The Magical Girl You Never See Twice
“Kuhahahat! Magical girls are just little brats, aren’t they?!”
The self-proclaimed Squid Baron.
Among his fellow monsters, he was simply called Squid.
For reasons known only to himself, he was swollen with confidence, bellowing at the top of his lungs without pause. He had no idea that his waterlogged, bubbling voice was already grating on the nerves of a presence far above him in the sky—someone he had yet to notice.
What, exactly, had filled him with such unshakable confidence?
To explain that, the story had to go back to the moment before a monster was ever transmitted down to Earth.
“Hey—you all right?”
“…Guh-hak!”
At the sound of another monster’s voice, Squid’s eyes snapped open.
He was inside the recovery unit of a spaceship that roamed the stars, a place undetectable by human instruments. To the monsters, it was another heart that never stopped beating.
He sat up in a thick slick of viscous fluid—his own black ink, born of tension and stress—spilling from his mouth and soaking the front of his body. His memories were foggy; all that remained was the vague sense that something had been done to him.
Had going to Earth itself been nothing more than a long, drawn-out dream?
“All right, my fellow monster. How many fingers do you see?”
Medic Tentacle, the executive in charge of the recovery room, extended a tangled mass of tentacles in an approximation of a human hand, wiggling them as if inviting Squid to count.
The sharply protruding tips were hard to tally accurately. Squid’s eyes rolled left and right.
“E-eight?”
“Hmm. Ocular function normal. Linguistic function intact as well. Rare!”
The moment he heard the answer, the writhing tentacles vanished into the mouth that sat where a human chin would be, emerged again coated in black ink, and began jotting something down.
Squid felt a prickle of unease.
The recovery units installed on invasion ships were supposed to be perfect—fragments of lost ancestral technology capable of bringing even the dead back to life. Yet Medic Tentacle’s words made it sound as though something were wrong with them.
“R-rare, you say? Is… is there some kind of problem?”
Anxiety clawed at him.
Earth—a planet of abundance that had gone unconquered for so long. The chance to be deployed there, defeat a magical girl, and ultimately claim the glory of invading the planet. He had volunteered without a second thought precisely because, with these recovery units, true death was impossible.
If something was wrong with the units, he could no longer approach Earth with the same carefree attitude.
That was what he thought.
Medic Tentacle, faced with a question that could be fatal to a monster’s morale, immediately waved the opposite cluster of tentacles—still ink-stained—in vigorous denial.
“No, no. The recovery unit itself is fine.”
“I-is that so…?”
The denial was almost too emphatic. Immediately afterward, he supplied the reason he had called the case rare.
“It’s the region you went to… that place is the problem.”
Medic Tentacle clasped his tentacles behind him and manipulated something in the recovery room. Moments later, a translucent panel materialized directly in front of Squid, clear enough to see through to the other side.
It was the hard evidence that backed up the strong denial.
A flat map of Earth stretched wide, its surface painted here and there in green, blue, colorless patches, orange, and deep crimson red.
Colorless, green, blue, orange, red—Squid knew those colors represented danger levels. Before he could even take them in, Medic Tentacle selected one small patch of land and zoomed in rapidly.
“See it? This is the region you visited.”
“Black…?”
At the end of the successive enlargements lay a pitch-black darkness so absolute that even the transparent panel seemed to swallow light. An alien color wedged between the oranges, blues, and greens of neighboring territories. Deeper than Squid’s own ink, deeper even than the starless void of empty space.
“Correct. And of the monsters who have returned from that region… approximately ninety-seven percent report extreme psychological trauma immediately after their first mission and leave the ship at once.”
“Ninety-seven…?!”
“I don’t normally share this much, but as a fellow from a similar homeworld, consider it a bit of friendly advice. No other physical abnormalities, I take it?”
“That’s right. And… the remaining three percent…?”
The remaining three percent.
The instant the question left Squid’s mouth, Medic Tentacle’s gaze flicked, almost involuntarily, toward the door behind him.
RECOVERY ROOM — EXECUTIVES AND AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
NO ENTRY
Squid knew that door and its warning as well. Fellow monsters often spoke of the room beyond it—of mad laughter that sometimes leaked out, of endless groans of agony. Among the crew it was half-jokingly called the torture chamber.
For the briefest fraction of a second, Medic Tentacle’s eyes had gone there. Then they returned to Squid.
“They’re receiving intensive treatment… that’s all I’ll say.”
In that moment Squid understood: the room was no torture chamber. It was the intensive care ward.
Was everyone beyond that door a victim of one single magical girl?
He staggered down from the recovery unit and walked the long corridors of the ship. His first mission had been an utter failure; he had never even managed a proper fight, and he still had no clear idea what had happened to him.
“H-hey! You there!”
While he trudged along dripping ink in despondent little drops, an unfamiliar voice called out.
“Hnnh?”
“You’re the one who went to the Black Zone just the other day, aren’t you?!”
Magical Girl Sun was always the hottest topic among the monsters.
Please don’t let it be my turn this sortie.
I’d offer up everything in the universe as a sacrifice if it meant I wasn’t the one heading into the Black Zone!
Even monsters who claimed not to believe in gods found themselves praying with all their might to the god of luck. For someone to visit that place and return to his own quarters in a single day…
…was nothing short of heroic.
“You crazy bastard—you were amazing!”
“R-really…?”
“Hell yes! I heard that psycho bitch catches monsters alive, plays with them to her heart’s content, then packs as much pain as possible into them before she kills them!”
“If you got murdered by her in an instant and still came back, that means you must’ve been strong enough to force her to use that kind of magic, right?”
“From now on, you’re the one who gets to handle that crazy masked girl’s zone, yeah?!”
Magic? Masked girl?
Squid didn’t fully understand everything his colleagues were saying. A exalted sacrificial lamb. His mind and body already fragile, he was easy prey for the cheers and encouragement surrounding him.
Endless praise poured from every mouth. Cheers and attention he had never once received in his life. He drank deep of that sweet poison called atmosphere, and in his arrogance he even thought:
Maybe… I’m actually strong?
And so the story returned to the present—
—to the exact moment Squid let out that thunderous roar.
Sun, watching the squid monster brim with unearned confidence, tilted her head.
What the hell is this idiot…
She wondered. Had the nerve paralysis from last time wiped his memories clean? Or was this a different monster that simply looked the same? Monsters apparently had species of their own, so it was possible.
Either way, there was no need to fight him head-on.
Drunk on his own confidence and momentum, the squid monster had completely forgotten the aerial ambush from last time. He wasn’t even looking at the sky.
“Let’s circle around behind him and freeze him solid.”
“Okay.”
He had no idea that the crimson nightmare that was his future was already drifting lightly through the air toward his back.
“Shhh.”
Sun pressed an index finger to her lips as she slowly descended from the sky, the soft sound telling Siyeon to stay quiet. Finger to lips, a single “shh”—a universal signal even a kindergartener would understand.
The greatest strategy was always surprise and assassination. Whether the opponent was stronger or weaker, it was the most convenient way to finish things.
She reduced her speed in midair and spoke to Siyeon while the monster still felt distant below.
“Stay quiet until I give you the signal with my face. Then you cast. Got it?”
“Okay…!”
Siyeon understood the chin-jerk signal. One of the most convenient first steps in torture was to rob the body of freedom. Sun could manage it alone in many situations, but having Siyeon freeze a few key spots so the monster couldn’t thrash around made everything far more comfortable.
Sun looked at her and gave two careful little jerks of her chin toward the monster. Siyeon’s magic wand, aimed carefully in that direction, released its spell.
“Moon Shower—!”
“Hwaaaargh—?!”
Just as the freezing hand of death that announced the start of the torture closed around Squid—
—a mechanical clank sounded as the recovery room door opened.
The visitor was none other than the eight-armed monster who often appeared in the conference room.
“Medic Tentacle, are you here?”
“Hmm? Ah, Asura. What brings you? Injured somewhere?”
Medic Tentacle turned at the familiar voice. Finding an unexpected but welcome visitor—someone he could speak with relatively freely—he spread his mass of tentacles in greeting.
“…Has Squid not returned yet?”
“No. Is there a problem?”
Medic Tentacle’s eyes went wide. He had never expected the name of such a low-ranking monster to leave Asura’s mouth. For a fleeting moment he wondered whether the fellow from a similar homeworld had somehow found a path to promotion—then he discarded the thought entirely.
“He volunteered for a second trip to the Black Zone using his own resources this time, so…”
“Oh. Oh no.”
A short, dismayed exclamation.
Among the executives it was common knowledge: the first visit to the Black Zone could still leave a slim chance. Even at a brutal three-percent survival rate, hope existed.
But the second time?
A monster who had already been there, returning a second time to the Black Zone where Sun lived?
There was no exception. No mercy.
The few words Asura added—spoken without the slightest hint of a joke—turned suspicion into certainty and cast a heavy silence over the room.
More than enough time had already passed since Squid’s transmission.
“It’s been five minutes since he was sent down.”
Asura’s expression was grave as he delivered the elapsed time.
Medic Tentacle understood exactly what those words meant.
“I’ll check whether there’s an empty bed in intensive care…”
“Please do.”
Magical Girl Sun.
In the recovery room of the ship, the name they used for her was this:
In the truest sense of the phrase—the magical girl who kills you if you see her twice.