Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 7 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

I’M THE CULPRIT

  Prism Cherry

Right to the end, she couldn’t decide if she should talk about it.

What the Pure Elements did as magical girls was completely different from the sort of magical-girl activities Prism Cherry knew.

She’d never heard of anything called a Disrupter, and she hadn’t been created in a magical-girl laboratory. She didn’t use a gem to transform, and she didn’t need to take medicine periodically, either. Magical girls engaged in plain, unrewarding public service and did not battle threats to the world or receive orders from the government to operate behind the scenes.

The magical girls who had invaded the lab had to be that sort of magical girl, too. They would have gone through the magical-girl selection exams run by the Magical Kingdom in order to officially become magical girls. Their costumes didn’t match and were completely all over the place, with no sense of cohesion at all, like Prism Cherry’s. They were different from the Pure Elements, who seemed like they had been predicated on the four of them being a team.

These were things she should have told them. She should have told them, “Even if you and I both call ourselves magical girls, we’re completely different creatures.”

When it came to any sort of information, it was obviously always better to know than to be unaware. If, when the time came to fight, they lost because they didn’t know these things, there would be no taking that back.

Even knowing this, she couldn’t say. She was frightened by the fact that she wasn’t the same as the others. She couldn’t say, after fighting Disrupters together and coming up with special poses and introductions, that she was affiliated with a different group. She didn’t want to think that these people, who were always so cheerful and kind, would exclude her because of that. And even if she wasn’t excluded, they were sure to be disappointed. Prism Cherry was one of the invaders—one of those people who had taken Tempest captive. They would think, Oh, that’s the sort of person she was.

She absolutely didn’t want them thinking of her like that.

At first, she’d only wanted to get to know some special people. Being someone unremarkable, having special people need her had made it seem as if she was special, too, and had made her glad.

Now, things were a little different. It wasn’t that she didn’t want them hating her because they were special. Because it was Deluge, because it was Quake, because it was Tempest, because it was Inferno, she didn’t want them hating her. Talking to Deluge at school about magical-girl things had been fun. She hadn’t yet chatted with Quake about that late-night anime Quake had told her about. Tempest had mentioned she wanted to ask advice about love. She still hadn’t finished her match in that game against Inferno.

She didn’t want them to hate her. She didn’t want them to be disappointed in her. If she was going to talk about it, she wanted to do it once they got Tempest back, at least. She wanted to contribute everything she could to taking back Tempest, to make them think, Prism Cherry is one of us, after all.

It was all selfish. Prism Cherry knew that best herself. That was why she worried over it to the end. Crying, she wondered what she should do, and before she ever reached a conclusion, the enemy came.

There had been no time to talk. But if there was no time, then she should make time. If they could fight off the enemies, she could make the time. With Luxury Mode, the Pure Elements would never lose. And with Prism Cherry backing them up, everything would be perfect. There was no reason for them to lose, no matter how strong their opponents were, even if they were graduates of the Archfiend Cram School.

The magical girls in the monitor were making their way through training room one with cautious steps. It had to be about time for Deluge and the others to come out of training room two. They would make contact soon.

As she was becoming more anxious, she heard the sound of a bulkhead opening.

Had they come back? Why would they? Pulling her eyes away from the monitor, she turned around to see the bulkhead was open—not the door to training room one, where Deluge and the others had gone out. The door on the opposite side, the one that led to training room four, was open.

Before she could wonder why the door was open, the magical girl showed herself. The great scythe she held in both hands was reminiscent of a reaper, and the eyes that looked upon her oozed malice.

Faster than Prism Cherry could try to stand, the magical girl ran up to her, swinging her scythe. Before she lost consciousness, she saw red fluid dirtying the white room, spraying all the way to the ceiling.

  Styler Mimi

Times like these, it was experience that enabled her to read people. The calm ones were Snow White, Uttakatta, and Filru, while the not-so-calm ones were Lady Proud and Marika Fukuroi. Grim Heart, Shufflin, and Stanczyka were difficult to evaluate, so she deferred judgment.

Filru and Uttakatta had appeared suddenly, and just as suddenly, their ally had been abducted. It was suspicious and a bother. But even these two were on the better side, compared to the not-calm ones. They said what they were after was no different from what Lady Proud and Umbrain wanted. Uttakatta had a cheeky attitude and Filru seemed tired, but still, Mimi could sense that they were doing the best they could.

Most likely, the frighteningly calm ones of the group assumed that Styler Mimi was also one of the not-calm crowd, but this was not true. Styler Mimi was even calmer than the calm ones, and there was a reason she was with the not-calm group. If Marika Fukuroi were to do something outrageous and wild, if Marika were among the not-calm, they would get in her way, and Mimi could steer things to a more peaceful resolution.

I’m a very calm magical girl, to think this way, she thought as she followed after Marika Fukuroi. If Snow White could read minds, surely she would pick up on that, too.

Going down the hallway, when they passed through the bulkhead, they found trees growing there. There was earth, grass was growing, and the trees reached up close to the ceiling. The trees were varied: long and short, big and small planted in a well-balanced way, and there were even shrubs and broken branches appropriately laid out. There were a lot of cedars, in particular.

Normal poison didn’t work on magical girls, and they didn’t get hay fever. But still, she remembered being human, and it made her nose itch.

Marika Fukuroi stroked the trunk of a cedar. “They don’t grow well because they force them to do it underground. And there are too many.”

This magical girl’s kindness was tilted much more toward flora than fauna—intelligent life included.

The trees were dense and thick, and Mimi couldn’t see the walls on either side. It was hotter and more humid here than it had been in the hallway. As she’d felt in the desert as well, she was quite impressed they’d made such a thing underground.

“It’s easier for you here than in the desert, right, Fukuroi?” asked Filru.

“Not unless I have sunlight,” Marika replied.

“Oh, is that right?”

They made their way along an animal trail passing through the trees. Mimi didn’t know if there were actually any animals there. A creature about as dangerous as one was walking right beside her. And despite what Snow White had said, they didn’t even know if there was room for negotiation with those magical girls.

When they came out of the animal trail, Mimi could see a bulkhead the same as the one they’d come through. Push the panel on the wall, and you’d probably see a white hallway. This route was the same as the left-hand side. This place was built all on one level, and Mimi didn’t quite understand for what purpose it had been constructed.

And even the events that followed were similar. After going about ten steps farther, the bulkhead started to slide upward, and there were three magical girls. They’d lost one, the girl who flew in the air, and added two: one with a hammer and one with a trident.

These two had to be the ones who had fought with Lady Proud’s group. Appearance-wise, they had the same tiaras and gems.

“You there!” The magical girl with the scimitar stepped forward.

“Akari?” Snow White stepped forward, too.

Styler Mimi looked between the girl with the scimitar and Snow White, eyes questioning. All the others, both enemy and ally, reacted similarly. And the one in question, the scimitar magical girl, also seemed to struggle to understand this, her brow wrinkling as she looked back at Snow White. “Who… are you?”

“Akari… What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I… Huh?”

The eyes of everyone present widened. Snow White detransformed, returning to her human form, then immediately became Snow White again. All the while, she and the girl with the scimitar were looking at each other.

“… Koyuki?”

They had to know each other, then. Everyone was dumbfounded to witness Snow White do this thing, which was clearly well estranged from common sense for a magical girl on the battlefield, and then the air around them, which had been on the edge of eruption, relaxed.

Stanczyka shrugged, while Shufflin, who had been holding her head and trembling, timidly raised her gaze, while Marika Fukuroi pouted as if sincerely disappointed.

The trident magical girl quietly asked, “You know her?”

“She’s a childhood friend,” the scimitar girl replied.

“The heck are you doing, Koyuki? Are you a burglar or a petty thief or something now?” asked the girl with the scimitar.

“I’m not a burglar or a petty thief. I’m a magical girl.”

“We’ve got more than enough magical girls here already. And anyway, give back Tempest.”

Lady Proud must have been irritated that they’d all been left behind by the two childhood friends chatting, as she cut between Snow White and the scimitar girl. One of her cheeks was twisted upward, and her eyes were harsh. “What have you done with the hostage?”

“Huh? That’s what we’d like to ask.”

Snow White circled back around in front of Lady Proud. “Something’s not right here. They haven’t captured Kafuria or Umbrain.”

Lady Proud pushed Snow White aside and half yelled, “Enough of this! If you two know each other, then both of you be silent!”

“Yeah, yeah, be silent,” Marika grumbled softly, and Mimi covered her mouth. It was best for someone who sought conflict to be kept out of a delicate situation like this.

Lady Proud swept her right arm outward, and her cape fluttered along with it. Her right eyelid spasmed, and her lips and voice were both trembling. Her whole face was so twisted up, it was less intimidating than just pitiful to see. “I’m asking you where Umbrain has gone! It couldn’t have been anyone but them!”

“They honestly don’t know,” said Snow White. “And one of theirs has disappeared, too.”

“Hold up,” said Inferno. “What’re you talking about? You abducted Tempest, didn’t you?”

“Akari, some of our own are missing, too. We don’t have your friend Tempest. I haven’t seen her.”

“I told you not to talk with the enemy!” Lady Proud snapped.

“They aren’t our ene—”

Snow White thrust her hand into the bag hanging from her waist, Marika Fukuroi swallowed the flower seed she’d been hiding in her hand. Filru sandwiched three sewing needles between her fingers, and Uttakatta brought her straw to her lips. Stanczyka began juggling her knives, and Lady Proud took a red vial in hand.

Styler Mimi readied her stance, too, pulling out her hair-cutting scissors with her right hand. Surrounding the trembling Shufflin, they stood at the ready in a circle around her, guarding one another’s backs.

The hammer, scimitar, and trident trio were watching, stunned. They hadn’t noticed. Snow White yelled at them, “Enemies are coming! Ready your weapons!”

Black, sludge-like lumps oozed out of the ground one after another, taking human form. Demons. But they were different in size and shape from the ones they’d seen in the desert.

These demons were about a size bigger than grown men and humanoid in shape. Each of them had unique characteristics: Some of them had bat-like wings on their backs, some had six arms, and some were baring sharp fangs from mouths all over their bodies.

Turning aside claws with her scissors, Mimi pushed away arms and blocked legs, shifting her position to slice at a back. The other magical girls all started fighting, too, and Filru was leaping through empty air, jumping above the trees to chase down two winged demons.

Uttakatta’s bubbles coiling about it, a demon flailed its arms and struggled, while Snow White slipped underneath it to cut down the demon about to strike at the artificial magical girls from behind.

“Why are we being attacked?!” Finally, the scimitar girl swung her weapon, and the one with the hammer, though confused, followed her.

Mimi got the feeling that the number of demons was gradually increasing. No—they were definitely increasing. Even now, they were endlessly oozing out of the ground to take form.

Striking a neck with a roundhouse kick, Mimi swung her scissors at one to hold it back, and when another slipped under her guard, she struck back with her elbow. When she was about to be sprinkled by the fluid Lady Proud was spraying everywhere, she backed up and almost tripped over Shufflin, who was holding her head and trembling, then hopped over her instead, bending over to dodge the horizontal swipe of a tentacle.

Stanczyka was skittering about in a back arch as she went around slicing at the demons’ ankles, and when the demons lost their balance, Snow White cut off their heads, one after another. The hammer blasted back demons, the trident froze them, and the scimitar burned them up.

“Prism Cherry! Why are they attacking us, too?! Change the settings!” the magical girl with the trident yelled at someone. One of their allies could do something to make demons appear. But there was no one to hear her pained cry, and the demons kept welling out copiously.

The shrubs burned, and the fire spread. Some demons were blasted backward to splinter cedar trees, and when Shufflin was trying to get away from a cedar about to fall, a tentacle caught her by the ankle, swinging her around. Uttakatta knocked the demon down by blowing bubbles at the ground at its feet, and she somehow managed to free Shufflin, but now they were surrounded by multiple demons.

“Clematis!” The purple flower that decorated Marika’s head was the hardest of the ones she could bloom—the “iron flower.” And it wasn’t just hard—by spinning around like a buzz saw, it would slice up anyone who got close. If she were to use it in such a chaotic fight, it wouldn’t differentiate between friend or foe.

“Get away from Fukuroi!” Styler Mimi urged caution as she bent away from the black fluid that sprayed from the demons.

From above the trees, the winged demons Filru defeated came falling down one after another. Lady Proud threw and shattered her little bottles to shower the demons with the contents, and the sound of their sizzling, the white smoke, and the sharp stench wafted in the air. The battle was chaotic enough already, but now Mimi could even hear coughing.

Snow White, who had teamed up with Stanczyka to chop up demons, went to back up Shufflin and didn’t have time for anything else.

Each of the artificial magical girls had taken out some demons, too, but they still seemed confused, and they moved awkwardly. Gleefully, Marika Fukuroi spun her clematis, but before long, its purple hue turned to brown, and eventually, the petals wilted and fell.

But the demons didn’t stop popping up. At this rate, the situation would slowly worsen.

“We’re retreating! Everyone, prepare to run!” Snow White yelled.

“No need for that! If we flee now, then what will happen to the people we’re missing?!” Lady Proud yelled back at her. Another cedar tree broke, rumbling as it fell to the ground.

“Retreat! We can’t go on anymore!”

“Only because you think you can’t!” Mowing down a demon with a kick that went right through the guard of its arms, Lady Proud stepped through the face of the fallen demon, turning it to black ooze. Then, holding a felled cedar under her arm, she did a half turn to slam away the demons around her. The magical girls surrounding her hurriedly ducked, and Shufflin, who had been standing there dazed, was pushed down by Snow White’s hand on her head.

“You can win if you believe you can! Feelings are everything for a magical girl! This is what we are! This!” She tossed the fallen tree under her arm at a demon, crushing it. Scattering her little bottles, she burned demons’ faces, and she thrust a low kick at the ankles of a particularly large one, causing it to fall to its knees with a cry. Now that it was down, she threw a high kick for good measure, aiming for the back of its head, but the piteously crying demon suddenly turned its head to the side, making her hit not the back of its head, but its face, and when the demon opened its great maw, her foot went into its mouth. The demon bit down hard the instant she struck, capturing her at the ankle.

There wasn’t even the time to be surprised. The lines of sharply grown teeth had captured Lady Proud’s ankle, and after that, no matter how she tried to kick or stomp, it never let go, and when the demon stood, it dangled her upside down.

Now, she was at its mercy. The demons leaped on her all at once, and Lady Proud, who was trying to defend herself somehow, even upside down, quickly reached her limit. Blood sprayed, a scream went up, and the red fluid burned the demons’ bodies, but even so, they wouldn’t let go, and Styler Mimi looked away.

Lady Proud cried out something. Her wordless scream was filled with a clear desire to kill. It wasn’t the scream of a victim. It was the roar of a warrior.

That instant, there was an explosion. The demons that had swarmed Lady Proud were blown away. The upper jaw of a massive demon hit the ceiling and dangled off it, thick and gooey. The smaller demons all became one mass as they were blasted off horizontally all the way to the bulkhead to be crushed with a splat.

It had been a large explosion, but fortunately, no magical girls had been caught in it.

At the top of her lungs, Snow White yelled out, “Retreat!” and all of them ran. The sounds that could be heard from above the trees started moving for the entrance, and still in a back arch, Stanczyka headed there, too.

Uttakatta blew some bubbles before fleeing, while Snow White blocked a demon’s strike. The demons must have thought that her giving the order meant she was the leader, as their attacks focused on her, and Marika Fukuroi let out a wild shriek as she leaped in toward them.

Shufflin must have thought that it was, in fact, more dangerous to be close to Snow White, as she ignored the “Wait!” that tried to restrain her and rushed off in an attempt to head to the entrance. But after five steps, she was embraced by a winged demon swooping down from up close to the ceiling, and the creature plunged its fangs into her neck. Stanczyka threw knives, Uttakatta kicked it away, and the trident girl ran up at the end to cut off the demon’s head, but by that time, Shufflin’s head had already been ripped off.

Styler Mimi ran. This was worse than hell. If it had been hell, then you wouldn’t be able to die again. Here, just by being present, people would die. If they stayed long, Mimi would be no exception.

Slipping past Stanczyka, who was beckoning as she pressed the panel, when Mimi came into the hallway, she immediately turned back. Filru, Uttakatta, the trident girl, and Snow White were coming back. The one who had not returned was Marika Fukuroi.

Mimi leaned forward to yell something like, “Enough of this, you absolute fool,” and then, noticing the red flower budding on her head, a shiver ran down her spine. Realizing what Marika was about to do, she internally cursed. You idiot! We’re in an enclosed space full of our allies!

Snow White grabbed Stanczyka by the wrist and dragged her into the hallway, and the bulkhead, which had been held up by her touch on the panel, started to slide downward. Styler Mimi, Stanczyka, Snow White, and Filru all somehow managed to slide through before the bulkhead came down. Only Marika and the demons remained in the forest room.

“Rafflesia!”

The instant before the bulkhead closed, she heard Marika’s voice.

The rafflesia was the largest of all the flowers Marika Fukuroi used. Mimi had heard her say she didn’t like using it because it was heavy on her head. More unique than any of the visual elements added together, like the weighty feeling of its mass or the massive petals, was the smell.

Smell that flower once, and you’d never consider doing it again. Even out in the open air, smelling it at close range would make you faint, and a little farther away, you’d vomit and be incapacitated—to say the least of it blooming in a closed space. That’d be a disaster.

The bulkhead was completely closed. Styler Mimi sniffed. There was none of that intense smell. It seemed with the bulkhead blocking it, the smell wouldn’t leak over here. She didn’t want to think about the scale of the stench diffused on the other side.

The question was: Did demons have a sense of smell or not? But…

“It’s okay. Demons can smell, pon.” Though she hadn’t asked, the mascot character gave his stamp of guarantee. If demons could smell, too, then Marika wouldn’t get killed. The smell of that flower would uproot the will to do anything.

  Princess Inferno

It seemed Deluge had escaped through the bulkhead on the other side, together with the intruders. There was no point in worrying about her. Now, Inferno had no choice but to trust in Koyuki. There was no guarantee that things would absolutely be okay because it was her. Koyuki from elementary school was not an elementary schooler anymore. So many years had passed, the both of them had become magical girls, and it seemed they’d become enemies, too.

But nevertheless, she had no choice but to trust Koyuki. When she’d said they didn’t know about Tempest, either, she had to believe that, too. Right now, she had no other options.

Running was always fun. But that day, she hadn’t enjoyed it, even once. While running, she was confused, and while confused, she ran. The most she could do was follow behind Quake.

Once captured, Disrupters were nothing that fearsome. In their practical training, they’d played the role of opponents, and they’d been planning to put them in capsules so they could walk around with them as portable familiars, or so Ms. Tanaka had said.

But Inferno couldn’t recall ever capturing Disrupters with blades growing from their bodies, or with six arms. Why were there Disrupters they’d never even captured inside the laboratory? And why had the Disrupters inside the facility attacked the Pure Elements?

You could only give those orders from the briefing room. There was no way Prism Cherry would give orders like that. Had something happened? Like, an enemy threatening her? Thinking about the possibility that Prism Cherry had been captured by an enemy, too, made Inferno turn back immediately.

She crossed over the ledge with a triple jump, grabbing at the stone with her fingers to climb to the top of the mountain, from where she jumped down.

Quake landed with a rumble of the ground and set off running, while Inferno landed softly and followed after. The time it took for the bulkhead to open was so frustrating, she couldn’t take it.

Sliding her body under the twelve-inch gap, they came into the hallway. One more bulkhead, and they’d be in the briefing room. Running down the hallway, right before the turn, Quake came to a sudden halt, and Inferno crashed into her back.

Even when Inferno body-slammed her, Quake didn’t move.

Looking ahead over Quake’s shoulder, wondering what she was doing, Inferno saw a magical girl there. She had a spear with a spade point and looked like the card soldiers from Alice in Wonderland, and she was gazing at them with malice in her eyes.

“Move it!” Quake swung her hammer, and when the card bent over to avoid it, Inferno thrust forward with her scimitar. The spade turned aside her blade with her spear, but not all the way, and it sliced into her shoulder, making that part of her costume burn up. Moving with the momentum of the attack, the card soldier rolled, then got up again to immediately turn and flee.

Inferno couldn’t quite digest this information. She’d just met that card soldier. There was no way she could come from the briefing room side. So then how had she been able to come from this side? If she’d come from the briefing room, then what about Prism Cherry, who was inside?

By the time she realized she didn’t want to think about it, the scimitar had already left her hands. She’d thrown it straight at the back of the fleeing card soldier, and without even the time to think, oh, it pierced through her.

The spray of blood dirtied the wall. There was a scream like a mouse or some other sort of small creature, then the sound of metal hitting the floor. The costume of the fallen soldier started to burn, and when Inferno panicked and tried to pull the scimitar out, the body came with it, and she flung the body down to roll on the floor.

She had been stabbed deeply. She didn’t move again. Inferno had killed her.

“Let’s go!” Quake yelled at her.

Inferno looked at her. Her mouth was pulled tight, and there was a wrinkle in her brow as she looked at Inferno. She was saying, “You can think all you want later.”

She was completely right. Inferno squeezed her right hand, which felt like it was about to tremble, around the hilt of her scimitar. If the enemy had come out of the briefing room, then Prism Cherry was in danger. They needed to go save her right this minute—right this second.

“Yeah!” Her voice didn’t waver. She understood what she had to do, and it was right over there. Thrusting her scimitar into the wall, she smacked her cheeks with both hands.

She made a conscious effort to not look at the fallen card soldier. She felt if she looked now, her spirit would break this time, for sure.

Quake pressed the opening panel. The bulkhead slowly rose. Though there was no way the speed could fluctuate, it felt like it was moving slower than usual. Inferno adjusted her grip on her scimitar. Her palms felt sweaty. She didn’t feel confident she was holding it properly.

They didn’t immediately try to go inside. They could see the floor—see the red liquid.

A number of card soldiers were standing there, surrounding the puddle of blood. There were card soldiers of various numbers and suits: diamond, heart, club, and spade, looking at Quake and Inferno. They seemed a little surprised. They were all yelling something, but Inferno couldn’t pick out any words.

The Queen of Hearts, waiting beyond them, sniffed and pointed at them.

“Off with her head.”

Quake howled. Her whole body glowed yellow, and the glow brightened until it was dazzling.

Inferno activated Luxury Mode, too. Energy rushed to every corner of her body. The flow of time slowed, and everything but Quake and herself was moving in slow motion.

With the spades at the head, the card soldiers stood in orderly formation to come at them. The spear points held aloft by the spades shone dully under the room’s lighting. If Inferno or Quake were struck by those, they would get hurt—and depending on where, it could be fatal. So then they just had to not get hit.

Quake swung her hammer up, and synchronizing with her, Inferno jumped. Quake swung down the hammer, and tremors washed out along the floor from the center point where her hammer hit. Quake’s magic generated a vibration more intense than the basic impact. Getting hit with that at close range made it hard to stay standing.

But if you were in the air, things were different. Inferno leaped over the card soldiers, who’d lost their balance and had been knocked off their feet by the tremors. As they flailed and rolled, she swung her scimitar down on the head of the queen they were all protecting—and was knocked away hard.

Numbness ran through the arm that held the scimitar. Before she could understand what had happened, a spade’s spear thrust toward her, and with an arc-shaped swipe of her scimitar, she repelled it, somehow.

It was a spade soldier. Before Inferno could swing down her scimitar, a spade thrust in from the side to strike her with a spear. Inferno had activated Luxury Mode; she should be faster and stronger. There was no way they could be obstructing her.

Quake swung her hammer from left to right, mowing down and scattering the card soldiers. She knocked their bodies away, table, chairs, and all. Inferno turned in the air and landed. Three card soldiers came in front of the Queen of Hearts:

The Jack of Spades, the Queen of Spades, and the King of Spades.

They turned aside the swing of Quake’s hammer and blocked Inferno’s thrust. They could handle attacks from the Pure Elements.

Even though they had Luxury Mode on, the cards were keeping up with their speed—and with their strength. Inferno tried to shove away the spear that thrust toward her but could do nothing more than shift its trajectory slightly, and in fact, she felt like she was ready to drop her weapon, instead.

The Queen of Hearts covered her mouth and yawned. “Off with her head.”

Inferno sliced diagonally downward with her scimitar, then up the other way. Spinning in a half turn to strike with the pommel, she was blocked by a spear, and she turned the other way to this time hit with the blunt side of her blade, but the card soldier bent to evade it.

Since their opponents’ weapons were spears, they had reach. From outside their range, Inferno was attacking with heat to exchange blows with them. But despite this, she didn’t feel like she could get any closer. Worst case, even Quake could get hit, too.

The three face cards were all exactly the same, their expressions identical as they silently made to attack. The skill and physical capabilities of each individual, as well as the coordination of the three together, was all at a high standard.

Quake swung her hammer to keep the enemies at bay. Their opponents found an opening to thrust in with their spears, but she stepped away, placing the wall at her back.

Luxury Mode was powerful, but it couldn’t be used for very long. It would automatically deactivate once they hit their time limit, leaving two completely exhausted magical girls.

Right now, they were somehow managing to fight three-on-two. Once Luxury Mode ran out, their ability to fight would be greatly reduced, while the enemy would come at them just as strong as before.

They had to end it before then.

The Queen of Hearts was probably the boss. At the very least, she was the most important of the enemies in this room. But the three soldiers would not let them target her. The soldiers’ spears stabbed out, keeping Inferno and Quake from approaching the corner of the briefing room where the Queen of Hearts yawned.

As they exchanged blows and sparks flew, Inferno realized: What if their enemies were trying to waste time? What if they knew Luxury Mode had a time limit? She felt like they weren’t being very proactive, considering it was three against two. They had more numbers, and the target they were guarding was right there, too.

Fundamentally speaking, the enemy side should have been the ones who had to end this quickly, but they just kept the princesses back and did no more, running out of range.

Quake kicked up a fallen chair. One card soldier, which had circled to the right, bobbed its head down to avoid the chair, and Quake turned her back to the entrance. Quake drew an upside-down V in the air with her tail. Inferno gave a little nod.

That was a suggestion that if the enemy wasn’t going to come for them, then let’s go for them instead. Drawing an upside-down V with her tail was the sign they’d agreed on. Inferno moved her scorpion-shaped tail in the same shape.

Quake raised up her hammer. The enemies froze. Inferno swung her scimitar, too. Scimitar held above her head, she looked over to the spot in front of the monitor.

Card soldiers were lying there in a heap. An incredible amount of blood was flowing out from under their bodies. It wasn’t their blood. It had already been oozing out when Inferno and Quake had returned to this room. This weighed heavily on her heart. Silently, she apologized, I’m sorry for getting you involved in this mess.

They still hadn’t come to a decision as to whether they should yell the name of their ultimate move or not. Now that the time came to use it, Inferno understood well that there was no need to bother telling the enemy what they were going to do. Inferno and Quake both swung their weapons down wordlessly, smacking the ground at the same instant. There was a burst of sound and light, and then they couldn’t hear or see anything anymore.

The Ultimate Princess Explosion was their greatest technique, activated by combining the princesses’ powers. When princesses in Luxury Mode swung down their weapons at the same time and place, it would activate. An angular barrier like old polygons would cover the area around the princesses, and then it would cause a big explosion.

If the four of them combined their powers, it would turn the area a whole thousand yards around to burnt charcoal. Because casual use of it would be disastrous, they needed permission to use it in training, and as a general rule, they weren’t permitted to use it outside the base.

There was no place within the facility where it would be okay to cause an explosion encompassing a hundred yards around, either. So inevitably, they’d never tried doing the explosion with three or four of them.

When they’d tried the explosion with only two of them, they’d done it in the desert area of training room three. She remembered all the sand had scattered around, and they’d been totally blinded.

That was what it had been like, even when doing it inside the big training room. Inferno had never even considered using it inside the briefing room. She had her eyes squeezed shut, but the insides of her eyelids were still white anyway. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Her vision was filled with the sights around them. Something black like soot danced in the air. The walls and door also had something like soot clinging to them, dirtying them. The chairs and table were lying in the corners of the room. The furnishings in this facility were such that they wouldn’t break, even after all that.

Inferno could hear Quake quietly mutter, “No way.” Inferno didn’t say it out loud, but she had been thinking the same thing. All the fallen card soldiers were gone, as were the ones that had been standing. The bodies of the girls were gone, too. Everything had become that black soot-like matter wafting in the air.

Inferno could hear the whoosh of the air coming in through the ventilation ducts. Burning up all the air of the room at once was causing the air from elsewhere to rush in here. Her head felt dizzy, and merely breathing hurt. Her exhales were heavy.

“Off with her head.”

And there was the Queen of Hearts. Inferno couldn’t see even the slightest burn on her. Her costume was in one piece, and the dirty old sack hanging from her waist was just as it had been before the explosion. She yawned like she was bored.

Quake shrank backward. Inferno gritted her teeth and stayed where she was—because standing there was all she could do. Unable to step forward or slice at her with her scimitar, desperately, she stood there, not backing away.

“Off with her head.”

The Queen of Hearts thrust her hand deep into the dirty sack. What she grabbed from inside the bag was not just the head of a magical girl—everything under the head followed, too: shoulders, arms, torso, a whole magical girl was pulled out, of such a size that wouldn’t fit inside a bag.

An ace of spades.

When Inferno saw that, she was certain she was going to die. The trio of the Jack, Queen, and King had been stupidly strong. And even compared to those, this one was on a different level. Even though she looked about the same, she was completely different. Inferno was able to understand painfully well that she was going to die, that one was going to kill her, that one would never move. Luxury Mode had not yet worn off. And yet, she couldn’t see any vision of their victory.

One glance from that card soldier made her feel its malice like it was stabbing through her. Her knees trembled, and she felt they would crumple. Add in the queen, who had been immune to the Ultimate Princess Explosion, and there was no way they could ever win.

Suddenly… her body rose up, and she was dragged backward. By the time she’d realized that Quake, behind her, had grabbed her by the collar and dragged her and tossed her out of the room, she was standing in the hallway, going into a fighting stance.

She understood the reason Quake had backed away, before. She’d gone to open the bulkhead.

Now the bulkhead was closing in front of Inferno’s eyes. Quake was still facing the enemy. Without looking back, she said to Inferno. “Run. Meet up with Deluge and the others.”

Inferno couldn’t even bring herself to respond, “What are you talking about?” Her hand reached out to the operation panel to open up the bulkhead again and stopped.

Quake was trembling. The hands holding the hammer, her shoulders, legs, her whole body was trembling. “I want to try doing something a little heroic.”

The door didn’t stop. Quake’s form was being cut off from her.

“Because I love you guys. I decided I’d live to protect you. So there’s nothing much to be surprised about here…”

The bulkhead closed, and Inferno dismissed her scimitar, turned her back to the briefing room, and started running. Luxury Mode was coming undone. The power that had filled her whole body disappeared, and exhaustion and fatigue spread from her core. But she still didn’t stop moving her legs in flight. She forgot even to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks as she kept on running.

  Filru

Both Lady Proud and Shufflin had been killed by demons. Filru had been alone above the trees fighting the winged demons, and she had heard their screams, and the sound of the demons’ joy and their gnashing teeth. Snow White, Uttakatta, and Styler Mimi had confirmed that they were dead, and for good measure, Fal had said that he detected no more magical-girl signals, so there was no doubting it, now.

She had thought there might be fatalities.

If a magical girl had accepted that e-mail, somehow managed to search out the artificial magical girls and find the laboratory by some means, and come underground, too, to get to this point, she couldn’t say she wasn’t prepared for this. But now that their allies were actually getting killed, even if she hadn’t witnessed it herself, it hit hard.

The two she’d only just been talking with, Lady Proud, who’d been fretting about having her position as leader usurped, and Shufflin, who’d been so flustered and anxious you felt sorry for her, had been ripped to shreds by demons’ fangs. She would never see or talk to either of them again.

Being a magical girl, this was as bad as it got. If she hadn’t been a magical girl, she would have been running away or crying and wailing in her fear of death.

At a glance, the others seemed to be calm, too, but the atmosphere was suffocating. The one with the trident, who had introduced herself as Princess Deluge, in particular, was like the odd man out. Things had turned out this way because of her kindhearted attempt to save Shufflin, and since no one could bring themselves to call her a fool, she was idly sitting in a corner of the hallway.

Having lost a place to return to was something Filru had in common with the others. It was like saying, let’s go back to base camp for now, but then when you do try to go back, base camp has been wiped out. The reality was like a nightmare and a bad joke.

Leaving the forest, they returned to the entrance, and when they got back, Grim Heart was gone. There was no sofa, carpet, writing desk, or candlestick there, either. Grim Heart and her things were completely gone, as if they had never been. Now the problem was no longer in the dimension of worrying about how to tell her about Shufflin’s death. They added one more to the list of magical girls who had disappeared thus far, including Kafuria and Umbrain. No matter how confident the one in question had seemed, they shouldn’t have left her alone.

Snow White was having a discussion with Fal.

Stanczyka was doing a pantomime in front of Deluge, who wasn’t paying attention.

Marika Fukuroi was alone, far away from the others. The rafflesia on her head had wilted, but a stench still clung to her. Getting close would nauseate a person and make their eyes water endlessly. While Filru was grateful for the fine result—Marika had knocked out all the demons with that stench—she avoided getting close.

Styler Mimi was fiddling with the door at the entrance.

“This is rather unfortunate.” Talking with Uttakatta made things seem less serious than they really were. It did, however, improve the mood.

“Yes,” replied Filru, “we shouldn’t have left Grim Heart alone.”

“… Is that truly a problem?”

“Come on, it’s a problem. It’s a real problem.”

“But you know…” Uttakatta’s eyes turned deeper into the hall. There, Snow White was conversing with Fal. If Filru used her thread, she’d be able to hear the conversation, but she wasn’t going to try eavesdropping on someone who could read minds. “Miss Snow White did judge that it was okay to leave Grim Heart alone.”

“That was a mistake, huh.”

“I wonder if it truly was.”

“Uh, but it was, wasn’t it?”

“Miss Snow White… very much seemed like she didn’t want to work with Grim Heart. I couldn’t say if she trusted her or not.”

“You think she didn’t trust her?”

If Snow White, who could read minds, didn’t trust her, what did that mean? If Grim Heart had been thinking bad thoughts, then it wouldn’t be a question of trust, and she could have said right there that she was thinking bad thoughts. Even if there wasn’t an immediate issue, sometimes people had issues with their nature, right? And if it was about nature, then with that strange air to her, and how she had gone off alone somewhere else, there would be issues with her, too.

“Damn it!” Styler Mimi smacked the door bitterly. “The door keeps telling me to input the password.”

“Huh?” said Filru. “It didn’t say anything on the way in, did it?”

“This is quite the disaster then, isn’t it?” replied Uttakatta.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha! I love it. Then we’re trapped in here.” Marika Fukuroi was the one person who seemed to be having a good time. Though they’d just met, still, some of their allies had died. So how could she be laughing? Despite how the flower on her head had wilted and fallen, the girl in question was full of energy and having a blast. Maybe someone should snap at her.

It had been so sudden that they’d gotten all these new members, so it would be odd to tell her to have more group consciousness. Back when the number had increased to three, Filru had been anxious about splitting the credit, but then when Grim Heart and Shufflin, and then Lady Proud, Umbrain, Stanczyka, Snow White, Marika Fukuroi, and Styler Mimi had joined in, well, their numbers had increased, but so had the safety margin, and as long as Filru played a part, she would still get credit—or so she had consoled herself. In that sense, Filru couldn’t find fault with Marika, but still, there was something to be said about attitude.

If no one was going to say it, then should Filru? Marika Fukuroi was such an aggressive type, it was frightening. If that was what was preventing people from complaining, then shouldn’t someone with confidence in her own strength be the one to speak? So wasn’t that Filru’s job?

As she was waffling over such things, her pinky finger trembled.

“The bulkhead… It’s opening! Left side! On the desert side!”

Those who had been sitting swiftly stood, and those who had been standing readied their weapons and rushed out.

With Marika Fukuroi charging in first and howling like a beast, the magical girls lined up in the hallway. They were fifty feet from the opening bulkhead.

On the other side of the gradually opening bulkhead was a familiar face.

“Huh…? You were alive?!”

It was Shufflin. She wasn’t the heart Shufflin she’d been when she had been killed. She was the spade Shufflin they’d seen in the desert, and for some reason, her number had turned to seven. The joy of Shufflin actually being alive, having survived somehow, was immediately blotted out.

Dumbly, Filru watched. Starting with the Seven of Spades Shufflin, ranks of Shufflins came pouring out. There were multiple Shufflins.

“They’re enemies! Fight!” Snow White yelled simply, while simultaneously, all the Shufflins raised their spade-shaped spears at once and began their assault.

Before Filru could even blink, they made contact with the enemy.

Marika Fukuroi repelled a spear, but a club got her in the shoulder, and when Stanczyka tried to help her, they were both swallowed into the crowd of Shufflins.

Snow White and Princess Deluge came out in front and tried to fend off the mob with their weapons, but heedless, the Shufflins continued their charge. Even when one or two were injured, they ignored it.

Filru leaped up close to the ceiling and stayed there, above the Shufflins’ heads. Uttakatta moved at the same time she did, jumping over the heads of the Shufflins to blow a breath’s worth of bubbles, then slip into a massive bubble that encircled her.

Before the attention of the Shufflins could turn upward, Filru crawled along the ceiling like a spider. She’d threaded string up there beforehand. As long as her threads were there, it was child’s play for her to crawl along the ceiling, slipping along above their heads. Uttakatta’s bubbles kept pace with her, and as the two of them moved, they shared a glance and nodded. When they reached the end of the crowd of Shufflins, they leaped down and spun around.

From somewhere in the middle of the group, they heard Marika Fukuroi’s wild cry. She grabbed a Shufflin’s ankle in her right hand, while in her left she grabbed the ankle of another Shufflin, and she swung them both around, hitting the walls, floor, and other Shufflins.

Snow White cut off a Shufflin’s arm. Princess Deluge blocked a Shufflin’s spear, freezing the whole weapon as well as the Shufflin’s arm. Styler Mimi struck back with her scissors against a Shufflin that had burst through.

Filru kicked away a Shufflin, while Uttakatta blew her bubbles. There were so many of them, and they were strong, compared to the heart Shufflins, but on an individual level, they weren’t all that powerful. Slowly, they walked backward, drawing the enemy toward them, and opened the bulkhead. Together with Uttakatta, Filru nimbly hopped into the desert, and when the Shufflins tried to follow, they all tripped.

Right before leaving the room, Filru had strung up a thread at their feet. It was an invisible trap.

When they fell, she kicked them and stomped on them.

On a daily basis, Filru had continued to recite over and over the rule that she was never to show mercy to rioters or escaping prisoners, so all hesitation had been eliminated from within her. It was important for a jailer to manage a prison smoothly, and there was no showing mercy to criminals. She put her body weight into it, crushing them with the intention of breaking bones.

In the battle, Filru’s feelings of indignation toward Marika Fukuroi vanished. Mercilessly stomping on the head of this girl who until moments ago had been her ally, she robbed her of the ability to fight. Beside her, Uttakatta was doing the same thing, blowing bubbles into the hallway.

The battle was chaotic. But she could see where the situation was headed, now. The Shufflins were attacking with no care for their own lives, but there was a clear gap in capability. It had been the enemy’s mistake to choose to fight in the hallway. In an open space, they may have been surrounded, but in a hallway, even if the girls’ side had fewer numbers, they could dam the tide.

Passing her needle through the limbs of the fallen Shufflins, Filru sewed them to the floor. She did the same for the Shufflins near the wall. She hit them hard, and then when their movements weakened, she stitched them to the wall.

As the sounds of beating rang out, she heard a heavy thunk beside her.

Filru looked at Uttakatta. She had lost her usual composure and smirk, and with a look of disbelief, her eyes were pointed down at the spear piercing her throat.

The spear was not held by a Shufflin. It was sticking out of the sack that hung from the waist of one.

The spear shoved farther forward, and blood overflowed from Uttakatta’s throat.

Following the spear, the hand, arm, head, and shoulders of a new Shufflin appeared from within the bag; Uttakatta’s throat spewed blood, and she collapsed.

It was the sack Grim Heart had carried around—the one that had carried her canopy and throne, and even a bookshelf and desk, and had never changed size. The Shufflins would probably fit inside, too.

Even as Filru was overwhelmed with shock, her head was calmly calculating. If Uttakatta was down, then she couldn’t block the hallway by herself. She’d only managed to hold back the Shufflins because Uttakatta was there, and they’d practiced cooperative tactics together. Rather than making the poor decision to continue the pincer attack, it would be best to draw a good chunk of the enemies away and leave this to the others.

While dodging and blocking enemy attacks, Filru once more clung to the ceiling.

  Grim Heart

She kicked the chair. The briefing room was furnished with a total of six chairs, and they all remained, unaffected by the experimental subjects’ explosion, but being hard and uncomfortable to sit on, since the barbarians would not be using them anymore, there was no reason for Grim Heart to use them.

Pulling out her favorite throne, she placed it in the center of the room. Only the Ace of Spades was at her side.

All the Shufflins that had packed this room had been burned up. Grim Heart had only accomplished one of her objectives thus far. And even that was incomplete.

She had basically accomplished her goal of securing the experimental subjects: two of them, the earth elemental and the wind elemental.

To capture the latter subject, she’d had one of the clubs lurk in the desert and strike. The clubs were experts in ambushes and covert activity, and their combat skills were second only to the spades.

There was no magical girl in existence who would be able to strike back against a club taking her by surprise by hiding in the desert using the four-dimensional bag. Grim Heart had secured one experimental subject, and she’d also captured Kafuria, who had been in combat with the experiment. This one would be put to a different use.

As for the earth subject, she’d set the Ace of Spades on her. This particular subject had fulfilled her role as sacrificial pawn in order to let the fire subject escape—and she did it so well that it was downright irritating.

Additionally, Grim Heart had secured Umbrain as a replenishment magical girl.

While Grim Heart and the heart Shufflin had gathered the eyes and ears of everyone around, she’d had the Ace of Spades and Ace of Clubs leap from the bag to grab her. Not a single person had noticed that surprise attack by the stealth pro and combat pro, including the one who’d been attacked.

That should be enough for replenishment purposes. And as for the experimental subjects—well, this was fine, too. Two would be enough. It should be plenty of data. She wouldn’t let the scholars complain.

The biggest problem was that a ridiculous number of magical girls had learned about the artificial magical-girl project going on in this world. Grim Heart had to make it so that such a plan had never existed.

The insolence of mere minions under the Magical Kingdom’s command trying to create magical girls with their own hands was exorbitant. When children opened a door that must not be opened, they would be punished. Just their knowledge was a sin.

Grim Heart had already let one get away, but she would accept there was no helping that one. If their numbers were decreased, then there would be any number of ways to plug the hole. And besides, even that one she’d let escape had been so badly wounded, she should fall dead soon. There was no problem. Grim Heart had even resigned herself to the humiliation of pretending to cooperate with the barbarians for the sake of rounding up the whole lot of them, and now she’d finally succeeded in locking them all in. Now the Shufflins would manage things, somehow. Grim Heart simply had to wait.

Grim Heart glanced at the Ace of Spades’s profile. She was simply looking ahead, with no profound emotion on her face.

She was a boring magical girl. But she was capable.

If Grim Heart were to secure the “artificial magical girl” technology from this world, she should be able to make her an even more capable servant. This world was barbarian, but the differences in their culture and ideas could bring about unique technology. From what she’d seen, there had been some deeply intriguing material, such as temporary power-ups, and cooperating to cause an explosion.

Grim Heart wanted to equip Shufflin with that technology, too. Excellent technology should be used by the homunculus, the artificial magical girl created by the Magical Kingdom.

But Grim Heart’s forces were not enough. The diamond Shufflins, who were in charge of skills and knowledge, were all dead. Though they had been able to change the password at the entrance, Grim Heart could not do any more, on her own.

The idea that Grim Heart had to go out to do anything herself was absurd, in the first place. She should just sit there while her menials did as she willed them to. It would be shameful for her to have to scamper about to deal with these barbarians—and shame was equivalent to death.

Grim Heart—one of the Three Sages who were said to be the greatest mages in the Magical Kingdom, the mortal incarnation of Chêne Osk Baal Mel—had no obligation to do labor. Her existence itself was the meaning of her existence.

Grim Heart reached into her bag to pull out the two magical girls and two experimental subjects: the wind subject, the earth subject, Kafuria, and Umbrain. They had all been tied up with magic rope. They couldn’t move, and the use of their magic was sealed.

Kafuria was wailing something in squeaks.

It seemed she had gotten emotional, and she was shouting and crying.

There was no need to understand what she was saying. The fact that she was irritating made Grim Heart decide on her as the first sacrifice. Putting her hand in the bag once more, she pulled out Shufflin.

“Off with her head.”

There was no need to say whose. Raising her great scythe, Shufflin swung it down.

The Joker was an excellent servant. She would not betray the trust of her master. Once Grim Heart found Kafuria irritating and desired to make her shut up, the Joker would intuit her feelings and act. If a sacrifice was needed, the Joker would first slaughter whoever most displeased her mistress.

Kafuria’s head went flying, and her life force poured into the Shufflins through the Joker. All the Shufflins that had been burned away as well as the one that had been devoured, all those that had lost their life force were generated one after another from the Joker’s body.

With the sacrifice of one magical girl, she could replenish in full however many of the fifty-two were lacking.

The spade Shufflins were effective in battle, the diamond Shufflins had skills and knowledge, the club Shufflins were excellent in concealment and stealth, and the heart Shufflins were stupid and incompetent, excelling only in their abnormal endurance, which made them worth torturing. As long as the Joker was alive, the life of one magical girl could replenish all of them.

The two experiments and Umbrain were making a fuss. The way they quivered in fear made for decent entertainment.

“Diamonds, hurry and seize control of the facility systems. Spades, finish off the remaining magical girls.”

Grim Heart nodded in satisfaction as she listened to the Joker’s instructions.

  Fal

They drew the enemy from the desert into the hallway, and then from there the battle moved to the forest, then the rocky area, and finally, the enemy was slowing down.

“Strange Fruits!”

Marika Fukuroi swallowed a seed, and without even a second’s pause, she bloomed a large flower, and thick vines extended around its petals. Eight inches thick and thirty feet long, the vines struck at the area around them. They knocked down the five card soldiers surrounding her, then wrapped around their necks to swing them about. The rock face around them was slammed over and over as fragments and bodily fluids scattered.

While trading blows with the Queen of Clubs, who wielded, as expected, a club, Snow White backed up along a ledge, doing a little jump on the way. When Shufflin followed, she didn’t jump; she pitched forward, and Snow White hit her hard in the back of the head with Ruler to shut her up. She’d been able to evade the invisible trap after hearing Filru think, I hope they don’t avoid that.

With Filru backing her up, Deluge, sparkling blue, beat down the Jack of Clubs with brute force, while Styler Mimi ran along a stone wall to lead the King of Clubs, arranging a pincer attack with Marika Fukuroi. They attacked the card from the front and back at the same time, making her prey to Marika’s vines.

All the while, Fal was observing the enemy. The heart Shufflins were timid and trembling. They didn’t seem to care about fighting the enemy, and it was the most they could do to protect themselves.

The spade Shufflins had spears. They were fairly strong, but compared to combat frontline types like Marika Fukuroi of the Archfiend Cram School, her partner Mimi, and Filru, the prison guard, on an individual basis, they weren’t as strong.

But their numbers made them dangerous. You could well say the reason Uttakatta had fallen to that surprise attack was because she’d failed to realize just how many there were.

There were probably a lot of the other Shufflins, too. All they’d seen in multiples had been spades or clubs, but Fal suspected there were a lot of hearts and diamonds, too.

The club Shufflins were equipped with clubs. They were as strong as the spades were. They had to be wary of the same things there, too.

The magical girls descended to the base of the rocky mountain and rounded up all the fallen Shufflins. Filru swiftly sewed them all up—the thread couldn’t be seen, but she’d probably tied them up.

“They won’t escape that thread… right?” Styler Mimi asked.

“Don’t worry,” Filru replied. “I didn’t tie them up, I sewed their bodies to the ground.”

“Th-that’s rather nasty…”

“Oh no, not at all. It doesn’t damage them or cause them pain.”

“More importantly, guys,” Marika Fukuroi cut in. The flower on her head had already completely wilted brown. Her chin was pointed at Princess Deluge, who was sitting atop a boulder. The blue glow that had enveloped her whole body was now gone. Her shoulders were drooping, making her exhaustion clear. Noticing she was being pointed at, Deluge lifted her head.

“This girl ended up with us,” Marika continued, “but should we consider her an ally? Wasn’t she the main target in this whole thing?”

“We should.” It wasn’t Deluge but Snow White who answered Marika’s question. “Because she’s not our enemy.”

“What’s that? Something you got from reading her mind?”

Deluge’s eyes widened at “reading her mind.” Entirely unbothered, Snow White nodded readily. “Yes. They were just attacked in the course of working as magical girls. They aren’t thinking about doing anything to us.”

“Hmph.” As if she’d lost interest, Marika’s gaze left Deluge. Maybe she really had lost interest. To her, powerful enemies had to be a lot more interesting than powerful allies.

“So then what do we do about them?” Marika pointed to the fallen Shufflins at their feet. “Question them for information? There’s a method of torture where you stick needles between their fingers, isn’t there?”

When the discussion was turned toward her, Filru shook her head and waved her hands in front of her hard, and Snow White slowly shook her head, too. “We can’t get any information from them.”

“You sure sound confident about that.”

“Now that I know there are multiples, finally, I understand.” Snow White had said that it wasn’t as if Shufflin had no ego, but that it was faint. She said that if multiple Shufflins existed at once, that would explain why. “Individual cards are not capable of sharing memories. The heart Shufflin was only ever thinking about obeying Grim Heart, while the goal of the spade and club Shufflins was to eliminate us, and they were thinking they had to do that, or they’d be in trouble. If that were all, it would seem as if they all had separate personalities, but it was more like one personality faded and broken up. There’s probably another one, the main body, that has the main personality, and she’s responsible for the sharing and integration of memories…”

When they heard a sound like a shutter rolling up coming from behind the rock mountain, all the girls turned over there at once. It was the sound of a bulkhead opening.

Marika Fukuroi made a wild cry and ran up the rock mountain first, while Snow White, Filru, Styler Mimi, and then a little behind them, Princess Deluge, followed after.

They all flattened themselves on the rock mountain or put the rock wall at their backs as they stealthily poked their heads out to check the bulkhead. It was gradually rising, and once it was about twelve inches up, someone slipped into the room. It was a familiar magical girl.

“Inferno!” Deluge cried and stood.

Princess Inferno reacted to her voice, looking up at the top of the rock mountain. Part of her costume was torn, blood was dripping from her arm, and tears were flowing down her cheeks. What had happened in this short period of time? Princess Quake, who should have been with her, wasn’t there, either. It was only Inferno who appeared from the other side of the bulkhead.

Inferno clambered up the rock mountain, then wrapped her arms around Deluge in a clinging embrace. She was breathing hard. Her arms were covered in something like soot. Ignoring the other magical girls around them, who were wary and watching for sudden movements, Inferno embraced Deluge tightly.

“She’s coming.”

“Who?”

“Prism Cherry… and Quake were…!”

“Calm down, Inferno. What on earth—?” Deluge cut off as her eyes turned toward the bulkhead. The other magical girls were looking, too.

One magical girl stopped the bulkhead when it was about to close and stepped into the room. Filru’s face stiffened, Styler Mimi’s expression twisted, and Snow White raised Ruler.

Only Marika Fukuroi looked glad. “That thing’s crazy strong.” She pointed to the Shufflin that had just entered the room.

Fal had no function that would enable him to understand an opponent’s strength based purely on appearance. He would have to see them actually act before he could first understand their strength. Even looking at Shufflin gaze up at them from the entrance, there was no way he could know how strong she was. But seeing the magical girls react to Shufflin told Fal just how powerful she was.

Her suit was spade; her number, ace.

Fal revised his internal hypothesis. It wasn’t only the suit that was meaningful—the number was important, too.

The Shufflins they had seen thus far had differed in ability, depending on the individual. The differences between suits, like with the spades and the hearts, had been greatest, but even within a suit, Fal had been able to detect a clear distinction in the strength, endurance, and agility of each individual.

Most likely, the bigger the number, the stronger the Shufflin. Three was greater than two, and ten greater than nine, Q greater than J, and A greater than K.

The Ace of Spades before them now was the strongest Shufflin.

Aside from the number, she looked no different from the spades they’d seen before. You could read no emotion from her expression, and she just seemed to be there, without any joy or sorrow, looking up at them. The point of her spear tilted upward, she took one step forward.

Her right arm, and the spear it held, seemed to move. To Fal’s eyes, it looked like nothing more than such an indistinct motion.

But as a result, Marika Fukuroi was blown backward, right through her guard, and together with Styler Mimi, who had tried to catch her, they both lost their footing, rolling halfway down the rocky mountain. Fal thought they’d just keep falling, but they stopped. They were tangled up in something. It was Filru’s string.

Princess Deluge shone blue once more, and Marika Fukuroi laughed loud, unable to restrain her joy, while Snow White swung Ruler and was repelled, and the Ace of Spades dodged Deluge’s attack as she kicked Snow White in the gut, knocking her off the top of the cliff, too.

The Ace’s left arm swung around, and Filru flew through the air. She must have caught her thread around the Ace of Spades’s left arm. And then Ace was flinging her around, slamming her into the rock face. The whole of the rocky mountain shuddered wildly, and the spot where Filru impacted was marked with an indent the size of a person.

The Ace was about to swing her around again when Snow White swept Ruler toward her, and the Ace held her spear vertically to block it. Ruler’s trajectory changed partway, but the butt of the Ace’s spear jumped up to repel it. She was staving off Snow White’s magic purely with her reflexes and the speed of her haphazard movements.

It wasn’t an issue of poor compatibility—her combat abilities were too high.

“Die!” Inferno yelled as she thrust in with her scimitar, and the Ace turned it aside with her left arm, which still had Filru’s weight on it. Completely unconcerned about how her left arm was on fire, the Ace grabbed the hilt of the scimitar, swinging around Inferno to toss her to the bottom of the cliff.

Meanwhile, the Ace was blocking Snow White’s attacks with her spear, and as she was about to turn aside Deluge’s trident with her bare hand, she stopped flat. The trident was frozen around the Ace’s left arm. Deluge yanked at the frozen hand, and the Ace lost her balance. It wasn’t only Deluge; Filru was pulling at her thread from the bottom of the cliff.

The Ace had been exchanging blows with Snow White while in this position, but she couldn’t manage it when Marika Fukuroi rushed up the cliff to tackle her from behind. Tangled up together, the two of them rolled down the cliff, and Snow White and Princess Deluge followed close after them, while Princess Inferno and Styler Mimi rushed up from the bottom of the mountain.

The Ace hit the end of Marika’s jaw with her elbow, but Marika took the elbow with her forehead, took her fist in her cheek, in the nose, and blood splattered, her eyelids swelled up, her nose broke, and even as she was getting punched, she seized the enemy’s arms.

“Bug Eater!”

Every part she touched spewed white smoke. The sound and smell of melting flesh rose from them.

No matter how she was hit, no matter what the Ace did to her, Marika’s arms did not let go. The Ace’s middle finger gouged into Marika’s eye, her knee thrust up into her stomach, and then she dropped her knee to Marika’s arm and bent her joint backward, but Marika still wouldn’t let go, using her own body to keep burning Shufflin until finally, the other magical girls caught up.

Snow White sliced the Ace’s back open with Ruler, and when she arched backward, Deluge, and then next, Inferno, sliced at the Ace with the trident and scimitar, and when her back was shredded deep and she was wailing in agony, Styler Mimi thrust her hair-cutting scissors into the Ace’s throat.

Her cry, like that of a strange bird, gurgled away and vanished. Blood overflowed from deep in her throat, not only from the wound, but from her mouth, too, dotting Marika’s face. With a visage beaten to disfigurement, Marika grinned fiendishly.

The Ace’s hands hit the ground, and unable to support herself, she slid down, falling on top of Marika before she instantly bounced back.

No one had predicted that—only Snow White reacted, blocking the Ace’s kick backward with Ruler, but she couldn’t fully absorb the impact and was flung back.

The Ace moved again, hitting Styler Mimi with a roundhouse kick, and Mimi instantly blocked with a raised right arm, only to be tossed aside just like Snow White.

The Ace slammed Deluge with a body blow from the shoulder and spun the both of them around, switching places with her. Inferno, who had been about to take a slice at the Ace, hesitated when Deluge’s back was turned toward her, and the Ace used that moment to hit Deluge in the gut with the heel of her palm, and Inferno, along with the scimitar she’d been raising, was blown away.

The wounds in the Ace’s back and neck alone should have been fatal. But even as she was staggering, she still wouldn’t fall. She stayed on her feet. The Ace’s leg swung up. Marika Fukuroi was lying beneath her, facedown. The moment the Ace tried to slam Marika’s face with her heel, Snow White rushed up and hit her in the neck with Ruler, and with a spray of blood, the Ace’s head danced high in the air, dotting the area with red.

Even staggering and about to fall, the Ace’s body still kicked, and even once it had fallen on its back, it continued to punch and kick at the ceiling before it finally stopped.

  Grim Heart

She kicked down the heart at her side. It ran away crying, but Grim Heart ignored it to yell at all the Shufflins present. “What do you mean, the Ace of Spades was killed?!”

“I believe the enemy may have been stronger than anticipated.”

Ignoring Joker’s response, Grim Heart threw the paperweight that had been on her desk. Seeing the heart-shaped paperweight bounce off the floor, hit the wall, then roll around made her even angrier.

“Will the strategy succeed without the strongest of them?”

“No, I believe that may be difficult.”

“Then revive her at once.”

Joker raised up her great scythe before Umbrain.

Umbrain was crying out, tears in her eyes, but Grim Heart couldn’t understand what she was saying. No matter how pathetic she looked, it just made her angry. Neither did she think to discover the meaning of what the girl was yelling.

Her head rolled along the floor, and Joker absorbed her magic. The magic needed for replenishing Shufflin was approximately one magical girl. Seeing the new Shufflins born from Joker, finally, Grim Heart’s rage began to calm. Even if the barbarians were to put up a bit of a resistance, there was no way they could beat the Shufflins, as a force.

  Princess Deluge

They had somehow managed to defeat the Ace of Spades.

But spade was not the only suit in a deck—there were aces of diamonds, clubs, and hearts, too. What’s more, there still remained the master of the Shufflins, who had been completely unaffected by the Ultimate Princess Explosion, Grim Heart.

With the two most severely wounded at the top of the list—the string girl Filru, who had been slammed into the rock, and the flower girl Marika Fukuroi, who’d been straddled and punched over and over—hardly any of them were without wounds. None of them would stand a chance against the three aces and the queen if they attacked.

Deluge proposed that at least they should move somewhere out of the view of the monitors, and the others agreed, and so they went out to the hallway connecting training rooms one and two.

Having seen Princess Inferno rush into the room wounded and crying, Deluge could guess what sort of news she came to bear. She didn’t want to hear it, but still, she had to.

“Prism Cherry was… killed.”

“This has gotta be some sort of mistake—”

“It’s not… The briefing room was covered in blood…”

Sakura Kagami.

Deluge had caught sight of her in town at night. She hadn’t seemed the type to play around late, so wondering if she was okay, she’d followed after her and had witnessed her transforming into a magical girl.

She’d been really startled, then, to find out there was another magical girl besides their group, and that she was a classmate, too, and even now, she remembered that excitement so well. The next day, heart pounding, she’d called out to her, and following that, Prism Cherry had immediately taken on the role of the fifth member of the Pure Elements.

If she hadn’t followed after Sakura Kagami that day, if she hadn’t seen her transform, if she hadn’t called out to her after that, would Prism Cherry not have died?

“To let me get away, Quake… went for the Ace of Spades all by herself… but she might still be alive. Quake and Tempest might not be dead.”

“The odds that Quake and Tempest are alive are fairly high,” Snow White added in agreement with Inferno. “The Shufflins’ goal is to steal the research on the artificial magical girls and to eliminate everyone who knows about the artificial magical girls. If they need living models as results of the research, they’ll take Quake and Tempest alive.”

“We’re not guinea pigs!” Inferno cut her off with a yell, and the hallway was filled with bleak silence.

What broke the silence was the laughter of Marika Fukuroi, who was wounded the most heavily of all of them, lying in a corner. “Obviously that’s what they think we are. You guys, and us, too.”

The air around them grew heavier. Filru breathed a sigh. “So then does this mean the e-mail we all got… was a trap? To lure us in and get us all at once?”

“I don’t think so, pon,” the round, monochrome mascot character disagreed. “It was too much of a clue to be a trap, and there’s no reason for us to be lured here, for anything we share in common, pon.”

It didn’t really matter who was correct. Even if the four of them were these things they called artificial magical girls, even if they were guinea pigs, like Marika said, all that was important was that they survive and escape this place.

The fierce desire to survive welled up within her. This wasn’t just about her. It was about Tempest, Quake, and Inferno, too—leaving together with them. Remembering Prism Cherry made her feel like she would cry, and she turned her face upward.

Given the current situation, even survival would be tough.

The briefing room was occupied. They could make use of the Disrupters as they pleased, all the training rooms could be monitored, they couldn’t reach their medicine, and the entrance was locked by a password.

They hadn’t seen the last of Shufflin.

According to Snow White, as long as the main body was alive, the Shufflins would never run out. The one the Ace of Spades had been most worried about being beaten had not been herself, but the main body that was elsewhere, apparently.

If they only had to take out the main body, that also meant there was no point in eliminating anything but the main body. Just the Ace of Spades alone had been abnormally strong. With all six of Snow White, Marika Fukuroi, Styler Mimi, Filru, Inferno, and Deluge together, they’d finally managed to defeat her. And even with her back sliced open and her throat impaled with scissors, she’d continued to attack them.

And not only that, she’d continued to move for a while even with her head cut off. Deluge hugged her arms to herself. Remembering it sent shivers down her spine.

There was Grim Heart, too.

They didn’t even know what sort of magic she used. Snow White couldn’t hear her thoughts, and Inferno had said that when she and Quake had hit her with the Ultimate Princess Explosion in a sealed room, she hadn’t even twitched.

And they were all wounded.

Filru had sewn up their cuts, and Styler Mimi’s magic had tidied up their costumes again, but there was nothing they could do about the broken bones and bruises, and the parts that were missing would not come back.

Filru, who’d been fully slammed into the stone mountain, was breathing hard.

Deluge and Inferno had to take their medicine, or they couldn’t use Luxury Mode.

Marika Fukuroi was the worst off. Her right arm was broken, her face was swollen, and the flower petals atop her head were wilted. Styler Mimi, who’d tried to treat her right eye, just silently shook her head at the state of affairs. The motionless Marika had been left to lie down in the corner of the hallway.

Even those whose wounds were comparatively lighter only spoke with pessimism.

“Grim Heart is from the Magical Kingdom’s Central Authority, isn’t she? Then doesn’t that mean all of us are out of luck? Won’t we end up with nowhere to turn—wanted by the Magical Kingdom itself?” Styler Mimi’s shoulders slumped as she turned to look bitterly over at where Marika Fukuroi lay on the ground.

“I doubt that’s what’s happened here, pon.”

It seemed Fal hadn’t given up yet, but it was dubious in the first place as to whether the mascot character even had emotions. Deluge could sense no human kindness in his shrill synthetic voice. Was this what mascot characters were like anyway? In anime, they’d been more like small cute animals.

“The Magical Kingdom isn’t a monolith, and in the first place, their public position is to avoid causing trouble for our world as much as possible, pon. What Grim Heart is doing is clearly illegal, pon. If we report it to where it should be reported, she will, of course, be targeted by management, pon.”

“The problem is how to report it, huh…?”

“How about digging a hole to get outside? Even if making a hole from here is impossible.” Still lying down, Marika knocked on the floor of the hallway. “Inside those rooms is earth, right? We should dig out from there.”

“We’ve used the Ultimate Princess Explosion in the desert training room before…,” said Deluge. “And the room had a bottom.”

“Gotcha. So then you can’t dig a hole, huh. So, Magical-Girl Hunter, read their minds to get us the password. Then we can go out the front door.”

“Shufflin doesn’t know the password,” Snow White replied. “Even the Ace of Spades wasn’t thinking about it.”

“Hold on.” Inferno lifted her head. “Magical-Girl Hunter…? Koyuki, you hunt magical girls?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Marika. “She’s Snow White, the big scary Magical-Girl Hunter. If she finds a bad magical girl, she’s off and running to go hunt her down. You guys better watch out, too.”

“You only hunt bad magical girls?”

Snow White smiled weakly—the first smile Deluge had seen from her—and gave a little nod, and Marika Fukuroi, still lying on her back, burst into laughter.

“Good, good, then that means only Grim Heart knows the password. So if only she knows it and the Magical-Girl Hunter can’t read her mind, then we can’t steal it and then scram. In other words, we just have to charge in head-on and win.”

If Deluge were to ask exactly what was so fun about this, surely Marika would answer, “Fighting.” To Deluge, whose head was filled with her desire to get everyone back alive somehow, or speculation as to where Prism Cherry was alive, it was unthinkable.

Were all magical girls like this? But Mimi gave Marika an irritated look, and Filru’s face said she couldn’t keep up as she breathed a sigh.

“Things are gettin’ fun!” Marika crowed.

“This isn’t fun, pon.”

“This isn’t any fun at all.”

“It really isn’t… You’re honestly such a massive dumbass.”

“Oh, yeah.” Inferno pointed at Marika. “You fired a beam, didn’t you? Couldn’t you use that to open up a hole in the door?”

“No,” Marika blurted out instantly. “This facility is made so that it isn’t affected by magic. Even a daisy beam wouldn’t work. Trying it would be a waste of effort.”

“You don’t know that unless you try.”

“Growing a flower takes the right environment.” Marika popped a seed in her mouth, and after a while, a white flower bloomed from her head. She slowly spread both hands, and the flower petals opened. The flower petals fell, leaving a green fruit. Marika plucked the fruit, tossing it to Inferno. “If I grow it without water or light, it’ll wilt real quick. If I grow it slowly and carefully, it’ll bloom for a long time. The underground isn’t suited to making flowers bloom.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come down here,” Styler Mimi muttered.

But Marika ignored her, pointing a finger at the green fruit she’d thrown at Inferno. “So put it the other way, if you want to harvest on the spot, it’s not so bad… if you ignore the fact that it was raised poorly. Slice that fruit open and lick the juice that comes out, and it’ll work as a painkiller, at least. If you suck on it too much, it’ll make you feel too good, so watch out. Also, I take no responsibility if it becomes a habit for ya.”

Expression serious, Styler Mimi added, “If you use that too much, it’ll make you stupid, so please use it with caution, seriously.”

Inferno plucked it in her fingertips. “I don’t need a painkiller.”

“It’ll be useful if you do.” Marika pushed herself up, and leaning against the wall, she staggered to her feet. “And now, here comes a visitor.”

Those biting their lips and hanging their heads, those looking up at the ceiling and ready to cry, everyone, without a single exception, readied themselves at once. It wasn’t coming from the briefing room side. The bulkhead on the entrance side was opening. Retreating back to the bend in the hall, they all raised their weapons and waited patiently.

Then, the bulkhead on the opposite side moved, too. The magical girls who had been packed in at the back swung around to look. Deluge nearly dropped her trident, then adjusted her grip on it. A pincer attack.

The situation had been bad enough already, but now that she saw what was coming from the doors on both sides, her knees felt ready to crumple. With the utmost effort, she calmed her body and kept it from collapse, raising her trident with trembling hands. Her body swayed.

They were the Shufflin spades.

With the Ace at the head, the Jack, Queen, and King followed. Shufflins appeared from the briefing room side, too. The Ace of Clubs was at their head, the Jack, Queen, and King followed, and the Shufflins with numbers of ten and below filed in after them. Deluge felt so dizzy and her head hurt so much, looking ahead was too painful to handle.

She wanted her medicine. She wanted to pep herself up. If she couldn’t win, she couldn’t win, but even then, it would surely be best to face the enemy with heroic courage before she died. She couldn’t do that without her medicine. She was scared to die. She didn’t want to die.

The Shufflins were expressionless, as usual. The other magical girls were the same. Deluge thought the destruction looming right before them must have killed their expressions.

But Marika Fukuroi laughed.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! C’mon, show me a good time!”

She probably tried to charge in ahead of all of them, but she didn’t get to. When Marika Fukuroi was about to step forward, Snow White got a good grip on the flower on her head and tossed her backward. Thrusting her naginata-like weapon out ahead, she blocked the way. “The other way. Hurry!” was all she said, and then she headed to the briefing room side—the side where the club Shufflins had appeared in full force. Deluge and Inferno looked at each other, and without the time to ask any questions, they followed Snow White’s back. Marika Fukuroi, who’d been tossed so roughly, and Filru, who seemed still hesitant, then Styler Mimi ran off one after another, and then an instant before they made contact with the club Shufflins and their raised bats, there was a light.

An explosion boomed, and the whole hallway shook. An intense wind blew through from behind them, and though Deluge felt like she would fall, she thrust out her trident.

There was an explosion.

The club Shufflins’ mouths were open, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Her eardrums weren’t working properly. In a half-hazy state, she swung her weapon.

The Shufflins were unsettled, and their coordination had fallen apart.

Deluge defeated one of the lower numbers, then a second, and then she crossed weapons with a third, the Jack, and when she was locked in a clash of weapons, a pleasant thunk rang out, and a knife landed in the Shufflin’s forehead.

The other magical girls sliced the enemies apart, or beat them, and club Shufflins lined the floor. Even the higher numbered clubs couldn’t match the spades, and what’s more, the explosion had rattled the Shufflins. Though there was no change in their expressions, they moved like they were agitated. And that was the moment when the magical girls had suddenly struck, so even heavily injured as they were, they could win.

When Deluge turned around, there was the jester girl, Stanczyka, juggling knives.

“Stanczyka… You were alive?” Filru asked, and Stanczyka responded with a circle made from the index finger and thumb of her right hand. This caused her to nearly drop her knives, and she hurried to focus on juggling.

“Stanczyka, did you cause that explosion as well, pon?”

She responded to Fal’s question with another “okay” hand sign. This time, however, she actually did drop the knife, and it clattered along the floor.