Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

BY OUR POWERS COMBINED!

  Miss Marguerite

She’d seen so many of them since coming to this island that she was sick of them, but she caught it in her right hand and bit into it without hesitation. The grayfruit was as juicy as ever. The sweet juices overflowed just from one bite, getting all around her mouth, and if she didn’t watch out, they would drip down her chin to her throat.

Miss Marguerite set her right hand on the hilt of her rapier and wiped her mouth with her left, only glancing at the one who had thrown the grayfruit at her—Touta—then immediately looked back at the main building.

She transformed into a magical girl. The range of her vision and hearing, her analysis of scent, the air touching her skin, even the lingering juices on her tongue were completely different from when she was human. She had never once felt so intensely grateful to be a magical girl, even back when she’d been a newbie.

The vibrations were transmitted through the bottoms of her shoes as they rocked the ground with even more intensity. Marguerite drew her rapier and readied herself. She watched as trees with wide trunks flew into the air all at once. Dirt danced in the air. Her decorative feather flattened against her hat. The trees before her shot off, and the goddess appeared, turned away from them. She twisted around, turned, leaped, turned again, and landed. They faced off. It was just over ten yards between them. She was already within range of the goddess’s axes.

The goddess clearly looked like something had happened to her. Her dully shining ax was at the ready in her left hand, while her left was empty. When Marguerite looked to see where the ax she’d been holding in her left hand had gone, she saw only the handle was left, stuck to her neck. That hardened clod of earth at the end of the handle had to be the ax, transformed. From the marks of dark-red blood that looked like her own scattered around it, you could tell it was being used to stop bleeding.

There was a strong affectation in the way she moved. Her gestures were elegant, such that should be called a magical-girl-style martial arts demonstration. Though Marguerite had only seen Dreamy Chelsea briefly, she could imagine that if she got serious, she would move like this. Was it just her imagination that now she seemed like she was putting on even more of a show than back by the river? Marguerite lightly bit her lip and licked the inside of her mouth. Even though she’d only just transformed into a magical girl, it was already dry and rough.

Dreamy Chelsea was an experienced master. Marguerite could believe that she was the one who had forced the goddess into bleeding so much that she would need to stop the flow. And she could imagine Chelsea’s end, too. The blood on the goddess’s white toga was not just her own—there was more splatter from another.

“Is the one you dropped the golden ax?”

The goddess said exactly the same thing as Marguerite remembered. Did she do that every time? Was it her routine before entering battle? Was it to get herself in gear? Or was it a meaningless protocol based on faith or delusion, with no meaning to anyone but herself?

The felt time, sharp awareness, and lessened fear of a magical girl all combined to form “the calm magical girl Miss Marguerite,” as she further explored that thought. That question would just leave an opening for her opponent, and the goddess asked it so mechanically, without any excitement. But Marguerite also didn’t get the sense that she was trying to calm herself and keep from getting worked up.

“Or is it…”

Marguerite thought the goddess seemed a little distracted as she spoke. Behind her, something large rose. Clantail had transformed. Clantail’s appearance had to have distracted the goddess’s attention. The goddess must have only become aware of her once she had transformed.

“…the silver…”

Did the goddess not perceive magical girls who had undone their transformations? Or was it that she couldn’t perceive them if they’d completely lost their magic power and couldn’t transform? Whichever it was, they couldn’t just let her pass by not eating grayfruit. That was because of the reason the goddess had noticed them—Yol. She was a mage. She couldn’t freely throw away her magic power—in other words, she couldn’t run away. When Touta had given Marguerite that grayfruit, Marguerite had glanced at him. She’d only seen him for a brief moment from the corner of her eye, but she’d seen him firmly grasping Yol’s hand. It seemed like he would resent Marguerite if she suggested they sacrifice Yol and flee. Clantail wouldn’t be okay with that, either. Marguerite couldn’t even consider if one of Cranberry’s children would be fine with it.

And of course Marguerite would also not be okay with that. Magical girls existed to protect those who needed protecting. Right as she’d decided on her plan, she sheathed her sword in one movement, without even a blink.

“…ax?”

Based on just the estimation that they were generally in that area, without looking back, Marguerite hooked Touta’s hood in her pinkie and plucked up Yol’s hood with the same hand. Grasping Touta with her right pinkie and ring finger and Yol between her right thumb and index finger, she lifted them up in one hand, turned around, and leaped—her gaze met Clantail’s, and she gave her a little nod, then turned her face toward the goddess.

Marguerite just yelled, “Forward!”

There wasn’t even a trace of hesitation or faltering in Clantail’s movement. She was resolute like the ideal of magical girl incarnate. The thought made the right corner of Marguerite’s lips quirk up, and then thinking about how she was smiling in the middle of a crisis made the left corner quirk up, too. Clantail bounded out with perfect timing, and Marguerite jumped on her back, wrapping her left arm around the neck of the horse base, around Clantail’s waist.

Clantail ran. She didn’t ask the questions you’d think she’d have asked, like “Aren’t we running the wrong way?” or “Doesn’t this mean we’re running toward the goddess?”

Even if Clantail had never seen the goddess in a fight, she had heard Marguerite explain about her. On top of that, the blood splatter on her white toga announced how dangerous she was. And finally and most hopelessly, Touta and Yol were there. Marguerite would feel bad to say this about them, but these two were a burden, and they couldn’t fight this opponent while also carrying the two of them and keeping them from getting hurt.

With all of these elements piled up, Clantail did not argue. She just ran ahead.

Her giant horse body flowed to the right, running to the goddess’s left side, the one that didn’t hold an ax. The goddess opened up her stance, raising the ax in her right hand over her head and then twisting all the way around, turning, showing them she was about to attack.

Marguerite had already experienced that there would not be time to evade once you’d actually seen the attack. She glared at the goddess, preparing herself to read the trajectory of the attack before it came, sacrificing her rapier at best, her arm at worst to evade the slice, but an unexpected impact made her jolt forward. She had no time to be surprised. Her arm around Clantail’s torso tightened, and she shoved the two kids behind her and herself down into the horse’s pelt. At just about the same moment, a slice made her hat fly off, and she reflexively huffed out through her nose. There was no pain and no smell of blood. Her head was in one piece. It seemed she’d avoided damage beyond her hat.

She immediately figured out what Clantail had done. Right before the goddess had swung her ax, she had transformed from a big horse to a shorter animal, making use of the height difference to evade. She somehow passed by the goddess’s flank and was managing to head forward per instructions. Now if she could evade just one more attack—right before shifting to the next thought, she saw what Clantail had transformed into and understood what she was going to do. As soon as Marguerite saw the long black fur with a white stripe, the long fluffy tail, and the shape like a weasel, she acted.

She tensed her legs and lifted up the kids, holding them against her chest to press their faces to her.

The goddess, who’d been about to attack as Clantail ran past her, was gone. She was hidden by the long tail standing in the way. Marguerite held her breath, and Clantail waved her tail slightly from side to side, and a yellowish liquid sprayed out in the goddess’s direction.

A skunk…!

Marguerite hadn’t been sprayed directly. She’d been holding her breath. But she still felt the intensely irritating odor. Marguerite blinked two, three times. She even felt like it was kind of getting in her eyes. Even a magical girl would inevitably faint from the torture of getting hit by that. For non–magical girls, it might even be fatal.

Still holding her breath, Marguerite looked behind them. The goddess was leaping. With nowhere left to run on either side, she’d gone up to escape to safety. She hadn’t simply escaped. The ax, the hand clasping its handle, and the arm connected to it bent like a single unified weapon. That jump had been both an evasion and a preparation to attack.

Marguerite felt a sudden force flattening her to Clantail’s back as the goddess retreated terrifyingly quickly into the distance, telling her that Clantail had accelerated in a burst. Clantail’s back was pale brown, and her stomach was white. Not being a specialist in the area, it was hard for Marguerite to tell what kind of creature she’d turned into, some kind of cow or deer or goat, and she raced along with incredible speed. Fortunately, there was no lingering aroma of skunk.

The axes cut through air, and the dirt and trees around were tossed upward. The goddess landed from her upward leap to pursue them, but she didn’t catch up. Clantail was slightly faster, being that she ran on four hooves. Now you could see the point in her running straight forward. The goddess had been cutting down trees or pulling them up by the roots in her path to them. That left destruction in her wake—in other words, it made a path. No matter how exceptional the goddess’s physical abilities were, going in a straight line, a beast that was good at running would be faster. Even if the footing was somewhat poor, even Marguerite knew there were animals that would sprint over that like it was nothing.

I’ll make doubly sure.

Marguerite wielded her rapier from her mounted position, cutting and preparing falling trees to be straight. Then she immediately bent them. Fallen trees bent at ninety-degree angles blocked the goddess’s way and view like people going from lying down to sitting up, and even though the goddess quickly swept them aside, repeating the process three times enabled them to visibly pull away from her. Clantail was so terrifically fast, even that slight obstruction was not insignificant.

And even if the goddess had her ax, she was one-handed. If she threw it, she would lose her weapon. She wouldn’t be able to cause explosions to get closer, either. She couldn’t use one ax as the igniter and the other as the propellant if she only had one left. And Clantail was too fast for the goddess to toss up dirt at her. They were just gaining more and more distance.

Marguerite had doubts about how far away they could get on this small island, but at the very least, if they had some more time, then they could hide Touta and Yol. Making a lot of noise as they ran would also draw the attention of other magical girls and make it possible for them to find each other.

Then, suddenly, Marguerite got the vague sense that something was off. She let out a short breath and inhaled again. She knew this feeling. She put a hand in Touta’s pocket, pulled out two grayfruit, ate half of one, and held the other out before Clantail’s face.

Yes, there were things to be uneasy about. Of course she hadn’t forgotten them—but this was worse than Marguerite had thought. The pace of consumption was accelerating. At this rate, escaping would be out of the question. When Touta looked up at her with concern, she gently held him down and glared at the goddess who chased after them with a smile.

  Nephilia

Falteringly, Nephilia told Ren-Ren that her injuries were essentially minor for a magical girl, that she wasn’t feeling as bad as when it had been at its worst, and that she was the best at running and hiding, with much expression of her gratitude and expectations for Ren-Ren, coaxing her, saying that they just absolutely had to do this now, and somehow she was able to convince her to split up.

Nephilia would have liked to avoid it herself. With one of them injured and the other ill, they both needed care. But in an emergency like this, you couldn’t go selfishly begging like a child and saying you wanted to be together. It was common enough in magical-girl activities that all you could do was pray for them not to die. Nephilia tapped the arrowhead Ren-Ren had given her twice with the pad of her finger, praying that she wouldn’t have to use it, and slipped it into her hidden pocket.

Now then… Oh, dearie me.

The main building had been destroyed. Had a mass of people turned mob forced their way in, had they experienced some cataclysmic weather like an earthquake or typhoon, or had it been attacked by a goddess with axes? She could basically assume it had been the third thing, but since the sounds of destruction had been moving toward the forest, here was actually safer—is what she told herself, somehow dragging her feet as they felt like they would crumple underneath her, circling to the back of the main building.

She cranked up her antenna to max sensitivity, alert to her surroundings, keeping in a low stance at all times, occasionally stopping to look around, never forgetting to refuel with grayfruit as she moved from one tree shadow to another along the edge of the forest. Though she had acted confident to Ren-Ren about her condition, she got out of breath just from walking around with her scythe as a cane. Her pace was as gradual as the wear on her mental state, and right as she had circled to the very back of the main building, she gulped. Squatting down and leaning against a tree trunk, she cautiously and gingerly took a look beyond the trees—to the main building.

The ground all around had been dug up, rocks were shattered, and trees had fallen. Two areas of destruction could be described as small-scale craters, and there were two rifts like fissures in the ground. They spoke vividly of a use of violence that surpassed human ken. The main building had not gone unscathed, either. The back entrance was destroyed. And then, fifteen feet from there toward the forest, someone was lying on the ground.

Nephilia’s eyes narrowed. Every single thing about the body was awful looking. The light filtering through the trees would have made the area feel kind of pastoral otherwise, which made it even worse.

Bearing with the pain, Nephilia crawled along, then quietly rose, face twisting. The destruction of the earth and the estate were pretty bad, but the corpse was even worse—an exceptionally gruesome sight. Since its face was gone, you couldn’t even say for sure who it was. But from the clothing, it had to be Rareko.

The destruction all around spoke of how fearsome the attacker was, but also indicated the efforts on the part of the victim. If Nephilia’s estimations were correct, then Rareko wouldn’t have been able to put up this much of a fight. Was she stronger than Nephilia had thought, or had someone else been fighting hard here?

Nephilia picked up a three-foot-long metal staff—it was the type where you’d rattle out three sections to extend it, like a billy club—and gave it a swing. The blood and earth stuck to it flew off, and under the sun, she could see there wasn’t a scratch on it. Its make was functional and basic for something a magical girl would use, but that also made it look easy to use. It seemed like it would be a better cane than her own scythe.

Staff arts, huh?

Needed by magical girls who used staffs and wands, staff arts had been developed based on the jodo used by humans, systematized through much fine-tuning to become one of what were called the magical girl–style martial arts. Since the weapon used matched a certain type of standard magical-girl image, and the sales pitch wasn’t contrary to the typical magical-girl view—that the goal was not violence but protection—there were quite a lot of people who would knock on their doors—in particular, those who emphasized defense. But how useful would blocks and stops and such be against the violence of the goddess? If you trained and trained to reach the position of a master among masters, then maybe you could pull off blocks and stops even Nephilia couldn’t imagine, but she doubted Rareko was that good. Her master, Maiya, had been helplessly killed by the goddess, after all.

With a sigh, she touched the foot of the pitiful corpse. No matter how many dead people she touched, she couldn’t get used to their body temperature. Its coldness seeped through her skin to run down her spine. It made her shiver.

She soothed herself by telling herself that even if it was a gruesome death, the body was still fresh, so it was way better than rotting corpses in summer, and while praying with one hand, she pleaded, Don’t curse me, as she rubbed her foot.

A voice came out. It was Rareko’s, after all. Her final remarks seemed to be of resentment. She seemed to be cursing someone, but she was muttering under her breath, so Nephilia couldn’t quite pick up what she was saying. If she was cursing someone who wasn’t there, that rated pretty high on the nasty-o-meter. If her resentment was unjustified, then fantastic. Nephilia wished she could have had the chance to talk more while she was still alive. Despite her regrets, she didn’t stop in her task. Most of the words that came out after were screams or yells—it was clear she was afraid. Her voice sounded cowardly, with a lot of worrying about her opponent, and it communicated something about her position and character.

“Oh, yes, thank you.”

Finally, meaningful words came out. She was thanking someone. Nephilia continued to rub. That was followed by some unimportant listening remarks like “Oh no, not at all,” “No, no,” and “Yes,” and “Mm-hmm.” Assuming she hadn’t been pressed to such anxiety that she was muttering to herself, that meant she was talking to someone.

“This gear, you mean.”

Gear?

Nephilia dredged her whole memory, but she had no recollection of any gear. What about gear? That was followed by “Oh, the carpet” in a voice so quiet she just about missed it. From the part about a carpet, Nephilia could guess. If that didn’t mean a carpet indoors, it was natural to assume that was Navi Ru’s flying carpet. Oh yeah, she remembered. When she’d spoken with the bald middle-aged mage before, he hadn’t been riding his carpet.

  Love Me Ren-Ren

Clouds of dust were billowing thick at the main building. Ren-Ren hid herself in the dust, flying so low she was skimming the ground as she went along the outer wall, circling to the front.

No matter how much her mother and father loved each other, they couldn’t be together all the time. And no matter how much they cherished their child, they couldn’t lock her up in the house and keep her from going to school. Even if the ideal was for a family to protect each other always, it wasn’t realistic.

She reluctantly understood that she was the one who had to capitulate, in the end. But still, of course Ren-Ren would repeatedly warn Nephilia, “Absolutely don’t be reckless.” Nephilia was reckless. If you didn’t watch out for her, she would do some truly shocking things. That was why she had gotten so badly hurt. Ren-Ren was really glad that she hadn’t died, but even so, she couldn’t just write that off since it had worked out in the end. If the same thing happened again, she would die this time for sure.

Nephilia was family. Family wasn’t allowed to die. Ren-Ren prompted Nephilia many times to be cautious, and she actually would have liked to be with her, she really, really would, she would so much have rather been together, but even so, they had parted ways. It was to protect the family.

When she circled to the front, she could see dust rising in the forest as well. The dust was fresher than that at the main building—in fact, trees and earth were flying right this minute. They saw each other at the same time—Ren-Ren slowed down from her glide to land in front of the half-destroyed gates, and Clarissa ran up to her in a low stance.

“You don’t have to be so reckless,” Clarissa said. Her kind words made Ren-Ren reflexively look back at her face.

Clarissa gave her an apologetic-looking smile with her lips alone. She twitched her ears like a cat, putting her right hand behind her head. “Oh, I’m not joking around when I say that, you know? I’m all ready on my end. So if you’d lend me a hand, that’d be great, but even saying that, I’d honestly feel bad if you pushed it and got reckless and got yourself hurt or even worse.”

“I know. I’ll be all right,” Ren-Ren replied.

“Well then, I’ll be countin’ on ya.” Clarissa lightly clapped Ren-Ren’s back, and Ren-Ren nodded. Clarissa seemed apologetic for some reason, or awkward in some way, but Ren-Ren didn’t really understand why. Each and every magical girl had her own situation, so she had to have her own reasons, too.

And one thing was clear: Clarissa cared about Ren-Ren’s well-being. That was something to be very glad about. Ren-Ren had to get safely back to Nephilia. Was Clarissa following Ren-Ren’s ideas about how families should get along and be together? Since Ren-Ren hadn’t told Clarissa about that, there was surely another reason for it.

“Ah.”

“Hm? What’s up?” Clarissa asked.

“No, it’s nothing.” Her mother had suddenly risen in her mind, making that sound pop out, but she covered it.

She couldn’t remember her mother’s face very well. It was hazy. Her mother had gone out a lot, so that had to be the reason. She thought about her mother vaguely. She did that because it let her feel happy. The more painful reality was, the better it was to feel happy. She couldn’t remember her mother clearly. When she strained her head to try to force herself to remember, it grated the area around her temples. So she would think about it vaguely. Ren-Ren knew doing that was best.

“Wait…,” Clarissa said, “are they coming back this way?”

The billowing dust stilled, then turned around and headed back to the main building. With a sigh, Clarissa rapped her own head with her knuckles, and each time she rapped it her ears perked up, and after she hit herself three times, her ears were pointing straight up as if to pierce the heavens.

Ren-Ren looked at the dust with her right eye, and even as she was captivated by it, she closed her left eye. She felt like her mother was smiling in the darkness. Though it was dark, so she shouldn’t be able to see anything, she felt a hazy certainty that she was there. Feeling hazy but also certain seemed contradictory, but it wasn’t. At the very least, not to Ren-Ren.

“…Mother.” Her voice came out again.

That unthinking slip from Ren-Ren made Clarissa turn around. Until a moment ago, Clarissa had been detached—if you were going to be nasty about it, you might say she seemed dismissive of others—but that attitude had totally evaporated now. Her eyes were wide and staring back at Ren-Ren as if she’d heard something unbelievable.

Clarissa started to open her mouth, and Ren-Ren clasped her hand to cut her off. “Let’s do our best.”

“Ah…yeah.”

“For your mother’s sake as well.”

Clarissa’s expression contorted even further. Did she not have any good memories of her mother? Was that why she looked so sad? If that was what it was, then it was time for Ren-Ren. The magical girl Love Me Ren-Ren would make all families happy—no exceptions allowed.

“Um, what—?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you out once this is over. For now, let’s fight our best.”

Behind her eyelids, her mother smiled, mingling with the blue of the sky as she stood next to her. Ren-Ren wasn’t just feeling it—she was actually there. So long as she loved her family, she could be certain of that. With a great flap of her wings, Ren-Ren flew into the cloud of dust. Sensing Clarissa following softened her expression into a smile.

  Pastel Mary

Something awful had probably happened to Chelsea. Even Mary could tell that, and she knew she was being optimistic, hoping those injuries would be on the better side. Chelsea was crazy strong, so if she was in that much trouble, that meant she could only be fighting against one person—the goddess.

Trembling, Pastel Mary was busy at work: following Ragi’s directions, carrying things, making sheep, having her sheep carry things. She wasn’t trembling just because she was scared. First, it went without saying that she was very scared. And she felt helpless, since there was no point in someone like Mary going out to save Chelsea, and then her noticing her own relief that she didn’t have to go if there was no point made her feel despair, and then she felt angry at the goddess for even hurting Chelsea after what she had done to Shepherdspie, and she was indignant toward Sataborn for making this thing she didn’t really get and leaving it out where it couldn’t be controlled, and a mess of a whole bunch of other stuff was filling her head to the brim and beyond, simmering and spilling out. She figured that if not for Ragi, she really would have lost it. The more she wondered about what, specifically, she would have lost, the more scared she got, so she decided not to think about that.

Ragi kept pulling out things and fishing around, muttering to himself as he picked out what he needed and put it into a locker. Why he needed them or what they even were to begin with, Mary didn’t know. Occasionally she would receive medicine from Ragi, which she would plug her nose to drink down in one go. Even if you wouldn’t go as far as with syrup medicine for children, couldn’t he do something to make it a little easier to swallow? When she asked him what sort of medicine it was, the old mage’s mind seemed elsewhere as he muttered back, “Hair growth formula.” Mary decided she’d misheard him and continued her work.

“The taste is…a little, um, avant-garde, or like, new wave,” she said.

She couldn’t tell whether Ragi was listening or not, but she just couldn’t bring herself to want to work when things were so uncomfortable, so meaning it to be to herself, Mary said, “But I’m sure this is good medicine. Though maybe not as good as the grayfruit. Compared to those, um, we need to take them a little more often, I mean, it’s not like I’m blaming you, or that I see that as a problem or anything like that. I was just thinking that the grayfruit are amazing, that store-bought medicine can’t beat it, huh?”

“Wait.”

Mary had assumed an answer wasn’t coming, so even getting a brief indication he was listening was surprising. She stopped her hand that was crushing the key to a cabinet and turned to Ragi to find he wasn’t looking at her at all.

“Why?” the old mage asked.

“Pardon?”

“It’s true, that’s strange. These disgusting tonics were made personally by Sataborn. He refined them and adjusted the components himself. And if you consider the effects, it’s natural to assume grayfruit were used in them. One should be able to absorb the components far more efficiently than with intake of the raw fruit…” The old man’s eyes dropped to the floor, and he swung his right fist high to low. “The rate at which it’s being siphoned away is accelerating… Yes! The fire. Even if the parts above ground burn, so long as the roots remain, the trees are not dead. In fact, they’re trying to repair themselves, so it’s natural to assume they’re absorbing magic even more powerfully. Self-preservation is an instinct. There are examples of plants’ rate of absorption becoming even more aggressive in an attempt to compensate as much as possible for spreading damage. And if the underground stems are connected, then it would exist as one single unit, and the fires are simply burning part of its body.”

While muttering, he started walking, going back and forth from one end of the room to the other, and after going there and back three times, the old man hit a sheep that was carrying things and went head over heels, the hem of his robe swinging up overhead. Mary panicked and rushed over to help him up. Ragi was already out of that “not mentally present” state of mind to become angry again. She was glad he was back to normal, but it wasn’t great that the target of his anger was her.

“These sheep are in the way! You created them! Control them properly!”

“That’s not that easy… It’s actually really hard. In particular, when there are a lot of them and I start adding in variations, some of them will always do what they want.”

“How can a shepherd magical girl be like that?!”

“W-well, I mean… Of course I have some elements of a shepherd motif, but if anything, my motif is artist. So I think there’s no helping that my ability to shepherd is not as great. Though I’m not trying to justify myself.”

Ragi’s expression rapidly turned more severe. Mary regretted having foolishly argued back and was about to apologize to ease his anger as much as she could, but the remark he tossed back at her was surprisingly not curses or insults, but a question.

“A motif… A motif, eh? You just said ‘motif.’”

“Huh? Yes…I did say that.”

“What do you think the motif is of that insolent wretch enacting violence up above us?”

“Well…I figure it’s, you know, the goddess of the spring from the story. So I think it’s unfair that she’s good at using axes. And maybe she can swim very well, too.”

Ragi’s eyes moved away from Mary again, and he returned to his earlier “absentminded” state, muttering and holding his beard with his right hand, before standing up like he was agitated. “I see. The motif. It was not the conventional magic of transforming the axes. And neither was it something so ubiquitous as strong physicality. Sataborn would think of something else. The motif. A god. He’s making a god. What extreme insolence. But for Sataborn. What would Sataborn…?”

Ragi muttered intently to himself without responding to Mary’s calls, but eventually he must have been satisfied, as he suddenly turned to Mary and gave the confused magical girl orders. “Put everything you’ve gathered outside.”

“Outside… Wait, isn’t that dangerous?!”

“I’m aware that it’s dangerous. But this technique isn’t possible in such a small space.”

“But we can’t… Really…? Um…what do you plan to do?”

Ragi turned around, walking with squared shoulders like he was incredibly irked, and, before Mary could stop him, he kicked one of the transparent cases with a goddess in it. “We just need power right now—energy.”

“Well, yes. I do understand that.”

“We’re going to make all of these into energy again. Sataborn, you bastard, serves you right.”

  7753

The pain on the bottoms of Kotori’s feet was an endless torture, but she still kept on walking, never stopping. She had to keep on moving her feet as long as she could. After walking around so much, she’d failed to run into Navi, and she didn’t even know if Mana was safe or not, but she still had to walk.

Kotori knew. She knew the information she had now was important.

The goddess had overlooked a human and a tortoise who had been unable to transform into magical girls. It had been beyond not just not noticing them, or happening not to see them. She’d treated them like they weren’t there, leaving them alone even when Kotori tackled her and held on, leaving them to their own devices no matter what they did. This was very important information. Life or death hung on this. She had to tell someone.

As her feet felt ready to give up from the pain, she scolded herself, telling herself that it was better than dying—If I die, I won’t be able to move. Many people had died before 7753’s eyes. If she were to ask them, “Which would you choose, death or sore feet?” you wouldn’t even have to wait for an answer. Kotori didn’t want anyone to die—surely nobody wanted to die.

She just walked, walked, and walked some more, and then she heard a loud noise, and the ground rumbled. She automatically crouched down and looked around—but there were just birds flying away, insects jumping off, leaves rustling and such, and nothing really happened.

That sound had been loud. But it had also been far away. Kotori stood up and looked toward the sound. Had it been the goddess magical girl? That would make it dangerous to walk that way. If that was dangerous, then she should avoid it. But right now, was “Avoid it because it’s dangerous” really the option she should choose? Dangerous meant that things would be dangerous for Kotori, but also for others.

She sucked in a full lungful of air and blew out as much as she could, repeating that five times before pressing her lips tight. It was going to be okay. The goddess would not see her. And the goddess wouldn’t aim to attack her, either. Though she might get killed in the cross fire—considering this far, Kotori grabbed her collar and clenched her teeth.

Let’s go.

She made up her mind. First, she tried to put Mei down from her left hand onto a tree root, but the tortoise was clinging to her wrist and she couldn’t let go. When she tried to somehow peel her off with her right hand, Mei bit her finger, and Kotori yelped.

“Mei. Listen a moment. I’m going to leave you here. It’s dangerous.”

The tortoise struggled, flailed, bit, and clung. Kotori sighed and leaned in to the tortoise. “Do you mean we go together?”

Mei stopped moving and stretched out her neck long, face turning to Kotori. It was difficult to read what she was thinking in those round eyes of hers, but Kotori could guess. She let out another deep breath and hugged the tortoise. Mei didn’t try to struggle anymore.

“Then let’s go.”

She set out once again. She felt like the pain at the bottoms of her feet had eased a bit.

  Clarissa Toothedge

Two magical girls dashed out of the forest. The first one, Clantail, glared at her with an indescribable expression. The second one, Miss Marguerite, who was riding on Clantail’s back, should have been purely surprised, but her face showed surprise only faintly, which was surely due to the depth of her experience. The way she hugged the two children to her chest while wielding a rapier in one hand made her look like a fighting mother.

It wasn’t as if Clarissa held any enmity for either of them, but she wound up greeting them by blocking the way right in front of them. It was crossing her mind that this was a bad idea when the movement of Marguerite’s eyes indicated to Clarissa that there was someone chasing after them. Clantail moved her lips to form “Run,” and Clarissa answered the two of them by snapping a wink at them. Saying out loud, “Leave the rest to me,” she waved a friendly hand at the two magical girls.

Clarissa didn’t know what Clantail was transformed into—a goat or a deer or a cow or what—but she avoided Clarissa to turn to the right, transforming into a blackish horse as she passed by. Then Francesca appeared from behind with an explosive sound.

That surprised Clarissa. If she’d gone so far as to use one of her axes to stop the bleeding, then that was quite the situation. It was out of the ordinary to be able to make Francesca go to those lengths. Had it been a unique magic, or incredible physical abilities? It hadn’t been Rareko’s staff skills. It seemed most likely she’d fought Chelsea.

“Is the one you dropped the golden ax?”

Clarissa inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. She couldn’t be distracted now. What Ren-Ren had said meaningfully just now, she would think about afterward. That had just been a bluff. Only Navi knew that Clarissa was working in order to save her mother, and there was no way he would tell anyone else.

“Or is it the silver—”

Arrows flew one after another from the high sky, only to be repelled by the ax. Francesca didn’t even look at the arrows. She was smiling at Clarissa. Clarissa’s natural smile was no less broad, and she didn’t let it falter. She put her right hand behind her back to smoothly draw something out. It would sound cool if you called it a three-foot-long straight sword, but since it looked like a butter knife you’d use at the dinner table, it was kind of lame.

Ren-Ren fired her arrows, which Francesca intercepted. It was good situational judgment and good backup. Ren-Ren seemed to be legitimately supporting her in a way you wouldn’t expect from someone trying to rattle Clarissa with a bluff at a weird time. Clarissa turned her hand toward Francesca, her palm faceup as she placed the sword on top of it, pointing her blade at the enemy. For the moment, she canceled out all the various kinds of positional information flying around in her head to focus on what was in front of her. Pursing her lips, she spat out the wood chips in her mouth.

“—ax?”

Her concentration was at its peak. She thrust in the sword without really making a show of it, and Francesca tried to swipe it away. Clarissa firmed her smile on just one cheek. The sword shaved off the part of the ax it touched, momentum sending the piece to fly off in the other direction, slicing down a tree as it went. Clarissa swept with the blade, and Francesca bent back to avoid it, but she failed to dodge entirely, and the chest of her toga was sliced away.

Navi had nabbed this sword from an Osk Faction warehouse. Clarissa had heard it had been made to kill homunculi. She’d also been told the name, but she didn’t remember it. That was because it was a completely insipid name of random numbers and symbols. Clarissa had thought about giving the blade a cool, original name, but when she’d heard that some important types went and did the exact same thing, she dropped the idea. Imitating important people was no fun.

Like using water magic on a fire monster or lightning magic on a mechanical monster, using this sword on a homunculus would have an immediate effect. It would work just the same on a magical girl who had originally been a homunculus. It had sliced off the tough ax, and it would easily pierce Francesca, who was even tougher. It killed all sorts of energies that created homunculi.

Clarissa thrust, swept, casually evaded a desperate low sweep kick, and, when a kick flew at her from down low, she met it with the sword, and blood spurted out. Francesca evaded arrows with a backflip, and the pointlessly dramatic movement made her fail to avoid Clarissa’s thrust, which deeply wounded her upper arm. When she countered with a spear hand thrust out, Clarissa cut her open with her return slice, then narrowed her eyes.

Francesca had just moved strangely. Had there been backflips in her behavioral pattern? Maybe she’d learned something from battling on this island. Clarissa had to watch out for that. After taking a lungful of air with some wood chips still chewed up in her mouth, Clarissa sprayed them.

By doing so, she could minutely attune herself to the enemy’s movements. And with her feline reflexes and invincible weapon on top of that, she could lead this fight to her advantage—and if you added in the movement patterns she’d learned from the developer’s documentation, then virtually no mistakes could occur. But that didn’t change the fact that carelessness with this thing would invite death. Clarissa would finish her off swiftly, just like always, without getting carried away. She’d use the sword mostly as a shield, killing all the enemy’s various energies to eventually finish her off.

Matching the arrows from Ren-Ren, Clarissa thrust and swept, with a feint, drawing a high kick from Francesca that she slipped through. Normally such an incredibly powerful high kick would fling Clarissa away by the shock wave alone, but the magic sword whittled away its force, weakening it to a disappointingly limp kick that wouldn’t even cause a breeze. Clarissa passed under that leg to get into the kill zone. She raised the blade to Francesca’s heart and thrust in.

She heard the shrill sound of metal hitting metal. Clarissa’s open right hand trembled. She couldn’t move it—it was numb. The magic sword was flung away, spinning into the bushes.

Francesca was holding a staff. Clarissa was confused. Wasn’t that strangely shaped, strangely colored staff the one Maiya had used? There was no reason for Francesca to be carrying it. Francesca shouldn’t be able to use weapons aside from axes. But she was holding it. It had not originated from a homunculus. The magic sword wouldn’t affect it.

The staff made swooshing noises as Francesca stood there spinning it. Then she stopped it in her palm, readying it sideways in front of her face. Those were the expert staff skills of a ranked martial artist. Clarissa was confused. She couldn’t understand what was happening. She stepped backward to put some distance between them, and then she got hit.

A crushed sound leaked from the pit of her throat. Francesca brought her left hand in as she swept outward, and while sliding the staff in her palms, she made use of centrifugal force to strike, switching to a sideways stance and bringing the staff back the other way as she thrust in. The flowing combination clearly came from an experienced hand. And every single strike had enough force to kill. The first hit sent everything below Clarissa’s right ankle flying, the second crumpled her from her right arm to her rib and probably crushed one of her lungs. The third thrust smashed all Clarissa’s organs and broke her spine, blood spurting from every hole as her tiny body was flung high in the air.

This was impossible. This was masterful technique, beyond just a smattering of skills. Francesca shouldn’t be able to do this. She hadn’t even been made to handle someone else’s weapon in the first place. Breaking branches, scattering leaves, Clarissa fell to earth on her back and then rolled. She was still confused. She couldn’t understand what had happened. What couldn’t have happened had happened.

She had to tell Navi, but she couldn’t move a finger. She thought of Navi—the two of them laughing, smacking each other’s shoulders, occasionally feeling discouraged, and when she realized, Maybe this is my life flashing before my eyes, at the end she reached out her hand for her mother and muttered “Mom” in her mind, and then her consciousness went black.