Kabukicho Melee - 1
July 18th.
"Hikari-chan! I became a magical girl!"
"Hmm... Hana-chan, you were already a magical girl, though."
"Eee! That's not it!"
Hana had sprinted all the way here to show off, and now she looked positively deflated that no one got it. She stamped her tiny feet in place and gestured frantically, begging me to catch on already.
'Even with all that gesturing, I honestly have no clue.'
For a while, the quiet cafe echoed with nothing but the sound of her stomping.
Ichika and Kyoko, who had been lounging around forever, had apparently gotten bored of teasing me and were now slumped in a corner of the cafe where I worked, watching TV with blank eyes.
Amid all that, Hana, who lived near the cafe, had suddenly come running in, bursting to brag about something.
A magical girl.
Something to brag about.
Since her debut...
"Oh... don't tell me?"
"Yep!"
Swish!
The moment Hana adorably raised one hand, the side tail her mother had tied for her swayed like a puppy's wagging tail.
"Transform!"
She cried out in a voice bursting with excitement as she pulled out her yellow Glass Star — and there, the starlight born of her Blooming was shining brilliantly.
A glimmer of starlight.
A yellow flash.
Yellow starlight burst forth from the Glass Star like an explosion, engulfing Hana completely and remaking her outfit.
An Awakened Natural 1-Star Magical Girl of [Swiftness].
Sato Hana's Blooming.
A yellow fluorescent windbreaker.
A white shirt shimmering with faint starlight.
Black shorts flecked with yellow stardust.
And running shoes glittering with yellow star stickers, practically itching to dash off toward somewhere far, far away.
A girl draped in starlight.
A yellow meteor.
'Huh... wait, her hair?'
Yellow.
Astoundingly, after transforming, Hana's hair had turned the exact same yellow as her own Glass Star.
"Huh...? Kids these days change their hair color when they transform?"
"You ARE a kid these days, though."
"Leader, don't sweat the small stuff. You sound like an old man."
"......"
Ichika must have finally gotten curious about all the commotion, because she shuffled over and plunked herself down next to us, scratching her butt the whole way. Kyoko followed suit, sneakily scratching her own back as she joined in.
'These two really are like little cousins, the way they carry themselves.'
Both Ichika and Kyoko were actually quite cute, but their sloppy, careless attitude — indoors and out — made it hard to see. Kyoko at least made an effort in front of others; Ichika was simply the wild itself.
"Waah~ If a little squirt like her can Bloom, then I'm still so far off, sir..."
"You were worried about THAT?"
"I'm a magical girl too, you know."
Just as she said, Kyoko still hadn't managed to Bloom her own star, so her orange Glass Star remained in its unopened state.
Comparing herself to Ichika, who had Bloomed in one burst, and to me, who'd already been Blooming when we met, she'd apparently been quietly stewing about it.
"Heeheehee!"
Pleasingly, Hana seemed delighted to have everyone gawking at her, and she started bouncing up and down on the spot, her newly yellow side tail swinging to and fro.
"Look at this!"
"Ooooh."
Hana began striking every pose imaginable to express her good mood.
An adorable pose with one foot raised.
"Yap!"
"Ooooh."
"So cute, sir!"
A figure-skating pose with one leg swept up high.
"Yoh!"
"Ooh, you're flexible. Wanna take up martial arts?"
A martial arts imitation with a tiny fist thrust forward.
"Hah!"
"Impressive, sir!"
So happy she didn't know what to do with herself, Hana cycled through pose after pose, soaking up every reaction, and Ichika and Kyoko took turns showering her with praise.
'Hana-chan usually isn't this open with strangers... maybe Ichika and Kyoko are fine since they see them at the cafe all the time?'
An endless baptism of compliments.
The joy of a successful Blooming.
Sato Hana's happiness meter blew past its critical threshold, and she could no longer contain herself.
"Calm down, Hana-chan."
"Heeheehee! Thanks, Hikari-chan."
I took Hana by the shoulders and kneaded them gently to settle her down.
Her body was already running hot, and she was trembling with an excitement you could almost feel as a heartbeat.
Ichika and Kyoko cooed over how adorable she was and patted her head.
"Heh heh, what a cute little squirt."
"Uuuu! Don't treat me like a baby!"
"Aigo, sorry sorry~"
Ichika then slipped her hands under Hana's arms and lifted her up, zooming her around like an airplane — vroom, vroom.
Hana was startled at first, but soon she was giggling away, thoroughly enjoying the game.
"Haa..."
"What's wrong, Kyoko?"
Kyoko fidgeted for a moment, then spoke up.
"Back at Odaiba, there wasn't anything I did either, sir."
"Ah... well, who cares? Everyone made it out safe — that's what counts."
"If only I'd Bloomed properly, things would've gone better... Maybe I should've just stayed home instead, sir..."
Kyoko was always so full of energy, rattling off her '-sir' verbal tics nonstop, so seeing her this anxious was genuinely a fresh experience.
Whether a star Blooms depends entirely on how clearly a girl knows her own dream.
And on how closely that dream aligns with destiny — the results vary wildly.
After the first Blooming appeared around December 2011 in the original story, some girls — like Ichika, leader of Flag — Bloomed right away under Fujimoto Sumire's wing.
'Ichika just showed an unusually strong resonance with destiny...'
But the vast majority were Natural 1-Star girls who never managed to Bloom at all before vanishing.
Above all, the original story had focused only on 2-Star girls — and among them, just the veterans who'd survived the war with the Union.
'All of them blooded and broken by the fighting.'
Most 1-Star magical girls had their path to Blooming sealed by the Curse of Struggle, and so they fought each other to pile up power instead.
Protagonist Shikishima Yuki was a miraculous case, growing her own star count through her battles against the fiends, so the variety of Blooming magical girls who actually appeared on the page was fairly limited.
'Half of volume one alone was about scrounging for food, after all.'
There was a shop window in the domain of a Natural 3-Star magical girl that let you obtain items with starlight — but since the whole point was escaping the domain of the Magical Girl of [War], the protagonist barely used it.
"Oh, now that you mention it, Leader."
"Hm? Wait — Ichika, aren't YOU the boss? Why am I 'Leader'?"
"Eh, whatever. More importantly — what about YOUR Glass Star, Leader?"
"Ah."
Aside from Haruko, I didn't think anyone had actually seen it properly.
I pulled the colorless Glass Star from my pocket and showed it to Kyoko.
An enormous starlight, blazing in a kaleidoscope of colors, formed a triangle and poured out endless energy.
The immense power of a world — something I couldn't show anyone until next year.
"Hmm."
"Three of them."
"Wow~"
Just as I'd predicted, the group's reaction to beholding the power of a vast world was distinctly underwhelming.
Blooming itself had only recently been discovered, after all.
Nobody yet understood the difference between a Natural 1-Star and a 2-Star.
'And the Fujimoto Turmoil probably won't happen either...'
I'd never mowed down magical girls on a battlefield the way Fujimoto Sumire did during the war, so it would be hard for them to grasp, firsthand, what a difference in star count actually meant.
'...Still, I show off my magic class every day — the least they could do is ooh and ahh a little.'
Like an uncle who buys his nephews and nieces something delicious, only to watch them declare they're full and leave half of it on the table, I felt a faint pang of disappointment. So I tucked the colorless Glass Star firmly back into my pocket.
"By the way, Sato — where do you live?"
"Right around here!"
"Ooh, a Yokohama local, sir."
"Yeah! In that white house over theeeere!"
"Funny thing from when I did that loading job last time — this really is a town with beautiful weather, sir."
The cafe settled back into a peaceful atmosphere.
Ichika drifted back to her corner and pulled out her smartphone to catch up on the news.
I returned to the counter and idly ran the espresso machine, pretending to tidy up.
This was a warm little neighborhood — loiter too long and the locals walking by would see it and snitch to Master.
Just as a quiet stretch was settling over us, Ichika suddenly called out to me.
"Leader!"
"Hm?"
"We had comrades besides us?"
"No? What are you talking about?"
Startled by the completely out-of-nowhere question, I stared quietly at Ichika.
"Then what's the Salon?"
"The Salon?"
"Yeah — didn't you make it, Leader?"
"Come here and look at this."
I set down the cloth I'd been wiping the espresso machine with and leaned in to study the smartphone screen Ichika was holding up.
A sense of unease crept over me at the familiar name that had flashed across the screen.
'Why is the Magical Girl of [Machine Gun] here?'
She was a character from the original story.
But the other two were girls I'd never seen before.
A motorcycle soaring over the streets.
An armored robot marching through the city.
A machine gun firing into the sky.
All of it was running wild around Kabukicho, reducing everything to utter chaos. And the on-screen caption showed the magical girls behind it all claiming to belong to an organization I supposedly founded.
"Me?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Beats me."
Ichika replied with a shrug.
"So... are we just supposed to sit here and do nothing about this?"
"......"
The peace we had now was something we'd built through methods that were practically an ambush in themselves.
The public's perception of magical girls had only barely shifted, thanks to the performances and miracles of the Magical Girl of [Beginning].
If that perception turned hostile and bloodthirsty like in the original story — if the world tipped back into a situation thick with pointed confrontation — then all of it could become the spark that dragged us back into the tragedy of Magical Girl HAZARD, the one that began with the domain declaration of the Magical Girl of [War].
I didn't much care about the epithet of the Magical Girl of [Beginning] being dragged through the mud.
But right now, ordinary magical girls' dreams were only just barely Blooming. A rampage by rogue magical girls was something I had to stop.
"Kyoko."
"Yes, sir?"
"Sorry, but could you watch the shop for me?"
"Whaaat?!"
Kyoko's face went slack with shock, as if she'd never imagined that her earlier offhand remark would boomerang back into reality so quickly.
But I paid it no mind and all but tossed the apron into her hands. Then I called over Ichika, who already looked ready to go.
"Ichika! Let's move!"
"Ooh, about time! My feet have been itching for this!"
"Wait!"
Hana thrust her hand straight up into the air and shouted.
"I'm coming too!"
"What?"
"I'm a magical girl now, so I'm gonna do good deeds!"
"......"
"You said if I do good deeds, I'll make friends!"
With Sato Hana, a freshly Blooming magical girl, joining us, our side would only be stronger for it.
And even if things turned dangerous, I could shut down the worst-case scenario.
'...It should be fine.'
With the clock ticking, I couldn't afford to deliberate any longer.
"Alright. Let's go!"
The three of us — me, Ichika, and Hana — bolted out of the shop.