INTERLUDE
It was an unfamiliar room. It looked like some warehouse. There were no windows. She couldn’t tell if it was day or night. It was entirely barren, with just concrete walls and a concrete floor. The room was square, with all sides about the same length—four and a half steps, given Shadow Gale’s stride.
Her wrench, scissors, magical phone, even her bandages had been confiscated. All she had on her person was her costume. She needed nothing more than her bare fists to break concrete. Shadow Gale wasn’t that strong, but even she could pull off that much. The problem was her guards.
Eerie black creatures were stationed in the four corners of the room, each hovering using two winglike square shapes on their backs. Whenever Shadow Gale moved, the four of them moved with her. Lifting the parts of them that corresponded to human faces, they always faced Shadow Gale, as if to tell her that they would attack instantly should she run.
Enough of these demon-like creatures had appeared to cover the whole sky, and Patricia’s subordinates had gone to fight them off. That crew had wound up unable to respond to Patricia’s call. And now there were four of those creatures here.
Aside from responding to Shadow Gale’s movements, they did nothing at all. No matter if she tried asking them where this was or if Patricia was okay, they didn’t react.
Shadow Gale wondered if Patricia was locked up somewhere, then bit her lip. She recalled the last time she’d seen Patricia; it was unlikely she was still alive. She’d been stabbed with a spear of ice in order to protect Shadow Gale, and her whole body had been frozen solid.
Shadow Gale jumped off the concrete floor, and the four black silhouettes all stood at once. When she showed them by raising her hands up to her head that she wasn’t going to try anything, they quietly sat down again.
Patricia had been killed, but Shadow Gale had not. She could assume the enemy’s goal had been to capture her. Perhaps that attack Patricia had protected her from had been done with the expectation that Patricia would protect her.
Shadow Gale clenched a fist and raised it up, trembling and tense, but she couldn’t bring herself to drop it to the floor. She swung it down to hit her thigh instead. She hit her thigh a second, then third, time, and on the fourth time, the four silhouettes stood, so she stopped. Her thigh was numb with the pain.
What was the enemy trying to do? Were they trying to use Shadow Gale as a hostage, to manipulate Pfle? Did this have something to do with Pfle’s memories that Shadow Gale had entrusted to Snow White? Was Snow White aware of this?
Maybe it was time to pay the piper—for Pfle and for Shadow Gale, too. But still, it wasn’t like Shadow Gale had no urge to struggle. Patricia hadn’t given her life to protect her so that she could mournfully spend her days in sorrow in this room somewhere. She would look for something that could be a hint as to where this was—and find a way to communicate that to the outside.
Keeping an eye on the black silhouettes to see if they moved, Shadow Gale knocked on the floor and walls. The creatures moved when she tried putting her ear to the door, so she gave up on that. But there was nothing anywhere that could be a hint. Reality was different from video games. There wasn’t necessarily a flag somewhere. Effort wouldn’t necessarily lead to something happening in response. Even the same action could lead to different EXP values earned, and there was variability in base stats. She’d been locked up to keep from getting away no matter what she tried, so just a little bit of searching around would not be enough to find an escape.
She could hear a voice in her mind telling her to give up. She was good at giving up. Her whole life had been nothing but resignation. This was also partly because a certain Kanoe Hitokouji was good at making people give up.
Should she give up? Or should she not?
Patricia’s face rose in her mind and apologetic feelings along with it. Knowing when to give up was a weapon, but that depended on the situation. Had she already expended all the effort she could? Was there nothing else she could do? If it were Kanoe, she might think up something.
Just the idea of trying to think like Kanoe put her right off it. But it had never been Mamori who had gotten them out of sticky spots—that was what Kanoe did. Shadow Gale got the feeling that Kanoe would have thought of something.
For the moment, Shadow Gale set aside action and shifted to thought instead.
What would Kanoe do? What sort of ideas would she come up with? While she was thinking, pondering, and racking her brain, before she could arrive at a solution, the room’s door opened with the sound of grating rust.
And there was the armored magical girl who had fought Patricia.
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