The Search Beyond the Wall
"Sis~ I'm sorry... you were off duty, and we couldn't handle it properly..."
"No excuse..."
The two girls trailed after Topaz in a dejected slump, offering their apologies as they went. Whether they were trying to advertise the fact that they were twins or not, they wore their hair in matching twintails, and their faces were alike — but the colors of those twintails and the atmospheres they carried made them look like opposites, even with those similar faces.
A Magical Girl could only begin her apprenticeship after turning twenty and receiving her license. These two had only been apprentices for a few months, and despite being adults, a youthful softness still clung to them. On top of that, identical twins ought to have been identical — and yet the red-haired girl was far more generously built, which somehow inspired a vague, lingering sense of pity.
One had a voluptuous figure but a mischievous, innocent air that made her look younger than her face suggested. The other was expressionless, so that at a glance she seemed older than the redhead, her demeanor calm — though her figure was rather slight. This being an erotic-game world, their magical girl costumes were high-leg by default, much like Topaz's. Fortunately or unfortunately, they covered a great deal more fabric.
"Ahaha, it's fine! You bought time without letting the damage spread. Even a full-fledged magical girl would have a hard time stalling a monster that popped up in the middle of the city without anyone getting hurt. So have a little confidence!"
"After all that effort holding the thing down, she blew it away with a single punch."
"Ahaha~ If Cherry just puts in a little more effort, monsters like that won't be much of a threat."
Even as she offered the red-haired girl — Cherry — those words of comfort, Topaz never slowed, pressing on toward the wall.
"A Jewel-rank magical girl isn't something you become through effort..."
"Hey! Aqua!!"
The blue-haired girl muttered it like a complaint against Topaz's encouragement, and Cherry flared up on her behalf instead. The tone was almost sarcastic, but Topaz showed no sign of taking offense. She simply stopped walking, turned, and looked back at the two of them.
"Aqua, why did you become a magical girl?"
"Intent of the question is unclear."
"Ugh! Seriously, why are you like this to Siiiis!!"
Aqua kept grumbling, still thoroughly unimpressed, and Cherry fidgeted in a helpless panic, trying to shut her sister up. Topaz only waited, smiling that usual, sunnily innocent smile, saying nothing until Aqua answered.
"Nngh... b-because I want to protect people."
It wasn't a scolding and it wasn't a rebuke — just a smile — and Aqua couldn't hold out against it. She said it like the words embarrassed her.
"Yep! That's enough. Aqua's going to get strong."
"Haa... so you're saying—"
Aqua had been about to spit another complaint at Topaz's recycled lecture on grit, but the sight of that one-hundred-percent cloudless smile stopped the words in her throat. She swallowed them and said nothing more.
"Uweh... Sis Topaz is scary."
"Concur. There's a reason people say Jewel-ranks each have a screw loose."
"Ehk?! Why? I just said something really nice as your mentor, didn't I?!"
Aqua and Cherry avoided meeting Topaz's eyes and, this time, took the lead themselves, hurrying toward the wall.
"Ah! Wait for me~!"
When they reached the wall, the usual leisurely atmosphere was gone. The place felt restless, unsettled. Soldiers shouted urgent orders and ran this way and that, and in the middle of it a familiar face stepped forward, greeting Topaz and briefing her on the situation.
"Ah, Lady Topaz. Seeing you again after just one day."
"Yahoo~ Soldier mister. Yesterday's patrol was all clear, but one of them crawled into the city, so I came to check."
"We received the report as well. We suspected a dimensional rift might have opened somewhere near the outside of the wall, and we're searching the area now. From what we've heard, other cities have also reported rifts opening beyond their walls."
"Eeeh~ Isn't that a huge deal?"
Cherry blurted it out, startled, and the soldier added an explanation with a bitter smile.
"Haha. Unfortunately, it seems our city was the only one that failed to catch it early. Which is why we're getting thoroughly chewed out right now..."
He let the words out like a man deflated, some buried resentment pressed down beneath them, then finished the rough outline of the situation and pulled out a tablet, bringing up a map.
"The unstable zone within a three-kilometer radius of the outer wall — anywhere a dimensional rift might reasonably have opened — is currently being searched by recon drones and by magical girls and Heroes who specialize in detection. Lady Topaz, as a precaution, we'd like you to search a portion of the area beyond that three-kilometer line."
He manipulated the tablet, marked a section of the map, and transmitted the terrain data to Topaz.
"Whoa. If it doesn't turn up near here, that's going to be a real problem. That search zone is no joke..."
Cherry peered over a shoulder at the marked area and muttered it like she'd just seen a ghost.
"We only have to sweep the zone they assigned us and we're done. The soldier misters won't get a proper rest until they actually find it, though."
"Whoa, that's awful..."
"Sympathy noted."
"Alright — for the soldier misters! For the citizens, too — let's do our best!"
At Topaz's sunnily ringing cry, Cherry and Aqua fell in behind her with the air of people who had already lost the argument.
They threw themselves into the search for hours after that. They found no dimensional rift. They didn't even feel the faintest trace of the alien mana that would have leaked from one.
"...Several hours have already passed, and there's been no separate contact. It's reasonable to conclude there is nothing near the outer wall. The complete absence of mana also makes it highly likely the rift has already closed."
"Mmm~ Yeah, it does seem that way, doesn't it?"
"Ahaha, this is a bit of a problem~"
Even with the search going nowhere, Topaz was still wearing that usual cloudless smile — and Cherry and Aqua felt a strange chill crawl over them. They hurried to add something, anything, to soothe her.
"W-well, our zone is almost done anyway!!"
"Affirmative. We should be able to finish the search within ten minutes."
"Mm♪ That's a silver lining, at least. Sorry about the soldier misters, though~"
The peculiar pressure only grew heavier. Cherry shot Aqua a look.
This is because you were being so cheeky! Sis is mad, isn't she!!
Affirmative. We're completely fucked.
"Hmm~? What's with you two?"
The twins had been communicating with nothing but their eyes, the way twins do, when Topaz suddenly asked — puzzled by how quiet Cherry and Aqua had gone. Both of them froze like frogs that had just locked eyes with a snake.
H-hurry up and apologize!!
I-I want to... the words won't come out... she's scary...
Topaz was smiling. She was definitely smiling. And yet irritation rolled off her face in waves, and the two of them clung to each other, shivering, thinking that the old saying about how terrifying a kind person is when they get angry existed for a reason.
"A-apologies... I was being insolent earlier and complained, I-I'm sorryyyy...."
Aqua wrung the words out of herself like she was on the verge of tears. Topaz only tilted her head, looking puzzled.
"Mm...?"
Aqua took that to mean why are you apologizing all of a sudden, and a cold sweat broke out on her.
"S-siiiis~ I'll apologize too, so... Aqua, forgive meee~ Hwaaaah~"
Cherry, who had been watching in a helpless fidget, burst into tears and pleaded with Topaz — and this time it was Topaz who broke into a cold sweat.
"Eh? G-girls? Why are you crying...?"
"Hwaaaah~"
"Kh-hhk... knngh..."
Cherry had well and truly broken down, and Aqua was fighting with everything she had not to do the same — though at this point it was hard to argue she wasn't already crying. Topaz was thoroughly, genuinely flustered.
Topaz was simply worried about the tentacle she had left home alone. Inwardly, she had been hoping the search would wrap up early so she could go back. She had been giddy at the thought of picking up where they had left off and enjoying those unfinished acts even more thoroughly. As the search dragged on, the smoldering remainder of her unspent lust had risen back up and put her on edge — and she could not, for the life of her, understand why her juniors had burst into tears.
Sweating, she explained that she hadn't been upset with them at all, that she'd just gotten irritable because there was something she wanted to do when she got home and now she couldn't. She soothed them until, at last, she managed to get them to stop crying.
"Sis, sis! What were you gonna do that you were so disappointed about?! Or we could do it together tomorrow?"
True to her lively nature, Cherry flipped her mood in an instant and came bouncing back with the question, all excitement — and Topaz felt a fresh cold sweat break out.
How was she supposed to say that her bad mood had been because of lust, and that the object of that lust was a tentacle monster she was supposed to be exterminating? And doing it together... would mean offering her brand-new magical girl juniors to a monster with her own hands.
The idea was more appealing than she had expected. Her face went slack, stupidly vacant.
"Sis..?"
"Hah?!"
Cherry's voice yanked her back to herself in a hurry.
"Ahaha, it's a little personal. Let's finish checking the remaining zone and head home~!"
"Aww, that's too bad. Then we're getting a meal together next time, okay?"
"Yeah, I promise!"
"Yahoo! Aqua, Sis said she'll eat with us!"
"Mm. As an apology, I'll treat everyone then."
"Aww~ I already said I don't mind."
The mood turned warm and easy again, and they swept the remaining zone.
"Done~!!"
"Searches are still far too boring."
"Ahaha, but it's the most basic thing, so—....?"
They had loosened up completely, already thinking it was over, already turning for home — and in that instant Topaz felt a wrongness and every nerve in her body went taut.
"Something's wrong..."
"?"
The two of them, still only apprentice magical girls, apparently felt nothing. They only stared at Topaz, puzzled by what she was doing. Topaz hunted for the source of the dissonance.
Something that ought to have been there was missing. An ineffable, subtle feeling she couldn't quite name.
Mana...?
Ordinary places had no mana. But this was clustered terrain where dimensional rifts opened often, and compared to a normal location, a faint wash of mana across the whole area was the baseline. They were away from the outer wall, yes — but even so, there should have been at least a trace. Here, there was not even that.
To feel the wrongness more clearly, she reached not with mana but with the sixth sense of a transcendent body, and something registered. In the same breath she shoved Cherry and Aqua aside and brought her guard up.
"Kyaa?!"
"What?!"
"Hup!"
The two of them startled. Topaz did not. She blocked the incoming attack with a calm, almost casual expression and flowed straight into a counter.
"Oh my, this is a headache~ I didn't expect a Jewel-rank to be here."
"A Witch..."
If a certain tentacle had seen what she was wearing, he would have lost his mind. Whether the thing even qualified as clothing was an open question: she wore nothing but a sheer full-body stocking. A black-haired fallen woman hung in the sky, soaring on mechanical wings, looking down on Topaz and her companions with a cold, aristocratic smile. She looked less like a Witch than a fallen angel.
"Mm~ Fighting you would be exhausting for me too... How about it? Pretend you didn't see me and I'll let you live."
"I refuse."
"Oh my, unexpected. Are you going to be alright lugging those lumps around? Those things lying there like insects, crushed under my mana?"
"Nngh...!"
"Humiliating...!!"
"You're the one looking away, lady."
"?!"
The Witch had been looking down on Cherry and Aqua, goading them — and Topaz closed the distance in a blink and blasted her as far as she could throw her.
"Both of you! Get to the wall! Now!"
Topaz didn't wait for an answer. She vanished toward the direction she had thrown the Witch, gone from their sight in an instant, as if she had folded the earth itself beneath her feet.
"Th-that's... Sis at full power...!"
"This is not the time to zone out! I already called for backup! We need to get away immediately!"
"Aaa!! Okay, okay!! Full speed!!"
The girls started to move — and in that instant—
KRA-KOOOOOM!!!
A colossal flash tore the air, and the explosion followed it. Even so, the girls did not look back. They tore away from the place that had become a battlefield at full speed, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and Topaz so they would not get in her way.