When Despair Descends (4)
"Why… why would you… do something like that…?"
Ian-na asked again, her voice trembling.
Illusion's eyes reflected Ian-na's image.
There she was — blue veins standing out stark against her white throat, pupils contracted to pinpricks as she glared up at her.
Ian-na could barely keep her body under control, so fierce was the rage threatening to burst from her.
In a ridiculous state, nose streaming blood, she crawled across the floor toward them.
"Hah… hah…"
Illusion found herself breathing hard without meaning to. A strange sensation she'd never experienced before made her entire body tingle.
It was a feeling she'd never even gotten from Scales. The fact that Ian-na — broken as thoroughly as a person could be — was directing her fury at her was overwhelmingly exciting.
"Why… whyyy…"
Two pale, slender arms.
Ian-na stretched her flailing arms toward her.
Without thinking, Illusion caught the arms Ian-na offered. More precisely, she interlaced her fingers with those small, delicate hands.
The moment their hands touched, Ian-na recoiled, trembling violently. She flinched all over, trying to pull away.
It was already branded into her.
The terror of magical girls.
…
Illusion's heart hammered as if it would explode. It was more thrilling than anything she'd ever done. Her head spun. She could barely keep her body in check.
She twisted her legs together. The ecstasy flooding every inch of her had left her slightly wet below.
A sense of conquest.
A sense of conquest she'd never felt at any point before. A strange excitement mixed with that conquest, scrambling Illusion's mind into chaos.
"Ptooey."
She forced Ian-na's mouth open and spat down her throat.
A mark.
A mark declaring she would thoroughly violate Ian-na's body.
A maddening ecstasy made her whole body feel like it was melting. She felt as if she might lose her reason entirely.
Thud!
To snap herself back, she drove a hard kick into Ian-na's stomach. She bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood, trying to scatter the feelings Ian-na stirred in her.
"Ugh…"
Ian-na crumpled into the corner, and Illusion looked down at her, turning over her thoughts.
The moral high ground belonged entirely to her.
Ian-na was clearly trying to purge the magical girls, so she was merely delivering justified retribution. And while she was at it, she would avenge the dead Oksana as well.
She needed to make Ian-na understand this situation. She needed to make her realize that in body, in mind, in justification — in every respect — the advantage was hers.
Only then could she completely break Ian-na.
Her thinking had changed.
At first, she'd planned to kill her. Before the senior she'd once admired could become any more grotesque, she'd intended to make her pay for her crimes and turn her into one of the countless stars in the sky.
But.
That wasn't enough.
What Ian-na wanted was to survive no matter what she became — she would do anything if it meant staying alive. She would completely abandon a magical girl's pride and not even refuse selling her body to the Bureau's upper ranks.
I want to make her beg for her life.
That was the thought filling Illusion's mind.
Illusion approached Ian-na, who lay clutching her stomach, and stomped on her head.
Scales, as if uninterested in the spectacle, blew a large pink bubble of gum and stared at her smartphone.
"…Why."
Ian-na murmured quietly.
"Why… did you kill him…"
Looking down at Ian-na, who could barely contain her rage, Illusion smiled faintly.
I didn't kill him.
Cunning Illusion had not killed the Adjutant. From the start, no one but Ian-na had been their target. Ian-na as an individual, with the legitimate justification of revenge, was one thing — but the moment they touched another monkey, it would be no different from confronting the Bureau head-on.
Of course, she intended to confront them head-on someday, but not yet. There were far too many monkeys.
A considerable number of magical girls still followed the monkeys, and more importantly, Scales's second Remegeton was not yet ready.
With Waning Moon neutralized, Entreaty's intentions — currently the strongest magical girl in all but name — remained uncertain as well.
Even if Scales stood with her, if Entreaty turned against them, opposing the Bureau as it currently stood would be nothing short of suicide.
Magical girls surpassed ordinary humans in every respect by tens or hundreds of times. Magical girls were the strong; ordinary people, no better than monkeys, were the weak.
Waning Moon and the majority of magical girls justified their own sacrifice with the words "protect the weak" — but she was different.
There was no need for the strong to sacrifice themselves for the majority of the weak. Especially not under a system where the strong — the magical girls — were placed under the dominion of the weak monkeys.
It was the strong who should lead the monkeys. She had no attachment to the current system, where the hierarchy had been inverted.
That was why Illusion intended to bring down the Bureau.
No — more precisely, to seize it. After eliminating only the Bureau's leadership, she planned to take that seat herself and run the Bureau however she pleased.
To become an iron-willed magical girl who ruled over ten thousand monkeys, a great magical girl praised by all — that was Illusion's goal.
Illusion was perfectly sane. At least, that was how she felt. And so, as long as the monkeys submitted to their rule, she intended to guarantee their lives.
Just as she always had, she intended to protect them against the invasions of the Unknowns.
That was also why she hadn't killed Ian-na's Adjutant.
Even for a monkey, she'd been rather taken with the way he'd been willing to stake his life for his master.
Illusion's ability was, quite literally, creating "illusions."
Having reached into the realm of rewriting reality itself, Illusion could easily change a person's location. All she had to do was think of the person standing in a given place as an "illusion" — a fake.
That was why the Adjutant had vanished like an afterimage.
Ian-na's Adjutant was no doubt wandering the woods outside the Bureau right now, with no idea what had happened. Well — maybe not.
Where a monkey ended up was none of her concern.
Illusion's gaze fixed on Ian-na.
Ian-na, trembling from head to toe as she vomited blood-streaked bile.
An amusing line occurred to her.
"Why, you ask?"
Illusion's voice was full of playfulness.
"Well…"
She was intensely curious about Ian-na's reaction. To see her expression for herself, Illusion grabbed her by the hair and forced her head up.
With a single sentence, she wanted to thoroughly shatter Ian-na's heart. She wanted to make Ian-na hate her. She wanted to break the body and mind of an Ian-na who hated her.
And the words that rose in Illusion's mind were exactly one.
Ian-na's face twisted to an extreme degree.
"You… bitch…"
Ian-na, who had never once in her life uttered a vulgar word, used one on her for the first time.
"…A magical girl's role is to protect the innocent… the weak. You… you… you… broke the precepts…"
"So what? I warned you. I said I'd kill him if you tried anything funny. Your monkey made the choice."
"People… aren't… monkeys… Harsa, you… why… why… whyyy…"
Tears shimmered in Ian-na's eyes.
What hurt Ian-na's heart more than anything else was that Illusion had been smiling even as she killed a person.
Unable to hold back the nausea any longer, Ian-na retched up bile right there.
No food came out. She'd deliberately kept herself on an empty stomach so she could eat chocolate while chatting with the two of them.
She'd also prepared a whole pile of sweet candies from the infirmary, so Ian-na hadn't eaten anything recently.
All of it, just to be with the two of them.
If only — truly — it had been just her.
If only they'd just killed her.
If they were going to kill without leaving a trace, if only they'd used their power on her instead.
Even dying unjustly, she could have understood. She could have sent the two of them off with a smile to the very end. That was the kind of magical girl Ian-na was.
A magical girl who protected the weak and sheltered others, who could forgive anything at all — that was Ian-na.
Ian-na clenched her teeth.
The two of them had crossed a river from which there was no return.
Illusion had shredded Ian-na's heart to pieces. For Ian-na, more than the wounds left on her body, what hurt most was that her most precious junior treated a life so carelessly. She was at the point where she could no longer maintain her reason.
"I wanted… to get close… I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding… and g-give you gifts… and with the two of you… again, just once more…"
Dead-eyed, Ian-na began to murmur softly. In her head she could accept that the two of them had killed the Adjutant, but in her heart she simply could not.
Illusion looked at that expression on Ian-na's face and smiled, filled with rapture.
Ian-na had been the idol of every magical girl. For decades she had held the summit of the Twelve Seats of Magical Girls. There had been a time when Illusion had truly admired her. She had even harbored feelings she shouldn't have felt toward another woman.
Ian-na had been kind to everyone. She had conducted herself as a model for all magical girls.
And that Ian-na—
"This can't… be… no… this… isn't… I-I… don't know… this kind of thing… this wasn't… how it was supposed to go…"
—had broken.
Completely broken.
The plan had gone a little off track, but this was enough.
Now it was time to break Ian-na psychologically.
With violence and threats.