I Became a Magical Girl in the Spotlight (3)
A magical girl's power is expressed in color, born of her own potential and her own emotions. The black wave that had just been hurled at me was no exception — it held every last drop of one girl's pain and the bitter injustice she had suffered.
"Disgusting."
I swatted it aside with a single mana-wreathed hand. The wave ricocheted off my palm, shot toward the roof, and detonated, blowing the hatch clean off.
"That's it! Wipe them all out and rack up those performance points!"
"Shut up!"
I kicked the suddenly cocky Ren with everything I had and sent him flying, then stirred my mana and sent thorns erupting from the shadows. Spikes burst forth, shattering floor and wall and ceiling alike. Every last one of them still firing back in resistance was skewered alive in the space of a heartbeat.
"Gyaaah!"
A pitiful experimental subject, late to the fight, lunged at me with claws slashing from a mutated hand. Her fingers punched into the bare skin of my abdomen. The nails snapped. The fingers bent the wrong way.
I frowned. It didn't hurt, but that viscous, murky power left a foul feeling in its wake. The darkness I possessed — my mana — was nothing like this wretched, pitiful force. Mine was the proud power of a demon.
"Kii..."
"Rest easy now."
I swept a shadow-wreathed hand and took her head clean off her shoulders.
"Nngh, there are still some left!"
"We can deal with them later."
"But..."
"Those goddamn performance points will pile up on their own. So. Keep your mouth shut."
I bared my teeth and glared at the whining Ren. He shrank on the spot, cowed. I left the handful of survivors who'd fled to their own devices and cut through the ruined interior of the ship.
A faint mana kept pricking at my senses, goading me onward.
Deep in the ship's bowels — a place that might as well have been built as a panic room — stood a steel door so thick it looked like even a bomb wouldn't open it.
"Why did you come here?"
"There are more of their experimental subjects in there."
I sent shadows surging toward that thick steel door. Even for me, it was too uselessly thick to smash in a single blow. But it would only take a little time. The shadows I'd sent ahead soon wrecked the locking mechanism and flung the door wide.
"Kh."
"Hah."
Both of us — even Ren — let out a sound of dismay at the sight before our eyes. This was no ordinary laboratory. If this was merely one laboratory among many, I didn't even want to know how thoroughly this world had gone to hell.
"What do you make of this?"
"Malice worthy of A-Rank performance points... ah, I mean, it's tragic. Tragic, I said!"
I grabbed Ren's ears and stretched them out. Listening to his shrieks, I slowly took in our surroundings.
This was a laboratory. And an enormous one at that. It was a scene I'd only ever seen in movies — one I'd never encountered even in the Demon Realm. Human beings sealed alive inside tanks. Young girls of every nationality, all of them looking to be in their early to mid-teens. There were a scant handful of boys as well. Every last child floated naked in a tank filled with some unidentifiable liquid, a respirator strapped to their face.
"These kids..."
"Half of them are dead. Half are still alive. But of the survivors — how many will actually be able to live a normal life?"
"How can you tell..."
I murmured it in a daze and stopped in front of one of the tanks. The girl inside looked about the same age as I currently was — East Asian. Hoses were plugged into her all over, and the entire upper half of her torso had already swollen into a grotesque, writhing mass of tumors.
The reason I could read their conditions was simple. Every child in this room possessed a faint trace of mana. I was the pinnacle of demonic power. Of course I would know.
"Creating a magical girl without Yggdrasil is impossible. I don't know the principle behind it, but what these people are doing is no different from breeding kaijin."
"...That's right."
"If these kids wake up, they'll become enemies. Your enemies, I mean. Or should I call them performance points?"
A hollow laugh escaped me. Whether it was because he'd been burned by my temperament one too many times, Ren couldn't get a word out.
"I can't stand to watch that happen."
I gathered my power once more. A peaceful rest for these suffering children. At the very least, I hoped they might live a new life in another world, the way I had.
"Stop!"
But the instant I was about to bring my raised hand down, someone smashed through the ceiling with a thunderous crash and landed behind me.
"Well, well. Who do we have here."
I took one look at her and let out a snort of laughter. A cute pastel-pink dress trimmed with frills. Dainty little decorations everywhere. A cute little girl advertising I am a magical girl to anyone with eyes, a large wand in her hand. And perched on her shoulder was a black weasel.
"Huh?! Retina!"
Ren recognized the weasel. Fellow professionals in the same industry — I supposed that was only natural.
"It's been a while, Ren. Weren't you stripped of your post after you botched Delight's care?"
"S-shut your mouth with that crap!"
Ren startled, glanced at me, then started hopping up and down. Stripped of his position, was it.
"A-anyway, we got here first. You two, get lost!"
"Get lost? Please. And we didn't come here to steal your performance points. What the hell are you doing, Ren? You call yourself a mascot like that? If the kid goes off the rails, you're the one who's supposed to lecture her and straighten her out."
The weasel mocked Ren to his face. Arrogant, dripping with elitist superiority — a perfectly typical mascot, as far as I could tell.
"...Hi?"
I ignored the little creatures and spoke first to the girl who was in the same boat as me. Friendly. Smiling.
"A newbie... talking to me like that?!"
But the cute girl stared at me like she couldn't believe what she was hearing, her brow furrowed.
"Hey, how old are you? You're a newbie, aren't you?!"
"...?"
"You don't know who I am? Keyni!"
Her eyes went round and she pointed at herself. Meanwhile, I was still buffering over the bizarre way this cute little girl was talking.
"I'm seventeen, okay? And I'm your senior, so show some respect."
"Ah. I see."
Now I understood. The transformed appearance was locked in, so no matter how old she got, transforming would always bring her back to that form.
"...What's with that look on your face?"
She must have read the grotesque twist of my expression, because her face turned ugly. Of course it had twisted. Kids who'd already grown up walking around looking like that. Then again, tentacle monsters walked around wearing the skins of young girls, so maybe it wasn't that strange.
"So then, our most esteemed senior. What brings you here? As you can see, this is an illegal facility where horrific experiments are being carried out."
"Tch... I didn't come to steal your performance points, so don't worry."
She frowned and took a step back. Personally, though, I wasn't particularly fond of someone who could look at a scene like this and still go on and on about performance points.
"Anyway, stop."
"Stop what, exactly?"
"Trying to kill those kids!"
"Oh, senior. With your experience, I'm sure you already know? These children are beyond saving. Even if we leave them as they are, unless we bring in an angel's blessing, the contaminated mana will consume them and trigger mutations that make cancer cells look tame."
I snorted. Well, she was only seventeen — peak age for drowning in that flower-garden fantasy that everyone can be happy. But this world required you to know when to let some things go.
"What kind of stupid crap are you talking?"
As it turned out, the one who still hadn't adapted to this world was me.
"If you leave those kids alone, you'll just end up with a whole crop of new performance points."
"..."
"You don't even know the basics? Doesn't your mascot teach you that stuff?"
"Eek."
That one hit home — Ren ducked his head of his own accord. Only then did I understand the situation, and I let out a dry chuckle.
"What? Why are you cracking up?"
She clicked her tongue and glared. For a split second, I thought it might be fine to just gouge those eyes out.
"Can't you even consider letting them rest in peace?"
"What are you even saying... ah, right, you said you were a newbie. I used to be like you once. But that's a dumb thing to do. Performance points are something you create and pile up."
I got a word in, but she just snickered like it was nothing. That was where I gave up on communicating. What communication was there to be had in the first place? I'd come here to play, not to work myself into a stress ulcer. I flicked my hand.
"Whoa!"
"Kh, what are you doing?!"
The writhing shadows burst forth all at once in the shape of spikes, shattering every tank and snuffing out the lives of the experimental subjects inside in a single instant. And that wasn't the end of it. The shadows surged and heaved, lifting my body into the air, the uniform draped over my shoulders fluttering.
"You idiot! How dare a mere magical girl—"
A rushing tentacle of shadow smashed the loudly yapping weasel and sent him flying into the distance. He'd tried to hold his ground, apparently — from where I stood, I was merely pressing down a little. The shadows were already creeping, seething, spreading to blanket the entire ship.
"Uh, uhh...?"
"I hear competition between magical girls is free and only natural. So I suppose that means I can kill you right here?"
I drifted through the air toward her. Her terrified face filled my vision. I laid a hand on her frozen throat.
In her eyes, I could see my own reflected — a red gleam burning in them. And in the midst of it, I heard something dripping. She hadn't been able to endure the killing intent I was pouring out. She'd wet herself.
"Seventeen years old, and this is what you do."
I snorted and mocked her, and her face went scarlet before she finally burst into tears. That was when I let go of the throat I'd been gripping. My interest had gone cold. I'm not a slaughterer.
"T-this time..."
"I acted exactly according to the rules you taught me, Ren."
I retrieved Ren and launched myself into the air.