30. Please do not try this at academy
30. Please do not try this at academy
I had admired the soul-stealing spectacle of Ignos's performance, but he was by no means a benevolent figure toward them.
From the moment he brought the students somewhere like this, I hadn't expected him to have good intentions.
"What's your goal, Ignos?!"
"Oh, my! If it isn't Miss Isis!"
"Shut up! Don't act like you know me!"
"How cold, when we share a naming convention! We could be distant relatives, for all you know!"
Mari, listening in, was momentarily tempted and whispered to Lirpin.
"Does that really count as a connection?"
"By that logic, Ceres shares the convention too, meow."
Oh. Never mind.
After a brief skirmish of feeling each other out, the battle between the magical girls and the evil executive began in earnest.
The first strike came from Isis, who for some reason despised Ignos.
"You've grown lovelier since last I saw you!"
"Hearing that from you doesn't make me happy at all!"
"And your outfit is more splendid too!"
"Shut your mouth!"
His words were flippant, and his footwork followed no recognizable school.
At first glance, Isis seemed to be overwhelming him, but Ignos maintained both the banter and the evasion, fending off her attacks.
Even when Mari, unable to stand by, joined in, Ignos dodged every attack with frivolous movements.
"Stop running! Fight back!"
"Oh? Shall I, then?"
With that, his magic baton transformed into a musket.
Compared to a magic crossbow, it was excessively outdated—no, it warranted comparison to something outright primitive.
Judging by the powder-loading method, it was an object you'd only expect to find in ancient ruins.
But what that weapon produced was nothing like an ancient relic.
"Ta-da!"
He pulled the trigger and raised both hands high.
The musket, fixed in midair, spat fire and poured out a spray of shot.
The pellets of shot split and split again, multiplying into thousands by the time they reached Mari and Isis.
"What is that?!"
Mari and Isis deployed shields and blocked the bullets.
The projectiles themselves weren't especially threatening, so blocking them wasn't difficult.
But the problem was what came next.
Examining the rounds stuck to the shields, I saw that each one was a miniature Ignos.
Those mini Ignoses swelled up like balloons—
"Huh?"
"Surprise!"
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
Despite their size, the miniature Ignos detonated with power comparable to grenades, shattering the magical girls' shields.
As the students worried for their safety, daggers and beams flew from within the smoke.
"Hieeek!"
Unfortunately, they were aimed at a very inappropriate place, and Ignos spread his legs and jumped to dodge.
And when he landed back on the ground, he shuddered and covered his groin.
"Have some decency! This is rated for all ages!"
"What have you been rambling about this whole time!"
The smoke cleared, and the magical girls emerged, just a little dirtied.
Fortunately, they didn't have a single scratch on them.
Soon, the battle resumed.
"Shall we change the venue a bit~?"
Ignos snapped his fingers, and the Land of Pleasure transformed into a theme park.
Within it, various gimmicks harried the magical girls, but they overcame each gimmick one by one through the strength of their comrades and their bonds.
Ultimately, in the center of the theme park, the magical girls confronted Ignos to carry out the last remaining gimmick.
"Now! Then! What choice will you all make?!"
When he turned on the screen in the center of the square, a train appeared.
The camera panned again, following the track the train was headed along into the far distance.
There, the track split into three branches.
Respectively: a track with many students tied to it,
a track with few tied to it,
and lastly, a track leading toward a cliff.
And inside the train was a professor, unconscious.
"Now! Your choice is~?"
He even made a thumping heartbeat sound with his mouth as he urged them to choose.
After agonizing, the choice the magical girls made was the cliff.
"Ah! So in the end, are the students more important to them than an old professor?!"
But as if violently betraying Ignos's expectations, they shouted.
"Before the train falls off the cliff!"
"We'll defeat you!"
The fact they had realized while carrying out the gimmicks in the theme park.
In the end, this place wasn't reality but a dream world.
Since it was a space created by the evil executive's wicked Authority, there was no telling what would happen if they died here, but one thing was certain: it would be okay if they defeated Ignos first.
Seeing them charge at him fiercely, Ignos panicked.
"The one here's just a clone~!?"
"Don't lie!"
"We cleaned up all the doppelgangers while we were going around the theme park!"
Their attacks struck Ignos without hesitation.
"No wonder I couldn't reach them! Gyaaak!"
He tumbled pathetically, barely dodging the attacks, but as a result, he ended up wedged in a sewer drain.
"My body!! My body won't move!!! Time out!!"
They each charged their finishing moves toward Ignos, who had soared high into the sky.
At that moment, their gems resonated with each other.
"Isis!"
"Right! Mari!"
The two crossed their weapons.
"Fist of Will!"
"Spear of Dreams!"
"O power of the shooting star that pioneers the future!"
Pink magical power and blue magical power gathered on their weapons and began to mingle.
And when that color turned violet, the two simultaneously thrust their weapons forward.
"<Splendid Stardust Stinger>!!"
An enormous light streaked across the sky above the Land of Pleasure.
"Impossible!!!"
Ignos was swept up in the torrent of light, sent flying as a shooting star, and at the same moment, the dream world was extinguished.
The train carrying the professor vanished along with the dream world right before the cliff's edge.
In the end, the magical girls triumphed once again today.
====================
A new joint finishing move for the magical girls.
Two finishing moves had combined into something far more than twice as strong, creating several times the power through synergy. How could that not be moving?
So Nikolai and I had thought:
that this scene was a fairly significant turning point in the magical girl story, a scene that would strike a chord in fans' hearts.
Yeah.
That was definitely how it should have been.
But, with a thoroughness that astonished me, the world paid the joint finishing move no attention at all.
Their entire collective gaze was fixed on Ignos's 'musical'.
- Can't you move your feet a little more lightly! Why can't you step in time while playing the trumpet!
A single mysterious letter arrived at the club room.
Inside was a request from the orchestra club asking for advice.
"Why?"
I was so dumbfounded that I headed to the orchestra club room myself.
There, I saw a symphony orchestra holding their instruments and practicing choreography, and my feet naturally came to a halt.
At first, I assumed the orchestra was trying something new and watched them for a moment.
Just as I'd thought, the sight of the trumpets all swinging in unison to the conductor's baton was pretty worth watching.
Up to here was fine.
I'd spread a positive(?) culture throughout this world.
But the conductor wasn't satisfied with this.
- Why can't the flutes do a somersault! They're light!
"?"
Even I couldn't do that.
My expression hardened gravely.
The problem was that the flute section was taking this dead seriously.
- We're sorry!
- I'll show you that scene again, so watch closely.
The conductor played Mari's scene on a small projection from a crystal.
There, it replayed the scene where Ignos's black doppelgangers, holding ocarinas, tap-danced and then performed a somersault.
- See? He warms up with tap dancing, then uses the momentum to flip himself over.
- Yes.
- Can you do it with a flute?
- We can!
The one who seemed to be the eldest among the flute players stepped forward to give a demonstration.
He tap-danced like in the video, spinning flashily, yet never stopped playing.
And then the final highlight.
His feet moved in a rapid blur before he flipped backward.
Just about when his body had rotated roughly 190 degrees.
- Crrk
The player, having fallen head-first, broke his neck.
"..."
No wonder they were practicing in a Sanctuary.
And what followed, right on that spot, was a succession of flute players breaking their necks,
a violinist attempting a split and dislocating their pelvis,
The harpist spun the harp around, lost balance, and ended up pinned beneath it.
Oh, Lord.
I could already hear it.
What the music clubs and music majors of the future would call Ignos.
When I was in the army, a biracial corporal told me that music students didn't call Chopin "The Poet of the Piano," but "The Pucker of the Piano."
Congratulations, Ignos.
From then on, you'd forever be remembered as "The Pucker of the Orchestra."
The practice, with its rampant blood and flesh, continued until the conductor recognized me, wiped the blood off his face, and approached.
"Oh, you’re here. I was so focused I didn’t notice."
"No problem. I heard you were asking us for advice."
"Yes. It's just that a few of the performance elements seem utterly impossible to realize."
"Ah, you mean that."
I gulped once and told the conductor the brutal truth.
"Actually, that's magic."
"Well, I know that, of course."
"No, I don't think you understand. I'm saying it's advanced magic."
Ignos was a professional wrestler from a magic tower.
A pro's pro wizard serving as an elder in a magic tower.
If Ailey was specialized in research, he was on the practical side.
"Then...?"
"To make that possible, you would need to complete at least the direct-disciple course at a Magic Tower, if not the elder course, Conductor."
If my memory was right, to meddle with the elastic modulus of the ground, you had to reach the direct disciple level at least.
The conductor tried to pretend he hadn't heard me and move on.
Naturally.
A direct disciple is basically a graduate student, after all.
But the players who had, up to this point, been breaking their necks and snapping their backs under his orders couldn't let it slide.
"Conductor?"
"We're making an effort, so shouldn't you do the same?"
"Hey, we're ultimately just a club!"
"We promised that once we entered society, we’d join an orchestra like the White Jade Orchestra!"
"Th-That's...!"
He was forcibly dragged away by the students.
Where they were heading was the magic tower branch office that helped with magic tower transfers.
'Hmm.'
So graduate school was going to be added to conductor training now.
I couldn't even begin to imagine how future conductors would curse me, but there was only one stance for me to take here.
I was counting on you, future me.
All I could do was avert my eyes from reality.