82. Mari Episode
82. Mari Episode
==============<Magical Mari Start>==============
With each magical girl's personal episode complete, the story of the show's protagonist, Mari, finally began.
As viewers predicted, Scapul was cast as Mari's archenemy.
The second time Mari faced Scapul, unlike the last, he held a Heart Gem.
Having begun to utilize the Heart Gem, he single-handedly drove the magical girls into a corner, as if the title of 2nd Seat was no hollow reputation.
But as always, the magical girls ultimately defeated Scapul.
"As expected of you, Mari—you are my adversity indeed!"
With those words and a fiery explosion, Scapul died just like the other monsters.
A few days later.
A slightly stronger Scapul appeared and threatened the magical girls.
At first, speculation circulated that he was using clones like Legion, but Riv denied that theory.
Having once tested his strength against the Councilors, he was aware of their abilities, which had been kept secret until now.
The ability Riv described was resurrection.
Fitting the rank of Councilor of Adversity, he possessed the ability to revive stronger each time he died.
"What kind of broken ability is that!? Isn't that basically invincible?"
After hearing Riv's explanation, Mari shouted in protest at the sheer unfairness of the power.
Isis, plugging her ears against Mari's booming cry, was a bonus.
However, according to what Riv explained next, Scapul's ability was fortunately not invincible.
"His resurrection is neither infinite nor without cost."
Scapul's power had a limit of ten revivals, with one life replenished per month.
The problem was the cost: he was absolutely required to engage in a life-or-death struggle at least once every three days.
If he failed to fight to the brink of death, or to die in battle, Scapul would certainly self-destruct.
"You have two choices. One: don't fight Scapul for three days. The other: kill him ten times within a month. Which will you choose?"
The former option was the rational one.
But Mari was unwilling.
Part of her reasoning was that no one knew what Scapul might do on the island in those three days, and also that he could simply find another battlefield.
But the magical girls didn't take Mari's words at face value.
Because anyone could see that it was rivalry.
And so, the tenacious, tangled fate between Mari and Scapul began.
Every time he returned, Scapul was stronger, and in each fight, Mari grew further and brought him down.
Unfortunately for Scapul, Mari's rate of growth outpaced his own strengthening through resurrection.
By the time Scapul had few lives remaining, Mari was already at a level where she could defeat him alone, without the other magical girls' help.
Thus defeat and resurrection repeated eight times.
With only two lives left, Scapul suddenly invited Mari alone to a place off the island.
Her comrades argued the invitation was a trap and tried to stop her, but she accepted, insisting that given Scapul's character, that was absolutely impossible.
Before long, Mari arrived at the location written on the invitation.
The place was a temple situated in the heart of the great forest of the Helheim Kingdom.
The enormous structure, built up in a triangular form, had an altar at its peak.
Admiring the temple's majestic appearance and looking up, Mari spotted Scapul meditating at the top.
As if he had noticed her at the same moment, Scapul finished his meditation and began descending from the temple.
While descending, he began to explain his past in a low voice.
*
This temple was an ancient relic called the Warriors' Altar, and Scapul came from a demi-human tribe that worshipped this ruin.
A legend had been passed down among that tribe.
The legend said that when a great warrior, recognized by the God of Warriors, ascended the altar, the Blessing of the Sun would descend upon them.
Therefore, his tribe held a festival each year, selecting warrior candidates to stand upon this altar.
But for hundreds of years, no warrior had ever truly received the Blessing of the Sun.
The tribe's people didn't exactly take the legend literally anyway, considering it just a tradition, so they weren't disappointed by this.
The problem came afterward.
One day, an army came to the tribe.
Those who called themselves the Apostles of Adversity suddenly began attacking the tribe.
Scapul and his fellow warriors fought back, but the Apostles of Adversity, wielding the magic of Heart Gems, slaughtered the warriors one-sidedly.
As his comrades fell one by one, Scapul placed his final hope in the temple.
But the temple did not answer him.
Scapul, believing that he lacked the qualifications of a warrior, barely managed to kill one Apostle and returned to the temple bearing its head.
Still, the temple did not answer.
Scapul despaired at the temple's silence.
Despair became hatred, and hatred became rage.
Feeding on that rage, he descended from the temple and began killing the Apostles of Adversity.
At first, it took immense effort to kill even one, but as he bathed in their blood, the power of the Heart Gem seeped into him, and he eventually began to massacre the Apostles.
He brought the corpses of those Apostles to the temple each time, trying to prove his worth as a warrior, but the temple answered only with consistent silence.
As the years passed, when he had piled up a mountain of Apostles' corpses as tall as the temple itself, a Councilor who called himself the 1st Seat came to find him.
"You are someone truly befitting a Councilor of Adversity."
And so, Scapul became a Councilor of Adversity.
One single conviction then filled the heart of Councilor Scapul.
The conviction that the gods were heartless, and in the end, the only things he could trust were pain and himself.
*
Having finished his story, Scapul asked Mari:
"In your eyes, am I a warrior?"
"Yeah. You're a warrior."
"That's enough. It's enough to be acknowledged by my mortal enemy, rather than by a silent god who won't answer."
He clenched both fists, as if discarding his lingering attachment to the temple.
And then Scapul and Mari clashed.
In this battle, unlike any before, Scapul fought Mari on equal footing.
And at the last, when their fists crossed each other's paths—
At that decisive moment, due to the difference in their heights, his fist passed over Mari's head, and Mari's fist drove straight into the center of his chest.
Once again, it was Mari's victory.
Mari gazed down at the fallen Scapul and shouted.
"Revive as many times as you want and come challenge me! Every single time, I'll beat you down again!"
Looking up at Mari, Scapul let out a hearty laugh.
"Thank you, my mortal enemy. Hearing you say that, even at the very end, truly puts me at ease."
"The end?"
At that moment, cracks began to spread across Scapul's limbs.
Watching his own body crumble, Scapul confessed his condition.
The truth was, he hadn't had two lives left, but only one.
He had already thrown one away on a different battlefield.
"Why would you do that?"
"Because if you'd known I only had one life left, you wouldn't have fought me with everything you had."
He had already realized it.
That he could never catch up to her growth.
And so, for an honorable death, he had lied so that she would give her absolute best.
"Do you know? That was the first lie of my life."
It was the first and last lie of Scapul, who had always cried out for a direct, head-on confrontation.
As his right hand completely vanished, Scapul lamented inwardly.
'Still, it's a bit of a shame. I would have liked to see for myself just how far Mari would grow.'
He buried that regret in his heart and asked Mari for a final fist bump.
Mari looked down at him with a bittersweet expression and touched her fist to his.
It was the moment their fists met.
"Well done, Magical Mari—and you too, Councilor."
At the voice of a third party who had intruded, both of them turned toward its owner.
"Adjutant...?"
The owner of the voice, whom Scapul had called Adjutant, wore a sneer on his face and shouted.
"My thanks for delivering two Heart Gems to me at once, Councilor! Now, farewell!"
With the Adjutant's declaration, a bombardment of magic poured down on the two of them.
The earth shook under the overwhelming volume of the magical barrage.
"Damn it. So he brought every last Apostle of Adversity."
In hindsight, it was obvious.
Scapul had only ever subjugated them through force; they had never been truly loyal to him.
The Apostles of Adversity weren't even an organization bound by loyalty or a great cause to begin with; betrayal and rebellion were everyday occurrences, so the Adjutant's treachery wasn't much of a shock.
What troubled Scapul's mind was Mari.
He himself was already a dead man walking, but he couldn't accept that the mortal enemy he had acknowledged would meet her death in a place like this.
Shielding her from the incoming attacks, he tried to squeeze out his last life force and use his magic power to open a hole in the encirclement for her to break through.
"If you're alone, you can surely escape the encirclement! Once I use my technique, run immediately!"
But Mari did not.
"If defeating you was my goal, I would never have fought you from the start!"
As Mari confessed that the reason she had traded fists with him—when simply leaving him alone for three days would have made him self-destruct—was to grant him an honorable battle, Scapul fell silent.
Mari declared they would break through together, throwing an arm around the shoulders of Scapul, whose soles had already disappeared.
Speechless, Scapul stared down at her, then grudgingly tried to move his feet.
But the Adjutant did not miss their opening.
A sharp whoosh sliced through the air beside Mari.
And from her side, fresh blood burst out.
"You son of a bitch!!!"
"Isn't this precisely what happens to you both, for playing those useless friendship games? The old you would never have done such a thing. This is all a consequence of you changing, Councilor."
Mocking Scapul's bellow, the Adjutant took aim with his crossbow once more.
Scapul wrapped himself around Mari to shield her from the second bolt with his own back, but he was struck directly by the subsequent magical bombardment and fell to his knees.
He looked down at Mari, bleeding out in his arms.
An alarming amount of blood poured from her, and she was gradually losing her strength.
"Haha... why am I so sleepy..."
As he held her while she murmured weakly, Scapul roared at her to stay quiet, desperately searching for a way to save her.
As he shielded her with his entire body from bolts and magic, the temple caught his eye.
Seeing it, he gritted his teeth and sprinted toward it.
Holding Mari, Scapul climbed the stairs.
The Apostles of Adversity did not stop their attacks on his back as he ascended.
By the time he reached the top, almost nothing remained below his knees, and his right arm had already fallen away.
He laid Mari upon the altar and knelt down, beginning to pray.
"O God... God of Warriors...! I return to your embrace and repent! I beg forgiveness for not believing in you! So, I offer this sinner up as a sacrifice—please bestow the Blessing of the Sun upon this girl!"
But the altar, as it had always done, did not answer.
Scapul was about to spew curses at the silent altar, but seeing magic flying toward Mari, he stopped to shield her again.
In the deafening roar of the blasts, Mari, having barely regained consciousness, saw Scapul protecting her and smiled weakly.
"Sorry... I didn't mean for this. I ruined everything..."
With those final words, Mari closed her eyes.
At Mari's final words, Scapul wore an expression like he'd been struck with a hammer. Then, resolving himself, he placed his hand over his own chest.
He tore out the Heart Gem embedded in his heart and thrust it into Mari's left gauntlet, where no Heart Gem had been set.
Shielding Mari like a roof in case a stray spell struck her, he pleaded in a tear-choked voice.
"O God... This unbeliever prays for the first time in his life. If you truly are the God of Warriors. If you truly love warriors. Then please—save the life of this great warrior. Do not let this warrior breathe her last because of a faithless man like me! O God!!!!"
Together with his cry, the clouds parted, and the sun shone upon Mari.
Though he could have received that sunlight himself, Scapul moved aside from over her without any hesitation, ensuring she alone could wholly receive the light.
He even continued praying, afraid that if his prayer stopped, the light might stop as well.
The sight of Mari rising in a halo of light while Scapul prayed for her was almost sacred.
When the light finally faded, there stood Mari, every wound healed.
The jewels on both her gauntlets held a dancing solar flame, and her mascot, Lirpin, had become a lion.
Mari lifted up Scapul, who had continued praying even as his limbs had turned to dust.
"Scapul..."
"Ah... O God."
Gazing at her final form, Scapul then wept and murmured.
"Thank you... for arranging my final moments in the arms of a great warrior..."
And so, Scapul crumbled into dust and vanished.
==============<Magical Mari End>==============
Just as Allen had predicted, the reaction to the Mari Episode was intense.
It went beyond intense—it was enough to form a river of tears.
The exploits of the awakened Mari after Scapul's death didn't leave a large impression in people's minds.
Nikolai, who had put considerable effort into the battle scenes, felt somewhat wronged, but the narrative of Scapul and Mari was simply that powerful.
Even Allen had blown his nose into a tissue in a corner during filming, and once more during editing—how much more so for the audience?
- Scapul...!!! I'll remember you!!!
The very next day after the drama aired.
Before anyone realized it, Mari's arc had become a dual-protagonist story centered on both Mari and Scapul.
Even fandoms that, under normal circumstances, would have been busy starting Fandom Wars over who was the best kept quiet and came to pay their respects at this funeral.
The problem was the format of the funeral.
Nikolai, seeing the Mari Faction hanging a portrait of Scapul and building a pyramid-shaped altar in front of the club room, could only press his fingers to his forehead.
"A grand funeral for a grand warrior!!!"
Something about how they would make Scapul into a Sun Warrior there.
While Ailey wasn't tied up as a sacrifice like usual, this was a troublesome situation in its own right.
Complaints were already flooding into the club room, demanding through the Student Council that the structure be dismantled.
But Nikolai felt it was unfair.
Magical girl fandoms were an uncontrollable bunch by nature—what was he supposed to do about it?
He was wracking his brain over how the studio could take responsibility for that mob, which was uncontrollable in a completely different way from the John Tracking Squad.
Nikolai was waiting for Allen, clutching at any straw he could.
But today, Allen was late getting to the office.
He was starting to worry since Allen hadn't arrived even though lectures in the Hero Department would have ended long ago when a voice that shouldn't have been there came from outside the window.
"Move it, faster!! A legless, armless Scapul would've moved quicker than you lot!"
"Soorryyy!!"
Allen was leading the construction effort, whipping the Mari Faction into shape.
And amidst all that, the Mari Faction was obediently following his words.
Nikolai's mouth hung agape at the sheer absurdity of witnessing an isekai pyramid construction site.
Only after rubbing his eyes at the unbelievable sight and giving himself a dry wash of his face could he convince himself this was reality.
'No wonder. I should've known when he was looking for tissues the whole time during filming.'
Why was he getting so overly immersed in the drama he himself made?
Nikolai fidgeted with his 352nd resignation letter inside his coat.