78. Magical Girl Dina
78. Magical Girl Dina
I had learned Diane's dark secret, but I stayed silent to protect her honor.
Pointing it out now would only shake the lead actor's mental state without yielding any benefit whatsoever.
I steadied my own shaken nerves, bound my right arm to my torso to render it invisible as always, and attached a prosthetic arm to my shoulder.
However, this was a shabby, slightly damaged-looking arm, different from the usual one.
It was meant to emphasize that the arm had been wrecked after the forced teleportation with Dina.
I equipped the somewhat creaky prosthetic and stepped onto the set.
My acting with Diane felt a little creaky after that day, but we somehow managed to wrap up filming for the Dina episode successfully.
==============<Magical Mari Opening>==============
Riv and Dina were suddenly sucked into a distorted space.
Viewers with even the slightest intuition immediately sensed that the Dina episode was finally beginning.
The Dina Knight Order, which was unusually well-funded, rented out an entire theater with the help of several benefactors including a former Magic Tower Master and waited for the Dina episode.
Indulging in the luxury of watching a drama on a theater screen, they took their seats and defended their viewing appointment with zeal.
The Dina episode began right where the previous episode left off, with the two of them being forcibly teleported.
By the time they regained their senses, they were surrounded by unfamiliar monsters.
Swiftly assessing the situation, the two immediately went into battle stances.
Riv's prosthetic arm whirred to life with a keening sound, and Dina reached for her waist to transform.
But Dina's hand sliced through empty air.
She groped at the air and murmured in despair.
"Could it be that during the teleportation..."
In the rush to leap into the teleportation, she had left her wand behind.
As a last resort, she attacked the monsters with magic, but her mana, unchanneled through the Heart Gem, couldn't so much as scratch them.
Dina, who had completely forgotten this fact thanks to the equipment the lab had made for her up until now, let out a groan.
At that moment, a transmission came through her earring.
[This is Penguin 1. Delta One. Respond.]
"Frank?"
[I am currently en route to that island with Alpha One and Beta One. Wait for us.]
"This place is an island?"
[Affirmative. It is an island located some distance east of Hetairo Island. It is not on any map, but it is no doubt something the Council has hidden.]
The hopeful news was that, fortunately, they knew her location because her mascot had remained on the other side.
But even that hope was dashed by the grim report that soon followed.
"How long until you arrive?"
[One hour... is what I would like to say, but the monsters are putting up fierce resistance, so it will take some time. Given the intensity, I suspect this might be their main base or something equivalent. Hold out. We will get there as fast as we can.]
Dina and Riv knew better than anyone that such operations usually took days, not hours.
Abandoning all hope of being rescued in time, they first sought a way to break through the situation themselves.
But Dina's presence, utterly powerless to affect the monsters, only made the situation more disadvantageous.
Dina looked around and then spoke to Riv, as if she had made up her mind.
"Orabo... No. Riv. I'll be fine, so you go ahead alone and escape..."
"Shut up and just hold on tight so you don't fall off my back."
But rendering Dina's resolve meaningless, Riv hoisted her onto his back and began to break through the monsters' encirclement.
His performance was beyond what the word overwhelming could even describe.
With Dina on his back, Riv never once let the monsters get behind him while carrying out a one-sided massacre.
Overwhelmed by that power, Dina, still clinging to his back, asked him the secret.
"What on earth is this power...?"
"Who knows. Ever since I put you on my back, my body has actually felt lighter."
Hearing that, Dina buried her face against Riv's back.
Soon after, carrying Dina on his back, Riv broke through the encirclement with overwhelming force and hid inside a building on the island.
By the time the fierce battle ended, Riv's prosthetic arm was battered beyond recognition.
"Hm..."
Riv was an outstanding warrior, but he didn't seem particularly bright, as he appeared not to know how to fix his prosthetic arm.
As he was examining his arm from every angle, Dina approached and asked him.
"How's the arm looking?"
"Well... I don't really know."
At Riv's answer, Dina sighed deeply and extended her hand.
While Riv was puzzling over the meaning of the gesture, Dina spoke with a pouty expression.
"I said I'll fix it, so hand it over."
Looking sheepish, Riv handed over the arm.
Taking it, Dina managed to repair the prosthetic even with the limited resources available.
She even added modifications on top of that.
Come to think of it, Bill, who'd helped create her suit, had only built the mana engine to replace the Heart Gem; from her suit to her equipment, most of the things were made by Dina herself.
Fixing an arm like this and even modifying it was no great challenge for her.
"I noticed the arm had a location-tracking function and a forced teleportation function built in. I removed those, which left some spare enchantment capacity, so I added a few features."
"Thanks."
"Though, without my equipment, I couldn't add anything grandiose. It's just tuned a bit better to your body than before, and the durability is significantly higher."
"This is more than enough."
Riv swung his newly upgraded arm around a few times.
Amazed by how much better it felt on his body than just moments before, he threw punches as if dancing, calibrating his senses.
Watching him, a certain scene surfaced in Dina's mind.
- Big Brother! You bought weird stuff again, didn't you!
- No! Look at this! They said these arm sleeves have body-strengthening enchantments!
Thinking back, Riv had always had an odd obsession with arm sleeves and vambraces.
Riv secretly buying such things with his allowance and Dina scolding him but then sighing and modifying them for him had been a daily routine for the siblings.
Dina smiled faintly, lost in the past, while Riv slowly tuned his senses.
Just then, a headache struck Riv, and the same scene flashed through his mind.
It was only for a moment, but seized by an oddly nostalgic feeling, Riv tilted his head and looked at Dina's face.
"Dina?"
"Huh? What is it, all of a sudden."
"Never mind. I just called your name."
*
After that, the two continued to hide on the island, waiting to be rescued.
The fighting was always Riv's responsibility, and once the fighting was over, Dina would climb down from his back and modify his arm.
Using resources scavenged from defeated monsters, Riv's arm grew steadily stronger, and along with it, the bond between the two deepened.
Before long, the two had begun calling each other by name, and upon hearing that the rescue team had arrived, they headed toward the shore.
Dina ran cheerfully into where her friends would be waiting.
"I'm back...?"
But what awaited her was a horde of monsters on a completely different scale than anything before.
Riv frantically reached out his hand toward Dina, who had run ahead by herself.
"Dina!"
In that instant, something like a gargoyle swooped down from the sky and snatched her up.
"Big Brother!"
Caught in the gargoyle's grip, Dina reached out her hand pitifully, but unable to reach Riv, she was carried far away.
And as he watched Dina vanish before his eyes, a headache seized Riv, and a scene surfaced in his mind.
It was the scene where they had been dragged away by the guards, each reaching out their hands pitifully toward the other.
Clutching his head in pain, Riv collapsed to his knees, and the monsters closed in on him with vile laughter.
Then, as a hideous bear monster sneered down at the kneeling Riv, he muttered.
"Have any of you ever considered what it feels like to live with only today?"
"What?"
What answered the monster's question was not a reply, but the cold touch of metal.
Felling the monster before him, Riv moved his legs again, his expression murderous.
Soon, the screen split to show three locations simultaneously.
In every one of those places, Riv was massacring monsters.
The footage comprised a short battle sequence lasting only five minutes, but those five minutes vividly conveyed Riv's fury.
Piling up mountains of corpses, Riv reached the place where Dina was being held captive.
The moment he saw her restrained inside the room, he tore off her restraints.
"Dina, are you okay?"
"Big Brother?"
"Yeah. It's me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry it took me this long to remember..."
But the siblings' emotional reunion did not last long.
As soon as he embraced Dina, the room they were in sealed shut, and a voice streamed from a speaker.
[How fortunate that you walked back here of your own accord, my masterpiece.]
Along with the voice, a magic circle rose up from the floor where Riv stood.
The moment he saw it, Riv began desperately breaking down the door, but the voice from the speaker was faster than the door's destruction.
[<Hill of the Blizzard>, <The Stolen Spring>, <Indifference and Prejudice>, <Ten Years of Solitude>, <Adventure>, <The Wandering Knight>, <The Puppet's House>, <Crime and Revenge>]
As the words continued, Riv's movements grew sluggish.
And the moment the door shattered, Riv's movements stopped.
Beyond the broken door, robed wizards were waiting for him.
"Back to your senses?"
"Initialization complete."
At Riv's answer, the wizard chuckled with satisfaction.
Then, after slapping Riv's cheek a few times, he pointed at Dina and issued his first command.
"Kill that woman with your own hands."
"Target?"
"Yes. A villain who ruins the great cause."
Having received the order, Riv rose from that spot.
His expression as he turned from the wizard's direction toward Dina was utterly blank.
"Big Brother?"
Seeing her own brother brainwashed before her eyes, Dina murmured in despair.
Sunk in deep hopelessness and abandoning even the thought of resistance, she knelt down.
In that instant, words no one expected spilled from Riv's mouth.
"You're all coming with me to hell."
While the wizards froze at Riv's sudden declaration, he broke both arms of the head wizard.
Then he snatched the Heart Gem from the wizard's waist and tossed it toward Dina.
"I'm sorry. Dina."
Leaving behind Dina's figure calling his name, Riv lifted the room door he had just torn apart and sealed the room where Dina was shut.
When he turned his gaze forward again, the fallen councilor and a host of monsters who had come to punish the traitor were waiting for him.
At his feet, the wizard presumed to be the councilor laughed low, chuckling.
"Foolish child... you are determined to ruin the great plan after all."
"Any last words left?"
"Yes. Since you have betrayed me, I too must take back what I gave you."
The councilor twitched a finger, and a magic circle appeared on Riv's chest.
And as that magic circle shattered, Riv clutched his chest in agony.
"When one of your lungs rotted away, who do you think gave you that lung?"
And with one more twitch, a similar pain struck his abdomen this time.
"When your organs died and you could no longer even eat porridge, did you think your survival until now was simply a miracle?"
At the last twitch of the fingers, the magic circle that had appeared on his right arm shattered.
"Your right arm is the same. Who do you think gave you that arm...?"
But the right arm moved perfectly fine.
"Huh?"
As the councilor let out a stupid noise, it was Riv's turn to mock him.
"As long as my right arm's fine, there's no problem at all."
"That's impossible! That arm is a masterpiece our military researchers spent decades creating! There's no way something like that could be modified...!"
"My little sister is just that competent."
"Wait! We shall have our vengeance...!"
"Before I go, warm it up nice and hot—use yourselves as kindling for the hellfires."
Crunch.
Having killed the councilor, Riv looked upon the monsters that awaited him.
He beckoned with a twitch of his fingers, taunting them, and they rushed at him all at once.
At first, Riv overwhelmed them.
But when the <Legion of Vengeance> showed signs of falling apart, another councilor's army, come to secure the Heart Gem, revealed itself, and Riv was soundly defeated.
The councilor who identified himself as Corin toyed with Riv alongside the <Army of Honor>, then hurled him against the iron door where Dina was.
Even so, when Riv rose in his wretched state, standing as if guarding that door, Corin approached slowly to finish him.
At that moment, the door he stood guarding opened carefully, and a girl emerged.
"Was there a magical girl like that?"
As Corin said, it was a magical girl no one had seen before.
A magical girl armored with a shining Heart Gem embedded in her chest.
The reason one could tell she was a magical girl was that, just barely visible beneath the armor, a magical-girl-like frilled dress could be glimpsed.
Whenever she moved, the mechanical sound that had come from Riv's right arm could be heard.
She checked Riv's condition, and reassured that he was breathing, she plunged into battle.
Unlike before, when she had relied only on stored mana and equipment, Dina, awakened as a true magical girl, overwhelmed Corin.
[Activating System Barbara]
The suit, now changed from the previous method of deploying from headquarters to a method of equipping and removing on the spot and having even resolved the mana-capacity problem, annihilated Corin's army with overwhelming performance.
Having single-handedly wiped out his army, Dina hurried back to Riv.
She attempted emergency treatment with one of the suit's functions, but the flame of his life was already dying out.
With a powerless hand, Riv grasped Dina's hand and spoke.
And along with his words, voices from the past overlapped.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I couldn't stay with you."
- We're always together.
"No. Big Brother's always with me. Isn't that right?"
- Yeah!
"Yes. That's right. Always together. Always..."
His words could not continue to the end.
As Riv's hand dropped limply, the screen darkened and the ending song rose.
*
The moment Riv's hand fell to the ground, foam frothed at the mouths of the Dina Knight Order.
Just as a motion to immediately terrorize the studio was rising from the lips of the Former Tower Master, the ending song suddenly stopped, and the episode, still unfinished, continued.
"... Watching the live broadcast is a matter of grave importance."
The knight order, whose eyes had rolled back in fury, briefly suspended their meeting and returned to their seats.
Several days had passed since Riv parted from Dina.
Compared to having parted from the brother she had sought so desperately, Dina was far too bright.
Veins were about to bulge on the foreheads of the Dina Knight Order, thinking this was some kind of character collapse, but the scene that followed was enough to calm them.
[You're back, Dina?]
When her lectures ended and she returned home, Riv greeted her.
In the form of a hologram rising from the Heart Gem.
According to the explanation that followed, the Heart Gem Dina had been using had absorbed Riv's soul and bound him to this world.
The principle was unknown, but since the object called a Heart Gem was itself an inexplicable artifact, it was glossed over roughly.
As a result, Riv settled into a role as something that replaced the AI of Dina's suit.
Before long, when a report of a monster appearing came in, Dina took up the Heart Gem Riv resided in and sortied.
Dina attacked the monster with various firearms, as usual.
Then, when the monster closed in on her, Riv in ghost form suddenly struck the monster down, and Dina finished it.
With this sortie concluded, the two exchanged a fist bump and spoke.
"We're always together."
"And together we're the strongest."
With that scene, the episode truly drew to a close.
===============<Magical Mari End>================
The place changed again, back to the club room.
With the regular broadcast of the Dina episode concluded, and me having watched it on pins and needles, Leon asked.
"What made you change the script?"
"Nikolai told me to change it."
Originally, the ending wasn't supposed to be like this.
Just as Riv told the councilor who had controlled him that he would see him in hell, Riv had been scheduled to go to hell.
- I have no regrets in my life. But if any lingering attachment remained, it was you, Dina. And now that even that has been fulfilled, I will count my sins with a glad heart.
Together with a monologue like this, the direction had been planned to end with him seizing the soul of the pitifully struggling councilor and walking into the hellfires.
But at this ending I had thought was fairly full of tragic grandeur, Nikolai recoiled in horror and stopped me.
If it were going to heaven, that'd be one thing, but if he went to hell because of sins committed while brainwashed, the fandom would cuss them out to death, he said.
Only after listening to Nikolai's subsequent lecture on the correlation between sin and retribution in fiction did I slightly revise the ending.
To have Riv go to heaven.
But even this was blocked by Nikolai.
- "Boss. In a world without magic, Holmes died and came back to life. In a world with magic, will that really be questioned as a plausibility issue?"
Following that, Nikolai proposed two choices.
Just end it nicely with a happy ending,
or get the shit beaten out of you and end it with a happy ending.
In my own way, I tried to hold out to the end for the sake of the work's completeness.
As I had certainly told Mother it would be a good ending, I had fully intended to kill Riv.
But Nikolai's final sigh-laced remark ultimately brought me to my knees.
- "Ah, why. Riv dying is a good ending too, isn't it?"
- "And from the knight order's perspective, us being burned at the stake would be a good ending too, I suppose."
So I changed it.
Bowing to wicked external pressure, I bent my convictions for the first time.
"Ugh. Ignorant masses who can't even tell the difference between a good ending and a happy ending."
And upon overhearing my grumbling, Leon said, utterly appalled.
"You seriously live with your life on the line, don't you."