45. The Path to Becoming a Magical Girl
45. The Path to Becoming a Magical Girl
"Hey."
I was filming Magical Mari at Bon Voyage Studio after school like any other day when Diane appeared beside me.
"Is filming going well?"
"Yes, it is going well, Diane."
"Cynthia."
"Diane."
She stared at me for a moment, then turned her gaze to the set.
There, Mari and Isis were taking down monsters in Stardust Mode and Future Slash respectively.
Diane watched them quietly, then out of nowhere dropped a bomb.
"Those outfits. Your taste?"
"Puht—!"
It wasn't me but Nicol, drinking cola next to me, who spat his drink out.
I, on the other hand, was already used to her and responded calmly.
"It's costuming driven by viewer demand."
"And you?"
"I don't really pay much attention to clothes."
"I see."
Her gaze shifted back toward the set.
*
After all the filming was done, Nikolai and I were in the planning room getting ready to call it a day.
Knock, knock.
But the sudden sound of knocking froze our hands as we were packing up our things.
"Who is it?"
"I love you."
"?"
A flat female voice came from the other side of the door.
What the hell. Was Diane a reincarnator too?
Nicol met my eyes as if he'd had the same thought, but that idea was shot down right away.
"Is that you, XXria?"
"??"
"XXria, is it?"
"What kind of answer are you hoping for?"
She tilted her head at my question.
Apparently that exchange just now was nothing but a coincidence.
There was a brief, trivial commotion, but she was always on her own wavelength and paid it no mind, immediately getting to the main point.
"When do I get deployed?"
"Huh?"
"I’m one of the heroes under contract here too. Put me in the production. That was part of the agreement."
The studio had signed a hero's employment contract.
The hero under the studio's contract had to work with the production.
It was a standard clause intended to prevent a temple or studio from sidelining a contracted hero.
But even if it was custom, the penalty for violating it wasn't negligible, and if I'd intended to let her do nothing from the start I wouldn't have signed her in the first place.
Still, just because I wanted to put her in didn't mean I could do it unilaterally, so instead of accepting her demand straightaway I looked at Nicol.
Because story matters were his department.
"There’s a role you could play, Diane. We’re reaching the point where the magical girls need support—something like a sidekick."
With the power inflation getting so severe, it really was time for on-site personnel to support them, even if they weren't fellow magical girls.
What about Isis's servants?
Those characters were comic relief.
As Nikolai said, we had already roughly outlined the sidekick's concept.
We were just about to look for an actor when Diane happened to visit the studio.
The thing was, that character had one problem.
"But wasn't that the character who becomes a magical girl later?"
"Uh... yes."
The character was meant to serve as a useful sidekick before awakening as the third magical girl at a dramatic moment.
The problem was that in my view, Diane, who had to play that role, was the furthest thing from a magical girl.
For starters, her looks and figure were already teetering on the edge of childhood innocence, but let's set that aside.
What worried me was her combat style.
The fighting method I'd seen from her in the John Series was... a little tricky to bring into a magical girl show.
Still, it was worth checking, so I did.
"Can you use magic?"
"Yeah."
A sphere on the verge of detonation materialized above her hand.
The Calamity Duke's bloodline was famous for its power.
"What about hand-to-hand? Ah, not what you showed in John—something appropriate for a magical girl."
She produced several firearms loaded with blanks and demonstrated a variety of shooting stances.
I was briefly awed by the textbook-perfect demonstration, then realized how totally at odds it was with childhood innocence and my expression hardened.
It felt like a middle-aged man's red-tinted revenge drama had suddenly intruded on a pink girl's coming-of-age story.
After thanking her for her trouble, I dragged Nikolai into a corner to discuss her character.
"Hey, in your world, were there military magical girls?"
"There were, but most of them didn’t end well."
"Same on my end. Not that. Was there ever a happy ending?"
"Not that I recall."
Damn.
And referencing those bad-end magical girls risked causing bigger problems in lots of ways, so they were no use to us.
'We've gotta pioneer a new space again.'
Just as I wondered whether we’d have to go on another adventure, one of the documents scattered across my desk caught my eye.
It was a report on an item created as a byproduct of the transformation equipment Ailey and the Golden Magic Tower had been researching over break.
The initial plan had been a device that spoke and, when you inserted a specific ornament or key, transformed the user, but what actually came out was a Hand Cannon with a voice feature tacked on as a bonus—you inserted scrolls loaded with stored spells and fired them all at once.
The Golden Magic Tower crowed about another new technology, which I didn't care about, but what mattered was that when I ran the estimates, it synergized perfectly with Diane's combat style.
"Boss. There's a problem, though."
"What."
"If we add this on, there's no way we can call her a magical girl anymore."
"The ship's already sailed for the hills, so why not fly to the sky while we're at it."
After consulting with Nicol, I told Diane about the magical girl she would be playing.
"Is this doable?"
"It's a bit demanding. The Destruction Magic imbued into the scrolls totally depends on the user's own capacity, so while I can strengthen it a little, I won't be able to make it dramatically stronger."
"So you're saying it's doable?"
"With enough time, definitely."
She conjured a Magic Circle above her fingers with a voice that was oddly brimming with confidence.
I couldn't fully grasp it, but seeing the keyword "Magic Fusion" in the middle of the formula made me think it was probably possible.
"Anyway, you're not going in right away. You'll be inserted at an appropriate point in the story, so you've got plenty of time."
"Then it's doable."
"Good."
With that, the third magical girl was decided.
=================
"So, Mari's next story is a summer vacation everyday-life arc."
"Huh?"
I boldly announced the next scenario to everyone in the studio.
I slapped the blackboard twice, and everyone in the room looked at it with flabbergasted expressions.
On the blackboard, written in huge letters, were the words Youth and Love.
"You all understand that Magical Mari is a show about a cute academy girl who matures mentally and overcomes adversity."
"Cute?"
Ceres tilted her head.
"What? You think Mari isn't cute?"
"Well, of course?"
"How can you have no affection for your own character? And you call yourself a professional actor?"
"No, think about it logically. What part of Mari's track record so far is cute!?"
At her words, I placed a hand over my heart and thought back over Mari's track record.
In my mind, the magical girls naturally started chiming in like a chorus, shouting "Last time on Magical Mari!"
Now that I thought about it, Mari had picked up the Heart Gem and her daily life had gotten a bit more dynamic.
But she was still attending school just fine and making friends perfectly well.
Sure, there were minor issues like a demon taking root on her back or her learning a friend-beam to make friends, but those were just the trivial transgressions of a college girl.
No matter how I looked at it, Mari's track record wasn't all that different from a girl in the prime of her life, so what was Ceres so dissatisfied about?
Once my thoughts reached that point, I arrived at the conclusion that her saying Mari wasn't cute was just plain embarrassment.
"What's there to be embarrassed about? A person's cuteness has nothing to do with age."
"...That's weirdly unpleasant."
"Anyway, since Mari started transforming, story-wise she hasn't had a proper break, right? She's been fighting monsters nonstop—not just a girl student but even a soldier wouldn't get run this ragged, you know?"
"Right?"
"So to change the mood for a bit, we're going to film Mari and Isis spending their summer vacation everyday lives. We need to remind the viewers that they're students in the full bloom of youth."
"I have a question."
"Go ahead, Ceres."
"Does it have to be summer vacation? Does it really have to be everyday life? I feel like we could just keep doing what we've been doing."
"No. It has to be everyday life."
"Yeah, but why."
"Because there are people who'll get mad if we don't."
The people from the Suspicious Club, to whom I'd promised to film Lirpin and Cled's daily lives, were especially terrifying.
Ceres seemed to pick up on some of what I was implying, because she didn't ask any further.
Once she accepted it and returned to her seat, the next person raised their hand.
"I have a question!"
"Go ahead, Kylie."
"Summer vacation ended a month ago, didn't it?"
"Which is why we're filming it now."
Back in my previous life, they always aired the summer vacation story after summer vacation was over too.
Back then, it somehow felt like being teabagged and honestly pissed me off.
And it seemed to have been the same in Nikolai's world.
Now that I'm on the production side I still don't know why, but anyway, following in the footsteps of our industry seniors, we planned to film the summer vacation story now.
Kylie looked oddly dissatisfied with my answer but returned to her seat anyway.
Once she sat down, Diane raised her hand this time.
"Me."
"Go ahead, Diane."
"So where did you decide they'd go play for summer vacation?"
"That's what we were about to discuss."
Honestly, we could just book any beach or island, but if possible, a place the actors could genuinely enjoy would probably come across better on camera.
At that, Diane raised her hand high again.
"Then let's go to our territory."
"That's a great idea."
Leon, who had been listening quietly, agreed with Diane's opinion.
Hetairo Academy was an island east of the imperial center, and the Calamity Duke ruled the eastern part of the Empire.
Therefore, among the current ducal territories, Karamzin Territory was the closest.
On top of that, the eastern region where the Calamity Duke's territory lay had the warmest climate in the empire and four distinct seasons, making it famous as a tourist destination.
Its world-famous tourism route followed the coastal islands, allowing visitors to experience a different theme on each one.
So looking at it all together, Diane's suggestion was highly suitable.
But my answer was emphatic.
"No."
"...Why? Do you not like me?"
"That’s not it, Diane. I’m just terrified of the Calamity Duke."
"Have you met my dad?"
"No. But I'm still scared."
It wasn't his feats that frightened me.
If I had to compare, my own father's accomplishments weren't all that different from his.
A great wizard did not need incantations for every spell.
Magic wasn’t a cheap trick where shouting “Avada Kedavra” made something pop out.
It was a miracle only triggered when all three elements of imagination warping enough to twist reality, concentration, and knowledge all clicked perfectly together.
Take a Fireball as an example.
First, to cast a Fireball, the image of a fireball had to overwhelm every thinking process—meaning you had to enter a state of selflessness or trance.
In that half-stuporous state, in one corner of your mind you had to be calculating the spell formula for the Fireball magic like writing code.
Lastly, you had to complete those two processes in an extremely short time under any conditions, whenever you wanted, and then return to reality.
Even so, if someone drilled the above process over and over, they could memorize one or two spells.
People in non-wizard professions usually misunderstood that point.
In contrast, the breed properly called "Wizards" were people who had to drop only their left brain into a trance state while using their right brain to analyze reality, pull up the appropriate magic, and write out the spell formula.
To make an analogy, it was like having to program code in sleep-talk while your left brain slept and your right brain stayed awake.
So here's a question: what do you think the odds are that a breed capable of that is of sound mind?
"Allen? Why are you suddenly insulting me?"
"Allen. I'm a little hurt as well."
"I'm offended too."
Ailey, Karl, and Diane, who had been listening to my explanation, protested, but I ignored them and kept going.
The Calamity Duke was a being who had reached the absolute peak even among such wizards.
Meaning he was a walking tactical weapon who could trigger a nuclear explosion if he set his mind to it.
I knew better than anyone what kind of sight you could get when a lunatic held a nuclear launch button, which was why I didn't want to meet him from the start.
At my explanation, the rest of the studio—aside from the professional wizards—also agreed they didn't want to meet him, though for different reasons than mine.
The others were no more eager than I was, because meeting a duke merely to arrange a film shoot was an intimidating prospect.
At that, Diane brought out her trump card.
"Why are you insulting my dad?"
"..."
For real. Playing the dad card so openly.
But my stance was firm.
Even if it meant pulling the dad card, I did not want to meet the Calamity Duke.
On top of that, I was currently in a situation where his daughter was aggressively hitting on me.
If even one misunderstanding arose, Allen could get disassembled into individual consonants and vowels.
In the end, faced with my utterly resolute stance, she had no choice but to give up.
"Ha ha! My victory! I absolutely will not go to the Karamzin Territory!"
The rest of the people watched me shouting in triumph with sour, icy expressions, but I didn't care since I was alive.
Nicol, who had been watching me like that from behind, muttered.
"That’s how I ended up joining this club."
"I’m not like you, though."
*
The next day.
The professor stood at the front of the classroom.
"A school trip is scheduled in two months. This time, Duke Karamzin has specially opened up his territory for the students, so you may look forward to it immensely."
- Karamzin?
- Whoa! I never thought I would visit Duke Karamzin’s domain in my lifetime!
Among the cheering classmates, I muttered under my breath.
"Son of a bitch."