Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 4 - Chapter 13

Magical Illegal Girl

This story is set a few weeks before the magical candy contest in Magical Girl Raising Project begins.

It was in the past year that the Jin Bang Mei had started operations in N City. Originally, N City had been occupied by the Fujianese Li Xin Yuan. Their organization took on miscellaneous tasks in N City, things that local syndicates needed done or lacked the know-how to accomplish—such as falsifying passports, smuggling, and so on—and this specialization allowed them to subsist independently. For some slightly complicated reasons, the Li Xin Yuan had come to be replaced by the Jin Bang Mei.

The Shanghainese Jin Bang Mei and the Fujianese Li Xin Yuan had been at odds for quite a while—basically since before the Vietnam War—and butted heads repeatedly. Over many years, in various locales, they’d fought with both words and fists, but Jin Bang Mei’s boss getting replaced after thirty years was the trigger that led the leaders of both groups to shake hands.

However, they hadn’t simply set aside their conflict. What was most important to both parties was face. In order to create an outcome in which neither ended up the loser, they arranged a give-and-take based on a highly detailed set of arrangements to exchange responsibility and control. All so that both sides could stand proud, believing they had won.

So Jin Bang Mei inherited Li Xin Yuan’s businesses in N City. If this had just been a simple inheritance, then no issues would have arisen from this, since they’d established a division of territory with the local organized crime syndicate, the Tetsuwa-kai.

The problem was the way the Li Xin Yuan presented itself to the Tetsuwa-kai, as opposed to what they were really after. Superficially, the Li Xin Yuan and the Tetsuwa-kai were on good terms. The Li Xin Yuan didn’t touch the Tetsuwa-kai’s sources of income, profiting only on passport forgery and smuggling aid…or so they made it seem. In reality, they sold quasi-legal drugs, had an illegal bookie at the racetrack, and ran a private mahjong gambling ring. The Tetsuwa-kai was not a collection of fools. They hadn’t failed to notice this; rather, they had been overlooking it, figuring it was so minor, it wasn’t worth taking them to task.

But then the Li Xin Yuan and the Jin Bang Mei switched places. And even though the Li Xin Yuan explained to the Jin Bang Mei what sort of work they did and how they did it, they weren’t able to educate the Jin Bang Mei on all the subtleties. So the Jin Bang Mei started enthusiastically tackling job after job, and to the Tetsuwa-kai, it looked like the rising power replacing the Li Xin Yuan was trying to take over the town.

So the Tetsuwa-kai gave the order to their bodyguard magical girl to attack the Jin Bang Mei’s base. The cowboy-style magical girl crushed their base all by herself, and Jin Bang Mei’s forces were eliminated from N City.

“It would all have gone so much faster if that were the end of it, but that’s not what happened.” The old man paused for a moment, tilted the glass in his right hand, then moistened his throat with the final gulp of red liquid. “The Jin Bang Mei are aware of the nature of the humiliation they’ve suffered, and they’re plotting revenge.”

“So what?”

The old man shot a worried look at the telephone receiver in his left hand. “You sound as if you don’t care one whit. I’ve made this call because I’m concerned for you, friend. N City is dangerous. I can’t call it a good place for a magical girl to lie low.”

“I’ve no need of friends. They’re just a hindrance to me. And you’re nothing more than a business connection.” The voice of the girl coming through the receiver sounded low and calm, in contrast with her ultrafeminine vocal mannerisms.

The old man set the glass in his right hand on the table. “It stings to have unrequited feelings at my age,” he said sorrowfully, but the girl on the other end of the line didn’t react. “By the way, what did come of that matter of the Mermaid Tear?”

“Are you trying to start a quarrel with me? I’m busy, and I don’t have the time for this nonsense.”

“Of course not. More importantly, as I’ve told you, N City is no place for you to be. You should relocate.”

She hung up on him. The old man brought his brows together, looking at the receiver, but then he adjusted the collar of his dressing gown and left the receiver on the table. He pulled his eye patch out two inches to snap it in place again, leaned into the backrest of his wheelchair, and gave a deploring sigh. Then he stretched his back to turn to the man in a suit standing next to him. “Hey, Totoyama. You’re my friend, right?”

Ripple stood atop the roof of a department building in Nakayado. She told herself that she wasn’t getting moody. At nighttime, this department store roof, and especially the hundred-yen rides and popcorn kiosks, just made you sentimental.

It had been a week since she’d become a magical girl. She was getting used to the job and was gradually earning more candy.

Calamity Mary hadn’t shown her face again. If they never ran into each other, then they’d never fight. Top Speed visited her every other day. She was annoying and a bother, but she was a good cook. Still, Top Speed was the type who’d get real carried away if you gave her any compliments—

Hmm?

A voice. Even from the roof, she could hear yelling coming from down in front of the Nakayado department store, a spot that was typically empty of pedestrians late at night. Gazing downward, she saw multiple people there. The man who’d yelled reached out his arm, and someone grabbed it and threw him, while a large suitcase sent another man flying—Ripple jumped over the fence and ran down the wall of the building. It might be a pain, but it was time for a magical girl to arrive on the scene.

The Mermaid Tear was the start of all this mess. It was some aquamarine or sapphire once beloved by the noble families of the Tudor or York court or whatever. And some nouveau-riche oil baron had pilfered it and sold it off to a fence. The plan had been for Rionetta to accept this gem as compensation for her work.

She had no particular affection for jewels. It was simply that some wealthy individual, an acquaintance of her late father’s, wanted the Mermaid Tear for the petty reason of giving it to his granddaughter as a present. It would make good money if she pretended to be a dealer and sold it off quickly to him. Or it should have.

Her employer claimed they’d given her the gem. They insisted that a magical girl carrying a doll had shown up at the appointed time to carry it away. Rionetta knew that was a lie. At the time of their appointment, there had been no one there to make a deal with.

Due to this discrepancy between their claims and the fact that neither of them would back down, Rionetta was now on the run from her former employer. According to them, this incident made Rionetta a thief for trying to take a double reward. Rionetta could yell “You’re the one who’s failed to compensate me!” all she wanted, but there was no one to listen to her. It was the nature of the world. Might makes right.

That had been the case even before Rionetta had become Rionetta. If this world were the simpler kind where righteousness made you right, then surely she would still have been a pampered rich girl.

When her life as a fugitive began, Rionetta went to N City to lie low, but a wealthy acquaintance of her father had warned her that N City was no place for her to be. She couldn’t bring herself to like the man, but she figured for the time being, she would take his advice and leave N City. But then, right as she was leaving her hideout, someone had showed up to challenge her. And not the people who had been looking for her, but an organization searching for a magical girl over some other matter… They were probably the Jin Bang Mei, who’d come up in that earlier conversation.

She couldn’t be wasting time in a place like this now. Facing three gangster types, she tossed one aside and punched down another. Right when she was about to kick the last one flying, a soft palm restrained her doll’s shin, stopping her leg on the spot.

What on earth…?

She saw geta, a red scarf, and a shuriken-shaped hair clip holding sleek black hair in a side ponytail. The three gangsters yelped and ran off, but Rionetta wasn’t even looking at them anymore.

That strange, ninja-themed costume. That perfect face. And most importantly, she had been able to stop Rionetta’s kick. In other words, this had to be a magical girl. Rionetta dashed off at lightning speed, not slowing even slightly as she ripped window shutters, bent iron bars, and shattered glass at the entrance of the department store to break into the building. She sensed the presence coming after her. She was being pursued. There was no mistaking it.

It wasn’t a human. It was a moving human-sized doll.

An exquisitely designed doll that resembled a human girl at first glance had been tossing and punching men and had been just about to kick another. Ripple had simply come between them with the casual intention of stopping the fight. Then, startled by the rare sight of an animate doll, she had been unable to keep the thing from fleeing, and it escaped into the department store.

By now, the alarms would be ringing at the security company. But Ripple couldn’t just leave. That doll girl had leaped into the department store so immediately that Ripple had failed to react, then run off so fast she would have a hard time catching up. Ripple didn’t know what this doll girl really was yet, but at the very least, it wasn’t an opponent humans could handle. And just now, it had been attacking humans. Kano Sazanami’s tendency was to shrug off anything that wasn’t her business, but now that she was Ripple, she couldn’t be like that anymore. The magical-girl lifestyle really was an annoying pain in the butt.

Ripple rushed up the steps, taking ten at a time, kicking aside the furnishings inside the store as she cut through. A mannequin leaped at her from the side, startling her, but she tossed a kunai back at it, and then she had to chase her quarry around until she came out on the roof.

The doll girl was looking at her, chain-link fence at her back.

Ripple blew out all the breath she’d been holding in her lungs.

Rionetta’s preferred method of fighting was to start by throwing dolls at her opponent. If she used dolls, no matter how many of them got wasted, she wouldn’t get hurt. Dolls were not her allies, friends, or comrades. They were just things. It wouldn’t affect her if they were destroyed.

She observed how the magical girl reacted when she was attacked by a doll…rather, a mannequin, this time. The girl was agile. She had good judgment, too. But if her skill in a fight was all she had going for her, Rionetta could manage.

The problem was the unique magic each magical girl possessed. If her magic was incompatible with Rionetta’s, or if it was beyond simply incompatible and was just absolutely powerful, then she would probe out a weakness in that magic power or avoid the fight entirely.

But this was not one of those times. Her opponent threw a kunai at the mannequin, and the weapon’s trajectory twisted around oddly to hit its target. That sort of bend was not caused by spinning or air resistance. That had to be the girl’s magic. This power would be easy for Rionetta to manage.

Her pursuer was still a young magical girl. Her experience hadn’t yet caught up with her powers. Rionetta had years on her. She had been killing and killing and nearly been killed herself, working for money and using the powers of a magical girl for personal gain. She had abandoned helping people long ago and had made it through far more carnage than this girl ever had.

It had begun with her father. There was no way she could repay his debts by lying around and working a normal job, and thus the little princess of a wealthy family had been unable to continue living without getting her hands dirty. And once her hands had been stained by that nasty work, she couldn’t get out. The red of the blood had seeped into her and wouldn’t wash away.

Rionetta had not begun this work out of a desire to save her father from dire straits. She had no wish to go through such hardships for garbage like him. It was simply because the lender she was dealing with forced on her his rationale: “No matter what’s happened to the father, the daughter will repay the money he’s borrowed.” Rionetta didn’t care what happened to her father, and she didn’t need friends, companions, or allies. All that bound her was her own personal safety and money. Though she might play the friend and act chummy, when the time came, she would kick anyone off a cliff. She had done something similar many times, in fact.

Rionetta was making it seem like she was running around, but she was casting her magic on every doll in the department store. She would lie in wait for her pursuer on the roof and send all the dolls in the building to attack her from behind. It would be a pincer attack. Mannequins, stuffed animals, mascot dolls. Rionetta’s magic was puppetry. And she could still control plenty more.

The doll girl should be cornered now. Ripple kicked open the door to the roof to confront her. But when she saw the girl’s smirking face and mannequins attacked her from behind, she realized this was a trap. She sent one mannequin’s head flying with a roundhouse kick and fired a kunai into another’s shin, punching and whacking until they were destroyed. But more came. Dolls appeared one after another at the door that led from the roof to the interior of the department store. The bare roof was only as wide as a playground with a few rides, but it was now as crowded as an amusement park parade.

Flying and leaping, Ripple hopped from place to place, staying in motion so as not to be surrounded. Some small creatures ran between her legs. One of them tripped her. About to fall, she put a hand on the wall, but something grabbed it.

It was a puppet, the sort you’d normally manipulate by tugging their strings. They were moving on their own, swarming around trying to tangle Ripple in their strings. All the string must have had magic cast on it, because it was considerably stronger than normal.

Next, the stuffed creatures came to attack her. They looked like adorable, cartoonish renditions of animals, but each and every one of them held razor-like blades in their paws. With these thin, sharp blades, they cut Ripple all over. As her feet caught in the strings, leaving her unable to walk easily, blood spurted from her cuts.

Scolding the fear in her heart, Ripple ranted at her limbs for weakening. Like Gulliver struggling against the Lilliputians, she yanked the strings, swinging the puppets around as she drew and swiped with the katana at her back.

She sliced up the stuffed animals, kicked away the puppets that still surged toward her, and rolled to avoid a mannequin’s fist. She turned aside a kick, dodged a knife-hand strike, and pointed her katana at the pair of reinforcements that had arrived at the entrance.

The two dolls were both life-sized: an old gentleman in a white suit and a clown with big curly red hair. Oh yeah, I passed by some fast-food places on the way here, too. Though the general assumption was that they didn’t get along, the two statues attacked Ripple with superb coordination, each covering for the other’s weaknesses. Despite taking a few hits, Ripple somehow managed to pull through to find that a group of mannequins had appeared. Some were half-dressed and some were naked without a single scrap of cloth on them, but all were expressionless as they gradually gathered at the entrance. How many were there? At a glance, Ripple gave up on counting. It was no use.

Something was moving around in the shadow of the mannequins. It was fast, and it was nauseatingly intimidating in a way the other dolls weren’t. It moved from shadow to shadow to hide behind the clown, and from there it swiped out at Ripple with its claws. She couldn’t dodge them entirely. They ripped open her cheek, and blood gushed out.

It was the very first doll. The ball-jointed doll made to look like a beautiful girl attacked her with claws on her right hand. Then she swiftly hid in the shadow of the mannequins, vanishing once again.

The reason Ripple had failed to dodge that attack entirely was because of her opponent’s ball joints and accordion-like arms. They made her reach much greater. Her strike had gone farther than Ripple had anticipated—the arm had reached out and bent more than it was supposed to and slipped past Ripple’s katana. If Ripple hadn’t bent backward, those claws would have torn her carotid artery right open.

The swarm of stuffed animals came together, piling up like a human pyramid to become one single wall. The moment Ripple realized what was happening, the claws swung out, piercing through the wall of plush.

She reacted reflexively—not with her katana, but with her left hand. She blocked the claws with her left palm. The claws pierced it, slicing through to her wrist. Blood sprayed from her hand, but Ripple kept clenching onto those claws.

She’d caught the doll girl. Ripple flipped the katana in her hand around into a reverse grip, swinging it at her—but right at that instant, there was a clicking noise as the doll girl detached her own right wrist to take a step back, and Ripple’s blade cut through air. She was taken by surprise, her stance was broken as her blade missed, and that was when the swarm of dolls, now a massive lump with the pharmacy mascot frog at their head, body-slammed her.

Ripple was launched upward. In midair, she caught sight of the doll girl and her mocking jeer out of the corner of her eye. Bright-red anger, the color of blood, began filling her body. Still in the air, Ripple spun, landed on the fence, and then leaped into the air again, over the heads of the dolls, to come down on a bench situated to the right of the center area of the roof, and from there, she ripped the bench from where it was nailed down, breaking the legs to lift it up.

The doll girl, the mannequins, the clown and the gentleman, the stuffed animals, and the puppets were all pressing close. Ripple was furious. She was angry at the army of the absurd descending upon her, and she sent that anger into her bones and muscles. Keeping the bench in hand, Ripple spun around in a circle like a top, rather like what the pro wrestling world would call a “giant swing,” once, twice, three times, mowing down the oncoming rush of dolls with the bench as she built momentum to fling it at the entrance to the roof. There was another bench in arm’s reach, and she tossed it in the same manner, haphazardly destroying everything within sight. Concrete scattered into sand and dust, billowing up thick until a gust of wind carried them away.

Ripple had beaten down the dolls and blocked the entrance from which reinforcements had been coming. But there remained one opponent. The doll girl casually jumped off the back of the bench Ripple had thrown at her and landed. Her most powerful foe was still standing.

To be young also means to be overflowing with energy. Rionetta couldn’t imitate that wild, bench-throwing style of fighting. That had surprised her—but this was over.

The ninja seemed to have used up her strength on those drastic moves, as she was staggering and ready to collapse. Seeing this was her chance, Rionetta dashed ahead, leaning forward. Kicking up concrete as she ran, she clicked in a new right hand from the wrist joint to replace her old one. She clenched that hand, then opened it again.

Ten kunai flew toward Rionetta. Every single one of them defied the laws of physics as they zoomed at her. They were fast, and they had weight, too. But she could read their movements.

Her right hand smacked one kunai, which dropped another kunai in turn. With her left hand as her shield, she blocked three more, dodging another by ducking her head. That one succeeded only in ripping her bonnet as the claws on her left hand shot out to knock two more kunai from the air. The remaining two kunai failed to reach her, plunging into the ground at her feet.

Rionetta’s enemy must have mustered her last burst of strength to throw those weapons; her knees folded and she thrust out her right hand to support her body.

Rionetta took one more step out to finish the girl off—and pitched forward. The space between the two kunai stuck in the ground sparkled. Tied between the two weapons was a transparent screen. So this girl had undone the puppets’ string, tied these two kunai together, and made it seem as if she had missed when in fact she had been aiming for the ground? What for?

To make Rionetta stumble.

Instantly, Rionetta broke her fall with a hand on the ground, but that meant her right hand was now occupied and unable to block the shuriken flying at her from the right side. It tore her face open.

Someone with a normal body would have died then. But Rionetta, with her puppet body, still had extra chances. She raised her head just as the katana was about to swing down on her.

She stuck out her right arm to protect herself, and it was cut off from the elbow.

Ripple was no longer questioning who her opponent was. Before her was an enemy trying to kill her, and the truth was that she was trying to kill her opponent, too. When the doll girl got up, Ripple kicked her, and when her upper body bent backward, Ripple sliced at her, too, cutting right through her beautiful doll clothes to gouge deep into her wooden body. But the doll girl still didn’t stop moving.

With her right arm, which was gone past the elbow, the doll girl blocked Ripple’s katana. Her sleeve ripped in a shower of wood fragments, and her arm got even shorter. The doll girl forced her way forward. This was handy for Ripple.

Ripple chose to move together with her enemy’s momentum, letting the doll girl push her back to the fence. Now a doll couldn’t take her by surprise from behind. Her foe’s attacks were becoming wide and sloppy. Ripple repelled and dodged them. The doll girl’s accordion arms reached out, but Ripple turned them aside with the dull side of her blade. She heard the sound of the fence behind her getting cut up. The doll girl’s string of attacks was only hitting the fence.

Ripple kicked her opponent’s left arm hard, seizing the moment when her stance broke to throw a kunai at her left knee and wedge it into her joint. She raised her sword up above the doll, and right when she was about to bring it down—someone wrapped around her from behind. The cold sensation of metal stabbed through Ripple’s skin. Her katana wouldn’t move.

But she’d destroyed all the dolls. She’d blocked the entrance where more dolls could appear, too. There should have been nothing but fence behind her. The claws thrust at the confused Ripple, and just as she twisted her body to avoid them, a roundhouse kick flew at her from her blind spot to hit her right in the back of the head. Realizing the claw strike had been nothing more than a feint, Ripple passed out.

Her pursuer had been a truly strong magical girl. She’d been prepared to kill or be killed, and even when backed into a corner, she’d kept the dark fire deep in her heart smoldering. Given three years, or two years, or even one, Rionetta might have been the one to go down. But this time, Rionetta had won.

Rionetta canceled the magic she’d cast on the doll holding up her pursuer’s body, and it turned back into the chain link and crumbled to the ground. In the last stage of the game, Rionetta had pretended to be flailing with desperate attacks while she had actually been cutting the fence at the ninja girl’s back into the shape of a doll. Even if it was hastily and roughly made, ready to break apart at any moment, a doll was a doll. By manipulating the fence cutout, Rionetta had held her pursuer’s hands behind her back.

Rionetta approached the girl, fallen and still. The damage to Rionetta’s left knee was serious, and her movement was stiff, but she could still finish her off, at least. If she didn’t kill her now, then one day, the time would come when she would lose.

“Wait, please.”

Rionetta had felt no presence at all. She sank into a low crouch, almost touching the ground, turning to face the source of the voice. It was a young woman. With the moon at her back, she threw a long shadow onto the wreckage of the roof.

Rionetta’s left knee wouldn’t move smoothly. Her right arm was in tatters. All her dolls had been wiped out. She didn’t have much strength left.

“I’m quite sorry, but could you let this one pass? It’s almost time for her exam.” The girl had vines wrapped around her legs and roses over her shoulders. Even for a magical girl, she looked fancy. This newcomer, whose voice and appearance was totally unfamiliar to her, made her tremble in the depths of her heart. “If you simply must, then I’ll be forced to fight, too. If you wish, I could be your opponent once more. The outcome might just be different from the last time.”

Rionetta’s instincts understood—they told her that if she were to fight now, she would lose. She slowly dragged herself backward.

“But fate is strange. Are we inevitably destined to meet each other? I’ve heard this happens quite often to magical girls…”

Rionetta turned away and scampered down the wall of the department store like an animal. She raced away with single-minded intent, shaking off the shivers that threatened to rise up from her feet. She told herself that she wasn’t going to get into fights she wasn’t getting paid for.

There was the sound of sirens—from both police cars and an ambulance. A crowd of rubberneckers had gathered in front of the department store, too. Shoulders heaving, Ripple looked below. The roof, which had been a place of rest, was now utterly destroyed, and mannequins and stuffed animals that had been knocked off the roof were scattered around the department store building.

“Hey…what the hell was goin’ on here?” A slight edge of fear colored Top Speed’s tone from where she sat in the front seat.

When Ripple had come to, she’d found herself on Rapid Swallow’s rear seat. Top Speed said that by the time she got to the roof, Ripple was lying there alone.

Ripple had lost. Internally, she was trembling with humiliation and anger, like window glass in the middle of a typhoon. Most of all, she was angry at herself for wondering if she’d have won if Top Speed had been there. Giving in to anger, Ripple whapped her mentor over the head.

“Ow! What’re ya doin’?! Hey!”

Ripple focused her irritation and exhaustion on the tip of her tongue and clicked it as hard as she could. It tasted like blood.

“Oh, you’ve returned alive? Splendid. So now that’s that. About the Mermaid Tear—”

She hung up on him. The old man looked at the receiver for a while, muttered, “Magical girls, eh?” and then, losing interest, dropped the receiver with a clunk. Suddenly, his expression changed, and with a chipper look, he said to his granddaughter, “Do you like magical girls, Kanoe? There’s an animated film playing about them now, isn’t there?”

The old man’s granddaughter smoothed her curls with her left hand, pushed down the hem of her uniform skirt, crossed her legs in the other direction, and placed her saucer down on the round table and her teacup on top of it. “You’re not going to tell me how you’d like to see a movie with your adorable granddaughter before you die, are you?”

“Don’t expect your grandfather to be so admirable. I’m merely curious.”

In response to her grandfather’s question, the girl’s eyes gleamed with a light even more mature than her manner of speech, even though she looked far younger than that very tone would suggest. She blinked slowly, and when she opened her eyes again, the light was gone. “So many magical-girl stories nowadays are violent. I personally prefer sweet, romantic stories.”

Without a word as to the light that had flickered in the girl’s eyes, the old man spread his arms in a jesting manner. “Romance, eh? Do you think you’d have fun watching something like that with your grandfather?”

“I think it might be enjoyable to watch with a friend.”

Facing each other, the two of them gave similar smiles.