Eight at Once
Hearing Teddy's unbelievable words, I grabbed my mask, kicked open the front door, and bolted outside.
Faced with a reality I simply could not accept, there was only one target nearby I could take it out on, so I snapped at him in pure irritation.
"Talk straight. Is this for real? Three of them?"
"I'm telling you it's real! Have you ever seen me lie about this stuff? Uh-oh, there's another one."
I wanted to deny it, but it was reality. For all that Teddy was a total washout, he had never once lied about monsters—zero times. And since he wasn't currently lost in gallery-scrolling mania the way he had been last time, I had no choice but to accept the truth I didn't want and move fast.
"Ah, fuck! I knew things had been too quiet lately!"
"Four, five! Oh for crying out loud!"
Cursing, I burst out through the main entrance of the apartment complex. Teddy's radar, which only ever seemed to work properly at times like this, kept racking up the numbers of detected contacts. Even he couldn't take it anymore and joined me in swearing.
The usual transformation spots that were always so conveniently empty were hard to find today, thanks to adults cooling off from the heat in the playground pavilion.
"Sun!"
In the corner of a stretch of cars illegally parked every which way along the street—right around the time Teddy announced that six monsters had appeared—I finally managed to transform and take to the sky.
There was no time for leisurely torture. I didn't care what the news or the articles said about magical girls. The point was that it bothered the people nearby, so I needed to wrap this up as fast as possible.
"Hey, over there! Over there!"
"Die, you piece of shit!"
Unable to process the sudden change in circumstances, I turned vicious. Pouring every bit of that power into the drop, I crushed a monster under the full force of my descent, leaving a massive crack in the ground.
Whatever it had looked like before, not even a shape remained. Before it could even scatter into magic powder, I shot straight back into the sky and asked Teddy for the next one's location.
"Where?!"
"Over there, over there!"
The numbers kept climbing. Aside from the one I'd already dealt with, seven monsters still remained. Taking them one by one on the ground would have been more thorough, sure—but was I short on power, or short on time?
"Fuck this, I can't even be bothered to land! Beam—!"
From the third monster onward I simply sniped them with precision beam bombardment from the air. Watching the ground turn into neat craters and the remains dissolve into magic powder, I repeated the process to the next location.
In the end, from the moment the first monster appeared, it took a combined total of sixteen minutes and forty-nine seconds. That was how long it took to wipe out every last one of the eight monsters that had shown up in our area.
Even after finishing, it somehow didn't feel finished. I perched on the edge of a building rooftop and asked Teddy,
"Any more?"
"No, not for now…"
"Ah, shit. What a day of bullshit labor…"
At Teddy's words that sealed it as confirmed, I flopped backward and sprawled flat on the roof of some nameless apartment building. Had they all popped some kind of drug? Things had been quiet lately, sure, but what the hell was this?
Still lying there, I rolled only my eyes, snagged the floating Teddy, and pulled him right up in front of my face.
"Hey. What the hell is going on?"
"I-I really don't know… This is a first for me too. I've never even heard of anything like this."
"So I'm the first again? Damn it all…"
Faced with the genuinely bewildered look on Teddy's face that said he truly had no idea, I released the hand holding him and let my right arm drop to the floor where I'd been holding it up.
Sprawled on my back against the apartment rooftop, the smell of the green waterproof paint baking under the sun only made my miserable situation stand out more sharply.
Normally, being first at something ought to feel good when it was for a positive reason. Being first only ever in the worst possible ways left me in a thoroughly foul mood. With nowhere for the resentment buried under the anger to go, I had no idea where I was even supposed to dump it.
"Looks like nothing else is going to show. We should head back."
"Haah, yeah…"
Listening to Teddy's cautious guess, I sat up with a short sigh and headed home.
Surely it wouldn't be like this next time.
The second I got home I snatched up my smartphone and flopped onto the bed. Even before opening any community boards, the search engine main page was already lined with fresh news articles. Of course there was no way the story of the eight monsters that had just appeared wouldn't be there.
Every media outlet that could sink its teeth into the story was already tearing into it without missing a beat. It felt a bit like a slab of raw meat tossed into an Amazon lake full of piranhas.
"Mari, are you tired?"
"Huh… No, no, don't worry about it."
At the voice drifting up from the bed on the first floor that I couldn't even see, I waved a hand dismissively, told her not to mind, and pulled my gaze away from the smartphone. Truth was, I felt ready to die from exhaustion…
Still, I had to make sure Siyeon didn't have anything to worry about. As long as the monsters didn't pull this again, it would be fine.
As long as they didn't pull this again…
But why all of a sudden with the monsters like this?
Along with that thought, I suddenly found myself curious about the reason for the simultaneous appearances. Should I have captured the eighth one alive and asked?
Not that I could grab one that had already turned to powder and vanished. At the time I'd been too busy rushing to finish them off, thinking another one might pop up any second, so the idea was left as nothing but regret.
If this happens while I'm at school, it'll be a real problem…
"Tsk."
I scowled and clicked my tongue as I turned over a situation I desperately hoped would never happen. It was the season when even the nights were starting to feel muggy. Around the time I opened the veranda door to let a little cool air into the house—
Ah, for real.
As if on cue, the stench of nicotine wormed its way in and made my nose wrinkle. Just when I was wondering whether I was really out there wiping out monsters for people like this, I thought it over again and realized that since I was getting paid, it wasn't exactly pure altruism for humanity.
Money was the best. Helping people was just a side benefit.
"Haaaahm."
My body felt especially sleepy early today after moving around far more than usual. Still, I figured I should at least eat dinner before sleeping, so I asked Siyeon what she wanted.
"Pizza!"
"Pizza? What kind?"
"Anything!"
Watching Siyeon decide the type of food but then leave the flavor up to pure chance, I sank into another round of deep consideration. Bulgogi and pepperoni, the ones that happened to catch my eye, would do. A size big enough for Teddy and the Sea Snake Mascot to eat their fill, and enough left over for tomorrow's breakfast too.
After placing the order, I closed my eyes for a moment. I'd only meant to rest them briefly, but my consciousness started to drift away as if I were sinking into something.
I really can't keep doing this…
With that worry, Mari decided she would just sleep until the pizza arrived. And as if to mock that worry, the interior of the monster spaceship was in the full atmosphere of a festival on Earth.
On a normal day, the recovery room should have been filled with the screams of pain and suffering—or mad laughter—from monsters who had visited the Black Zone. Now the monsters waking from the recovery devices were embracing each other with a friendship that transcended species and gender, roaring with joy.
"Wooooooo!! We did it—!"
"I died instantly! Instantly, I tell you!"
"This actually works! Who came up with this idea?!"
"This is no time to stand around! Let's go tell the others!"
Watching the monsters pour out of the recovery room in a noisy rush, Medic Tentacle scratched his round head with a hand made of bundled tentacles. Seeing combatants who felt gratitude and even joy at dying in an instant left even his own mood complicated. Watching them charge out without so much as gathering data on Sun, he crossed his arms and added a few words.
"Hmm. Since when did our fine soldiers become suicide commandos?"
"It can't be helped. It is the Black Zone, after all."
One of the recovery room monsters answered Medic Tentacle's mutter. The sheer scale of the terror the words "Black Zone" held for monsters made even Medic Tentacle feel it all over again. He did respect their commendable efforts to try overcoming her, but their frequent incomprehensible demands were simply troublesome.
"Last time it was 'please make us suicide bombs,' of all things…"
"Better to have a bomb go off from inside your own body than get caught by that woman."
When he voiced one of those incomprehensible demands, another recovery room monster immediately contradicted him. The back-and-forth continued.
"…If you're part of the recovery room staff, shouldn't you be taking my side?"
Medic Tentacle turned to look at the monster, slightly miffed and half-incredulous as he asked. He was, after all, their undisputed direct superior. Contrary to his expectation that an apology would follow, what came back from his subordinate was yet another unexpected question.
"Hmm. Then, Medic Tentacle, sir—would you like to go there bare-bodied yourself?"
A sudden question on a topic he hadn't seen coming.
"……."
Medic Tentacle shut his mouth at the question that had flown at him out of nowhere. Go there bare-bodied? Even if he'd had hundreds of mouths, not one of them would have been able to readily answer "yes" to that.
Even so… a suicide bomb is a bit much. A bomb for self-detonation is…
Unable to answer the question that had been thrown at him, Medic Tentacle could only offer a timid mental rebuttal as he kicked at the empty air with tentacles shaped into feet and muttered to himself.