The Machine Gun of Love - 1
The girls who had gathered in the plaza had a great deal in common.
They hated home.
They hated the smell of garbage bags left to rot in every corner of the house. They hated the dry, crunchy rice of a convenience store lunchbox eaten alone.
And when they finally bolted out of that suffocating house and ran for the plaza, they found themselves wondering.
Why did the adults, who claimed they had no money, head off to that street to spend it? Why did they throw away the things they loved and drift toward that glowing stretch of neon? Why did they walk out like that—never once coming back?
So the three girls each clutched a single object their lost family had once loved, and they waited. They prayed that somewhere, their family would recognize the thing in their hands and come home, back to the way things used to be.
They waited for years in that plaza, the one with a clear view of the street.
By the time I reached the rooftop, someone had already followed me up there.
A curly-haired girl in a flight bomber jacket, who introduced herself as Lena. With aviation goggles covering her eyes, she flashed me a cheerful grin and saluted in greeting.
"It's an honor to meet the noble Magical Girl of [Beginning]!"
"......"
Listening to her, I felt my anger rising slowly, like water coming to a boil.
What? Noble? An honor? Was she out of her mind?
The faces of the people fleeing in terror. The expressions of those who clung to the police officers who had saved them, weeping. And now the girl who had run riot in front of every one of those innocent people was laughing like it was nothing. That made me furious.
Even the security detail who had fired at me on sight hadn't pushed my anger this far. But the rage that had been smoldering all this time finally boiled over at this moment—directed at these girls who had nearly hurt, or perhaps had hurt, innocent bystanders.
"Spare me the act. You cause a riot and then put on this attitude?"
"Ah... well, fair point."
"You knew that, and you did it anyway?"
"Apart from smashing up the buildings of Kabukicho, Kohane and Nanami promised nobody would get hurt, so don't worry!"
Lena beamed as if it were the most trivial thing in the world.
"We just blew off a little steam... until you showed up."
"You call that blowing off steam?!"
My head throbbed as I recalled the barrage I'd watched through my phone. Magic that could reshape the world, spent on—blowing off steam?
"You opened fire downtown. There's no way nobody got hurt."
"They were blanks, so rest assured. We agreed not to engage in any real violence until we saw you."
"......"
I couldn't read this girl's mind at all.
To be fair, even among the characters from the original story, Lena had been uniquely difficult to understand—a genuine madcap. All the story ever revealed of her past was that she had received the power of Blooming, gathered through struggle against the Union, and carried out something alone.
Is she thinking she's been repaying some debt of gratitude to me ever since that broadcast?
If anything, these girls who revealed their worship alongside a pure yet razor-sharp malice felt far more threatening than the ones who had come at me openly, intending harm.
If I just leave them be, they might go too far next time.
These were magical girls teetering on a knife's edge between reason and emotion. If I let this moment pass without doing anything, I couldn't shake the feeling they might end up crossing a line there would be no coming back from.
Why, while smashing Kabukicho to pieces, did they want my recognition? Why did they carry such grim resolve about it?
What did these girls actually want, deep down?
"......"
Fine. I'll give them exactly one chance.
Was what they carried pure malice—or nothing more than a moment's impulse?
Tap!
Tap!
I struck my staff against the rooftop, and I watched Lena's attention snap toward me.
"Why did you think that smashing Kabukicho required my approval?"
"That street..."
Lena gazed out over the Kabukicho spread beyond the buildings, and her words died in her throat.
The street that lured people in with its dazzling nightscape was filled, in broad daylight, with nothing but a cold and heavy silence.
As Lena simply stared at it, countless emotions flickered through her eyes.
Rage.
Sorrow.
Pain.
Despair.
Loneliness.
"That street swallowed everything."
"......"
"Our happiness, our past, our dreams, our futures. All of it."
"......"
"We were rotting away in the shadows behind the light that street pours out... and you..."
Lena pointed at me with fingers trembling little by little.
A face swelling with feeling. A face that looked like it wanted to scream. A face aching for someone—anyone—to finally understand.
Wearing all those expressions at once, she looked at me, slowly folded her shaking hands over her chest, and closed her eyes.
It was a posture that called prayer to mind. Except it wasn't a blessing or a wish offered for anyone.
It was the posture of someone who could only lean on, and worship, another.
"You were... you were the only one who ever affirmed that we could shine on our own."
Was what Lena remembering her dream of her debutante moment?
"Unlike that street, which treated us like we didn't exist and took everything from us, you gave us dreams and power. Of anyone, it was to you that we wanted our feelings to be acknowledged."
Or was it some nightmare from her past?
As she slowly removed her goggles and gazed at me with desperate sincerity, Lena's striking blue eyes left an impression.
"Won't you watch us, just once, exactly as we are?"
"......"
"Acknowledge our feelings just this once, and we'll do anything you ask."
What she showed me was madness—fury festered in the dark until it grew mold.
Even if they evacuated every civilian from that street and rampaged to their hearts' content, another Kabukicho would simply spring up somewhere else. Whatever pasts these girls carried—and I had no way of knowing them—I was certain of one thing: destroying a street would bring nothing back.
And yet it was a rage that would never unwind unless it was spent now. They had likely been ladling that fury into their hearts little by little over no short span of time, and it had piled up until they were living through hell.
If there had been even a single thread of hope in those hellish days for these girls, it must have been this unjust anger itself. They knew far too well how irrational it was—so they had simply wanted to hide behind my name and vomit the fury out. That was why I could not affirm them.
"That is not a reason to hurt other people."
"......"
"So. Are you confident?"
"Confident about what?"
"Confident that even if you surrender to that rage and the emptiness comes after, you'll be able to hold yourself back."
Lena burst into a hollow laugh, as though I'd asked her something absurd, and answered without a shred of doubt.
"'Course I am! Even if we're hopeless, incurable trash—as long as we smash that street—"
"It wasn't only that street that drove you to despair."
"......"
"The people still living inside it—are they not exactly the thing you want to erase?"
"...B-but you're the Magical Girl of [Beginning]—"
The desire to have their righteous anger acknowledged, and the impulse to take irrational revenge right here and now, tangled into a dizzying knot and collapsed into contradiction.
By pointing out that contradiction, I meant to see their true hearts.
"If you're so worried about dirtying my name, then you should never have dreamed of getting permission through it in the first place."
"......"
"You're cowards. Cowards who plan to dodge responsibility by pretending to worship me."
Lena's face was warping, little by little.
The superficial smile she'd maintained to the point of calling herself and her friends trash fell away without a trace, and between her upturned eyes I could see wave after wave of distrust quietly gathering.
So I was nothing but a refuge to them after all.
The rage hidden beneath a thin mask—rage that looked ready to erupt at any moment. Perhaps that was precisely the burden the original story had handed off to Sumire. In that case, what I needed to show them was a test: to confirm whether the fury they carried was truly what lived in their hearts.
"So what do you want me to do?"
"Prove it. Yourselves."
Snap!
A crisp sound rang out and echoed.
By the time my senses caught up, the space we stood in was no longer a rooftop— it was the very front of Kabukicho.
"L-Lena?!"
"Lena...?!"
"You three!"
Hana and Ichika had subdued and brought over the two girls. Nanami and Kohane, too, had somehow appeared at my side.
Snap!
With another crisp ring, the Glass Stars in the hands of the girls who called themselves the Salon began to glow.
Two dazzling stars—and a third. Three colors: fluorescent orange, ivory, and khaki. Starlight that had seemed spent, as if the earlier rampage had all been an illusion, now surged up until the stars blazed blindingly bright.
"Don't hide behind my name. Prove it yourselves."
I pointed at Kabukicho, addressing the girls who sat dazed with their glowing Glass Stars in hand.
"Prove what it is you truly want to do."
"......"
"......"
"......"
Kohane stared at me for a moment, then rose to her feet as if she'd made up her mind. Nanami, righting her cracked helmet, summoned her motorcycle once more. Lena simply staggered forward step by step, her face unreadable.
A brief silence.
And then a storm of destruction slammed into the street before us.
Mecha armor spitting fire. A motorcycle tearing off in a flash of light. A baptism of machine-gun fire raining down.
Clack—weeeng—BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
VROOOOOOM!
RATATATATATATATATA!
As the girls' cornerless, homeless fury came pouring down onto the street of indulgence, chaos descended.
"AAAAHHH!!! HELP!!!"
"Oh my god, what is this!!!"
"No!!! My shop... MY SHOP!!!!"
Father's memory.
Two heavy machine guns materialized behind Lena and were tearing apart a neon-decorated rooftop. The people hiding inside the shop were buried as the ceiling came down. This, perhaps, was so that no soldier from some foreign country could ever walk in and turn a helpless woman into his own private local wife again.
Mother's memory.
Nanami rode her bike like a storm, blasting apart the signs that lured passersby. So that a young mother who slipped in dreaming of one night of escape would not fall under their spell. So that she would never lock eyes with the biker gangs lounging there. Even as people went down struck by falling shards of signage, she did not stop.
Older brother's memory.
Kohane reloaded the mecha's rifle and pulled the trigger. The bad shops that toyed with people's hearts while wringing every last coin out of naive otaku customers. This was so that a simple older brother who did nothing worse than love building plastic models would never set foot inside one. Even if young women came stumbling out, their cosplay costumes soaked red.
The roar of destruction ringing through Kabukicho was the screaming that had burst from their wounds.
It was the scream of days gone by, when no one had looked after them. Every night they had wept there, raged there, been hurt there.
"We are!!! Right now!!! Here!!!"
"Look at us!!"
"We are...!"
The children who had clutched their mementos and waited, hearts fixed on families that would never return, stayed children until they became girls. Their time and their souls had been chained to the Kabukicho streets.
"We are...!"
"Sob..."
"Hic..."
The girls who had been venting their rage without restraint suddenly clutched at their own chests and sank to the ground.
Kabukicho lay in complete ruin. The echoes of screams and terror rolled through it—and they could not bear any of it any longer.
"This isn't... this isn't..."
"What we wanted was..."
"This isn't it..."
Emptiness.
Destruction, in pursuit of reclaiming lost time and lost souls. But the more buildings they burned and the more people they wounded, the only thing carved into them was a wound upon the soul. Because in the end, their anger had never truly been about hurting anyone.
"I see."
"Then it can still be undone."
"It isn't too late yet."
Unique Skill of the Magical Girl of [Deception]
⟨ Dream Fantasia ⟩
Tap!
I rapped my staff lightly against the ground once more.
Everything had been an illusion.
A test, to see the truth of their hearts.
And for the girls who had collapsed in despair, I had decided to give their dreams back.