Chapter 3. Possibility? (2)
Don't start thinking this is manageable. That was what I told myself, staring at the number: 70 percent.
The moment I decided I could handle it, the reading would drop. I had batteries, sure, but none of them would last forever. Stretching what I had as far as it would go—that was the whole game.
Yes. Think exactly that way. Even burning through every last scrap of this gathered despair, I still couldn't beat Iris.
"Wha—"
Iris faltered at the sight of me cleaving her beam clean in two.
67 percent.
See? One little look at that and this happens. Was I simply incapable of keeping my focus?
70 percent.
...The way it climbed the instant I cursed myself out—the gauge was nothing if not honest.
I ran forward.
Ka-chak.
Iris looked flustered for a heartbeat, but she quickly recovered her composure and ejected the fuse. The second round loaded.
Good. Then so would I. Let's see just how far this circuit could take me.
I thought back through the techniques I'd seen in the webtoon. Until now I'd mostly solidified my energy into blade form—of everything the webtoon had shown, that had seemed the most effective.
Once the circuit's number dropped, I wouldn't be able to attack near a magical girl at all. My 'despair' had to outweigh their 'hope,' at the very least.
And right now? The fact that I'd cut through her beam meant we were close. In the webtoon, Iris's Hope Circuit usually held around 70 percent; when her composure cracked, it sometimes sank to 50.
Maybe that was why she leaned on warp point techniques. Against Blossom, who held nearly 90 percent, her raw power fell short—so she'd carved out her own workaround: banish the enemy before they could fight back.
I dismissed the blade extending from my wrist, then thrust my hand forward as though a laser might fire from my circuit, and set my stance.
Iris had already finished taking aim at me.
75 percent.
Take that shot head-on and I'd go flying somewhere. Or maybe Iris had dialed her power back—raw magic alone would be plenty to knock me out.
And if I were captured like this, Blossom would learn my face too.
The thought set my heart pounding. Fear climbed up to my throat. What if Blossom—no, what if Hayun—looked at me with disgust?
77 percent.
The battery was still full. Which would I choose? The battery, obviously. I didn't trust myself.
BANG!
The instant Iris fired, recoil slammed into my wrist. The suit blunted some of the shock, but my arm still throbbed dully. It was fine. Nothing broken yet.
73 percent.
...The number dipping just because I'd felt a flicker of relief—yeah, I was right not to trust myself.
Click.
I worked the circuit quickly and ejected the battery. The moment the top plate flipped open, black smoke curled up—a burnt-out cell. I shook my arm to drop it, opened the pouch on my suit, pulled out a fresh battery, and slotted it home.
The new one was fully charged. The gauge read 70 percent, and it kept falling. That wasn't good.
So Iris's attack had been a warp point shot after all. Had she chosen to simply overwhelm me with magic instead, I might not have held out—I might have blacked out.
Confusion clouded Iris's face. Her gaze on me wavered.
65 percent.
Seeing that face, my heart settled fast. Not good.
I tried to summon despairing thoughts. If the number kept dropping like this, I'd eventually hand Iris the high ground—I had to somehow convince myself I was at a disadvantage, but—
……
I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from curling up.
Ah. So maybe I really did prefer villains to magical girls.
Or maybe it was simple cowardice. The truth was, I'd wanted to be a magical girl too. Jihye had it right. Maybe I could even have worked up the nerve to tell Hayun.
But.
...I'm a lost cause of a person.
It had been that way since my past life. No matter how hard I studied, my grades only slid as the years piled up. After university, and again after the army, even holding a B was a struggle.
My high school grades, at least, I'd earned myself—grinding alone off memories of my previous life. But that was where it ended. One harder subject and I'd probably crumble. Second year would likely prove exactly that.
To fix what was broken at the orphanage. To put one more snack in the kids' mouths.
Hiding behind excuses like those, I'd followed the scout who approached me. And become a nobody of a combatant. Just like the nobody I'd been in my past life.
A pretty face, the position of the protagonist's childhood friend no less—and this was all I amounted to. I was beyond saving.
72 percent.
Good. A little steadier now.
By the time Iris ejected a fuse and fired at me again, I was already rolling sideways. I didn't buy the nonsense about knives or brawling beating a gun at close range, but Iris's rifle was undeniably long. Dashing forward while cutting right, I slipped past the beam by a hair.
I swung my fist.
"Eek!?"
Had she simply never let a combatant land a proper hit before? Iris shrieked.
Without so much as a hitch at that scream, I drove my circuit's energy—
"Heh."
Iris stuck her tongue out at me, then swiftly dropped her left hand to the hem of her dress.
"...Ah!?"
The skirt of her dress was deeply pleated. Naturally, no slit showed at a glance—one would have made the design look strange.
But Iris slipped her hand inside that hem without missing a beat. ...On the left, the fabric overlapped to conceal a slit. And strapped to that inner thigh, presumably, a second holster.
The motion was blindingly fast. She must have drilled it countless times.
Bang!
By a hair's breadth, I stopped the shot. I thrust my left arm out front like a shield and discharged the battery's energy. It lasted only an instant, but a black hemispherical barrier bloomed up before me.
Bang! Bang!
Three shots in all—that was what I could block. The pistol looked like a compact automatic small enough for one hand, spitting out a tiny fuse with every trigger pull.
Small gun, and apparently no warp point function—I wasn't getting flung off to some bizarre location.
Clunk!
After stopping three bullets, the battery auto-ejected. While I was still flustered that my circuit hung open—
"...Ugh!?"
My scream, warped through the helmet, slipped out.
Thud. Thud.
Bullets of pure magic struck both my shoulders. The suit's defenses beat that spandex getup I used to wear, so the pain was a shade duller—but it still felt like a boxer landing light jabs through gloves. Not that I could truly judge the power behind them. I'd never boxed.
As I staggered back, Iris bounded away too. Looking again—she still hadn't touched the ground once.
Calling that cowardly... I probably shouldn't. If we were keeping score, I was the dirtier fighter.
The instant my hand went to my pouch, Iris's rifle muzzle swung toward me. I flung myself at the floor.
78 percent.
My helmet cracked against the ground, my head lurching hard inside it. No time to hurt. I rolled sideways as fast as I could and just barely slipped around the corner.
I swapped in a fresh battery. ...That was the last one. Once this was spent, I'd be fighting on the circuit's power alone. 81 percent. Fine. I didn't love that it only surged at moments like this, but in a way it was efficient. Either way, it would help me survive.
Iris was humming.
That meant she was angry. A habit straight out of the webtoon, and one I'd grown thoroughly sick of since coming to this world.
Iris wanted to seem grown-up, but she had the face and mannerisms of a little kid—and she believed open anger made her look like a brat.
So she buried it. Pretended to be 'in a good mood,' like that. Her usual air of easy composure was the same act.
...And the reason Iris wanted me dead was that, like last time, I kept flustering her with my teasing.
No, wait—seriously, how had she even found out this time?
81 percent.
What now? Run from here? But this bend led somewhere I didn't know. I'd only stumbled in lunging at Iris and getting knocked back, so it was actually clean.
There weren't even any combatants around. Had Iris taken them all down?
……
I looked the other way. The corridor Iris was facing head-on.
A few downed combatants lay there. Some still squirmed on the floor like earthworms—maybe still conscious.
There were a few places to hide down that corridor, too.
If I ran that way, my odds of escaping—
—were probably close to zero.
84 percent.
...And yet, for me, it wasn't all that bad.
Even if a furious Iris hurled a mass of raw magic, the battery could absorb one hit. And if she used warp point magic, better to just take it and get launched.
Dodge or block both, push deeper inside—and there'd be the fallen cadre.
Free the cadre, and at least my story—that I'd moved for a magical girl friend—would carry some weight.
82 percent.
No. I'd stalled too long. My emotions were slowly settling, and calm only comes faster the longer it lasts. I had to decide right now.
...All right. I shut my eyes for a beat, sank into thought, then made up my mind. It wasn't as if I believed I could reach the exit on my own anyway.
Without another second of deliberation, I burst out and threw myself forward.
"There!"
Iris fired at me. I rolled across the floor with everything I had; scorching heat seared past right beside me.
Click. A fuse clattered to the floor. She must have finished reloading while I was hiding, because Iris swung her muzzle straight at me.
Charged with the suit's energy, I blasted forward. At the same time, I spent the battery's power to throw up a barrier and scatter the beam. The battery popped free of my wrist.
A door came into view ahead.
68 percent.
The energy the suit burned, plus the tiniest flicker of hope I'd felt, had nudged the number down. Once it started falling, it fell faster and faster.
I just had to make it there. Just there.
A forcibly pried-open door stood ahead—nearly identical to the one I'd opened, wrenched apart in much the same way.
Beyond it lay the bound cadre. He lay prone on the floor, but he strained his head up, looked my way, and wriggled.
61 percent.
I formed a blade along my arm.
Behind me, faintly, came the sound of the rifle chambering its next fuse.
I reached the door—
—before my hand could touch it.
……
Inside, I caught sight of a certain pink.
The girl with that pink hair was glaring at me.
She was the sort of girl who seemed to have forgotten how to get angry, so at a glance her expression didn't look especially furious.
But I knew better. Years at her side had taught me, over and over.
This was the face Blossom wore when she was truly, furiously angry to her very core.
I'd gone up against magical girls plenty of times, but Blossom had never once looked this enraged.
...Was she angry that we'd stormed their base without permission?
—BEEP-BEEP-BEEBEEBEEBEE!
I turned my gaze.
There stood the thing that had nearly been destroyed.
I'd seen it in the webtoon, too. There, the Company had come to destroy it—and failed.
The ultimate objective of this operation.
The Generator.
It was blatantly illegal, and the government knew full well it existed—yet there was a reason nobody ever moved to tear it down.
A hotbed of twisted utilitarianism—and the ultimate purpose of the beings called 'magical girls.'
"Hurry, hurry and get me out of here!" the cadre wailed.
...Well, the Company wasn't after it to cut out that absurd utilitarianism.
More likely they just wanted to prove their own method was more efficient. Under the Galaxy Federation's system, break that one thing and you're helpless until it's rebuilt.
Far more complicated, too.
"...Why would you go this far? Are you trying to crush even the hope we have left?"
Blossom said. Even as the words left her, magic swelled in the weapon in her hand.
What Blossom carried was a 'magical girl's' wand. You know the kind—wand-sized, with a star or a heart perched on the tip.
Far more magical-girl-ish than guns or gauntlets. And that was exactly what made it so dangerous.
A wand crowned with a flower, at a glance almost a bouquet. No—deliberately modeled on a bouquet, surely.
BEEP-BEEBEEBEEBEE!
93 percent.
...Unbelievable. All it took was meeting Blossom's gaze. And it wasn't just the number climbing—my heart itself was pounding like it would burst.
Terrifying. I was afraid of Blossom. Afraid that attack would crack my helmet and bare the face beneath it.
And at the same time, another negative emotion stirred. ...And over that emotion, yet another rose in turn—and just as when my mind found calm, the Despair Circuit spun at an exponential rate.
"Hey!" the cadre shouted.
Fighting Blossom here was a losing bet. Which left exactly one option.
I dropped low at once and seized the cadre.
"Good— urk!?"
Then, hoisting him like a shield, I charged at Iris coming from behind.
"Ah, wait!?"
Perhaps she'd meant to talk, because Blossom—her weapon still wreathed in nothing but magic—shouted after me, but it was too late. My circuit's number, swollen higher than ever, was spinning past 90 percent. Battery or not, the suit could put out explosive power.
"Uwaaagh!?" howled the cadre, wind whipping into his eyes and mouth, his face contorting grotesquely.
"...What the!?"
She must have taken me for a rat in a trap, because Iris had been advancing on me—and she jolted, startled, at the sight of me charging straight at her.
With every ounce of strength I had, I hurled the cadre at Iris.
"What do you think you're doooing!?"
The cadre flew, screaming.
"Eeek!?"
Thank goodness the cadre was ugly.
He streaked at high speed, aimed dead-on at Iris's face.
And how would Iris fare, staring that face down head-on?
Iris performed serenity, staged her cool composure—but partly because she couldn't actually keep her cool.
She hastily raised her gun.
"Iris, wait!!"
Blossom shouted it as she chased after me, but too late. This was Iris, who'd been firing shot after shot at me while already chambering her next fuse.
Iris's rifle spewed fire.
I dove into the beam.
The cadre and I took it together, side by side.
A pain like being battered all over flared through me, and then—
—it had worked.
The scene before my eyes shifted, and relief washed over me.
Then I hit the ground rolling.
"Gahk! Keh! Huk! Heh!"
The cadre rolled across the ground making grotesque noises.
Still, I was glad I'd come out far better than that.
Because I'd grabbed his nape at the last second, we'd landed in the same spot.
"Wh-what the hell!? What kind of bottom-rung bastard throws a cadre at a magical girl!?"
Then he lifted his head, saw that we'd made it cleanly out of that hellhole, and went speechless.
"...First time fighting magical girls?" I asked, drawing a blade from my wrist.
The ropes binding him were reinforced with magic. No ordinary cutter would make short work of them.
"Uh, uhh..."
Yeah, that figured. This had been his debut in the webtoon too, and even after being captured he'd had precious little to spill.
Probably a disposable piece, sent in to scout the interior layout.
Even among cadres, each had their own role.
James, for all his appearance, held a fairly high seat where combat was concerned. Even in defeat he pushed the objective as far as it would go, and he never—no matter what—let himself be captured.
There were cadres for technology, cadres for business strategy. Usually they didn't get along with the others.
The tokusatsu-villain types: bragging they were better than James, volunteering to go out in his place before the 'Chairman,' getting thoroughly trounced, and then earning James's mockery.
When I undid the glowing ropes, the cadre rose to his feet and looked at me with a rather sheepish expression. Then he scratched his head.
"Uh, thanks?"
"Don't mention it."
Honestly, it was closer to me using him for my escape.
I ran my hands over my body.
……
Better shape than I'd expected. Unlike last fight, nothing seemed broken.
That was saying something.
40 percent.
Maybe because I felt good for the first time in a while, my despair reading sat a touch lower than usual.
"Hey! Hey! Where are you going!"
"Home."
"In that state?"
"I'll have to walk or run. One of the two."
I said it feeling strangely refreshed.
Right. I hadn't won this time either. But I hadn't won—and I had still landed a real hit. Iris had been unmistakably rattled.
Seeing Blossom's face was a little fatal, though.
……
Yes. What I'd felt looking at that face was probably jealousy.
She was the protagonist of this world, after all. Unlike an extra like me, who doesn't even appear in the main story.
"Well then, I'll be off."
"Uh, uhh... right, yeah?"
I gave a light bow to the dimwitted cadre, who still hadn't grasped the situation, and ran.
This time, I'd come out on a mountain.
Still inside Seoul, at least. Thank goodness.
...It was pretty dark out here, but in this outfit, a little tumble wouldn't kill me... right?