Chapter 5: Position (3)
What those watching the combatant move felt was sheer bewilderment.
This was no ordinary combatant's movement.
The figure fighting head-on, blocking the magical girls' attacks straight on, was enough to sap the fighting spirit out of everyone — the magical girls attacking her, and the combatants fighting alongside her alike.
Worse, the combatant wore a helmet, so her face was invisible. No one could tell what expression she wore inside, but at least from the outside, she looked like a machine fighting without the slightest change in expression.
In fact, Iris genuinely suspected it might actually be a machine.
Robots already existed. Not perfectly identical to humans, but the Galaxy Federation was known to use them for combat as well. If Noir Corporation had succeeded in building such robots—
But no. The combatant's wrist bore a circuit. A circuit spinning round and round at tremendous speed.
Circuits ran on emotion. Not a single simple feeling like joy or sorrow, but a device that generated energy from the interplay of complex emotions felt in response to something else.
For magical girls, that something was Hope. The tangle of positive emotions stirred by looking upon hope was what allowed magical girls to unleash their enormous power.
But then — what on earth was that combatant looking at, to move the way she did?
The tips of her fingers trembled slightly.
No combatant had ever landed a clean hit on a magical girl before. Since she'd begun fighting Noir Corporation's grunts, this would be the first.
Her gaze fixed on hope hadn't changed, she told herself.
And yet, somehow, watching that figure fall again and again only to rise each time, her confidence had slipped a little.
It had been like this for a while now. Even before the combat suits changed, she had sensed it, bit by bit. The one combatant among them all who stayed standing to the very end, searching desperately for a way through — the one who, no matter how many times she failed, never gave up.
Why?
What could Noir Corporation have done to her, that someone like that was standing over there?
Iris couldn't begin to guess.
Only one thing was certain: if this went on, they would fail again.
The failure of the last battle was what had led to this. The Federation had barely managed to track down the hidden researcher, and every magical girl had scraped together just enough time to mobilize and stand here.
If they failed here, they'd never live it down.
She took aim.
Her bolt-action rifle had been destroyed, and it burned through energy in a single shot. Worse, every round mattered so much that a miss carried far too much risk.
……Besides, her circuit's output wasn't as flawless as it had been back then. For now, rationing her energy carefully was the better call.
Ta-da-da-da. Pressing the gun tight against her body to control the recoil, she squeezed the trigger with all her strength. She heard the small fuses ejecting outward.
The combatant, who had been knocked flying once by Dahlia's attack, quickly crossed her arms and raised them in front of her face. Every warp round struck home inside that guard — and it accomplished nothing.
Black sparks crackled again, and the combatant rose to her feet.
Where did it all go wrong?
Iris pondered the question as she swapped in a fresh magazine.
Whirling around, she returned fire at the combatants leaping in from behind her. A single warp round was more than enough to send a grunt flying somewhere far away. This charge wouldn't carry them as far, but blasting them clear out of the Complex was plenty for the moment — and the raw energy of the round itself was enough to take them out of the fight, too.
Five combatants vanished from her sight in an instant.
A prickling sense of danger came from behind, and she rolled forward, sprang up in a hurry, and dropped into a seated firing position facing rearward.
BANG!
Where Iris had been standing mere moments before, that combatant was crouched, her fist buried in the floor.
Was she copying what Blossom had shown a little earlier?
It didn't leave the clean, sword-like scar Blossom's blade had. But a fist-shaped crater now sat exactly where Iris had been.
……Is she trying to kill me?
Was that really what drove her?
Iris fired at the combatant again. The combatant's body lurched.
She wasn't invincible. The black sparks had never perfectly blocked every attack.
Iris embraced hope. She felt her circuit spin faster. Energy coursed through her body, and the mana supply to her gun steadied.
And the more that happened, the harder her shots hit.
The combatant raised both arms slightly, then brought them down. It looked like she was striking empty air — but long blades bloomed along both arms, following the arc of the swing.
The combatant lunged at Iris. It was the moment right after she'd emptied her magazine.
BANG!
But Blossom threw herself in front of Iris.
Wedging her blazing pink blade of light between herself and the combatant, Blossom stared straight into that helmet.
Even with the light shining on it, nothing could be seen inside the visor.
Iris sprinted sideways, the sound of her reloading magazine ringing out.
"……"
When she'd tried to talk to her earlier, too, she'd shown no intention of answering.
In that case—
"Hnngh!"
Blossom poured her strength into the blade.
Ka-ga-gak!
Where light met light, crimson sparks began to fly. It was a fierce spray of flame, like steel being sheared apart — but Blossom didn't look away.
The combatant, arms crossed to catch Blossom's weapon on the edges of her two blades, was driven backward.
BANG!
And Dahlia's mana rounds came hurtling in at the combatant.
This time, she didn't go flying.
As if to say she wouldn't be caught by the same trick twice, the combatant shielded her head with one arm. A barrier had sprung up around her body. A long, shallow groove had been carved into the ground.
Clack.
The combatant's circuit popped open, and something like a battery — charred pitch-black — ejected and clattered away.
"Rose!"
"On it!"
At Blossom's shout, Rose charged. As the combatant tried to dodge, Iris's shot came screaming in, her magazine freshly loaded.
The combatant raised her arm to block the beams flying precisely at her head — but she couldn't stop Rose's fist.
THUD!
An ugly sound rang out, and the combatant shot away in a straight line, in the direction opposite to Rose's charge.
Bang, bang. She smashed through wall after wall. The holes she'd punched through were dark and dim. It was still evening, and nearly every light inside the Complex had gone out.
"Delphinium……!"
"……I know."
Starlight danced around Delphinium. It spread outward from within her cape — as if the night sky itself had been lifted and draped over her — so beautiful that even the combatants charging at her had their eyes stolen for a moment. Of course, every one of those combatants was then knocked cold, one by one, by the wand-work of Dahlia standing beside her.
Delphinium, eyes closed until now, opened them.
She raised her wand high into the air, and the starlight drifting around her gathered at its tip.
The white starlight converged—
"D-Delphinium's attack!"
"Everyone scatter! Find cover, anywhere!"
She heard the terrified screams of the combatants, and the Squad Leaders shouting at their squads.
"……Idiots."
Delphinium murmured it under her breath.
The magic she was about to use wasn't a combat spell in the first place.
Then again, anyone who'd ever been caught in one of Delphinium's wide-area attacks had every reason to panic. One wrong step and you'd end up in a hospital bed.
Delphinium swept her wand.
The starlight gathered in one place split apart again into countless tiny lights and scattered in every direction.
Taking light that had scattered at random, gathering it, and raining it back down in a regular pattern.
That was, in fact, exactly what the spell was for.
"……"
Delphinium closed her eyes again and concentrated.
She could feel the countless combatants around her. Most of them were simply trembling, staring up at the light raining from above.
Sneering at the sight, Delphinium raced along the flow of the spell.
And then—
"……What?"
"Delphinium?"
At the sound of Delphinium's flustered murmur, Blossom asked.
"Wait, this is……!"
Delphinium, who always wore a lazy, can't-be-bothered expression no matter what happened, was wearing a look of outright horror.
And it wasn't only the magical girls, Blossom included, who sensed that something had gone wrong.
The combatants hiding here and there, watching how things unfolded, also felt that something was off when they saw the magical girls suddenly thrown into confusion.
Just as Delphinium opened her mouth to shout something to the others—
BANG!
A thunderous crash erupted from the spot where the combatant had been sent flying moments ago.
My head hurt.
The longer I fought, the more my focus slipped away.
Naturally. That's what work is — the longer you grind at it, the more you just want it to be over.
And it's worse when the job doesn't come with fixed working hours. God, I was so sick of this.
I dragged myself up, and the place around me looked like a construction site.
Not a proper one, though — more like they'd been preparing to remodel the layout of the rooms. There was a huge hammer lying there, probably for tearing down a wall or two.
"……"
I bent down and picked up the hammer.
Right. Magical girls channel magic into objects and wield them as weapons. Iris uses firearms she designed herself, and the others use the things they cherished most — or, in a slightly different way from Iris, things they designed themselves or commissioned from someone else.
The most unusual of them all was Blossom's weapon.
That bouquet was a real bouquet. It had manifested at the moment Hayun placed in a competition and heard her parents' heartfelt praise.
True to magical girl tradition, an object tied to one's memories carries added power — if you can recall those memories and find the emotion called hope within them.
And all the more so when that hope is a tangled, complicated thing.
……Not that a hammer I'd just grabbed off the floor had any story like that behind it.
In the moment I'd been surrounded by the magical girls, my circuit had already been heating up as if it were about to melt. That was just how it felt to me — in reality it was holding up far better than that — but the burning heat around my wrist was unpleasant.
Let's finish this fast and get some sleep.
With that thought, I hefted the hammer.
And charged forward.
BANG!
After smashing through a few walls, I leapt with everything I had, and the ground beneath my feet caved in with a tremendous roar.
The magical girls in the distance saw me. They all looked a little flustered.
For some reason, combatants were scattered around, hiding. The reason was—
Ah, right. Delphinium.
She'd cast a spell. Judging by how the surroundings weren't scorched, it probably wasn't an offensive one.
I had no idea what kind of magic it was, but it was definitely something that didn't help our side one bit.
In that case, her first.
Just as James had boasted, the suit was putting the energy of my furiously spinning Despair Circuit to one hundred percent use.
Gliding gracefully like Iris, or warping instantaneously — that was beyond me. But blasting mana hard out from under my feet was doable.
I lined up my angle toward Delphinium, gripped the hammer tight in both hands, and raised it over my head.
Mana poured from my hands.
I felt something sticky-slithery running down my arms. I could feel this thick jumpsuit soaking through in an instant.
I couldn't quite tell what was happening to the hammer.
But—
BANG!
Right before my swing landed, Delphinium scrambled out of the way.
There was something deeply satisfying about watching Delphinium — who had always hovered far beyond my reach, idly flicking her conductor's baton as if our struggles bored her — roll desperately out of harm's way.
The gauge dropped just because I'd chuckled a little. Yeah, this circuit's fundamental design is just broken.
At this rate, it really is a circuit built to lose.
Not that I was rubbing anything in.
Where I'd struck, a viscous black substance remained.
BANG!
It exploded, belatedly. I wasn't caught in the blast — except for the fact that the black substance now coated my jumpsuit entirely, and was slowly clinging to my body.
"……W-wait a second. You—"
Didn't want to hear it.
I swung the hammer at Delphinium.
The head of the hammer, too, had grown grotesquely coated in the black substance. Every time I swung it, the substance that had crawled down the handle slowly changed shape. At first it merely swelled in size, little by little; later, jagged spikes began sprouting from it.
By the time it had become something that looked like it should never, ever connect with flesh, Dahlia threw herself in front of Delphinium to shield her.
That wand of hers — the one that used to break my bones with a single careless swing. I'd heard it was made from the wood of some tree on a planet far away. Far harder than any tree on Earth, yet wonderfully receptive to mana, and according to the webtoon, that planet had long ago taken to the skies in wooden sailing ships and pioneered space with them.
Not that any of that mattered right now.
Crack.
"Eh!?"
The wood that met the head of my hammer split with a splintering sound.
And when the hammer struck the ground, the tip of the wand caught between them simply shattered to pieces.
I swung the hammer at Delphinium's panicked face.
WHAM!
The hammer's head connected with Delphinium's skull. There was no sensation of anything breaking or shattering. Her body was protected by magic just as strong as the helmet guarding my head. That's why Blossom can swing a blade that could cut her own body so safely.
BANG!
But pure kinetic force can't simply be waved away.
"Dahlia!"
Rose shouted.
Dahlia went skidding sideways across the floor.
Rose came charging at me, and I drew the hammer back in, gripping it tight in both hands.
Then I spun my body in one swift rotation and swung at the oncoming Rose.
CLANG!
Rose's gauntlet caught the hammer, but it couldn't absorb the sheer energy of its weight.
In the instant her body wavered, I slipped inside her guard and jabbed the end of the hammer's handle into her stomach.
Rose, true to her brawler's nature, didn't back down easily — even dazed and drained from the blow, she swung her fist with all her might into my helmet. Crack — something gave way somewhere, and a fracture spidered across my visor. But it held.
She punched me right where the battery sat.
The battery burst, and Rose and I were both thrown backward. I still hadn't let go of the hammer.
The suit was still mostly intact. Even the cracked part of the visor was unchanged. ……Just how absurdly overbuilt were those gauntlets?
A beam came flying at me, and I sprinted forward with everything I had.
Toward where Blossom was.
Blossom and Iris were both already running my way. Rose, too, shook herself upright in no time and launched her body toward me.
"……Everyone, stop……!"
I heard someone shout from behind, but I didn't stop. I didn't want to. I sent a surge of energy toward the source of that voice. Delphinium, mid-shout, took the hit and was swept off her feet, skidding away across the ground.
Hadn't I lost every single time? Just once — yes, just once, I wanted to win.
There were this many magical girls, and I was still fighting. I still hadn't fallen.
I swung the hammer — and Blossom's face filled my view.
Why did it have to be a magical girl story?
If only the webtoon had been a tokusatsu instead, I wouldn't have had to see the look on Hayun's face.
Deep in Hayun's startled eyes, there was the faintest glimmer of fear.
Hayun was afraid of me.
Well, of course she was. I was smeared head to toe in some strange liquid, soaked in black, sticky goo, brandishing a grotesquely mutated construction hammer.
Besides, none of it would make sense to her.
Why I would charge at her like a madwoman like this.
Frankly, I didn't fully understand it myself yet.
In the end, the blow went wide. I couldn't bring myself to bury the hammer in Hayun's face — even knowing it wouldn't seriously hurt her.
A light round came screaming in from behind.
The magical girls surrounding me dodged.
Hayun, too—
dodged me.
BANG! An explosion went off behind me.
I was too tired now. What did it matter that energy wrapped around my body, if the me inside collapsed?
What had I eaten today? I'd been on edge since morning, so I hadn't eaten much. Hard to use the bathroom in the suit, after all……
It was only natural for Hayun to dodge me. I kept pressing in with threatening attacks; she had no choice.
But the kids at school had always quietly kept their distance from me too. For all sorts of reasons.
And now, in a moment like this. In a moment when it was just me, alone.
God, I'm pathetic.
Hayun doesn't even know who I am right now.
The circuit was spinning like mad.
The black smoke was billowing worse than ever. The energy condensing into matter there overflowed as liquid, dripping down in fat drops. All that talk about the suit being flawless — turns out it was another design flaw after all.
"Haah, haah, haah……"
Was I just tired? I couldn't tell. Maybe not. I'd simply been out of breath for a moment. After a short rest, I felt fine again.
I raised my head.
Everyone was staring at me, eyes wide.
Ah, right. I'd tanked another explosion standing up, hadn't I? I'd taken a light round bigger than anything Iris had fired at me, so it was only natural.
Rose was the first to charge.
I swung the hammer one-handed.
Rose, who had come in with her fist drawn back to strike, hastily crossed both arms in front of her.
BANG!
A groan slipped through Rose's gritted teeth.
I kicked her arms away to knock her back, then swung the hammer at the beams firing toward me. I couldn't block them all. But where they landed, it didn't hurt.
My arms were turning into something like a hard-shelled crustacean. I could still feel my body inside—
Blossom came at me. I caught her descending blade. The shell cracked a little where it struck.
"You — what are you?"
Blossom said.
"What on earth are you—"
She said it staring at me, her face full of bewilderment.
Would she say the same thing even looking at my face? Somehow, I had a feeling she would.
Sparks burst from the circuit.
"Everyone, STOP!!"
Delphinium's scream reached my ears as if from far away.
"That's not the researcher over there!"
I raised the hammer.
"There are explosives in the pillars! Everyone has to get out!"
I turned to look — Delphinium was crawling along the floor, shouting.
"Iris, hurry—"
But before the words could finish, the world before my eyes flooded white.