t even give a name to. With the hem of her tattered skirt fluttering, she did an emergency stop, standing her star perpendicular to the ground, and extended her bent knees to kick off the other way.

At just about the same instant, Chelsea was blasted away. The star decoration, floor, ceiling, rubble, everything was scattered, whizzing through the sky. All sound stopped. Even the wind slowed. An intense impact slammed Chelsea’s whole body.

She saw the goddess coming right after her faster than even the speed at which everything was flying away, and Chelsea clenched her fists. She ordered the star in her palm to try to get away, and a beat later the goddess did a horizontal sweep.

Though she thought she’d evaded a direct hit, Chelsea’s body flew horizontally. Something hit her back, and she didn’t even have the time to realize that it was the wall of the main building before she broke through the next wall and the one after that, then hit her shoulder on the ground and bounced, rebounded, and rolled, breaking through a door to hit something hard, rolling along as she scattered multiple stars in all directions. Mary and the others should be somewhere in the main building. She had to warn them. She had to tell them to hide.

She couldn’t hear any sound, but it was like energy was firing wildly in her brain. When she exhaled, bubbles mixed with blood blew out with her breath. Pain pierced her whole body. Her blood was flowing away. It wouldn’t stop. She tried to stand up. Just trying to move her arms and legs made pain run through them. Something hot welled up from deep in her throat, and she spat it up. It wasn’t vomit. Syrupy, thick blood was mixed in it. The blood wasn’t just coming from her mouth. She had been completely sliced open, from her right shoulder to her chest.

She shifted her bottom away from a broken mop, kicking away a bucket, putting her hand to a broom to stand up using it as a cane. Her field of vision was misting pink, and on the other side of the door that was creaking and breaking, the goddess was raising her weapon.

  Ragi Zwe Nento

As soon as he opened the door and looked into the room, Mary let out a little shriek and sank down weakly in place. Even Ragi felt some fear, but his curiosity was greater, and a powerful ire was even greater than that, which kept his limbs moving. He went around Mary, who was still sitting there trembling, to push open the doors, lighting the room with the magic glow he made on his palm.

There were rows of transparent containers two sizes bigger than a normal human. This in itself was not unique. These could be seen in any research facility in the Magical Kingdom. They were mainly used as cultivation tanks, and also like the ones in this room. These containers had indicator lights on them, with cords and hoses connected as well. Greenish, translucent fluid filled the vessels, and the bodies of magical girls floated within. The forms floating there with full hair and spotless white togas met the description of the wild magical girl who was on the loose on this island.

Ragi’s eyes swiftly ran from one end of the room to the other. There were ten containers in total with nine magical-girl bodies floating there. One container was empty. Ragi approached it, placing his palm against the glass, and when he was close enough to touch his forehead to it, he looked inside. Fluid—probably cultivation fluid—was accumulated at the bottom. The inside of the container was also damp. It was fair to assume that there had been a magical girl here until recently.

Ragi turned back and called out to Mary. “There’s no need to be afraid. The bases here haven’t been set up for operation.”

Mary let out a deep breath, leaning against the wall as she rose to her feet, and then she let out another deep breath. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her lower lashes were wet and stuck to her face. “Um…one of them is empty… Is the person who was in there…?”

“It’s natural to assume that it’s the ruffian who’s on a rampage outside.”

Mary’s eyes flared wide open. The hand she was resting against the wall tensed, and the wall made a nasty sound and cracked. A little piece fell down to bounce off the floor, where it rolled to Ragi’s feet. “So then doesn’t that mean…if we use the…um, nine people in here, then we can restrain the one going crazy out there? If it’s nine against one, then they couldn’t lose, right?”

“I just said they haven’t been set up for operation.” Ragi turned away from Mary, who was visibly disappointed, and toward the room. Pointing his light from one corner to the other, he searched the room. Aside from the containers and what came with them, there was just a cabinet in the corner, seven feet high and fifteen feet wide. The doors of the cabinet were all open. It was not locked. It was packed with a variety of stacks of paper that looked like records and data. As he picked some up, Ragi’s eyebrows furrowed. It was written in an ancient script. He pulled whatever didn’t look useful and tossed the rest aside, stirring up dust as he made piles on the floor, and at around halfway through, he discovered some writing that looked like the same script. The book seemed like a service manual.

“…Francisca Francesca,” Ragi muttered.

“What’s that?” Mary asked him.

“The name of those things over there, apparently.”

The spelling and grammar were in the style of the later period of ancient script. It was the same as the label on the gargling medicine—did that mean it had been written by the same person?

The wrinkles between Ragi’s eyes deepened. This place looked very much like a secret research lab, which fit perfectly with Sataborn’s boundlessly childish character. Ragi also felt an immature provocation in how he’d made use of a minor ancient language to write documents in, as if to say, “If you’re a researcher, of course you should be able to read this.”

Ragi broke the seal on a bottle labeled STOMACH MEDICINE and drank down the thick, viscous liquid. This one was also labeled in an ancient language. Judging from how the styles matched, Sataborn had written this. Sataborn must also have been the one to do the compounding and effects, as well as the adjustment of the ingredients. Even if a store-bought gargle medicine had the hidden effect of awakening a passed-out mage, would it have such an immediate efficacy? This was Sataborn, so it had to be specially made, with excessive labor invested to show off.

Ragi capped the half-drunk stomach medicine and tucked it into his robe. He would like to bemoan his hardship in having to rely on Sataborn’s dubious pharmaceuticals, but he had something more important to do.

“Mr. Ragi.”

“Wait a minute.”

He flipped through the pages. He got the gist of the main points. This document was, as it said, a manual. It detailed just what sort of thing the completed item was. Ragi put a finger between his brow and rubbed out the wrinkles. There was almost certainly no mistaking it. This was the magical-girl base that had been made to serve as an incarnation for one of the Three Sages. He lightly bit his lower lip. This wasn’t something natural magical girls could beat once it was activated, even if no spirit had been summoned into it.

Is there no way to bring it to a halt? There should be a stopper for emergencies.

He flipped to the end and clenched his teeth. There was a page with a piece torn out. It was the part that related to Francesca’s weakness. Had someone ripped it out?

Along with rising rage and despair, he also had a feeling something was off. He flipped again from page one, rereading the manual apart from what was missing, and assembled a hypothesis. It should be fair to assume that the missing part was about Francesca’s fatal weakness. Either it was a command word to stop her or a pharmaceutical that disabled her just from its smell; whatever it was, it was a means to stop her.

Through reverse calculation, he could tell that nothing else had really been written in the part that had been torn out. There wasn’t enough space to write out anything excessive.

So then… How strange.

Everything aside from her weakness was written here. Ragi read over it all again three times, and his doubts deepened. The magical girl called Francisca Francesca was far too proper, as a vessel. She was strong, fast, hard, and beautiful, and she had powerful magic—but that was all.

Ragi knew—if Sataborn was the one developing it, there was no way he would devise a base that was simply excellent and nothing else. His usual modus operandi would be to incorporate some new technology with particular pride, to flaunt it.

The gargling medicine rose in his mind. He had clearly done some compounding that had been unnecessary for the original gargle medicine. The grayfruit followed that pattern, too. It was a truly Sataborn-esque improved breed. Though there was a flaw in it, he’d kept it hidden.

A shiver went down his spine. Unknowingly, his right arm had had been hugging his left arm.

To write the manual in an ancient language was very like a hobbyist. He could just imagine Sataborn assuming that if you didn’t understand it, then you hadn’t studied enough. Hadn’t he been the same about Francesca? Those who would try to use her without even looking this up he would chide with an expression like a teacher to a student: “No, no, no, you can’t do that.”

“Mr. Ragi!”

“I told you to wait.”

“This! This!”

When he gave Mary an unpleasant look to ask, “What is the matter?” she was slammed into the wall. No, she wasn’t slammed into it. She slammed herself into the wall in the most unnatural way, rampaging all around to hit the floor and then the ceiling, as if she were being swung around by something.

“What are you doing?! This is no time for playing around!” Ragi yelled.

“I’m not! Trying to play around!”

Whatever Mary’s own intentions, a mage like Ragi wouldn’t be able to do anything about a magical girl running about madly. With Ragi hurriedly backed into a corner, Mary repeated this self-harm three or four times. On the fifth time, she smacked her face hard on the floor, and when she jumped for the sixth time, a sudden rattling and noise made the whole room shudder, and Ragi immediately grabbed the cabinet to support himself. As the walls and floor rocked and dust fluttered down from the ceiling, Mary slammed her whole body against the floor and stopped moving.

Ragi wasn’t sure what to call out to her, but Mary got to her knees and stood up, shoulders heaving. She was gasping like she was in distress, but he could sense a firm will in her eyes—if you subtracted how vacant they were to begin with. That was not the face of someone caught by a temporary madness.

“…Just what happened?” Ragi asked.

“Before, there was this big shaking, as much as just now, right? There was someone banging around at the entrance.”

Ragi clicked his tongue quietly. He’d only detected more recent swaying. Did that mean he’d been focused so much on the manual, he hadn’t noticed such great shaking? If you said this was the usual, maybe it was the usual, but the situation being what it was, he couldn’t write this off as a laughing matter.

Pastel Mary continued, looking quite desperate. “I was wondering who it was…and when I cracked open the door, this thing flew in. It was dangerous, banging into the hallway and door, so I caught it, and then I was getting dragged everywhere.”

“Don’t do something so dangerous! Opening the entrance without asking.”

“I told you about that, Mr. Ragi, but you didn’t listen!” When Pastel Mary timidly opened the palm of her hand, there was a round pebble there—it looked like a little star. Mary brought her palm to her face and looked at the pebble, and then she looked at Ragi. “Um…this is Chelsea’s star, isn’t it?”

Ragi nodded. “Probably.” The stars that Chelsea controlled were generally about this shape and size. Why had Chelsea sent this over, and why had it stopped? A wrinkle formed between his eyes when he thought of the reason, and, guessing it was connected with the wild shaking, he started to open his mouth, then bit his lower lip hard to keep the words from coming out.

  Miss Marguerite

On the edge of the river, all that remained was the burnt stench and the marks of blasting in a radial pattern, and the goddess’s footsteps and path of destruction didn’t lead anywhere else.

Feeling pained, Marguerite looked down at the destruction. Clantail was standing guard quite expressionlessly, but she had to be thinking the same thing. Marguerite knew from experience that the goddess was able to fly by causing continuous explosions with her axes. They knew that if she used that method, they would be unable to track her anymore.

But, she thought, the goddess had clearly been unable to perceive the two of them when they’d lost their transformations. Why would she have chosen to travel by flying dramatically when she wouldn’t have known there were two people pursuing her? Did it mean something?

She told herself that even if the goddess’s path had come to an end, that didn’t change what they had to do. They would share what they knew about the goddess. If they had extra grayfruit, they would split it. If there was someone who needed to be protected, they would guard them. She wanted to know if Touta was safe.

She waved a finger at Clantail, indicating that they would go into the forest. There weren’t many obstacles on the edge of the river, and if you set aside the slipperiness, it was easy to run there. In the forest, on the other hand, there were a lot of obstacles.

They would go in the same direction as the goddess. Clantail took the lead, while Marguerite was the rear guard. Their roles were reversed from when they had been traveling along the riverside. It was best for the one who was familiar with outdoor activity—Clantail hadn’t mentioned it, but, well, that was surely true—to go first. But that would place a burden on her.

Marguerite had to do her own job, at least. She stayed alert and watchful to her surroundings. There was a lot more in the way compared to when they’d been at the river, and the visibility was terrible. The footing was just as bad. On the way, Clantail stumbled and hurriedly caught herself. After walking awhile, she stumbled again and caught herself.

“Are you all right?” Marguerite asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Perhaps…you can’t see well? I thought you had a kinda mean…er, sharp look in your eyes.”

“I’m all right.”

“Let’s change positions.”

“I’m all right. I can see if I squint.”

“Hey, right now—”

There was a bursting sound, and the ground shook. The two of them supported each other, grabbing the bark of a nearby tree and crouching low and at the ready.

The violent rumbling of the ground quickly stopped, and Clantail looked right, looked left, then looked into the forest. “Wasn’t that…at the main building?”

After all this running and walking around, at this point Marguerite’s sense of direction was getting vague and weak, but now that Clantail pointed it out, that did seem right.

The trees here were tall. The spire of the main building couldn’t be seen from here. Marguerite started to consider what they should do, but before she could think of anything, Clantail was moving. She grabbed the comparatively thick tree that she had put her hands on for support before and briskly climbed up it. All Marguerite’s feeble thoughts as a woman of civilization, like Doesn’t that hurt with bare hands and feet? Isn’t that difficult? Can you really see properly? were crushed as those hands and feet were set on the tree branches, Clantail’s muscles straining as she made her way along with a strength different from that of a magical girl.

Near the top, she poked her face out from the foliage and called out, “Ahhh,” like a sigh. She turned her head from side to side to look around, and this time she yelled, “Ahhh!” in surprise. Clantail started to descend like she was in a panic, and on the way, a branch tangled in her skirt, and she failed to notice and tried to come down, which made her lose her balance. Coming down so fast she was practically falling, she hit a branch, somehow caught herself before being bounced off, then climbed halfway up the tree again to grab the skirt that she’d lost, then came down, put it back on, and breathed a sigh.

“The main building has collapsed,” Clantail said. “Also, they’re there.”

“What’s there?”

“Calling out and waving.”

“Like I said, what is there?”

Clantail opened her mouth to say what, but the words wouldn’t come out. Right as Marguerite was thinking to prompt her, she heard footsteps, and when she turned around, there was a smile spilling out. Marguerite caught Touta, who leaped at her with a cry, and when Yol came after, she failed to catch her and fell to the ground.

Marguerite now understood that Clantail had climbed up that tree to confirm the sounds that she’d heard coming from the main building, and then she and Touta and Yol had seen each other, as the others were also trying to see from a high place, and Clantail hadn’t been able to say what she’d seen because Touta and Yol’s names wouldn’t come out.

They were still amid danger and crisis. But it was okay to be glad just for the moment. Nodding at Clantail with her flushed cheeks, Marguerite scrubbed the hair of the two kids pushing their heads at her.

When she sensed a noise and shaking even louder than before, she stopped petting them and turned in the direction of the sound. Concern and anxiety colored all their faces as they all looked in the same direction. Clouds of dust billowed up, the sight letting them know whether they liked it or not that the main building was not safe. Then a figure appeared in the smoke, only to be lost in the dark-brown dust and immediately vanish.

Marguerite heard someone swallow. She fell silent. Hadn’t that been the goddess?

She was looking toward us…? No, she wasn’t. I don’t think she could perceive us. Or was my guess that she can’t perceive us mistaken? But I was certain that time…

Marguerite’s eyes happened to drop to Yol, who was still hugged against her chest. Someone who wasn’t a magical girl was there with them. She was certain she would’ve known otherwise—after all, she herself could perceive magical girls. Someone cried out, and something familiar flew toward her.

It was a grayfruit. She reflexively reached out to take it. She looked toward the voice. Touta, who’d thrown the grayfruit at her, was looking at her with an expression like he’d finished a job and was tired, but satisfied.