Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 5 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

A HERO? OR AN IDOL?

  7753 (Time remaining: twenty-two hours, twelve minutes)

Ripple’s duffle coat had a hood. But since it wasn’t long enough to cover her feet, she couldn’t hide her one-toothed geta.

7753’s peacoat lacked a hood. She had no hat, either, and no surgical mask. When she expressed her wish to buy a hat, Mana told her, “We don’t have the time,” and that was that. So she just bought a surgical mask at the convenience store and borrowed Ripple’s scarf to wrap around her head. She kept her goggles on, too, so she must have looked like quite a suspicious individual.

Hana had even managed to tuck away her long ears into her hood. She must have taken the length of her ears into account when she got that coat. It was a long coat, too, and fully covered her rather bare legs.

Mana wore a trench coat, and it didn’t have a hood, either. But she wore neither a mask nor a hat, leaving everything above the neck open. 7753 wondered if that was okay, but Mana was basically a pro, so it had to be fine.

Archfiend Pam’s dress coat made 7753 feel uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t quite put into words. It looked like off-the-rack clothing bought from a store but also like a haute couture item, or perhaps even handmade. Maybe it wasn’t a coat she’d put on after transformation but rather part of her costume.

Now basically all of them were in coats and pretending to be normal people. But 7753 wasn’t sure how regular humans would see them.

7753 was less than an amateur when it came to investigations like this one. She might have talked big and muscled her way in, but she had just been reciting word for word a speech her boss had made up for her. She may have doubts, but she was absolutely not going to voice them.

Mana got into a small cream-white sedan and fiddled with her magical phone. Apparently, they were using this car for the investigation. 7753 breathed a sigh of relief, glad that they wouldn’t have to walk around dressed like this. But the car wasn’t very magical girl–ish.

Generally, a magical girl could run way faster than she could drive a car. However, they couldn’t afford to stand out in broad daylight.

The tinted plastic on the windows wasn’t very sedan-like. It felt like an undercover police car.

“We were using a station wagon that was a little bigger. But we abandoned it when the enemy attacked us.” Hana seemed apologetic as she opened up the driver’s side door and showed them the cramped interior of the car.

Mana snorted at her. “Just remembering that is aggravating. Don’t talk about it.” Then, despite having just ordered Hana not to talk about it, Mana told them about what had happened after they were attacked.

Two magical girls had chased after the station wagon when Mana and her partner had tried to drive away. Figuring their pursuers would catch up to them, Mana had used her magic to put up a smoke screen so the two of them could escape. They’d burst out of either side of the station wagon, running in opposite directions in an attempt to shake off pursuit. Mana had somehow managed to escape, but when she’d met up with Hana to search for their team member, they’d found her body with its neck broken, hidden in a back alley, covered by a cardboard box. There had been no sign that she’d resisted. Mana said it looked as if she had been kicked in the neck from behind while she’d been running.

“Fucking hell. They killed the search specialist Section Three entrusted to us just like that.” Her voice was thick with regret as she basically admitted they’d had the wool pulled over their eyes. One of their team had been killed, and since the Department of Diplomacy had put up a barrier without even consulting anyone, now they were locked in. But Mana still wasn’t giving up. “We’ll look for Toko. Or if not her, then a magical girl. We just have to be the first to act. The barrier won’t last forever. Casters, tools, and the regional magic all have their limits. Once the effects wear off, they won’t be able to raise a new one right away. It’s twenty-four hours until the time limit on the barrier is up…well, twenty-two hours now, huh? If the enemy escapes us even after all that time…”

Deep furrows appeared in her forehead as her eyebrows rose and nostrils flared. Every single part of her face twisted in anger. 7753 felt as if she could hear Mana’s molars grating. She looked away.

Mana breathed a deep sigh and continued. “…Further failure is not on the table. And if we’ve got outsiders butting in here, too, that goes double.”

After that, Mana fell silent, and Hana followed up very apologetically. “Um, so 7753 and Ripple, I want to confirm something, first of all.”

“Yes?”

“Do both of your magics use your eyes? Am I right to assume your always-accurate shuriken can only hit things you can see, Ripple? And that you can only see the status screens of people in your field of vision, 7753?”

“No, I can’t use it on people I can’t see,” 7753 said, and she glanced at Ripple, who gave a little nod.

“Got it. So that means it’s best if you two can see… Then I suppose this should do it.”

All of a sudden, 7753’s field of vision cleared. Unable to grasp right away what had changed, she was confused. She tried taking off her goggles, thinking that the transparency had increased, but that wasn’t it. She could see everything clearly: the scenery around her and the distant background. A magical girl had better vision than a human did, but this was beyond that. When she looked at Ripple, she saw that the ninja was glancing all around, just like she was.

“This is my magic.” Hana Gekokujou’s magic was to make senses sharper. She could heighten any of them: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. “I can do all of them at once, too, but too much would make you confused. Also, when I use my magic on multiple people, the more I do, the harder it gets. So for now, sight only. How is it? Shall I raise it a bit more?”

Everything seemed to come closer, like an optical illusion, and then 7753 could clearly perceive each and every speck of dust in the air. The shape of the clouds drifting across the sky were perfectly distinct to her. She could even identify the types of trees growing on mountains that had merely registered as distant background moments before.

“Something like this? Raising your sensitivity any higher might start to give you problems, though.”

“Wow, this is awesome. You’re amazing!”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing great.”

Transforming from human to magical girl made all your senses sharper, but the joy of this change was different, less a deep stirring of emotion and more a feeling of discovery.

Ripple crouched on the spot, and when she stood again, there were two little stones in her right hand. She threw one of them into the sky, and in a flash it was gone. The other little stone followed it, after a hard windup and a powerful fling. Before long, they could hear the crack of the two stones colliding high in the sky. Fragments fluttered down, and Hana and 7753 cried out in surprise, applauding.

“That’s quite the skill,” said Hana.

“…Not at all.”

“This magic is only effective within a ten-foot radius of me. If you stay as close to me as possible, it won’t wear off or anything.”

Hana drove the car. Sharpening her senses, she took on the role of enemy scanner, making sure to pick up on anything unusual. When she was asked if the police would stop her since she looked underage, Hana showed off her license. It said she was twenty-one years old, and the ID photo looked just like her—but without bunny ears.

“Our team chief is good at making things like these.” Apparently, Mana had forged it. Most modern technology was reproducible with magic.

“Now all that’s left is to go over the procedures and divvy up roles.”

Mana used her magic staff to search for the general area their targets were located. The end of her staff apparently would point toward nearby magical presences, but it wandered around oddly, so it actually only gave them a general direction. Still, that was much better than nothing.

From the passenger seat, 7753 looked outside. The staff pointed toward their targets, but it wouldn’t tell them how far away they were. That meant she had to use the goggles and heightened eyesight to help with the search. Their enemies could be hiding inside a building, but that was still no reason not to look.

She needed to tweak the parameters that would be visible to her. She couldn’t just say she couldn’t find them because they weren’t transformed. 7753 set a dreadful parameter that she normally wouldn’t see as highest priority: “number of magical girls killed.” Every time she saw someone from the window while they were driving, she focused her goggles’ sights on them.

Ripple’s role was to be her guard. Her magic was shuriken that would always hit their targets, and from what 7753 heard, she seemed pretty strong. She had been shocked to hear that Ripple had been one of Cranberry’s children, but the magical girls sent to 7753 were all, to some extent, troublemakers. And they possessed the strength of problem children.

Hana didn’t brag about her combat skills, but she couldn’t be weak, either—after all, she and Mana had initially been central to this investigation. And the fact was, even though her magic was auxiliary, its effects were startling. However, there was that ten-foot constraint. They had to be careful about that.

And then there was one more in the group. 7753 looked out the window. She could see no moon or stars in the sky. Everything was covered by clouds. Since it was nighttime in November, it was chilly outside. Archfiend Pam was flying alone under the cold sky. She could fly at high speeds and had eyesight sharp enough to discern the world below from her high altitude, as well as the power to strike back if she were ever attacked from the air and the speed to race to them if anything went wrong on their end. Did that mean she could basically do anything?

The instant before Archfiend Pam had flown off, 7753’s boss had bullied…er, instructed her to “take a look at Archfiend Pam’s combat abilities.” Timidly, 7753 had asked this of Archfiend Pam, and Pam had readily agreed. But when 7753 had attempted to check her combat abilities with her goggles, her vision was instantly overwhelmed by infinite heart symbols, burning her eyes with intense light and giving her a temporary headache.

When Archfiend Pam asked leisurely, “So whatcha think?” it was the most 7753 could to do to reply, “Amazing…”

Now, Archfiend Pam was flying so high that 7753 couldn’t see her even with the help of Hana’s magic. Perhaps this was because Mana didn’t want to see Pam, or perhaps it was easier to look down from higher in the sky; 7753 didn’t know which. It could have been either.

Figuring their formation had to be totally airtight, 7753 started to gain a little confidence. She really didn’t feel like she could help out in combat if the time came to fight, but division of labor was key. Even if she couldn’t fight herself, it wasn’t as if she would be completely useless. Thinking to herself that she would just do the best work she could, she looked out the window. Her status screen reeled by at a dizzying rate as she scanned those who entered her field of vision one after another. But with the dynamic vision of a magical girl, she could manage it without issue.

The car drove along the road at just about five miles per hour below the speed limit. Since there weren’t a lot of cars going by on the two lanes, they weren’t causing any traffic jams. They hit a T intersection and then turned left toward a brown field that had already been harvested. From there they turned left again onto a mountain road, passing by a reservoir and then starting on a winding descent.

7753 didn’t really know where they were going or what the route was. “So…where are we trying to go?”

She didn’t mean anything by that, but the immediate “Wha—?” from the rear seat clearly sounded grumpy, so 7753 closed her mouth.

From the driver’s seat, Hana intervened. “I think it may be best for you to think of it as us driving in accordance with the staff’s directions. It’s not set in stone, so we have to change directions frequently, and there isn’t much sense that we’re aiming for a goal.”

“Oh, I see.”

“It’s a fairly primitive method, but in the current situation, I think it may be the best we have.”

“Has your concentration run dry already?” The voice from the back seat sounded even grumpier now, and 7753 ducked her head.

She felt bad, thinking she’d made life harder for Ripple beside Mana in the back seat. Being right next to a superior in a bad mood put a lot of pressure on you.

“Isn’t concentration supposed to be one of the selling points of a magical girl? What are we gonna do if you guys can’t even manage that? Huh?”

Agh, she’s finally picking a fight. 7753 heaved a long-suffering sigh to herself.

“Oh, look, there’s a convenience store!” Hana pointed ahead. They could see it at the foot of the mountain. As was always the case with rural areas, the parking lot was needlessly large. “Shall I buy some dinner? It’s about time, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll go myself. I’ll be back soon, so just wait there.”

Hana parked in the lot, and after a reminder to stay alert at all times, Mana left the car. 7753 blew a deep sigh. She was finally able to breathe.

“I’m sorry.” Hana put her hands together and bowed her head, a strained smile on her face. “She’s not a bad person. It’s easy to get the wrong idea about her, though.”

Figuring that she was referring to Mana, 7753 shook her head, flustered. “Um, no, I don’t really…” Maybe she’d been acting too blatant about it. Hana must have found the convenience store to make things easier for her. She had made Hana worry about her.

“She’s passionate about her work. She’s diligent and has a one-track mind, and sometimes she feels like she can do what she wants so long as she’s in the right. All the interference in this case has upset her… Er, sorry for calling you an interference.”

“Oh, it’s okay. You don’t have to be so delicate with me.” 7753 thought that “interference” was the perfect word for what her boss was doing.

“You can see who she really is when she gets drunk, but normally, she’s so hard to approach. But well, once her real personality is out, she’s easier to be around—like, she can be cute, though.” She seemed to be talking less about a boss and more about a little sister. From the way her bunny ears moved under her hood and the slight sourness in her smile, she seemed rather gleeful to 7753. “But normally, she’s got a bit of a sharp tongue…so I’m sorry, 7753, Ripple.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s okay, really.”

“Really. She’s not a bad person. She’s more concerned about magical girls than anyone else out there.”

“She’s concerned about…magical girls?”

“Yep.”

The unease that had been with 7753 all this time was melting. Now that she thought about it, magical girls didn’t need dinner. It made sense that Mana didn’t look or dress like a magical girl. And when she’d talked about magical girls as a whole, she’d spoken as if she was not included. “Mana isn’t a magical girl, is she?”

“No, she’s not. She’s what they call a mage… Wait, you didn’t realize?” Hana replied, shocked.

7753 was embarrassed. If she’d been paying proper attention, she would have noticed herself without being told. That day had been a string of unexpected events since morning, so maybe she hadn’t been thinking straight. Or so went her mental excuse. “I’m sorry; I’m embarrassed to say…”

“But with your magic, 7753, you can tell by looking, can’t you?”

“Well, um. I sort of take care to avoid using it as much as possible when I don’t need it. I mean, it would be rude to just go and scan people who aren’t my trainees, and I like to try to get permission as much as possible and stuff when I look, so… I’m sorry.”

Hana’s expression went from surprise to exasperation and then to happiness. Finally, she smiled. “You’re a good person, aren’t you, 7753?”

“Oh no, I’m really not.” She only did this because she didn’t want people getting mad at her. She knew better than anyone that she was just a coward. If anyone here was good, it would be Hana. She was the far better person for always trying to help her out. “Also, the way you say my name is a little strange.”

“Strange?”

“I mean, saying ‘seventy-seven-five-three’ in full every time is so long. Nana is fine. I’d prefer you just call me that.”

“But that’s like I’m calling you by a nickname.”

“I don’t mind if you use a nickname.”

“No, but—”

“No, no.”

“No, no, I mean—”

Hearing a giggle from the back seat, the two of them glanced behind them. Looking at her lap, Ripple muttered, “Pardon me.” Her cheeks were just a bit red.

  Kuru-Kuru Hime (Time remaining: twenty hours, five minutes)

It was near eight in the evening. After parting ways with the students, Nozomi had made her way to the apartment building with the address she’d been given. In room 204, where everyone was supposed to have gathered, only Toko was present. She was sitting daintily on the table with a coaster under her.

“Where is everyone?”

“Hopping and prancing about outside. Humans who have just gotten powers can’t help but want to try them out. Just moving around gets them so giddy.” A cynical smile appeared on the face of the cute-looking fairy. “They’re all young, so there’s no helping that. Most of the kids who become magical girls are dim-witted. It’s unusual for an adult to become one, though.” She looked at Nozomi with upturned eyes. “You’re a rare find.”

“Me?”

“It means that your heart was ready to accept magical-girl-hood.”

“I was never really aware of that myself.”

“Life isn’t just about the things you’re aware of,” Toko said, then fell silent and stared out the window. Nozomi got the feeling that Toko had just been disparaging her. Playing with a bunch of kids? At your age? She may just have been venting, but Nozomi felt that to be true of herself. Toko’s expression revealed more maturity than any of them, Nozomi included.

“Hey, Toko.”

“What?”

“What are the bad things these evil mages do, specifically?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? Check out some fairy tales or young adult novels or comics or anything. They’re basically doing that,” she said without even looking around. That perfunctory and indifferent way of dealing with people was also adult. Nozomi put her things on top of the sofa and left the room.

It seemed Toko’s mood had improved while Nozomi was gone, over at the school. Or maybe it was less that her mood had improved, and rather that she’d simply calmed with the passage of time.

After they’d driven away the enemy to end their first battle, all the novice magical girls returned to the science prep room, avoiding the eyes of the public as they went.

Toko was still furious that they’d failed to kill anyone, but the students didn’t flinch at her rage, instead discussing what they should do about their current predicament. Seeing the magical girls ignore what she had to say merely stoked the fire of Toko’s anger, and after some yelling and raging, she flew off. After a while, they could hear what sounded like more angry yelling courtesy of Toko coming from the roof. Her harsh voice was filled with unmistakable aggravation. She came off less like a fairy than a gangster.

Soon after that, Toko came back, and though she wasn’t exactly mad at that point, she was in an incredibly bad mood.

Toko said that an ally had contacted her, and she relayed to them what she had heard. A spherical barrier had been erected around the whole of the B City region for the next twenty-four hours. Evil mages could pull off that sort of thing easily. And now, this limited what they could do.

“You should’ve just killed them all quick.” Toko wasn’t even trying to hide her displeasure.

Nozomi was somber, but Captain Grace seemed full of confidence as she said, “We’ll beat the enemy next time, so that doesn’t matter, right?”

Weddin added pleasantly, “Let’s settle down and make a proper plan.”

Rain Pow kept things positive. “So in other words, this means for the next twenty-four hours, they can’t escape, either.”

Even Postarie was talking proactively. “If we use my magic, we can run after them.”

Nozomi—the magical girl Kuru-Kuru Hime—patted Funny Trick’s shoulder, comforting her. She was the only one of them discouraged by this. Having common sense did not always help you.

The whole group, including Toko, discussed their next step.

“It’s getting dark, so it’d be best for us all to gather in one place, right?”

“You can practice your magic or chat, but put up a watch. Absolutely do not forget that the enemy is looking for us.”

“If the enemy attacks you, just make some noise. Like, yell or something.”

“Should we stay transformed?”

“That’d be best, considering the enemy might attack.”

“Oh, that’s true. But if we stay transformed, that might make it easier for the enemy to find us.”

“So then it’s best to be detransformed, huh?”

“I can’t just be the only one who stays transformed?”

“Umi, don’t be selfish!”

Captain Grace ended up being the one to supply the magical-girl squad with a base. It was an old apartment building on the edge of town, currently unoccupied. Apparently, she’d inherited it from her grandfather.

Everyone headed over there, and the first thing they did was figure out their own magic and powers, then exchange information. If they were going to do anything, this had to come before anything else. They also made sure to call their families. Nozomi would temporarily split up with the others to go deal with some remaining work at the school and then meet up with them again. That was the plan.

After leaving the students, Nozomi recalled the events of a few years ago, when her mother’s health had suddenly declined.

At the time, Nozomi had quit her job to take care of her mother. Her father didn’t want a stranger caring for her, and Nozomi had been unable to say no to him. So either her father or Nozomi would have quit their job. When comparing their incomes, her father made more at the city hall. On top of that, when it came to house chores, it was better for Nozomi to handle them rather than make her father learn everything from square one.

She didn’t regret the decision, exactly. She just wondered sometimes, What if my mother hadn’t gotten sick? And she hated herself for thinking about it. She’d been seeing someone at the time and even thought it was about time she got married. But once her mother fell ill, she’d gotten fewer and fewer chances to see him, and eventually, he had broken up with her.

Her father was still well, but he talked less than he used to. If his health were to decline, Nozomi would have to care for him by herself this time. She couldn’t just send her father to an institution when she had cared for her mother at home. She felt the same debt of gratitude to him for raising her as she did toward her mother.

Now that she had become a magical girl, it was just like when her mother had become ill. Her time was limited, and since now she had to deal with her personal business within that period, she couldn’t manage her job anymore. With caring for her mother, she had discussed it with her father and cooperated with him. Obviously, she couldn’t ask for her father’s help with magical-girl things. Even if this “danger to the world” Toko spoke of was looming, Nozomi had to return to the school alone for a curriculum meeting.

When Nozomi arrived at the roof of the apartment building, she found all the students together there, testing out their magic and sharing opinions with one another. It seemed things were going reasonably well. Nozomi had already gotten used to the bizarre sight of all these pretty girls in strange outfits in a group and decided to join them. They opened up a space for her, and when she sat down, she suddenly noticed something. “Didn’t we say we were going to undo our transformations?”

All of them were sitting there, transformed.

“Oh, well, there were reasons for that.”

“Reasons? Like what?”

“One of us has a handicap when she’s not transformed.”

“Handicap?”

“Mei does,” the dancing girl replied with her hand raised, then disappeared.

“Here, Ms. Himeno. Look.” Captain Grace tugged her sleeve, and when Nozomi looked down, there was something there, where Tepsekemei had been. No, not something, but someone.

“Hmm?” Nozomi had seen this creature before. She seemed to recall it was the tortoise they kept in the science prep room… Before she even had the time to think about it, the tortoise vanished, and Tepsekemei reappeared.

“Tepsekemei can’t talk in her other form, and she said it hinders her cognitive abilities, too… So Umi said, why doesn’t everyone just stay transformed?” Funny Trick seemed to be desperately trying to keep up with the situation herself as she explained.

Nozomi pressed a finger between her eyes and massaged two, three times. Now that she was aware that magic surpassing the laws of physics and common sense was real, she wasn’t going to get anywhere if she allowed herself to be startled by something like this. But it was careless of her not to notice that there were more girls when they were transformed. In any case, now Tepsekemei was a full-fledged ally. Nozomi would feel bad if she hurt her with an exaggerated show of surprise.

“Um… Well then, let’s move on, shall we? How far have you gotten with this discussion?”

“We were just talking about each of our magics,” said Weddin.

“I see. So then could you tell me about them, too?”

“I made up a simple list. Please, feel free to take a look.”

• Weddin (Mine Musubiya, class 2-D): Can force people to keep promises. Not very athletic.

• Captain Grace (Umi Shibahara, class 2-C): Summons a pirate ship. Can bring tools out from inside the ship. Excellent strength and speed.

• Tepsekemei (Egyptian tortoise Mei): Can merge with the air. Isn’t very strong but is quite fast. Can fly.

• Funny Trick (Kayo Nemura, class 2-C): Can switch the positions of two hidden things. Fairly athletic.

• Postarie (Tatsuko Sakaki, class 1-B): Can make any object sprout wings to send it flying back to its owner. Not very athletic.

• Rain Pow (Kaori Ninotsugi, class 1-B): Can manifest rainbow bridges. Athletic ability is middling.

• Kuru-Kuru Hime (Nozomi Himeno, Japanese teacher): ?

This sort of thing must have been why she was the class representative. Teachers had an easier time of things with such a reliable student around. Nozomi transformed into Kuru-Kuru Hime to fill in the empty space on the list with her own magic.

Kuru-Kuru Hime’s ability to manipulate ribbons could be useful when jumping between buildings, if she could time it right to help her with the movement. She would jump and then extend a ribbon from midair. Then she would grab on to the edge of a building or a chain-link roof fence with her ribbon and pull. Doing this, she could lengthen her jump, which could save her time. She could also use the ribbons to restrain enemies. She demonstrated this by undoing the ribbons decorating her whole body and wrapping them around and around Mine Musubiya, now transformed into the magical girl Weddin. Weddin strained and strained her arms, but she could only wiggle. Magical girls were a lot stronger than humans, but Kuru-Kuru Hime’s ribbons were sturdy enough to withstand it.

“I see. I can’t move like this,” said Weddin calmly. “You could use a skill like this in some dirty video game or manga.”

“How does a minor like you know about that stuff?!”

“It’s common knowledge.”

“That is not common knowledge.”

Nozomi had thought that Mine was more straitlaced. She was speaking politely enough, but she was acting very chummy now. Perhaps she felt more familiar now as a fellow magical girl. Nozomi’s sense of dignity as a teacher had crumbled and disappeared. Though it was doubtful she’d ever had any in the first place.

Weddin’s magic was to compel people to keep their promises. No matter how casual it was, if you made any kind of promise to her, then you would have to keep it. If you said, “I’m not going to hit you,” and then raised your hand to try to slap her cheek, your arm would go numb, and you’d be unable to move it.

“That’s some scary magic…,” said Nozomi.

“It epitomizes the fearsome nature of marriage.”

“How can you say something like that when you’re underage?”

“It’s common knowledge.”

“It’s the kind of common knowledge you need to get rid of.”

While they were chattering away, Captain Grace, sitting on the edge of the roof, suddenly brought up something. “Now that we’re magical girls, don’t you guys feel like our names should have a theme or something? When you’ve got a unifying idea like fruits, or colors, or fire/water/earth/wind or something, you feel like a team, right?”

Weddin, Captain Grace, Funny Trick, Postarie, Tepsekemei. They were far from thematically consistent. Their names and outfits were all over the place, as if each one of them was a character from a different story. Kuru-Kuru Hime in particular stuck out like a sore thumb for being the only one whose name was in Japanese, which made sense, given she was a Japanese teacher.

It felt like her name didn’t quite match how cute she looked, festooned with ribbons. If Nozomi had chosen a name for herself, she would have gone with something fancier, though she would have kept in mind how the students saw her.

When she asked Toko, “Why did I end up with a name like this?” Toko puffed up her chest proudly and replied, “Inspiration struck!” Before the palm-sized fairy’s confident smile, Nozomi didn’t feel like pressing her any further about it. When she asked, “Can I at least change it?” Toko’s response was anything but dreamy: “You need connections with higher-ups for that.”

Weddin shrugged as her lips formed a cynical smirk. “I think it may be fine not to have any sense of cohesion. We’re a ragtag team of odds and ends. That’s undeniable.”

Without missing a beat, Rain Pow countered, “That’s not true! We’re all allies from the same school.”

“No. It’s not as if we’re real friends with trust or anything.” Weddin gave a light nod. “Either way, we don’t need a theme.”

“But, like, don’t magical girls have to have that sort of thing?”

Kuru-Kuru Hime didn’t see anything wrong with Captain Grace’s argument. In the long-running TV anime Star Queen, the girls were all named after constellations, and each of them used a special move based on their namesake. With the Cutie Healer series, each new series starred new magical girls, and their motif changed for each series, too. Kuru-Kuru Hime understood the desire to have all the names unified on a theme in a group of magical girls.

Weddin touched her middle finger between her eyes, then removed it again, wearing a look on her face that said, “Whoops.” She’d probably forgotten she wasn’t wearing glasses and had tried to adjust them. “Are we even magical girls in the first place?”

“What? Of course we are. That’s what Toko said.”

“I think it would be more accurate to say that we aren’t.”

They were girls living in modern Japan—well, aside from the one adult and one animal—but they had acquired mysterious powers, cute outfits, and pretty faces by means of a fairy who had come to them from the Magical Kingdom. What’s more, the fairy herself was using the term “magical girls.” There was no reason not to call them that.

Funny Trick put her finger on the end of her chin. “For better or for worse…I think we are.”

“Toko has explained these things herself,” said Weddin, “and I’ve personally done various experiments, as well. As expected, our physical capabilities have improved remarkably. I wouldn’t say this is characteristic of a magical girl, but rather of a beautiful fighting girl or battle girl.”

Kuru-Kuru Hime tilted her head and went, “Hmm? Aren’t we the beautiful fighting-girl type of magical girls?”

“That’s something else, isn’t it?”

“But we were bestowed with magical powers.”

“In this case, the source of our powers has nothing to do with it. Some works still fit within the genre of magical girl even when their powers are ninjutsu or science-based.”

“But Star Queen and Cutie Healer are both magical girls, right?”

“No. Star Queen and Cutie Healer are both beautiful fighting girls, not magical girls.”

Weddin informed them that originally speaking, the magical-girl character type focused mainly on using magic in everyday life, and that they should clearly be distinguished from beautiful fighting girls. With the latter, both their enemies and allies had magic, or at least some power that was close to it. “The only reason the term ‘magical girl’ has come to include a separate genre as well is because their fans are so arrogant.”

Clenching her fists so hard her fingers turned red as she passionately explained, she looked completely different from the girl Nozomi normally saw: the coolheaded class representative Mine Musubiya. The flame of the candle decorating Weddin’s veil blazed higher. Was that candle linked to her mental state?

“When the majority of the show’s cast comprises named characters involved in combat, rules like You can’t reveal your true identity and Magic is a secret might as well not exist. Does the protagonist’s magic-school classmate count as a magical girl? Does the elf girl who left the forest to become an adventurer because she wanted to see the human world count as a magical girl? No, they do not. They are not magical girls. They are neither beautiful fighting girls nor magical girls.”

“Um… But, like, even in a fantasy story where magic is commonplace, there are characters with a magical-girl motif, right?” Funny Trick tried to argue back, even as Weddin pressed her.

But Weddin brushed her argument aside. “You would just call that a character with a magical-girl motif. If you take a real person…let’s say Nobunaga Oda. A character based on him is never going to be the real Nobunaga Oda.”

Captain Grace pouted. She did not seem to be happy. Kuru-Kuru Hime could easily see this getting annoying if she didn’t step in, so she attempted to support Grace’s side. “But there are works that have ‘magical girl’ in the title, right?”

“No, Ms. Himeno. That’s just having magical girls as a motif. That doesn’t make it a magical-girl story.” With a cough, Weddin continued. “Plus, though you mentioned thematic names such as those in Cutie Healer and Star Queen, the trope of themed names is not derived from the magical-girl genre but from sentai superhero shows. The genealogy of both those series can be traced back not to magical-girl series, but sentai shows. So in other words, you can tell from this that there is a direct relationship between these shows and the beautiful fighting-girl genre.”

“You’re just an otaku splitting hairs.” Captain Grace’s single cutting remark knocked down all of Weddin’s argumentation. Grace glared at Weddin, and Weddin gave a slight flinch but glared sharply back at her. Funny Trick tugged at Grace’s sleeve but was brushed aside, while Rain Pow scowled a bit. Postarie was so flustered, you had to feel sorry for her.

Kuru-Kuru Hime clapped her hands twice and stood. “Come on, that’s enough pointless chatter. Let’s start practicing our group tactics next.” She didn’t quite manage to dispel the hostility, but still, pointing out what they were supposed to be doing next should coax their emotions in a new direction.

“Hold on, please.” Weddin raised her hand. “There’s something more important that we have to decide first.”

“…And what was that?”

Weddin stood swiftly enough to make her skirts flutter up and spread both her hands. “We have to decide on a leader!”

After an unproductive debate between Captain Grace and Weddin, it was decided that the question of who should be their leader should be resolved democratically, and Weddin won by a single vote. Weddin instructed them to “go along with the leader’s decision if anything happens.” At first, nobody realized this was part of her magic, so nobody reacted, but after she’d repeated the same instruction three times, everyone finally figured out what she was trying to say. Though some were reluctant, some seemed to hate the idea, others were affable, and others showed no expression at all, they agreed.

It looks like things are settled for now, Kuru-Kuru Hime thought, but right then, she got a poke in the shoulder. She turned around to find Tepsekemei hovering there, legs crossed.

“What about Mei?”

Kuru-Kuru Hime didn’t understand what she was being asked, but she couldn’t reply that she didn’t understand what Tepsekemei meant, either. So all she answered was, “Believe in yourself.”

  Captain Grace (Time remaining: eighteen hours, fifty-three minutes)

Captain Grace, a.k.a. Umi Shibahara, had a secret base.

The term “secret base” was indeed pirate-like; the reality, not so much. It wasn’t a treasure island or an underwater cave. It was an apartment building located on the outskirts of B City, in a former flophouse district. It was old enough that anyone who was around when it had been built was long gone, and no one was living there now, either. The location was inconvenient, so even if it were eventually renovated, whether or not people would actually occupy it was anyone’s guess. The same was true for knocking it down to make a parking lot.

Nothing could really be done about this property, which had belonged to her grandfather, so when Umi had pestered him for a secret hideout, he’d handed it over to her. Umi owned it legally, too.

She had been bringing in furniture and household items bit by bit for a long time now, making it more comfortable to live in. There were locks and working utilities, too. Though it looked run-down, Umi thought it passed for a fine home. As a secret base for magical girls, it was a little lacking, but there was no way around that.

Once their discussions and magic demonstrations were over, the group decided to break for one hour. Grace and Funny Trick were seated facing each other at opposite ends of a mahogany table. On the table were two coffee cups and saucers. Captain Grace had brought these furnishings out from the vessel she could summon with her magic, a pirate ship that could race quickly across the water. Since the ship itself was pretty big, she had to choose the right place to summon it. She’d brought it out on the school sports fields after everyone had gone home, hauled out everything that seemed useful, and then dismissed it. Its furnishings were all magical items that wouldn’t break, even when handled with the intense strength of magical girls.

Her expression uneasy, Funny Trick said to Grace, “Listen…”

“What?”

“Don’t do that again.”

“Do what?”

“You were arguing with Weddin.”

“Oh, that.” Grace snorted. Kayo had been like this ever since they’d been little. Umi got worked up easily, so it was Kayo’s job to placate her and keep her in check. It was an appropriate personality for a partner of hers to have, but sometimes, she could be too timid. Umi wished Kayo would be a little bolder, even if to a lesser degree than Umi herself. “She’s just getting cocky ’cause she’s a little stronger than before. She said some stuff about being the leader, but it’s not like that’s official or anything. She’s just a smug idiot.”

“Maybe you could try to get along more.”

“Maybe I should let her have it.”

“That’s exactly what I told you not to do!”

Captain Grace knocked back her steamed milk and banged her cup back down on the table. She had been right to predict that a cup for magical girls would not break from such a shock, but the bottom of it hammered a circular indent in the mahogany table. Grace cursed quietly, and this time, she lowered the cup slowly. “You got a problem with what I’m doing, Kayo?”

“I don’t mean that…”

Kayo was timid, but when Umi did something, she would follow. That was what made her Umi’s partner. She hadn’t changed since back when they had read adventure stories together in the elementary school library.

“So you just have to be quiet and follow me, just like always. You won’t regret it. I’ll make sure you won’t come out on the losing end.”

  Postarie (Time remaining: eighteen hours, forty minutes)

At Tatsuko’s side were Kaori and one other: the magical girl in the wedding dress. The three of them were sitting in a circle on the roof of the apartment building.

“Now, if you’d please take a look.”

Weddin passed a university notebook emblazoned with a 1 to Tatsuko. When she opened it, she found lines of tidy, small handwriting. It listed the unique characteristics of magical girls: strengthened physical capabilities; night vision; sharpened senses; no longer needing to eat, sleep, or expel waste; an unusual toughness; and that their transformed selves were beautiful girls. Then there were the rules: Try to avoid being seen by regular people as much as possible; don’t reveal your identity to anyone; and make sure to follow Toko’s orders. Recorded together with these things were some fairly detailed and specific numbers. Her handwriting was good. And painstaking, apparently. Every letter, without exception, had a tilt that rose diagonally up and to the right.

“So there’s this many benefits.”

Postarie looked up from the notebook and examined Weddin. There was something argumentative about her tone and her actions, which seemed to contradict her bridal-gown costume and its connotations of indisputable joy. Even her magical ability to force people to keep their promises was contentious.

“Toko promised that if we become full-fledged magical girls for her, then we can stay that way forever. All these benefits would be a great advantage to our day-to-day lives. Oh! I was also thinking we could come up with a pose for when we all assemble. Do you have any ideas? I’m not quite sure if that’s the sort of thing that magical girls do, but since there are seven of us, I think we could use our numbers to emphasize our beauty as a group.”

“I see.” Rain Pow was frequently offering appreciative interjections, like “Of course” and “I agree,” to pacify Weddin, and after they parted ways, she exhaled a single tiny sigh.

“And so…” After splitting with Weddin, Rain Pow and Postarie caught Tepsekemei floating around above the road in front of the apartment building. Her body and her dancing-girl costume from Arabia or wherever were both half-transparent, like vapor, and they could see the building behind her. “You two want to know about Mei’s magic.”

“Yeah, we do.”

It was fair to say that Tepsekemei had the skimpiest outfit of the group. Unlike the other girls, who looked “cute” or “cool,” Postarie’s first impression of her was “sexy.”

Postarie also thought that she was by far the least sociable, too. It wasn’t just that she didn’t smile. Her expression didn’t change at all. She kept a straight face, not showing anger or sadness or anything. It was normal for a group of young women to compete over their looks. And yet even in such an environment, Tepsekemei was unfriendly, blunt, and quite casual, seeming neither entertained nor bored.

Very often, a woman with such an attitude would be excluded from the group. Postarie, with more than ten years’ experience of being excluded, knew this painfully well. From Postarie’s perspective, Tepsekemei hovered high and away from the crowd, especially given she had not originally been a human. And not just in the literal sense.

“Since becoming a magical girl, Mei has realized something.” The wind blew, and Tepsekemei’s form wavered. “Mei is Mei. I am not myself. Mei was always Mei.”

Postarie looked at Rain Pow beside her. She was smiling, but she must have been just as baffled as Postarie was.

“Um, what might you mean by that?”

“Mei’s whole life was spent at the bottom of a hell she couldn’t crawl out of. Mei didn’t even notice it was the depths of hell or how everything in it was pain. That’s what Mei means by realizing something.”

Tepsekemei transformed into vapor once more, leaned against a rust-covered pillar, then wrapped herself around a disintegrating cardboard box soaked in rainwater. The box was ripped to scattered shreds with a light snapping sound. “Next thing you know, Mei’s able to do things like this. Mei can’t break anything too sturdy, though.” She slipped into a rain gutter and then ruptured it from the inside. “Mei can deliver messages.” She split into five Tepsekemeis and then again into ten. “Mei can use this to startle someone.” The ten forms fused to become one giant Tepsekemei. “Mei can go back to normal real quick.” She stabbed her pointer finger into her own head, and with a deflating sound, she returned to her original size. “Mei likes banging air into things.” She stretched her arms to five times their length, took the broken gutter in hand, and threw it into the air. Making a gun shape with her hand, she said the word “bang,” and in midair, the gutter burst open.

“Try hitting Mei,” she said.

“Huh? Me?” Rain Pow pointed to herself.

“Try.”

“Hey, I can’t just do that out of the—”

“Just do it.”

“But, like…” Rain Pow scratched the back of her head, turning toward Postarie with the weak smile of someone indeed at a loss. Then, without warning, she stepped toward Tepsekemei and took a swing at her. Before Postarie even had the time to be startled by her sudden move, Tepsekemei’s form changed like some amorphous creature, entwining Rain Pow’s arm mid-punch. When Tepsekemei turned back to normal, she had Rain Pow’s upper body held fast, her right elbow and shoulder in an arm lock. Tepsekemei knocked Rain Pow to the ground and held her down.

She then released her, took her hand, and pulled her up. Postarie cried out in surprise, clapping her hands, and Rain Pow, now on her feet, followed suit.

“Wow! That was amazing!”

“I didn’t even know how you pulled that last move on me!”

The both of them positively giddy, Postarie said, “That was so cool!” and they turned back to Tepsekemei only to be startled again.

Tepsekemei was looking at them with an expressionless face. “What do you guys think will happen now?”

Rain Pow looked at Postarie imploringly. Postarie gave a small shake of her head, looking back at Rain Pow. She didn’t understand what Tepsekemei was trying to say.

“Haven’t you noticed?”

“Um… Noticed what?”

“We’ve gained something amazing. Mei doesn’t want to lose it. That’s why Mei will fight. Making use of everything. Because of this life. Mei is Mei. Mei can’t die, if Mei wants to still be Mei. Dying was very scary. Mei didn’t know. But you should know. Isn’t that right?”

“Uhhh…yeah. I guess…that’s true.”

Tepsekemei floated cross-legged in the sky. Postarie didn’t know what she was looking at. Her gaze didn’t even seem focused in the first place. She was blinking and her eyes were moving, but it didn’t feel as if she was looking at anything. Her expression seemed fake, too.

“I wonder why. Thinking is so difficult.” Still floating, she rode the wind toward the mountain.

Neither Rain Pow nor Postarie could call out to stop her and so watched her go. Postarie wasn’t sure if, ultimately, she could just chalk this up to being a different species, or not.

  Weddin (Time remaining: eighteen hours, twenty-two minutes)

It was safe to assume that Weddin had processed enough information to satisfy her. She put her pen down and read over her notebook once more. This information should be useful when coordinating with others during combat.

The issue was sharing this information. Kuru-Kuru Hime was a teacher to begin with, so she had a good memory. Rain Pow absorbed things quickly as well, and she would even help Postarie out.

It was the remaining three who were the problems. Captain Grace didn’t care to consider the finer details of things. And Funny Trick was always with her, so Weddin could hardly talk to her at all. Tepsekemei was a waste of effort. Weddin couldn’t even tell if the girl was listening to what she was saying.

“Funny Trick’s magic is to switch two hidden things, and Captain Grace’s is a very fast ship. For Grace’s magic, rather than just using the boat, using its equipment is the right choice—on land, at least.”

“Got it.”

“So then, what about your magic?”

“Mei eats air.”

“…I don’t think that’s quite it, but let’s go with that. And what about Funny Trick’s magic?”

“Who’s Funny Trick?”

“Okay. One more time, from the top.”

Someone regarded as unintelligent might be called “monkey-brains.” But compared to Tepsekemei pretransformation, even a monkey might be considered a genius.

It wasn’t as if she had no desire to learn. She just couldn’t learn. And it wasn’t as if she couldn’t learn anything. There were things she could and things she couldn’t.

“Weddin’s the leader.”

“That’s right.”

“Why’re you the leader?”

“Because it was decided democratically.”

“But you’re weak.”

“…You may think so, but please don’t say it. And in the first place, how can you remember my name properly when you can’t remember anyone else’s at all?”

“Because you’re Weddin?”

Weddin held her head in her hands. As the class representative, she had tutored classmates with lower marks—to win over her teachers, of course. However, those people were human, and they attended a private school, so they’d all have to have the scholastic ability to get in, at least.

Right now, she was dealing with a being that, until yesterday, had been just a tortoise. Mine had fed it a number of times. She’d even thought it was cute. But she’d never thought of the creature as an equal.

—I mean, it’s a tortoise.

How on earth was she supposed to get her to learn?

As you’d expect, she was smarter now than when she was in her original form. Just understanding human language and being able to communicate took her beyond tortoise level. But question of her intelligence aside, the issue was that she had no habit of learning.

Unlike Grace, Tepsekemei had the desire to learn, so Weddin really did want to help her out somehow. Among all the members of their group, Tepsekemei’s magic could be particularly multipurpose in its use, be it in a support, reserve, or offensive role. So if she could work together with the rest of them, it would really strengthen their forces.

Weddin lifted her head, glancing up to see Tepsekemei staring at her with a terrifying expression, like a beast baring its fangs. Panicking, Weddin backed away, stepped on the skirt of her veil, and fell straight onto her butt. “Wh-what is it? If you’re unhappy about something, could you at least put it into words?”

Teeth still bared, Tepsekemei tilted her head, confused. “Mei is smiling.”

“Nobody smiles like that!”

“How should Mei smile?”

So Tepsekemei didn’t know how to smile? Now that Weddin thought about it, tortoises didn’t make facial expressions to communicate. Sea turtles would shed tears during spawning season, but they did that to expel salt from their eyes and not because they were sad or in pain.

“Um, well… First, lift your cheeks.”

“Like this?”

“No, that’s scary. Not like that. The cheeks go like this.”

“Like this?”

“Ugh! Geez, this is tedious. I’ll adjust your face myself, so please just remember how I put it.” Touching Tepsekemei’s face, Weddin adjusted the positions of her eyebrows and cheeks. When her fingertips touched her cheeks, she was startled by their softness. A magical girl’s skin was smooth and silky.

“That tickles.”

“Just deal with it.”

Somehow, Weddin was able to make a shape resembling a smile. She took half a step back to examine Tepsekemei’s face from various angles. It was a little stiff, but you could call it a smile. “Right, then remember this shape.”

Before Weddin was done giving that instruction, Tepsekemei’s expression returned to its original blank look. She looked up into the sky, muttered, “They’re here,” and disappeared with a whooshing sound.

Then, as Tepsekemei shot up into the sky, someone descended onto the roof of the apartment building with a thump to take her place. She wore a katana on her back and a fluttering scarf, and one of her eyes was closed with a large scar. Her shuriken-shaped hair clip and her costume, despite its chain mail-like parts, was ninja-themed.