Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

THE POWER OF LIFE

  Miss Marguerite

Marguerite helped Touta and Yol escape to the main building, and by the time she came back, Clarissa was flying in the air.

There wasn’t a moment to spare. It was less that she made a judgment, and more that she just let her body move. Marguerite leaped off Clantail’s back, smacking her horse rear and telling her “To Clarissa” as Marguerite spread her legs and pointed her toes at the goddess. The sound of hooves grew distant. Clantail had run to Clarissa. Since Clantail spoke little, Marguerite often felt anxious around her, but at times like this, she was grateful she didn’t ask questions about things. It meant less trouble.

It looked like Clarissa was injured beyond saving. Even from a distance, you could tell her wounds were fatal, and on top of that, she was bleeding so much, her whole body was covered in blood. But there were two reasons that Marguerite had sent Clantail over there, even knowing it was pointless.

The first was Clantail’s reaction when she saw Clarissa. Being on her horse back, Marguerite had been able to feel how strongly she felt from her rising body temperature, which practically burned Marguerite’s rear. Clantail had a strong aversion toward death, and she didn’t even care that this was someone who had been at least somewhat antagonistic toward her. Though it was a truly dangerous trait to have, it was also what had saved Marguerite’s life.

That was why, even though Marguerite thought Clantail’s passion was incredibly naive, she wouldn’t reject that trait. But though she wouldn’t reject it, she’d make her take half a step back. By sending Clantail to Clarissa first, she would show her what it was like to fight against the goddess. That would give Clantail time to let her head cool and know the enemy more precisely. That was the first reason.

The second reason was that Marguerite wanted to face the goddess alone for the moment. She had more dust at the bottom of her pocket than she had fixation on one-on-one fights, and she wasn’t motivated by enmity or a desire for revenge, either. It was just better to be alone to know whether her estimation and analysis were correct or not. She released her right hand’s grip on her rapier’s hilt for a moment, then took it again with a lighter touch. Her feet never stopped.

The goddess’s chest was cut open, blood dripping out. That wasn’t the only difference from before. An ax handle with the end cut off was thrust into her sash, and she was holding up Maiya’s staff. She drew in the staff with flowing motions, swinging it and then raising it to point at Marguerite.

Marguerite did not rush. She moved forward without haste, but also without hesitation. She kept her pace up to make one large final step and thrust, which Francesca started to swipe away with her staff, but Marguerite let it slide across the hilt and thrust back. The goddess shook her staff to repel the rapier, and right before she could strike Marguerite with the return blow, Marguerite made a large leap backward. The blow hit the ground and kicked up dust, blocking her vision like a smoke screen. The thrust that came from the curtain of dust was faster than Marguerite’s reflexes, but she had seen it coming. She was already evading, having placed her body in a safe zone to avoid it. Then she readied herself in a low stance, holding down the hem of her skirt with her toe to keep it from flipping up from the impact.

Dirt pattered down on her from above. Droplets of blood dripped from the goddess’s hair to stop in her eyebrows. Her expression was fixed in a smile. The end of the ax thrust into her sash wriggled like an amorphous creature—it looked like it was slowly trying to make a blade again.

It’s trying to make a full ax again… If it goes back, then we’ll be the ones at a disadvantage.

Marguerite swallowed her remaining half of a grayfruit in one bite.

It was just as she’d predicted. The goddess wasn’t as frightening using the stick as she was with the ax.

Her rough sweeps had come from simple attack instinct and not from any combat theory; with her magic axes that she could transform according to the situation, her strikes had been extremely difficult to evade. Even just dealing with each individual attack had whittled Marguerite down body and spirit, and, even focusing on evasion, she’d taken hit after hit. She’d been unable to predict what the goddess would do next, and then, while caught in surprise, she’d been driven further, until, before she knew it, she was just running.

Maiya and Rareko’s staff skills came from a highly systematized technique, but they were based on an art for humans. It wasn’t suited to a monster—or a goddess. Defense-based stances were overly sensitive to the enemy’s actions, and blows meant to be blocked were far from full power strikes. With the goddess’s tough exterior and reflexes, there was no need for her to be so defensive, but she was intently devoted to the basics of staff technique.

Marguerite lightly stepped aside to avoid a low jab, then timed a sweep of her knees with a thrust of her rapier, and then, right before the goddess’s stick slammed in, Marguerite drew back her sword, shifting to the right with footwork that mixed in feints. With every swing and thrust of the staff, dust swept up, trees broke, and branches and leaves scattered. Marguerite clasped her left hand and opened it. Even if it wasn’t healed all the way, it was enough if she could move this much. Her powers of regeneration were greater than normal—that had to be thanks to the grayfruit.

Marguerite responded to a sudden backflip from the goddess by kicking a rock at her, which she repelled by spinning her staff, but Marguerite closed the distance all at once to attack, thrusting in with her rapier. The spinning staff became an impediment that slowed the goddess’s reaction, but she still escaped with three continuous cartwheels followed by a somersault. The full-body thrust from Marguerite skimmed the goddess’s torso but only sliced away half of the sash at her waist.

Acrobatic movements didn’t suit the goddess, either. Though at first Marguerite had been overwhelmed by how she mimicked Chelsea perfectly, once she was used to it, it was nothing more than a show. What point was there in an overwhelmingly powerful lion bewildering a rabbit with flashy movements?

There was a menace in the way Chelsea moved. She packed a single peace sign with her faith in magical girls from the ends of her fingers to each one of her nails, with enough apparent madness to make Marguerite hesitate to attack. The heart was a powerful weapon for a magical girl. If you were just going through the motions superficially without the conviction, it made them nothing more than half-baked xing yi quan. It was actually hindering the goddess.

The enemy pulled back for a slam and a thrust, both of which Marguerite evaded. With the dust scattering everywhere, even if it got in her eyes, Marguerite fixed her unblinking gaze on the enemy, rapier at the ready.

Staff work was a very popular martial art among magical girls, and lots of people used it. In other words, an instructor of the Inspection Department would have to assume it would be used by one of the potential enemies she’d have many opportunities to fight. Even someone like the goddess, who was incredibly physically powerful, wasn’t such a fearsome opponent if she only used basic moves. The problem was the ax. The handle of the ax hanging from her waist continued to writhe in an attempt to restore its blade. She had no idea how long the one hanging from her neck would stay like that, either. The magical girls on this island had continuously whittled down the goddess’s forces bit by bit, and, as a result, they had managed to make her fight with staff techniques, which were not suited to her. This was their chance. She couldn’t let it go by. Rather, if she did let it go by, then things really would be hopeless. She would finish this before the ax went back to normal.

She slithered from tree to tree, the Inspection Department’s style of footwork making smooth movement possible even if the footing was in ruins from fallen trees and dirt dug up. The goddess followed Marguerite with the same manner of walking, and Marguerite evaded her and thrust, at which the goddess slashed back, and Marguerite bounded off the trunk of a tree that had been blasted down in a two-point jump, bending the tree at a right angle to make it a throwaway launchpad, and, with splinters of wood scattering around, she dodged the staff that came thrusting toward her eyes, landed, and, after preparing for the goddess’s next attack, kicked a fallen tree in half and stepped forward to slice at her. She skimmed the place she’d cut before a second time.

With a flutter, the goddess’s sash was sliced off and hung in the air. Without even an instant’s pause after that attack, Marguerite swiftly went facedown on the ground in one movement. The horizontal sweep of the goddess’s counterattack cut through the air.

Hands on the ground like a four-legged beast, Marguerite slid backward, watching the handle of the ax lying there as she stuck out her tongue. She wetted her upper lip.

She had cut the sash and made her drop her ax. How should she set things up from here? Should she wait for Clantail’s support? But if she wasted time, the effects of the grayfruit would run out. Marguerite was unable to make decisions on her own. She had struggled this much just to reduce the enemy’s fighting power—in this case by one ax. But now that she was at this step—thinking this far, Marguerite narrowed her right eye.

The goddess drew the staff in with her palms, lowered her stance, and spread her legs. This stance was different from before. Marguerite sidestepped and then backed up, raising her rapier in front of her face.

What the goddess was doing was not a defensive stance. Her eyes were fixed only on destruction via attack. It was a Maiya-original unorthodox move, opposed to the staff technique ideal that both the wielder and the opponent be unharmed. Its name came from the time it had once pierced the wing of Archfiend Pam—Fiend Piercer. Since it was piercing a devil, you could say it was a technique fit for a goddess.

Marguerite had been letting her body move as it would, but now she stopped. She wasn’t sure what to do. Maiya had used this attack to pierce Archfiend Pam’s wing. Just what would the Fiend Piercer become when it was executed by someone far stronger than Maiya? Would it even be possible to read ahead of it, or evade it? She couldn’t even imagine the scale of the destruction, or the force. Marguerite licked her bottom lip—it was entirely dry.

  Ragi Zwe Nento

No mage had failed to hear the rumors that the Osk Faction was a group of villains who didn’t care about the law and treated magical girls like trash, with the Lab being the greatest example. But true evil lay in hiding your own evil as much as possible while putting on a face like you wouldn’t kill a bug. Many of the nasty rumors about the Osk Faction and the Lab were propaganda.

“Do we take this, too, Mr. Ragi?” Mary asked him.

“Of course.”

There was already an underlying shared perception of the Osk Faction being a frightening group, but using fear as transaction material helped close negotiations smoothly—such was the MO of organized crime. Having solved disputes this way meant they started off by spreading their own bad name themselves, and then they just let other factions say whatever nasty things they wanted and didn’t deny them. Ragi would wail that such tactics were irresponsible, childish, and an abandonment of magely pride, but nobody in the upper ranks would listen to his lamenting, and even if they did hear it, none of them would be ashamed.

“We don’t have enough sheep,” Ragi told Mary. “Make more. Strong physiques suited to carrying are best.”

“I told you that too much customization makes them hard to control.”

Now he realized those tactics had changed not only the perception from the outside, but the perception of the organization from within. Hadn’t the twisted idea come about that it was okay to go a bit too far because this was the Lab—that in fact you had to go too far? They believed the Lab was such a fearsome organization, nobody could look down on them, and a strange sense of pride had grown from that idea.

“It’s really okay to move these?” Mary asked him. “They won’t wake up while they’re being carried?”

“Of course they won’t. Dolls without souls in them are just things.”

This had turned to arrogance, and they’d assumed that no one could be so imprudent as to ignore the Lab’s requests and insert specifications not written in the documentation, and so they’d overlooked an eccentric researcher called Sataborn going out of control. Thinking about it like that, everything made sense, and that irritated Ragi all the more.

“I’ll have you assist in the ceremony,” Ragi said. “Make sure to have your sheep back off then.”

“Wait, huh? Me? No way, I can’t do that,” Mary protested.

“The assistant need only handle one technique that even a simpleton could do. Even if you don’t understand what it means, you can just chant it as I tell you.”

“There’s just no way!”

“Find a way!”

Now that he was thinking about it, he could picture Sataborn being somewhat prepared for murder, too. Ragi was not only not a blood relative but hardly connected to him at all—hadn’t Sataborn indicated him as an heir because he wanted someone from inside the Osk Faction to stab it in the back, someone who would also be able to understand what he’d arranged? In other words, it had to be a mage with enough ability to protect him as well as someone to brag to when the time came—thinking that far, Ragi was so infuriated, he slammed the end of his staff into the earth.

But it wasn’t just Ragi. Parties involved with the Inspection Department and their connections had also been invited as heirs. If he was thinking that when the time came he would have them act how he wanted—

“Mr. Ragi. Mr. Ragi!”

“Mm, yes. I can hear you. What is it?”

Was he overthinking this? Not as far as he was concerned. He had the feeling Sataborn would have been bound to do it. But he also felt like these thoughts were influenced by Sataborn’s strong personality. But Ragi still thought that when Sataborn had found out that he would literally get to spend as much as he wanted to research and develop what he liked how he liked it, the old mage must have been happy like a little boy. It wouldn’t at all be strange for him to place his own life as second or third place in importance after that—in fact, that would be very like him.

“The entrance is too small, and I can’t get the cabinet outside, though,” said Mary.

“You’re a magical girl. If the entrance is too small, then just make it larger.”

Even understanding this, Ragi did not sympathize, and he just became more and more irritated about it. In the first place, the situation indicated that Sataborn had not been murdered, but rather that he’d simply died accidentally. If it had been murder, then they would have made up some reasons to put off the distribution of the inheritance. Shepherdspie didn’t have the guts to ignore such pressure.

But now Ragi could not preach to him about how a mage should act, or yell at him to consider the trouble he caused others, or entreat him to consider how he did things, or just whack him a good one. Sataborn had set out on a journey to a place beyond Ragi’s reach. That was also quite vexing.

“That’s crazy…,” Mary whined.

“Even if it’s crazy, do it!”

  7753

It was easier once she reached a path, but in no way was it easy. Kotori occasionally looked down at the tortoise hugged to her chest and thought, If she wasn’t an Egyptian tortoise, but a Galapagos tortoise, would I be able to ride her instead? which made her aware that she was also mentally exhausted, and she scolded herself with a No, none of that, and hurried onward.

When the main building came into view, she let out a deep breath and drew in another deep breath and walked farther. She held herself back from hurrying as fast as she could, but she also stayed alert to keep from feeling like this was a casual stroll, paying attention to her surroundings as she swiftly circled around to the front of the main building. When she saw that the scale of the destruction was much bigger than she remembered, her shoulders slumped, and she prayed that everyone was safe.

She swore to herself that no matter what awful sights she saw, she would not be rattled, and she would not cry out or fall on her bottom, and then she took a sneak peek through the cracks in the collapsed wall, where she found another pair of eyes. They weren’t human eyes. She blinked a few times and drew away. It was about twenty inches away, and she realized what it was. It was a sheep.

Kotori circled around the crumbled area, and when she leaned forward to look inside, she saw three sheep grazing on grass. They just glanced at her and didn’t seem bothered by her presence.

If there were sheep, then there was Pastel Mary, and speaking of that girl, she’d been suspected as the grayfruit thief. Kotori wouldn’t be very glad to run into such a person. Or would they actually come to an understanding if they talked? At the very least, you’d be able to reason with her more than with the goddess.

I was even able to fight with Pythie Frederica. Compared to that…probably.

She could think about it, but there was nobody else to ask about it. Kotori Nanaya had no doubts that she was personnel to be used, and she thought herself completely unsuited to giving orders, or operating a group, or positioning people, or putting together overall plans. When she worked as a magical girl, it was almost never on her own authority, and her decision was basically never needed. There was always someone who was better at thinking than 7753, like her boss—on this island, that would be Mana—and she knew that it was best to follow the order of that someone.

Kotori’s eyes dropped to the tortoise. Seeing her look up with round eyes did soothe her heart, but a tortoise wasn’t very qualified to ask advice from. She didn’t have the time to hesitate and wonder what to do. There was also no time to think. There was nothing for it but to go. Talking, she could manage, and if she told Pastel Mary the information she’d learned, maybe she would change her mind and come to cooperate with everyone instead. Given the situation now, she had no choice but to hope for that. She nodded and stood up.

Kotori heard the sound of striking some big metal thing, some fine things spilling, the cry of a girl, and then, loudest of all, a man yelling, “What are you doing?!” and then it went quiet.

She definitely remembered the voice of that old man. She only knew of one old man on this island to begin with. It was Ragi. Kotori ran out, passing by the sheep that only glanced at her, heading for where she’d heard those sounds. Her impression of Ragi was all bad—he was a stubborn old man, a complainer, he was always mad, and he got exhausted easily. But he was a mage of high enough status that even Mana respected him, and her way was to immediately snap at anything she didn’t like. And even when Ragi got angry and yelled, it was for serious reasons.

At a time like this, what Kotori trusted was not someone who was friendly or easy to get along with. Someone who would never cheat or deceive would be better, someone stupidly overserious to the point of rigidity. She couldn’t imagine the old man betraying others to get some grayfruit—in fact, it seemed like he would be more likely to scold Pastel Mary for stealing fruit.

Kotori went straight from that corner, and while she began to doubt if she was really going the right way, she squashed those feelings and walked instead, racing out, leaping—by the time she heard someone yell, “Watch out!” she was already tumbling over.

She found someone on top of her, and when she looked up, their eyes met. An airheaded-looking magical girl with a soft and fluffy costume—it was Pastel Mary. Before she could wonder what had just happened, there was a call of “What are you doing?!” and, on all fours, Pastel Mary turned around and called back, “It’s all right.”

Kotori still hadn’t figured out what had happened. She accepted the hand extended to her and was pulled to her feet to look around. Was this the courtyard? In the open space were Ragi, Mary, and a few sheep—and when Kotori saw a bunch of goddesses lying down, she swallowed a scream and started falling backward. Mary tried to catch her, but her feet slipped and she couldn’t do it, and the two of them fell in a tangle, and Ragi huffed at them, “What are you doing?! Honestly!” striking the ground with his twisted cane.

“I’m sorry,” Pastel Mary said.

“Sorry.” Kotori added her own reflexive apology. Despite apologizing, she still didn’t understand the situation, though. “Um…just what is going on here?”

“There’s no time to explain,” said Ragi. “Just get away from there. You’re a disaster waiting to happen.”

Mary helped Kotori get up, lost her balance, and fell, and Ragi yelled, and with the help of two sheep, once they were a couple of steps away and looked back, Kotori noticed what she had failed to see before. The grass looked vaguely faded over an area of about one yard in diameter. When she looked closer, she saw it wasn’t that the grass had faded. There was a translucent tray—a strange object like a tray—floating on the ground.

“What…?” Kotori started reaching out, and then, at the yell of “Don’t touch it!” she turned around to find Ragi glaring at her with his eyebrows furrowed. Now that she thought of it, she didn’t recall what he looked like when he wasn’t grumpy or angry.

“Um, what is this? Is it dangerous?” Kotori asked.

“Assume that if you touch it, you’ll die.”

Kotori automatically backed up, and the back of her head hit something. Mary’s shriek and Kotori’s shriek came at the same time, and then Ragi was yelling, and as Kotori crawled along, in her confused mind, she thought, I have to get as far away as possible from the dangerous thing. Holding her head, she tried to stand, and then a goddess magical girl lying there in peaceful sleep entered her field of view, and Kotori shrieked again and reflexively backed up, and her back hit something. Mary’s shriek and Ragi’s yell rang out. Mei wiggled leisurely under Kotori’s clothing.

  Love Me Ren-Ren

It took Ren-Ren a few seconds to understand what had happened. Maybe it was longer, maybe it was shorter. Clarissa’s body flew through the air, scattering gradations of red, and when her back hit the ground, time finally started moving for Ren-Ren. Thoughts of the enemy flew out of her head. Ren-Ren’s head was full of only Clarissa and Clarissa’s family as she pulled a dive without a care for what would happen. After Clarissa bounced and was about to land a second time, Ren-Ren caught her from the side. Leaving two trails on the ground from her right and left legs, she backed up until her back hit a thick trunk and she finally stopped.

Ren-Ren was about to say, “Are you all right?” but the words evaporated before they could come out of her mouth. Blood continued to flow endlessly from Ren-Ren’s arms as she held Clarissa, dirtying her chest, stomach, every place she touched. Her transformation had come undone. She was a very ordinary-looking girl. The old-fashioned outfit of a white shirt with a suspenders skirt suited her small frame surprisingly well. Broken bones were sticking out here and there, her whole body was limp, her warmth was seeping away, her pulse and breathing were already gone. Her body did tremble slightly, but Ren-Ren quickly realized that was just the trembling of her own arms.

Everything that went around in Ren-Ren’s head was difficult for Ren-Ren herself to explain or describe. There was a little girl who had been trying to return to her mother, and she was now still and unmoving in Ren-Ren’s arms. Something that should not take shape was gradually taking shape. The little girl was Ren-Ren. She was Ren-Ren herself, who had become a magical girl in search of a warm family. She was none other than Ren-Ren, unable to return, fallen without accomplishing her goal. Even though this was whom she had to protect most of all, the girl slipped from her arms and landed on the ground.

She staggered. Swayed. A frog-like sound leaped from her throat. The trembling wouldn’t stop. The scenery contorted, the forest became covered in rainbows. She heard voices that she shouldn’t be able to hear, and a wind that shouldn’t blow was whistling along, and, as Ren-Ren’s body and mind were about to be blasted to pieces, a smack rang out on her cheek.

She locked eyes with a magical girl. She was expressionless—no, there was something there. She was holding Ren-Ren’s collar in her left hand, while her right was open and raised. The psychedelic scenery returned to normal, and the incomprehensible sounds disappeared as well. There was a stinging heat on Ren-Ren’s cheek, and she realized belatedly the magical girl had struck her.

“Snap out of it. It’s not over.”

Behind the magical girl, dirt and trees were flying. Even if it seemed like a joke, it wasn’t. There were no lies or jokes here. The magical girl raised her horse front legs and lowered them. Her hooves stamped on the ground and left prints. Ren-Ren opened her mouth. She couldn’t breathe right. Warm liquid flowed down her cheeks. She hugged the cooling body of the girl to her chest. The thick smell of blood flooded her nostrils.

“But she…she wants to see her mother, her family,” Ren-Ren protested.

“I do, too. I’m going to survive and go back to my family. You too.” Clantail’s speech was faltering, and it was like she was trying to speak as quickly as possible, making the words very clumsy and hard to catch. But every single one of her words rattled Ren-Ren’s brain, her insides, her core. A little flame lit in her body that had been chilled to the bone, making to warm her from the inside.

“Run or fight. Pick one. It’s not good to just stand here.” Saying just that, Clantail turned around.

“Wait.” Ren-Ren called her to a stop. She shoved at Clantail an amount of grayfruit that overflowed from her palms and, before she could say anything, flapped her wings and flew into the sky. The scenery that she had only been able to see vaguely was now clear and crisp. The blue of the sky and the white of the clouds made a vivid contrast, and even with earth and trees flying into it, it never lost the sense of being connected to reality. Nephilia’s face rose mistily in the clouds, giving her little ksh-shh giggle. It was going to be okay. Ren-Ren fully understood just what was what. She’d managed to properly distinguish who she was, what she should do, and what she should not do. The sight of Clarissa enjoying a chat with her mother rose in her mind. It was a happy and precious picture that she would never see again.

The next time, she would absolutely not fail to protect those she had to keep safe. She would fight in a place that gave her the best of odds of succeeding. Love Me Ren-Ren was the protector of love and families: She had to protect the love of the family with her life.

Ren-Ren had gotten ahold of herself again. She even realized that she had been out of sorts until now. She thrust out her right fist, opening and closing it, and inhaled from the bottom of her lungs, drawing in breath to every corner of her body.

The memories that had become twisted returned—clearly this time. Her mother and father fighting. Her young sister crying, trying to cut between them. The little body that had been impulsively flung aside to bounce against the wall and stop moving. The screams of a girl had drowned out her mother’s cries and her father’s yells. And then her memory cut off there, and she couldn’t see any more.

Never…again…

She would not repeat the same thing. She would not let it be repeated. Ren-Ren would stop it.

Her parents were facing off, her father with a stick and her mother with a rapier. And then her little sister was racing toward them. At this rate, her little sister would die. Many times, she’d thought of her as annoying—all she did was follow her calling, “Big sis, big sis,” but she was still her cute little sister. Even if she was bounding off the ground with the lower body of an animal, she was still her little sister. Ren-Ren had to protect her. Even if it meant shielding her with her body, even if it meant sacrificing her life, she had to protect her.

Her head was clearer now than it had ever been. Ren-Ren grabbed over a dozen arrows at once from her quiver and nocked them to her bow. She could see the flow of the wind. She could even see the weight of the air. Even before firing the arrows, she could see their trajectories. She had the feeling that right now, she could do anything. Thinking about resolving everything to live together with her father, mother, and little sister, Ren-Ren had a faint smile on her face.

  Nephilia

Swapping her scythe for Rareko’s staff made it a little easier to walk, but it was still painful. But she put up with the pain and walked, just as she’d put up with the sick feeling to touch the corpse and gain some valuable information. The rest would depend on how accurate Nephilia’s guesswork was.

She could constantly hear sounds coming from the other side of the estate. It made her wounds ache. It was hard on her mentally, too. Was Ren-Ren doing well? Had Clarissa carried out what she had said she would? Even if they were close by, emotionally she felt like a soldier’s family, worrying far from the battlefield.

But what she had to do was far from pretty, and far dirtier and more underhanded than what people did when fighting on the front line. The way she was poking at dead bodies like this, she was no different from a hyena or a vulture.

She went through the entrance, which had been widened from the destruction, to enter the main building. She could hear the sounds of battle coming from the other side of the main building, so there wasn’t much point in exercising wariness here, but even understanding that, she didn’t relax her guard, perking up her ears to sneak from shadow to shadow as she followed the trail of destruction. When she came to a place that looked like it had originally been a kitchen, she lifted a pot off the ground and drank down the soup inside before gently setting it down on a broken traditional charcoal stove. Even to someone in magical-girl form, Shepherdspie’s specially made soup was still good.

Coming out from the kitchen into the hallway made Nephilia scowl. The destruction here was particularly bad. Before, no matter how badly things had been wrecked, there’d still been enough remains that she could guess what had originally been there. Here there wasn’t even debris left, and the whole floor had been dug up from the foundation, with carving extending into the earth below. It looked like an underground tank with a drill on the front had been going full speed straight across the main building—the fallen ceiling parts and pillars were shyly trying to hide it, but they didn’t hide it at all. They were like pale snow piling on top of footprints.

When she looked up, she could see the ceiling of the second floor. The fact that it wasn’t completely collapsed was impressive.

She hopped down from the floor into the rubble, and the shock that ran through her knees made her clench her teeth. As she felt heat seeping through the bottoms of her feet, the scowl on her face deepened. The path of destruction was hot. It seemed that it had not been an underground tank that had caused this, but a beam weapon.

When she followed the destruction, gradually its path narrowed. Sighing with the thought that if it was going to be like this, she shouldn’t have bothered coming all the way down, she went up onto the floor again, and eventually the path of destruction ended. Nephilia narrowed her eyes. This wasn’t enough to call destruction, but there was the mark of something having hit the floor. There was a trail of dots, making her think that it had been rolling along while hitting things.

She followed it farther. Red blood was sprayed all over, not just on the floor and walls—there was even some on the ceiling, indicating just how badly the victim had been wounded. Running into things, falling, sliding along the floor, it led to a destroyed door. Nephilia swept aside the remains of the door with her staff and stepped into the room beyond.

Someone was lying on the ground. For some reason, she was wearing a bathrobe. Wearing this incongruous attire was Dreamy Chelsea, pretransformation. She was leaning against the wall, head weakly hanging. Nephilia approached her, crouched down, took her wrist, shook her head, then put her own hands together and bowed.

Looking up at the wall Chelsea was leaning against, she sighed. There was a dark-red person-shaped mark on the wall. The wall was cracked deep and wide at the parts that corresponded to hands. She’d probably slammed both hands in when she’d hit. In other words, she’d caught herself—while getting wounds bad enough to make a human shape in blood.

Nephilia opened up the chest of the bathrobe and inspected the body. There was a broad slice on her front from shoulder to stomach, and she was bleeding enough for it to pool around her seat. But the cut was sewn up with little stones carved out like arrowheads, which were holding it shut like staples. Chelsea must have used her “stars” to stop the blood.

The marks left by her catching her fall and dealing with the bleeding told Nephilia that Chelsea had done everything she could to survive until the very end, but that fact just deepened Nephilia’s gloom. When someone fought and fought only to die in the end, it hit the observer hardest. The athleticism to avoid instant death and the spirit to never give up brought about a painful end.

Right then.

Nephilia touched Chelsea’s foot. It was still warm—indicating that she’d been alive until just a little while before. The freshness was nauseating, but right now she wasn’t in a position to complain. She just rubbed the foot.

The sound that came out of her mouth, or rather her nose, made Nephilia squint one eye and tilt her head. It took her a moment to realize that this series of sounds was a song. It was fragmented and hoarse, and weaker than a katydid in the winter. It was very close to humming, and not a song Nephilia knew.

Singing right before death. She had to be deranged. Even veterans would sometimes become deranged when about to die. Nephilia didn’t think it meant anything. She started rubbing a notch faster to move past it. When the proper noun “Chelsea” came out during the tune, Nephilia realized what kind of song it was. This was an original theme song or something. It was difficult to bear, but she had to continue.

“There’s always trouble…but she’s sure to come…’cause she’s a magical girl… Save me, Chelsea…”

The voice stopped. Her voice wasn’t coming out, as if there was something caught in the back of her throat. Nephilia put a hand to her throat and cleared it a few times. There wasn’t anything strange here. Why was her voice suddenly not coming out anymore? When a hand reached out to her, she became even more confused. The young woman leaning against the wall was extending her hand, grabbing Nephilia’s arm.

Nephilia’s breath caught. The woman’s expression was ghastly as she squeezed her hand. Pale lips trembling, her words almost trailed off, but they never faltered.

“Heard…that voice…”—her voice was a mutter that eventually became a whisper, then turned quieter than a mosquito’s buzz to vanish—“asking…Chelsea…for…help…” She dropped her head, unable to finish.

Nephilia released the foot and smushed up a grayfruit she’d pulled out of her pocket, then began pushing fruits into the woman’s mouth one after another.

She’s…!

She had been dead. Nephilia was in the business of making contact with the dead, and she would make no mistake there. Chelsea’s life had definitely come to an end. Everything about this was crazy. It was crazy, but you could say that magical girls were like that. Maybe it was her faith in magical girls, her mental fortitude, her experience, and the physical elements in her favor—how she’d broken her fall, stopped her bleeding, her strong body and incredible endurance just barely keeping her soul tethered—and then the final push of calling her by name to ask for help had enabled her to return—maybe.

Whatever the case, if she was back, there was no reason to send her off once more. If she could work, then Nephilia should have her work. The woman’s skin gradually regained its color. Her fingers twitched.

  Clantail

Clarissa was beyond saving. Clantail knew better than anyone that her wish to keep anyone from dying wasn’t going to come true. Living things would die. But still, she didn’t want them to die. She didn’t want Marguerite, Ren-Ren, anyone to die. She swallowed a grayfruit in one gulp. The fruit juices welled up almost to her nostrils and stung a little.

Marguerite remained stone still, facing off against the goddess. She wasn’t able to attack. It was probably because of some technique or magic the goddess was about to use. Clantail would distract her, ruining her move and providing Marguerite with an opening to attack.

Clantail formed a route in her head, and, changing her lower body from a quarter horse to a springbok, she accelerated. Marguerite cried, “Don’t!” She must have noticed the sound of Clantail’s hooves. Heedless, Clantail rushed forward. In order to create an opening, she had to attack. With her toughness, the flexibility of her magic, and her ability to evade, Clantail was the one most suited for that role.

But she was still glad that Marguerite had been worried about her. It made her heart even firmer. Clantail would go first. It was settled.

She transformed from a springbok to a cheetah, using the change in height to throw the enemy’s aim off, and accelerated. The momentary burst of speed was too fast for Clantail to handle. She landed on the ground and leaped up. Branches, leaves, and dirt slowly fluttered down. She headed to the right, aiming for the goddess’s flank—but their eyes met. The goddess was turning back toward Clantail.

That reaction was more than expected. But Clantail wasn’t about to take any hits now. Clantail saw herself as the best choice to play shield or bait simply because it was objectively true that she was—she hadn’t done this out of a spirit of self-sacrifice or a suicidal urge. Even if the road to victory was a narrow one, it wasn’t like it didn’t exist.

She didn’t want anyone to die. Clantail herself was included in that. Her life was important to her, as her friends had saved it. She would never waste it.

Then the goddess’s gaze shifted slightly. Not to Clantail—behind her, to the right and diagonally upward. Leaves rustled. Branches broke. The goddess came out of her stance to use her staff to knock down the arrow that flew in from above. Clantail transformed into a puma and leaped high, and in midair she turned into a spider monkey, and with her long, agile tail she grabbed the arrow that was shooting for her back. Arrows rained down everywhere like hail, on the ground, tree trunks, and leaves. They hadn’t been aimed somewhere. They’d been fired all over the area.

With a running start, Clantail reached the treetops in one bound, getting her long claws into a branch to get ahold of it and turning herself around, and on the way she checked behind her. She could see Ren-Ren nock multiple arrows.

Clantail moved from branch to branch, and when Ren-Ren fired more arrows, she grabbed another with her tail. For some reason, Ren-Ren was aiming for Clantail. The goddess smacked the arrows down while Marguerite rolled on the ground. The area where the two were fighting was stuck with arrows like a hedgehog. Ren-Ren was attacking all of them. Clantail couldn’t understand what was happening. She couldn’t understand the point of what Ren-Ren was doing right now.

“Ren-Ren! Stop it!” Marguerite yelled, but Ren-Ren didn’t stop.

She swooped in a sudden dive from ten yards up to skim the ground, all the while continuously firing arrows without pause. This was different from when she’d unleashed a wild barrage over the whole area, and each and every shot carried the threat of death as it aimed for the magical girls. The goddess swept her ax to knock the arrows down, and Marguerite jumped along the ground while Clantail raced through the trees as she struck an arrow aside with her tail. A second shot was hidden by the first, and Clantail grabbed it with her monkey hand while she struck aside a third shot with her own hand. They were fast. She’d get hit if she let her guard down even slightly.

She moved along a branch to hide from Ren-Ren, and arrows thunked continuously into the trunk.

Marguerite was confused. She had her hands full just dodging. Clantail was harder to hit due to where she was, but it was only that she was less pressed than Marguerite, and she wasn’t any less bewildered. Even the goddess, who had seemed unruffled no matter what, now appeared confused. None of them could understand what Ren-Ren was doing.

Ren-Ren was all over the place, flying from the sky to between the trees, even skimming right along the ground. For some reason, she was smiling like she was glad. Had she lost her mind? But she was moving too skillfully for that. From a low-altitude flight, she circled around behind Marguerite and fired an arrow. From what Clantail could see, it was close to a miracle that Marguerite managed to avoid it. That had been a fantastic shot.

Marguerite went down on the ground like a lizard. The arrow zoomed through where she had been a moment ago and headed straight for the goddess, who swept up the hem of her skirt to knock down the arrow right before it hit. This whole sequence of events all happened in less than a blink.

Ren-Ren had aimed at Marguerite while also using her as cover to aim for the goddess. It had been a nasty move, unpredictable to Marguerite, who should have been an ally, and even to the goddess, who you’d assume would be her enemy. That move had caused the goddess to falter. Her casual defensive motion—keeping her lower body relaxed as she struck the arrow aside with the staff—didn’t make it in time, and she was forced into an emergency evasion that left her unbalanced.

Clantail still had no idea what Ren-Ren was trying to do, but she could take advantage of this. Clantail switched from a spider monkey to a leopard, staying in Ren-Ren’s blind spot as she raced down a tree trunk to turn into a giant crocodile, using the massive change in size to close the distance to the goddess in an instant and swung her tail.

Marguerite worked with her. From her awkward position facedown on the ground, she threw a rock. Though the goddess was off-balance, she still swung her staff to repel the rock, then swiped back the other way to smack down an arrow. With her free hand, she grabbed the crocodile’s thick tail and squeezed as if she were going to crush it through its thick scales. Clantail’s body rose into the air. Even just her tail was over six feet long, but the goddess was going to swing this dinosaur-like saltwater crocodile around in one hand.

Clantail turned from a crocodile into a hagfish, using the mucus she secreted to slip from the goddess’s fingers and escape her grasp. This caused the goddess to lose her balance further. With incredible force, Marguerite went from her knees to stepping inward to thrust and was blocked by the staff.

Clantail turned into a tiger and attacked the goddess. With the hand that was still smeared in mucus, the goddess grabbed the handle that was dangling from her neck and pulled it out, along with the earth. Blood spurted from the goddess’s neck, but the bleeding was mild, given the depth of the wound. It was already starting to stop. Marguerite sliced at her, then swept her blade outward, and the goddess responded with a swing of her staff, but it lacked power. She was off-balance, sandwiched from front and behind, and with arrows coming at her. Her focus had failed. If they were going to do it, now was the time.

Clantail would literally get her from behind. She’d rubbed mucus on the goddess’s free hand. Maybe needles wouldn’t pierce her tough skin. Maybe she would even be resistant to poison, but no matter how tough her body was, smeared in mucus, she would slip. Even if they couldn’t beat her when directly slicing at each other, if the goddess was struggling just to hold on to her weapon, that was something else. Clantail reared up on her tiger back legs. The goddess was tightly clenching the handle of her ax. The earth clod had formed a steel-colored blade and had gotten a lot larger. Her hand on the handle slid a bit. It was slipping. She couldn’t hold on.

This is it!

They both locked on. Right when they were both about to attack, Ren-Ren fluttered down soundlessly.

Clantail was stunned and unmoving for less than a third of the blink of an eye. Ren-Ren spread her hands in a completely nonchalant manner to embrace the tiger torso. Clantail didn’t even have the time to ask what she was doing. The goddess’s ax swung down, and blood spurted out. White wings splattered with red fluttered down in pieces.

Ren-Ren was smiling. Her back was cut open and blood flowed from her mouth, but she was still smiling. “Don’t… Family…”

Clantail leaped backward, cradling Ren-Ren. Held in her arms, Ren-Ren no longer moved. But she was still smiling. Marguerite swung her rapier, and the goddess turned back to her.

Even if Clantail didn’t want to acknowledge it, she was forced to acknowledge that Ren-Ren had protected her. She still didn’t know what Ren-Ren had been trying to do, but that wouldn’t change the fact that Ren-Ren had protected her.

It was just like her friends. Nonako, who had always been getting mad at Rionetta and calling her “Fucking doll!” had died protecting her. And Rionetta had said, “I shan’t forgive anyone who’d hurt Pechka’s hands. I promised as much,” and had been true to her words and died defending Pechka. Pechka had died guarding Clantail. She’d looked so strangely satisfied as she’d been betrayed. Ren-Ren’s smile now was just like that.

The earth shook. Marguerite went for the goddess. The goddess raised her staff at her side. A voice leaked out. It took time for Clantail to realize it was her own voice. The voice was gradually getting louder. She didn’t want anyone to die. Who was it who had attacked so aggressively and used Ren-Ren as a shield?

The voice became louder. It made her want to plug her ears. Marguerite’s eyes flared wide. The goddess turned back to Clantail again. Clantail howled. Rage, hatred, sadness, everything was all mixed up and being scattered outward in a big whirlpool. The whirlpool had a lot bigger to get.

She transformed into a polar bear, swinging her arms around to slam at the goddess, heedless of the ax striking her, slamming her sliced-up palm on top of the goddess’s head, and when the goddess went down on one knee, Clantail swung down with the front leg of an African elephant.