Once Upon a Time, There Was a Friend

Once upon a time, I had a friend.

It wasn't as if I'd never had any friends at all. Back in high school, I'd had one. Just one — but the kind of friend you could actually call close.

Then Mogumogu-dan's invasion kicked into high gear, magical girls started showing up, and I lost contact with that friend. That was already ten years ago.

And now the friend I'd had ten years ago was standing right in front of me.

"I—I'm shocked."

An honest reaction. I really was shocked. From the moment Eve had first appeared in public, she had always been Eve. Not in her magical girl outfit, maybe — but whenever she turned up on television or variety shows, she was always Eve. And it turned out she'd just been walking around transformed the entire time!

Anyway. That was one thing.

"Wow. So the great President of the Magical Girl Association was actually a guy..."

And what was with that slovenly look?

He had that much money and he couldn't even buy some decent clothes and put himself together a little? Hair like a bird's nest, sweatpants with the knees poking through — good lord.

What a sight.

Either way, I had no intention of revealing my identity. Friend or not, I wasn't about to act like I knew him.

I could more or less tell why he'd gone dark all of a sudden, and I had my suspicions — but if you asked whether I was happy enough to see him that I'd go and acknowledge him now, well, I wasn't.

More than anything, he was standing there as his real self, and I couldn't show mine. This wasn't some transformation I could undo. I had simply become a woman. Even if I told him I was that old friend of his, I had no way to prove it.

"Mom, look. That's Daddy, right?"

Kabe tugging on my sleeve snapped me back to reality. And I remembered what I needed to do right now.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

A few shots of Eve as a man.

"H-hey, what are you taking pictures of?!"

"You."

And then a video of Eve frantically transforming into a magical girl, shifting into the Eve I'd always known.

"What the hell are you filming?!"

"You, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠said."

"Hey, delete that right now!"

"Oh?"

I gave my phone a little waggle and smirked. The way Eve's expression shifted with every gesture of mine was a treat.

"I'm not sure who you think you're giving orders to."

This was one of the perks of belonging to an evil organization. Even if I did something bad — even if I knew perfectly well it was bad — I didn't have to wring my hands over it and suffer a guilty conscience.

Just like now.

"So. You were originally a man."

"Yeah..."

Eve's house. True to a rich household, the sofa in the living room was extravagantly fancy. Genuine leather, no doubt. It looked expensive.

And there I sat, in the seat of honor, one arm planted on the armrest like the boss in a mafia movie. Watching Eve fidget beside me on my right only made the feeling more convincing.

"It's fine, Eve. You don't have to worry so much."

Eve's face lit up. Fair enough. The public had no idea Eve was a man. The beautiful, charismatic, first-and-strongest magical girl, Eve — that was the image she'd carried all this time. If word got out that she'd actually been a man, and that she still turned back into one the moment she dropped the transformation, her image would take a serious hit.

"I was going to say Kabe's dad, too... but saying it like that is starting to weird me out."

"That's Daddy~"

"Mhm, mhm. That's right, Kabe. Daddy. He's Daddy."

I smiled at Kabe, who had fetched a big tub of plain yogurt and was shoveling it down like it actually suited her taste. But I couldn't help the discomfort. My body might have been a woman's now, but my head and my heart were still a man's — and calling some kid who'd turned out to be a guy "the baby's father" just didn't sit right with me. If it had been a woman, maybe. But a man?

"Look... I don't particularly plan to use this to blackmail you or anything."

Eve's expression brightened at once. Honestly, she was a beauty. If I hadn't known her real identity, I might have been a little smitten.

"I don't even need to blackmail you. Our Association President will take care of everything on her own, right?"

"Hey!"

"Ah, this probably isn't the time to be raising your voice. I might accidentally take the lock off my phone, you know? I might accidentally lose the thing."

"Nnnggghhh..."

"Don't be like that. You know as well as I do why magical girls and Mogumogu have to fight. I'm not going to order you to throw a match when we attack or anything like that. And besides."

Honestly, even with this leverage, what was I supposed to do with it?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Money? Eve already handled plenty of that for me. Fame? An evil organization boss chasing fame would just be funny. Power? I already had any number of subordinates loyal to me.

"It's not like catching you on this gives me anything useful to demand. Let's just call it a bit of fun."

"You... you mean that...?"

Eve eyed me with deep suspicion.

"Well, don't believe me if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you don't want to. Want me to start making demands right now?"

"N-no. No, it's fine."

"Anyway. That Karin or Margarine or whatever — where's that guardian of yours? I haven't seen hide nor hair of him. Keru's always hanging around me."

"He went to the Light Realm to file a work report. He'll be back in about two days."

"That so."

With Eve more or less sorted out, the questions about Kabe were what remained. She'd chanted some spell I couldn't understand, a black orb had formed from Kabe, and the moment it settled over Eve the transformation had come undone.

"Kabe."

"Mhm."

"Did you know from the start that Daddy was a man?"

"Yep, I knewed it. I knewed as soon as I saw him. That's why he's Daddy."

"Ugh — drool. It's dripping, it's dripping. Eve, a tissue."

I took the tissue Eve handed me and wiped the yogurt running down the corner of Kabe's mouth. She was every bit a child, and yet... how had she known? Nobody else had.

"How did you know?"

"I jus' knewed when I looked."

"Then what was that magic just now?"

"It's dark magic! Kabe can use magic!"

"Aww, is that riiight~"

I didn't think I was going to get any more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠useful answers out of Kabe. I could have asked what kinds of magic she could use, but I barely knew anything about it myself.

Kabe tore across the garden. After being cooped up in that cramped underground base, the feel of actual grass under her feet must have been wonderful — she ran and ran, laughing the whole way. I tossed her a rubber ball, and she was immediately absorbed in playing with it.

"Eve. Didn't you say you were going to explain something?"

"What?"

"You know. The marketability thing."

"Ah. That."

Eve flicked the rubber ball back toward Kabe as it rolled to her feet, then scratched her cheek.

"You've heard about the Two-sided Barrier, right?"

"Yeah. More or less."

"Then I'll go into a little more detail."

Originally, she said, there hadn't been anything like it. When Mogumogu-dan first invaded, there was no such system in place — if people died in an attack, they simply died, and if a building came down, that was real property damage. Magical girls eventually appeared and interception became possible, but casualties and property loss had been unavoidable all the same.

Things changed a great deal once the Two-sided Barrier — a magic unique to magical girls — was developed. When Mogumogu-dan attacked, the magical girls would move to intercept — they actually had the target locations arranged in advance, of course — and set up a Two-sided Barrier. Once the barrier activated, everyone inside it was shifted outside, and anything that collapsed or broke within the barrier was restored to its original state the moment the barrier came down.

And on top of all that, the fighting that went on inside the Two-sided Barrier was perfectly visible from the outside!

Really, wasn't that a little too convenient? An evil organization could invade, and now nobody died and nobody took any damage.

"So it turned into a sport. It had only been under discussion, but then you people found a new Mother, revived, and issued a declaration of war — and those talks suddenly picked up speed."

"In other words, since everything inside the Two-sided Barrier is completely visible, you're going to use magical girls as living billboards?"

Slap a sponsor company's brand image on the back of a magical girl transformation outfit. Stamp a flagship product logo on it.

"There's even talk of putting sponsor product images into the visual effects of finish skills."

"You've got to be kidding me. This is a sport, not a fight."

"There's nothing bad about it, either way. You know this too, Mother — these fights were never about winning or losing. The point is keeping the balance in check. A little side income like this is good for Mogumogu-dan and the magical girls both, isn't it?"

She wasn't wrong.

Which meant there was only one thing I needed to do here.

"What's our cut?"

"Sponsor contract fees get split fifty-fifty. The incentive paid out for each fight is thirty percent to the winner, seventy to the loser. The loser has restoration costs and so on, so it seemed fair to give them a little more."

Not a bad deal for us, considering we were going to lose more often than not. Until now, magical girls had been in a position where they simply couldn't lose, so Mogumogu had been defeated every single time.

And of course they had. Magical girls were specialized for one-versus-many combat to begin with. Main got swept away in two or three of a magical girl's area attacks, and we didn't even have the numbers. If a magical girl lost under those conditions, that would have been the strange part.

But I was here now, so it was worth a shot. I'd mass-produce Main, build them in a variety of styles, and pull off a scene where the magical girls were driven back two or three times out of ten.

"Fine. Those terms work for me. But we're not taking responsibility if a magical girl dies, either."

"That's never happened. You don't need to worry about it."

"There's one thing I'm curious about, though."

"What?"

"What do you mean a brand image shows up in a finish skill?"

Eve thought for a moment, then stood.

"It'll be faster if I just show you."

She rose onto her tiptoes, lifted one hand to cover the corner of her right eye, and stretched the other out in front of her.

I'd seen that pose somewhere before. That "dark flame dragon of my right hand" kind of vibe.

Wow. What even is that line.

A magic circle bloomed across Eve's palm. What slowly took shape from within it was a spear of considerable length. Not that the spear was the problem right now.

"Why is your chant like that..."

At my words, Eve's face went scarlet.

"Sh-shut up! My magic won't activate unless I do this concept!"

Magic that wouldn't fire without a full chuunibyou routine. She really had it rough, in all kinds of ways.

"Anyway, this is my unique weapon — the Radiant Divine Spear. I'll show you what the effect looks like, so watch closely."

The spear didn't have much in the way of ornate decoration, but it threw off a strangely dazzling light. Eve spun it a few times, then drove it into the ground.

"H-hey, stop..."

"Don't... please stop..."

I wanted to clap my hands over my ears.

Dozens of spearheads rose into the air around Eve. Arrayed around the Radiant Divine Spear she'd wound back to shoulder height, they all locked onto the space in front of her at once. Then Eve thrust, and the spears shot forward as if some invisible target were waiting there.

And from within that storm, a rainbow-colored aura bloomed in a great rush — and slowly, steadily, began to take on a shape.

"That's... an energy drink, isn't it...?"

It absolutely was. The aura that had erupted as the spearheads struck home was gradually resolving itself into the form of a beverage can.

"Yep. That drink. The one where you borrow tomorrow's stamina to spend today. This is how it works — the magical girl plays billboard. Minimum exposure counts per fight will probably go into the contract terms, but the paperwork is still in the draft stage, so the conditions will get adjusted."

I had nothing to say.

Wasn't this a little too capitalist...?

"The stronger a magical girl is, and the flashier her skills, the better the odds a good sponsor will attach to her. Besides this, they're apparently looking at things like sports betting too, but that needs a legal review, so I don't know much about it yet."

Capitalism wasn't a bad thing. It really wasn't a bad thing, I knew that.

It was just... something about it felt a little...

"Got it? So when you raid Itaewon a month from now, you need to make it as flashy as you can."

You people are the villains here, right? Right?