22. Magical Girl Magical Mari - Appearance!
22. Magical Girl Magical Mari - Appearance!
[Next Episode!]
An executive of the Twilight Council suddenly appears!
Incomprehensible ideology and overwhelming violence bear down on Mari.
The first crisis she has faced since becoming a magical girl.
Scapul overwhelms her in both strength and skill.
Will she truly be defeated like this?
To be continued next episode!
*
- "Give us the next episode!!!"
- "Aaaah! Allennnn!"
"So... Boss, what do we do?"
"Leave them. They're just making a racket. Unlike last time, I'm not sensing any bloodlust."
"Ailey is hanging off you just like last time, though?"
"Is there a pile of firewood under her?"
"No?"
"Molotov cocktails? Torches?"
"None of those either."
"Then it's just messing around. Let's call it a victory toss and move on."
And so the next week arrived.
=====================
Boom!
The ground erupted and a single girl soared into the sky.
With her pink hair tied in twin-tails and wearing a frilled dress, people recognized her at a glance.
Mari, who had flown high into the air, landed as though crashing into the earth.
Barely managing a breakfall, she slammed into the ground with a thud and gasped for breath.
Lirpin, whose eyes were spinning on her back, was an added bonus.
The fact that her proud Gauntlet had been half-destroyed by the previous strike had her breaking into a cold sweat as she glared at the hole where Scapul would be.
Thud!
Meanwhile, Scapul leaped from underground to the surface in a single bound.
"Eheh—"
The monster standing before her eyes had an entirely different aura from when they first met.
Gone was the solid, imposing man; in his place stood a mean-looking giant who spoke in a smooth, oily voice.
"Did you like my greeting?"
"Ngh. You call that a greeting?"
"Sure is~. What you just saw was nothing but basic body enhancement, y'know?"
As if proving his words were no empty boast, merely putting a little strength into his fist gathered enough mana to distort the air around it.
"Well? Do you believe me now?"
Gulp.
A bead of cold sweat ran down Mari's forehead.
Scapul shook off the mana that had gathered in his hand and suddenly extended it.
Mari leaped back to avoid his hand.
Scapul stood there awkwardly, his arm still stretched out in the same pose.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Don't you know a handshake? It's basic courtesy to shake hands with your opponent before a fight."
"..."
But she did not take Scapul's hand.
He sighed and suddenly vanished.
Boom!
Scapul suddenly appeared before Mari and drove a kick into her abdomen.
He seized her arm as she floated in the air and flung her over his back.
Just before she hit the ground, Mari squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of the fate about to befall her.
Tap.
But contrary to her expectation, even without taking a breakfall, both of her feet landed naturally on the ground.
And the arm Scapul had grabbed was now shaking hands with him.
"???"
He grinned.
Having completed the handshake to his satisfaction, Scapul released her hand and put distance between them.
Riiip.
And then he tore off his top, revealing a scar-riddled torso.
"Oh my!"
The sight was apparently too much for the still-innocent Mari, and she covered her face with both hands.
Scapul ignored her reaction, grinned viciously, and assumed his stance.
One knee slightly raised, both fists brought up to his face—a textbook Muay Thai stance.
"Now. Let's be a good trial for each other. Magical Girl—"
*
Boom!
Scapul's fist slammed into the ground.
Mari dodged the punch with boxing footwork and drove consecutive strikes into Scapul's spleen while his stance was still unrecovered.
Bam!
Her mana-reinforced fist collided with Scapul's flank, producing the crash of iron striking iron.
"Ngh."
It should have been a vital point, but Scapul merely smiled and swept a low kick across the ground.
Mari jumped to evade the attack.
Scapul didn't resist his body's rotation; he spun one full turn and landed a spinning kick on her as she hung in the air.
"Aah!"
Before rolling across the ground, she barely braked with flight magic and set her stance in midair.
Looking at her, Scapul wore a puzzled expression.
"Strange."
"..."
"You seem unable to focus. The you I know couldn't possibly be that weak."
He stroked his chin, then turned to look at the hole he had emerged from.
After glancing back and forth between the hole and her, he snapped his fingers.
"Aha! You're worried about the ones down below, aren't you?"
"..."
"Don't tell me you think I'd take them hostage?"
As he edged closer to the hole, Mari hurriedly cut him off and stood guarding it.
"So I was right. Heh. Don't worry. I won't touch the people below. They cannot become adversity for me."
"Why should I believe that..."
"If you really can't trust me, let's change locations. You're the only one I'm interested in."
Mari glanced once at the hole and nodded.
Scapul gestured for her to follow and moved to a new location.
*
After relocating, the two continued their battle.
With nothing left to hold her back, Mari's attacks began to deal damage to Scapul little by little, unlike at the start.
Even so, the gap between them was vast.
Scapul's true strength wasn't his massive frame or solid muscles.
Those were merely secondary.
His true strength lay in flexibility and speed.
Like a supple ballerina, he could attack and defend from any posture, any direction, any state.
Even lying down, even upside down, even while spinning, even with his back bent, even on his knees—
Even so, his attacks were just as powerful as when he stood upright, leaving Mari feeling as though common sense itself had collapsed.
Even as she felt the fundamentals of the martial arts she knew breaking down, she steadily accumulated damage.
Bam.
Yet even if she landed five hits, a single kick from Scapul erased all the advantage she had built.
She clutched her throbbing arm and glared at Scapul.
"Huh huh huh."
He seemed delighted to have finally found a worthy opponent.
There was no way to describe the sight of him refusing to lose his smile even with a broken nose and missing teeth as anything but madness.
"Let's wrap this up soon."
He raised his fist high above his head.
She couldn't even begin to guess what school that stance belonged to.
Soon, the fist descended from above his head.
She dodged this punch as well.
Then another fist came flying from the other side.
She dodged this too.
Finally, a kick.
She dodged this as well.
'Good. Now—'
She tried to aim for the opening that inevitably came after a kick.
But at that moment, following an uneasy intuition, she chose to duck her head instead of attacking.
Immediately after, a kick passed through the space where her head had just been.
And the owner of that kick had somehow appeared behind her, executing the kick upside down like a b-boy.
Scapul, still in a handstand, kicked at the air once more before returning to his original stance and flashing a sinister grin.
"Good instincts. But I wonder how long you can keep dodging."
Until the moment he circled behind her, she had not seen his movement at all.
That fact horrified her.
Soon, Scapul's attack came from the side.
She rolled across the ground and barely evaded that attack too.
Now she understood what Scapul had meant by wrapping it up.
Ever since saying those words, Scapul had not stopped moving.
The inevitable gap created by violently moving the body and gasping for breath—
he had chosen not to breathe in order to erase that gap.
"Guardian! Barrier!"
"Got it!"
She had experienced this situation once before.
About two weeks ago—two episodes ago—the cockroach monster that appeared had possessed this level of speed.
That monster, dashing around too fast to track with the eye and striking with body slams, had been difficult for her reaction speed to handle.
So she created a defensive spell to counter attacks she couldn't react to.
The cockroach monster crashed into this barrier—which reflected attacks back twofold—and went out in a blaze of glory.
So this time, too, she activated the barrier at the precise moment, like throwing a counter, expecting it would work the same way.
"Miracle Barrier!"
Lirpin's body shone, and a dome-shaped barrier enveloped Mari.
Scapul, who noticed the barrier's existence belatedly, didn't stop and threw his fist anyway.
'I did it!'
But as if betraying her expectations, he briefly examined his fist and grinned.
"That was satisfying pain."
Then he raised his fist again and began pounding the barrier.
Each time, the barrier reflected the impact back into his fist, but he paid it no mind and continued the barrage.
His relentless barrage continued for five minutes without pause.
Scapul's breathing grew ragged from throwing nonstop punches for that long, and his fist turned bright red.
Even so, his relentless strikes didn't stop.
Crack.
About six minutes later, cracks began spreading across her barrier.
Her face turned pale as she saw the barrier reaching its limit.
In contrast, Scapul's face lit up with delight, and he attacked even more fiercely.
'What was I supposed to do?'
Just then, Scapul showed a slight opening.
"Whoops!"
He had slipped while trying to kick the dome.
He toppled backward but recovered in an instant—yet in that moment, Mari realized something.
'Come to think of it, Scapul couldn't fly!'
Up until now, he had never demonstrated flight magic.
When he came up from underground to the surface, he leaped. When he moved locations, he sprinted through the heart of the city or vaulted over buildings.
And this time too.
If he had known how to use flight magic, he would have recovered mid-air before falling, as Mari would have done—but he simply fell and got back up.
She realized that was Scapul's weakness.
In that instant, the barrier shattered with a crash.
She dodged the fist flying through the broken barrier and kicked Scapul high into the air.
"Gahk!"
Breathless and unable to avoid the attack in time, Scapul soared high into the sky.
She flew up and kicked Scapul even higher once more.
Unable to use flight magic, Scapul couldn't leverage his signature flexibility in midair.
As she kept kicking the floundering Scapul higher and higher, ascending to near the stratosphere, Mari mounted him from above, as if trampling his back.
"Don't tell me...!"
"Prepare yourself!"
From the lofty altitude, she accelerated.
Scapul, pinned beneath her feet, couldn't resist the gravity driving down upon his back and plummeted toward the ground like a meteor.
Scapul's body, gathering speed, caught fire and streamed a tail like a shooting star.
"<Stardust Impact>!!"
The shooting star crashed onto the shore, triggering a massive explosion.
When the seawater had scattered and the cloud of sand had settled, Scapul lay collapsed at her feet.
Beside him, she struck her signature V-pose and smiled brightly, as always.
The seaside sunset alone celebrated the dirt-covered girl.
*
With Scapul defeated, Hetairo Academy regained its peace.
Perhaps because an executive had fallen, the monsters that would normally appear at least once a week didn't show up for a while.
Ceres could savor ordinary student life for the first time in a long while.
"..."
"Ceres?"
"..."
"Ceres!"
"Y-yes!"
Though she did sometimes doze off in class—maybe the fatigue from battle hadn't faded yet.
"Are you feeling unwell, by any chance?"
"No. I'm sorry."
"That's a relief. No need to apologize. Students can get tired sometimes too. If you feel unwell, you don't have to tell me—just head straight to the infirmary, alright?"
"Yes. Thank you."
Still, she was an honor student, so rather than scold her, the professor worried about her and let it slide.
She sat back down, slightly embarrassed, and listened attentively to the lecture.
Thinking that this, too, was an everyday happiness.
That day, unusually, the sky was clear.
.
.
.
The scene shifted to the middle of the sea.
"The criminal's status?"
"No issues!"
"What about the restraints?"
"The restraints are also without issue!"
"Door security?"
"Security status is sound!"
"Good. Good work today."
In the middle of a colossal ship upon the sea, knights saluted one another.
Past them, deeper inside the ship, Scapul was bound in iron chains within an iron cage.
The chains were incomparably sturdier and thicker than those at Hetairo Prison, and the bars of his cage were as thick as a man's waist.
As if that wasn't enough, several heavily armed knights surrounded the cage inside the vault-like room, making the scene utterly menacing.
"Knights, where exactly are you taking me~?"
"..."
"Are you transporting me because the facilities on Hetairo Island can't hold me~?"
"..."
"Shall I take a guess~? You're planning to toss me into the Empire's proud Tartarus Underground Prison. Am I right?"
"..."
"Ugh. No fun. The problem with people these days is they never listen to what others have to say."
As knights dispatched from the imperial mainland, they didn't even dignify Scapul's words with a reply.
They simply stayed on edge, ready to subdue him the moment he showed any suspicious signs, never relaxing their guard.
For a moment, the room where he was held seemed to sink into silence.
But before long, Scapul's mouth opened again.
"Knights, do you know the best way to understand freedom?"
"..."
"If you won't answer, I'll tell you. It's—"
Sensing something ominous, the knights collectively went on alert against Scapul.
As all eyes focused on him, he smiled.
"Getting thrown in prison and escaping."
A sense of déjà vu.
The knights, who had already been briefed on this situation, attacked Scapul immediately without hesitation.
But with a speed utterly incomparable to what he'd shown at Hetairo Prison, Scapul tore through the chains, burst through the iron bars, and folded the knights, armor and all.
The last remaining knight muttered.
"This wasn't in the report..."
"That's because I was only using physical enhancement back then."
"Impossible. Why would you do such a thing...!"
"Because if I gave it my all, it wouldn't be a trial, would it?"
In other words, escaping this transport ship was worth giving his all.
But his praise was hardly welcome to the knight.
Regardless, Scapul raised both hands high.
The knight, realizing what he was about to do, hurriedly shouted to his comrades outside the vault.
"Everyone, brace for the ship to sink!"
No sooner had he spoken than Scapul's two fists slammed into the vault floor.
And the transport ship split in half.
.
.
.
After single-handedly sinking the transport ship, Scapul let himself sink with it.
A search party was dispatched to find him.
They mobilized clairvoyance around the clock, so the moment his head broke the water's surface, they would be able to locate him immediately.
But for a week, not a single human silhouette was found in the surrounding sea.
"He must be dead by now."
Still, just in case, they marked him as missing and concluded the investigation.
Not long after the search party withdrew, Scapul's head surfaced in the middle of the sea.
"Pwah! Even for me, a week is a little rough."
Though he said that, he showed no sign of strain whatsoever.
He submerged again and headed somewhere.
As he arrived deep in the ocean depths, a branch of the Twilight Council revealed itself there.
"Councilor! Where on earth have you been?"
His secretary rushed to find him.
"You should have at least taken a Heart Gem with you! What if you had been in danger?"
"I went to endure adversity. If I'd brought a Heart Gem, it wouldn't be adversity."
"...."
Leaving his flabbergasted secretary behind, he entered his office.
Leaning back in his chair, he rolled a modestly sized gem fragment in one hand and muttered with a ferocious smile.
"A magical girl, huh..."
As his leering face zoomed in, a violet Heart Gem was reflected in his pupils.
====================
"Give us the next episode~!"
"Sob... Allen..."
"I make it for them and they still bitch."