Trying to Change the Genre of This Novel - 5
Fujimoto Heavy Industries' No. 5 logistics warehouse stood empty.
The underground storage linked to it had been hastily converted into a research facility, and to plug every possible leak in security, the company's official excuse was that the warehouse was under repair. Aside from a bare handful of personnel and guards, every employee's access was now strictly barred.
"Here for the shift change."
"Yeah. Nothing to report."
"Yes, sir!"
Inside the cavernous space once used to load heavy machinery and shipboard equipment tens of meters across, guards from Fujimoto Security — the division that handled the jobs the company could never let the public see — clustered around the corridor leading down to the underground warehouse, holding a fortress-tight watch.
Flicker.
Flicker.
"……"
Dusk had long since deepened into full dark, and with the connection to the central power plant severed under the cover story of repairs, only the makeshift work lights illuminated the warehouse interior.
"Is the wind making them flicker?"
"Probably."
Flicker.
Flicker.
The facility had been thrown together in a rush, and the equipment had been smuggled in through unofficial channels — no small number of the pieces were defective.
"And now this one's completely dead."
"Headquarters, this is SP-3. The wind's taken out our lights. Requesting a replacement."
[Copy. Hold your position.]
"Copy."
The guard tucked his radio back into his belt and switched on the flashlight issued to the special security detail.
Silver.
A masked girl.
The instant he clicked the flashlight on, a silver-haired girl stood before him.
"What the—?!"
The guard fumbled the pistol from his belt and fired.
Bang! Bang!
Bang, bang—
"Mmgh…!"
"Whoa! Aren't those gunshots?"
The firefight broke out right at the entrance, yet it carried faintly all the way to the girls' dormitory — the most secluded corner of a research facility already buried deep underground.
"Kyoko, it's time. Let's move."
"You got it, sir!"
The moment the girls in the room rose to their feet, a voice poured from the speakers installed in the dormitory ceiling.
[STOP! What do you think you're doing! Sit down, NOW!]
[One? Only one intruder?]
[Find out which company sent them!]
The firefight seconds before had thrown the situation control room into a panic, and the monitors' broadcast came through a chaos of shouting, static, and overlapping noise.
"Have a taste of this, sir!"
Kyoko raised her fist and shook it at each of the four dormitory cameras in turn. The thought that they were finally getting out had her grinning from ear to ear, teeth bared in delight.
"Kyoko! Quit screwing around and get out here!"
"Ah, roger…"
"I'll cover every one of you. Let's move — fast!"
"Yes! Boss!"
"Th-thank you, Boss."
Kyoko, who had been grinning just moments ago, felt reality crash back down at Ichika's words, and tension began to close in around her.
Gulp.
She forced the fear down — and then she ran, out into the open with the rest of them.
The moment I confirmed the test-subject girls were on the move, I peeled my consciousness away again and shifted to my clone fighting at the main gate.
Bang bang bang bang bang!
In time with the gunfire, flashes strobed from the muzzles, lighting the dark warehouse in stuttering bursts.
Between each flash came the frantic footsteps of the security team.
I didn't want to kill ordinary people who were only following orders.
I had struck in the dark, even killing the lights — and yet beyond knocking out the first guard with my fist, I had nothing to show for it. I'd balked at unleashing my psychic power on a civilian, half-convinced I might rip their mind out like a cork from a bottle, so I had tried hand-to-hand combat instead…
Bang bang bang bang bang!
…and the instant one man came under attack, the other five scattered and opened fire all at once.
I'd hesitated to flush them out with illusions because I couldn't control the variables.
As it turned out, this had been the worse move. With that thought, I spread my hand and unfolded five-colored light into a shield, broad and solid.
Bang bang bang bang bang!
Clang-clatter.
Barred by the veil, the rounds crumpled and rained down. Keeping the barrier up to swallow the bullets, I sprinted for the nearest guard.
Tap.
I kicked off the ground, and the distance collapsed in a heartbeat.
A startled breath.
Trembling eyes.
"Kgh!"
Blocked by a veil blazing like a prism, the guard had seen his bullets were useless — so he aimed to break my stance instead, shoulder lowered, and charged.
"Uraaaagh!"
Even as the highly trained giant came barreling in with a tackle, my sharpened mind read the scene with slow-motion clarity.
A low hum.
I could even hear the air shudder as his massive frame flew toward me, arms reaching to seize me.
Between the limbs of the oncoming giant, the men around us had their guns trained, watching me.
"Not a chance!"
"Urk!"
With minimal footwork I slipped past the guard — and the world snapped back into focus.
The guard whiffed harmlessly by.
Beyond him, another squad had already secured cover.
Before they could fire, I clamped a fishbowl-shaped illusion veil over each of their faces. Encased in spherical veils like astronauts, the guards clawed desperately to peel them off.
"Agh, what IS this thing?!"
"It won't come off!"
"Suppress it! Suppress it, I said!"
Bang bang bang bang bang!
Blinded by some unknowable force, the guards tipped into instant panic and blasted away whatever they had.
Clatter.
Inside a field of vision they no longer had.
Even so, a few rounds found their mark by sheer luck.
But each one crumpled against the veil and fell as worthless scraps of lead.
Tink! Tink! Tink!
When the last of the bullets clattered down, I closed in on each guard — still fumbling to reload on pure instinct, blind as they were — and shoved them one by one.
"Uwaaah?!"
"Damn it!!"
Staggering, flailing for balance, they dropped their magazines — and froze.
Clatter-rack!
Scrabbling frantically for the magazines that had fallen with a heavy, loaded thud, the men soon gave up on shooting altogether and simply charged blindly at the sound of footsteps.
"Wha—?! My magazine!!"
"Bullets are useless! Rush him!"
"Stop him!"
"STOP him!!"
Like detectives swarming to make an arrest, the whole team hurled itself at me at once.
Watching them come, I cast Blink.
Whoosh!
The distance collapsed again in an instant.
I slipped out through my own shadow pooled beneath their feet, and the guards toppled over one another in a heap. Then I slapped each of them once, lightly, across the head.
Smack.
"Ugh?!"
"You son of a—!"
"Nnnngh…"
…As I suspected, I'd fumbled the power control a little; they were all shivering head to toe in pain, unable to move a muscle.
Unorthodox power use and illusions could sow plenty of chaos, but non-lethal suppression with my ability — even with a 3-star magical girl's transcendent physique and reflexes — took far longer than I'd expected.
And even if I'd tried luring them out with illusions, the guards at the entrance obviously wouldn't have budged.
I couldn't come up with bait convincing enough to make them all move at once, so in my impatience I'd simply charged in — and this had only made things worse.
No. The real problem is my own green-ness — my inability to commit, decisively, to subduing the enemy…
I'd thought I made my peace with the idea of killing the day I came to this world.
But when it came to butchering guards who posed no real threat, revulsion welled up in spite of myself. Thanks to that, this meaningless back-and-forth had dragged on far longer than it should have.
And controlling seven clones at once is driving me insane. I can't even spare a thought for the security cameras.
Six wildly fluctuating stock charts to track at once — a task hard enough seated, in total silence, with my full concentration — felt like a genuinely diabolical difficulty setting.
Seizing the lull in the fight, I peeled my consciousness away to check on my clones.
Ichika's group had frozen when the guard blocking the stairwell opened fire.
Bang bang bang bang bang!
Clatter.
But the rounds were swallowed by a veil one of my clones threw up — and Ichika immediately unleashed her psychic power on the shooter, sending him tumbling head over heels down the stairs.
Every time they met a guard in the corridors, one of my clones raised a veil and Ichika took the man down.
Sometimes with movements adapted from martial arts techniques. Sometimes by kicking off the walls and vaulting overhead to scatter her enemies' gazes.
That was how they fought through, subduing everyone in their path.
She fights well.
To her, the guards were enemies she had to engage with everything she had for her friends' sake — and her responses were decisive and swift. If anything, that decisiveness ended the fights faster, and spared more lives because of it.
"……"
Bold action beats clumsy hesitation.
That was the lesson my first real fight had taught me.
Cursing my own inexperience, I shifted my consciousness elsewhere.
To the one preparing the gaze-steering for when everyone came out of the warehouse.
Far off, from what had to be the security headquarters several hundred meters away, dozens of armed guards with submachine guns were piling into vehicles and racing toward us at full speed.
Time to get out.
I confiscated the pistols from the guards collapsed on the floor, hurled them all away, and waited for Ichika's group to come up the stairs.
Tap-tap-tap—
"Hahh… hahh…"
"Welcome."
"Hahh… where are we?"
"Tokyo Bay. I'll explain everything later — for now, let's get out of here."
"Right. Let's go!"
In her entire life, Ichika had never once run at full sprint, without a single stop, for tens of minutes like this.
A colossal port with no end in sight no matter how far she ran. Dozens of giant cranes. Tokyo's night skyline glittering far in the distance.
Only when she crossed in front of the logistics warehouse and saw the signboard — Fujimoto — did she finally understand who had caged them all.
Fujimoto…!
It had only been some ten days, but the memory of eleven girls starved and wrung dry to their very limits, in shifts, was one she would never forget as long as she lived.
All that remained now was to get her comrades out alongside her.
Just as Ichika allowed herself that thought—
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pop!
"Kgh?!"
"Whoa!"
"Eek!"
A flash. Searchlights so brilliant the world whited out before her eyes.
Every searchlight ringing the No. 5 logistics warehouse — pitch black only moments ago — flared to life at once, sweeping this way and that before locking its beams onto Ichika's group.
A screeching, ear-splitting, high-pitched wail of an alarm.
Under that wail, the searchlights kept every movement of the escapees in merciless view — and in the same instant, the on-site guards who until now hadn't been able to find them in the dark came charging all together.
Screeech!
"It's HQ's reinforcement unit!"
"Grab them!"
"Subdue them!!"
"Weapons free!!"
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
From beyond a hundred meters, more than ten black trucks were disgorging armed guards wearing the Fujimoto Security mark, running to tighten a closing ring around Ichika's group.
"Hey! What do we do now?!"
"We're done for, sir!!"
Despairing inwardly, Ichika still believed the fox-eyed girl who had proposed the escape must have a plan.
The girl had located a facility whose very existence Ichika herself hadn't known, and wielded abilities on an entirely different plane. If anyone could find a way out, surely it was her.
"Come to think of it, if I use that… we won't need the fireworks after all. The light will hide everything, so as for the clones…"
Through the noise of the men closing in to seize them, the fox-eyed girl shouted to Ichika.
"I'm releasing the clones now — trust me and just run! Keep your eyes on the ground!"
"What?!"
Swoosh.
The clones that had been masquerading as the fox-eyed girl and her companions vanished like a dream. She'd asked for their trust — but anxiety came flooding in all the same.
"Wh-what do we do, sir?!"
"RUN!! There's no other way!! RUN!!"
And Ichika ran.
Light. Noise. Shouting. Everything tangled into a dizzying whirl — and just as the guards closed in close enough that she could see the expressions on their faces—
Unique Skill of the Magical Girl of [Deception]
⟨ Phantasmal World ⟩
Enormous glass marbles hung in the sky.
The power to warp reality itself. A grand delusion.
"Wh-what on earth is that?!"
"What IS that thing?!"
Marbles each what looked like five meters across descended slowly from the heavens — and scattering the searchlights' beams, they began to pour out prismatic, riotously multicolored light.
Light.
Light flooding everything before her eyes.
"Aaaagh! My eyes!!"
"I-I can't see!!"
"Fire! FIRE! Just fire!!"
Bang bang bang bang bang bang!
Rattle-rattle-rattle!
Shadows danced.
Flame sang.
People screamed.
A harbor at midnight — and there, lights of every color in the spectrum vied with one another, scrambling the guards' perception.
And the silver girl was smiling.
"HQ! HQ! Cut the power!! Don't argue with me, just cut it!!!"
Darkness.
All the kaleidoscopic light that had filled the world a heartbeat before vanished at once — and the world plunged into black.
"Now the fireworks won't go to waste!"
the girl cried.
And light surged up again.
Stars made of flame. The prison of light beginning anew.
Fwoooosh—!
Pop—!
A night sea embroidered with burning stars. Light spilling out between the glass marbles. Figures dancing amid the dizzying glow.
A girl deceiving every watching eye.
Ichika knew she would never forget that sight for the rest of her life.