28. Magical Girl Magical - Isis
28. Magical Girl Magical - Isis
Mari headed for the coast of Hetairo Island, as Isis's subordinates had told her.
Waiting for her there was Isis, already mid-transformation.
"I heard what my attendants told you. You need a Heart Gem to save the academy too, right? Same here. I need your Gem to protect my family."
Apparently, the information that had reached her was somewhat distorted.
Mari decided to play along with their version.
"I've got things I can't compromise on either."
No further words.
The two took their stances at once and clashed.
*
Unfortunately, Isis was no match for Mari.
Her dagger was threatening.
But the wielder's own skill was nowhere near comparable to Mari's.
Her own power was controlling her.
Just Mari casually throwing a one-two was enough to send her staggering badly—the gap between them was that stark.
Just when it seemed Mari would win without any upset, the situation changed.
"Found you! So this is where you were, magical girl!"
A monster that had barged unannounced into their battle.
The torso of a bat, the antennae of a butterfly, and the wings of a bee.
Flapping a total of three pairs of wings, the monster seemed to be of a similar type to the Monstrous Bird she had seen before.
Mari moved the exhausted Isis to safety and faced the monster bat.
"I'll finish this in an instant!"
She immediately tried to launch Stardust Impact.
But that technique didn't work on the bat monster.
If anything, the bat monster was practically her natural enemy.
Its strategy—using near-sonic flight to toy with Mari, inflicting status effects with illusions and paralytic venom, and wearing down her stamina with ultrasonic waves—was a terrible matchup for Mari, whose only means of attack was close combat.
She used her wits to close the distance with the monster, but even that turned out to be a clone.
"Impossible!"
Mari, cornered this time not by brute force but by compatibility.
Even so, she did not give up.
"Isis, look out!"
When the monster's attack veered toward Isis amid all this, she shielded her with her own body.
Isis asked Mari in a strained voice.
"Why...?"
"Because you're my friend!"
But Mari's fighting spirit didn't last long.
In the end, with venom spreading throughout her entire body, she collapsed to the ground.
The monster giggled and approached Mari to finish her off.
- The world has always forced me to my knees. Fate brought me misery and pain and whispered for me to abandon my dreams. Even when my body shattered to pieces and my soul plummeted, reality whispered sweet frustration in my ear. When I stared reality in the face, reality smiled at me.
In that moment, a blue flash erupted from behind her.
The monster and the magical girl both stopped fighting at the sudden intrusion of a third presence and focused on the light.
- Ah, but reality. I have realized. Even when my body was in fragments and my soul crawled the floor of hell, I was still dreaming. What you whispered was not surrender, but flight.
- So, world. No matter how many times I stumble, I shall never stop dreaming.
Fate. I shall defy you to the very end.
Reality. I shall seize my dream with my own hands.
- [Dreams. Grant me the power to soar once more. Flying Dream!]
As the light subsided, Isis stood there, looking completely different from before.
- [In pursuit of my dream, I have arrived!—Magical Isis. Take flight!]
The face-concealing mask had transformed into a style covering only the lower half of her face.
The sleeves that had covered her arms were gone entirely, leaving her armpits and side-breasts bare, and as if that weren't enough, the back was cut out as well.
Beneath the fluttering skirt, spats claiming to be undershorts were visible, and the thighs exposed just below, between the knee-high socks and the undershorts, were... divine.
Had the outfit been a ballerina's, it would have been praised as art, but worn by an assassin, it caused severe cognitive dissonance.
Or perhaps “assassin” was accurate after all, since that look alone could certainly kill a virgin and wasn't entirely inaccurate.
The newly reborn Isis raised a dagger like a wedding knife and shouted.
"Monster. By cutting you down, I shall seize my happiness!"
"Shaaaak!!"
The weasel that popped out of her blue gem and hissed was a bonus.
"Ha! The weakest of the Councilors, and so arrogant! Did you think the likes of you could wield a Heart Gem?!"
The monster that had threatened Mari redirected its attention toward Isis, exactly as she intended.
Switching targets, the monster used the same method it had threatened Mari with—a toxic dust storm—and engulfed Isis.
But against the now-masked Isis, such things had no effect.
"Then how about this?!"
An illusionary clone technique.
Yet as Isis spun through the air like a figure skater, dozens of throwing knives rained in every direction, erasing the clones.
Landing gracefully on the ground, Isis smirked and beckoned at the monster with her fingers.
"Is that all you've got to show me?"
"Y-you...!!"
The monster used its finishing move.
It created dozens of phantom clones, which launched ultrasonic attacks all at once.
And the moment the ultrasonic waves struck Isis, her body vanished without a trace in a massive explosion.
"Haha! That's what you get for underestimating—"
"Where are you looking? That was my clone, you know?"
"Wha—"
When the monster turned around, more copies of Isis than the clones it had summoned were looking down at it.
The daggers the many copies of her had been holding had transformed into rapiers.
"Impossible!"
"Are those your last words?"
All the clones tilted their bodies.
And as the original's hand swept downward, every one of those clones flew in like arrows in unison.
The monster dealt with a clone or two, but was slashed to ribbons by the dozens of clones that followed.
Finally, the real Isis passed through the monster, whose entire body was covered in fine cut lines, and murmured.
"Splendid Execution!"
"Aiiieeeee!!!!!"
With a dying scream, the monster exploded into pieces.
When it was all over, Isis removed her mask and looked down at Mari.
A bitter smile was on her face.
"What now? I've ended up becoming a magical girl too. My gem. Are you going to take it?"
Isis shook her head.
Isis was no longer a fragile girl who needed protecting.
Mari had felt that keenly through this battle as well.
She needed allies.
So did Isis.
Isis extended her hand and pulled Mari to her feet.
The two shook hands with the sunset behind them, and the battle concluded—
"But that's that. We should still settle this, don't you think?"
Isis glared at Mari, a combative smile on her face.
Isis already knew what Mari intended.
Separate from that, she was frustrated by having been hit earlier and wanted revenge.
Now that she had awakened as Magical Isis, she also wanted to test her power.
Anyone might wonder what this was about, but Mari rose to her feet right then and raised her fist.
"Of course."
Mari was battered and bruised.
But that didn't matter to her.
The fighting spirit rising from her body proclaimed that mere injuries like these could not dent her resolve.
The two clashed once more against the backdrop of the setting sun.
Unlike the first time, their combat power was now evenly matched.
Before, Isis's dagger had been unable to pierce Mari's clothes, but not anymore.
Whenever Mari's frills brushed against the dagger, they were snipped off as easily as scissors slicing paper.
But Mari was no pushover either.
Despite clearly being injured, each punch she threw boomed through the air like a mace, making the dagger that blocked it ring shrilly.
Combative grins rose on the faces of the two as they fought evenly.
Just as the battle was dragging on, one of Isis's clones hurled its dagger, pinning Mari's skirt to a tree.
"This ends it!"
When Isis's Splendid Execution came crashing down for the final blow, the fight seemed poised to end in her victory.
But even within that fight, Mari had grown once more.
She, who had been hobbled every time by her lack of a wide-area attack, created that very technique in her battle with Isis.
After enduring Isis's finishing move through sheer guts, she soared high into the sky.
Sensing something ominous, Isis created clones, but Mari ignored them entirely as she prepared a new technique.
"You'd better dodge this!!"
The mana-control technique Scapul had demonstrated only once.
Pink mana gathered in her fist, forming a beautiful shape.
As the mana condensed and the air distorted, instead of containing it in her fist, she released it into the air.
At first it was a beautiful, firefly-like effect, but Isis soon realized that had been an illusion.
The mana was condensing once more.
Mari had first released her own mana into the atmosphere, and then, as she reclaimed it, she absorbed even the ambient mana in the air.
The atmosphere was warping. No, it was screaming.
Isis knew by instinct.
If that hit her, she would die.
Friend or not, everything except her Heart Gem would evaporate.
Was this what being friends was?
No. Absolutely not.
No matter how much of a sheltered rich girl she'd grown up as, she had enough common sense to know this wasn't it.
She hurriedly tried to surrender.
But the distorted atmosphere, the screaming air, prevented Isis's words from reaching Mari.
"Hey!!!"
By the time the world was distorting around Mari's fist, she swung it with a radiant expression.
"<Stardust Destroyer>!!!"
A brutal bombardment, ill-befitting a magical girl, descended toward the earth.
Isis was horrified and tried to block it, but as it actually bore down on her, her whole body froze.
The mana wave rushed at her like a life flashing before her eyes.
KWAAAAANG!
Fortunately, the shockwave grazed past Isis's head and obliterated the beach behind her.
As Isis stood frozen at the shocking sight, Mari had approached before she knew it and poked Isis's cheek.
"I won, right?"
Looking at Mari's radiant smile, Isis whispered to her weasel—Cled.
"I think she's insane."
"I second that, squeak."