The Magical Girl of the Waning Moon (2)

The Control Room.

Here, beneath a soft red glow, the massive monitors spanning the far wall cast their light across the entire Far East.

The barren Gobi without a single blade of grass; the beginning and the end of the Great Wall; Tiananmen Square; Sinuiju Station; the Taedong River basin of Pyongyang where the Juche Tower rose high; the wetlands along the Amur and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠outer harbor of Vladivostok; the forested reaches of Kamchatka and Hokkaido blanketed in thick snow.

Not to mention the skylines of Tokyo and Osaka, Busan, Seoul, Shanghai, Nagoya, Taipei, and every other city—down to the remotest wastes where no trace of human presence could be found.

Everything was being fed onto the screens.

Like the Adjutant, Bureau agents in ash-gray uniforms sat at their stations and scanned their monitors for anomalies. Each was assigned anywhere from a few hundred screens to several thousand. For the peace of humanity, for the stability of the world, enormous manpower was poured into surveilling every corner of the Far East.

Well over a hundred people. They filled the Control Room so completely that its vast floor could not be taken in at a glance, all of them swarming for the sake of surveillance alone.

I sat at the exact center—an ideal vantage from which every monitor and every agent lay open before me. I interlaced my fingers and quietly brought my hands up before my face.

Everything was only beginning now.

The protagonist of this novel, the Magical Girl of the Scales, would make her first appearance.

And she would begin to hate me.

You… what have you done…

Ian-na’s first meeting with the protagonist had been the worst. The death of another magical girl dispatched to the scene had been laid entirely at Ian-na’s feet, and a deep grudge had settled between them. In truth it had been closer to the protagonist hating Ian-na unilaterally. Because the first button had been fastened wrong, their relationship had spiraled steadily toward catastrophe.

The Bureau began reducing the number of magical girls by eliminating the “old generation” first—starting with the first-generation artificial magical girls who had no control chips inside their skulls, then moving on to those recovering from wounds suffered in the Holy War at scattered points across the Far East. Under the fine name of “protecting the world,” it demanded unilateral sacrifice and attrition.

And in that process the protagonist’s rage and hatred swelled until, at last, she carried out the Girls’ Rebellion. In an instant she seized the heart of the Bureau and erased Ian-na’s body without a trace. To the very end she never realized that Ian-na, reason long since extinguished, was nothing more than a simple puppet.

…It had been a bleak relationship.

To twist the novel’s plot, maintaining amicable terms with the protagonist was essential. Against someone who already possessed the highest potential and could wield two Remegetons at once, it was better not to stand as an enemy. There was nothing to gain by earning her hatred. This was a situation in which I would have to bow my head first and keep it bowed.

Beeeep—

A sharp alarm cut through the air, and every agent at their stations began assessing the situation at once. This was no rare event; to them it was as ordinary as breathing. Having lived through it countless times, no one panicked or floundered.

The soft red lighting shifted in an instant to a deep, saturated yellow. A yellow alert had been declared.

The Control Room recognized four levels of alert. White meant nothing amiss. Blue called for caution. Yellow signaled that danger was imminent. Red ordered total force and the immediate annihilation of the enemy. Blue was the most frequent; yellow followed close behind. White was never formally issued—if the soft red light simply continued, that itself was white. From yellow onward, things grew serious.

Unknowns appeared and began devouring sentient life. Their strength scaled with their size, and their size scaled with the dimensional rift that birthed them. When a red alert sounded, every magical girl received a muster order. It meant the dimension itself had been torn wide open and enemies would pour through in overwhelming numbers. In those cases the magical girls prepared to die—to halt the spread and seal the rift.

In any case…

The alert now sounding was yellow.

A monitor in the left-hand corner, where an agent sat, flashed yellow as the alarm grew louder still.

“Please look at the main screen.”

The great monitor at the front resolved into the image of a small wetland littered with discarded logs.

“…Beta Ether concentration is rising in Sector 79. A dimensional rift is projected to open within twenty minutes.”

Beta Ether. The particle energy that appeared whenever Unknowns—the enemies of every sentient being—began to cross over. When a crack formed between dimensions, Beta Ether was the first thing to leak through.

I kept my mouth shut. Not because I was flustered, and not because I did not know what judgment to render.

“Director.”

When I gave no answer, the Adjutant looked at me with open worry.

“…Sector 79, near Chumikan in the Russian Federation. Who is the nearest magical girl?”

“Spes Unit 3, currently in Yakutsk.”

I was not the one giving the orders.

A solidly built man sat in a position similar to mine. Neatly pomaded hair and a meticulously tailored suit made him look, at a glance, every inch the gentleman. When he spoke, his tone, his manner, and his voice all carried an excess of cultivated polish.

“Dispatch Spes Unit 3.”

“…Deputy Director, Spes Unit 3 has not yet finished recovering.”

“Is that so.”

The temporary forward post of the Far Eastern Federal District of the Russian Federation, stationed in Yakutsk. The magical girl attached there was Spes Unit 3. As the name itself announced, she was not a natural-born magical girl. She was an artificial girl manufactured with every advanced biotechnological resource the world possessed, ethics be damned. Only the brain and spinal cord remained human; every internal organ, every major body part, every muscle and bone and everything else was artificial.

“Beta ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ether concentration continues to climb. The reading has broken 27.4 percent… estimated time until enemy manifestation is approximately five minutes.”

“The situation is growing serious. We have no time to hesitate. Send Spes Unit 3.”

The Beta Ether readout on the left side of the screen climbed steadily higher. Naturally, the denser the concentration in the area, the higher the number rose. A high reading meant the dimensional rift was opening wide—which meant a powerful enemy was more likely to emerge.

“…Deputy Director, the reading has already exceeded 31.2 percent. We anticipate the appearance of a Medium-class Unknown. Spes Unit 3 is a first-generation artificial girl; she cannot handle a Medium-class.”

The Deputy Director frowned in thought for a moment, then turned to me.

“What is your view, Director? We must drop the Veil and commit a magical girl before the Unknown crawls through. If we continue to delay, we will have another Beirut-scale catastrophe on our hands.”

He was shifting the responsibility onto me.

What the Deputy Director wanted was the certain death of the outdated artificial girl called Spes Unit 3. He wanted to begin the slow removal of magical girls who had become useless—incompetent and weak. The plan known only to a vanishing handful inside the Bureau as Pest Control.

The Deputy Director was an efficient, brilliant, and utterly unambiguous villain tasked with eliminating magical girls across the entire Far East. For someone who wanted to survive, he was also an enemy I would have to remove without fail.

“…I…”

I needed to think carefully. How would the Ian-na of the novel have acted?

Ian-na’s body was half a corpse already. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠It did not show on the surface, but life-support systems were attached throughout. The medical wing could monitor her condition in real time—or deliver electrical stimulation to her brain and torture her without mercy. From the beginning a behavioral-suppression chip had been installed inside her skull so that she could never rebel against the Bureau no matter what happened. For some reason it seemed inactive now.

Even a faded, rusted reputation from the past was not entirely empty. Ian-na had once brought down three Grandis-class Unknowns by herself. From the Bureau’s perspective that was more than enough reason for caution. The Remegeton that had once belonged to her—now gone—was Waning Moon. Used beneath faint moonlight, it could unleash power no other magical girl could hope to match.

Of course, that would never happen. But if Ian-na’s body recovered fully and she once again took a Remegeton into her hands, she could raise a rebellion—one that would certainly succeed.

I forced my mind back to the present.

Given the nature of Ian-na—who, even in this broken body, still found comfort in looking out over the world she had protected, and who placed the lives of complete strangers above everything else—

A magical girl exists for the sake of humanity…

—she would send Spes Unit 3 to prevent the Unknown from realizing itself into this world and to buy time for the residents to evacuate. Following the Deputy Director’s recommendation.

And of course that choice had led to a wretched death. Spes Unit 3 had not even managed to buy time; her strength failed and she fell. Her corpse became nourishment for the Unknown. After the first incident, every arrow of blame was loosed at Ian-na. That had been the original story of the novel.

From here I would twist it, just a little.

The authority the Bureau had granted me was almost nothing. Even if I opposed the dispatch of Spes Unit 3, my power amounted to a handful of dust. No one except the Adjutant would listen to me. That was reality. Most of the Bureau was already under the control of the Deputy Director and his creatures, and they were sharpening their blades to purge imperfect magical girls who might one day threaten humanity.

And so there was nothing I could decide.

Nothing I could decide…

“Connect me to Yakutsk… Let’s ask her herself.”

“…Understood.”

For a magical girl, sacrifice came before all else. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Because magical girls sacrificed, humanity had peace; because there was peace, there was a future. The prerequisite for becoming a magical girl was the willingness to throw away even one’s life for ordinary people who had nothing to do with you.

Ah—artificial magical girls were slightly different. They were selected from among orphans, vagrants, violent criminals, and other volunteers, then remade. What they required was not a spirit of sacrifice but brainwashing. Extremely thorough brainwashing.

“Yes.”

The monitor showed a girl in a white hospital gown. Bandages wrapped her body in multiple places; a severe scar covered half her face. Marks of strangulation ringed her throat, her entire body was a map of wounds, and blood still seeped from several of them.

“Sector 79. Beta Ether has broken 35 percent. The nearest magical girl is… you.”

“I understand perfectly.”

The girl quietly stripped off the hospital gown, stood bare, and pressed both hands to her chest. A Remegeton was the materialization of magic drawn from another dimension’s ether, given form as a tool. Spes Unit 3 summoned a small, shield-shaped Remegeton and showed her resolve.

A middle-aged man’s voice, thick with a Russian accent, came from behind her.

“It’s all right, Filippov. Like always, I’ll come back.”

“Doctor, don’t worry. But… when I get back, you have to double my hazard pay. My family got a little bigger recently.”

The girl smiled faintly, kicked off from where she stood—

and never returned.

…

Well. That had been the obvious outcome.