Love and Peace (4)
Mediterranean-Atlantic Magical Girl Detention Bureau.
It was the third-largest magical girl oversight organization in the world, capable of projecting enormous influence across Europe, Africa, and the entire Middle East.
From its budget to its technology, it outstripped the Bureau in almost every respect. Its reach was far greater as well.
That was because it received massive investment from Jewish capital headed by the Rothschild family, along with European conglomerate houses such as Cravant, Fugger, and Wallenburg.
Naturally, that also meant it could never escape their influence. Most of the Detention Bureau’s magical girls were produced for the purpose of being offered up to their sponsors — and once they had outlived their usefulness, they were sent off as those sponsors’ “livestock.”
Ho-jun had a rough idea of what went on inside the Detention Bureau, but neither he nor the Bureau’s upper ranks ever interfered. A principle of mutual non-intervention existed between them.
Unless it involved wars waged with magical girls, terrorism, or the exposure of classified magical girl intelligence, the oversight organizations had no authority to meddle in one another’s affairs.
Aside from the time they had stopped the Chinese Ministry of Public Security Witch Bureau from using magical girls in a surprise assault on Taiwan, the Bureau itself had never once interfered with another oversight organization.
…But still.
Ho-jun believed that right now, the Bureau was the one being interfered with by another oversight organization.
[Krr-gegegegegek]
Through the camera embedded in a dead magical girl’s eye, the creature roaming the abandoned building’s interior began to come into view.
The first thing to enter Ho-jun’s field of vision was its white jaw. Head and body followed, filling the screen.
Its torso was unnaturally long. At every joint hung a human arm, stretched long like a monkey’s. Using those countless arms, it scuttled about the ruined building without rest, crawling like a centipede.
Its face was too ambiguous to call human. The mouth split wide left and right like an insect’s mandibles. Its skull stretched long behind its head — Ho-jun thought it looked exactly like a xenomorph.
Its skin was endlessly pale. Translucent flesh tinged with blue. Beneath the surface, the inner musculature, veins, and organs showed through in faint, sickly glimpses.
And inside its belly, something unidentifiable was nestled.
Without meaning to, Ho-jun frowned and looked closer.
An egg.
The thing was carrying an egg. Nothing about it could be called human.
[Krr, gegegegegek—!]
It spread its antenna-like jaws in a grin. Teeth lined its mouth in every direction like a shark’s, filling the frame. As if it knew Ho-jun was watching, it performed every kind of grotesque display before the dead magical girl’s corpse.
Only its two eyes — the last thing that still allowed one to imagine it had once been human — burned with a red light.
And then Ho-jun was certain.
This thing’s true identity was a low-grade magical girl “delivered” from the Mediterranean-Atlantic Magical Girl Detention Bureau — the same facility that had suddenly gone silent.
In other words, one of the Detention Bureau’s playthings.
“D-Deputy Director… that thing is…….”
So-rim called out to Ho-jun in a panic, but it was not Ho-jun who answered.
“That’s what becomes of a magical girl in the end….”
It was Ian-na.
There was no longer any point in hiding what it was. Ho-jun and the rest of the Bureau agents had already guessed that the creature was a magical girl.
Revealing that it was a runaway magical girl carried its own returns and risks.
The risk: it would lend legitimacy to the purges of magical girls that Ho-jun was driving forward.
If every magical girl was destined for an end like this, then the argument of Ho-jun and the Bureau — that they should be eliminated in advance — would only gather more force.
The return: research into magical girl rampages would accelerate even further.
If they brought it down, they would obtain a precious sample — a corpse. And if that happened, the Bureau’s countless biotech researchers would swarm over it like bees to study the nature of a magical girl’s rampage.
That was how it had gone in the original novel.
Ho-jun had been secretly researching magical girl rampages all along. Thoroughly. Even pouring his own money into it.
Perhaps he might even find a solution that could stop the rampages altogether.
Then countless magical girls would be removed from the purge list.
If the rampages could be prevented — if the Madness could only be suppressed — then no one would have to die.
That had been the method Ian-na herself had envisioned as well. If she could uncover the truth behind magical girl rampages and the accumulation of ether, and keep magical girls from being swallowed by Madness…
Then no one would have to die.
And no one would have to kill.
Even if, in the end, it had been a dream she herself never managed to achieve.
Perhaps… Ho-jun would achieve it for her.
She allowed herself the faintest hope.
In the original novel, though, the results of Ho-jun’s research into magical girl rampages had never been made public — not even at the very end.
Because Ho-jun had died before the research ever truly got off the ground.
…
It couldn’t be helped.
Right now, the time had come to tell Ho-jun and everyone else what that thing truly was.
Ian-na took one deep breath, then continued.
“A magical girl who starts to rampage ends up looking like that. Human form, human heart — she forgets it all. Only instinct is left, I suppose…….”
Ian-na’s body would not stop trembling.
Even her voice.
It was a side effect of the sedatives, but when Ho-jun looked at her shaking frame, he reached a different conclusion.
That Ian-na was terrified.
Any concern he might have felt for Ian-na overdosed on sedatives no longer registered with him at all. The thing on the screen — what had once been a magical girl — was simply too horrific.
Even Byeol-muri was staring at the creature’s appearance with the same vacant shock as Ho-jun.
But then a single question lodged itself in Ho-jun’s mind.
…How does Ian-na know what that thing is?
In that moment, every suspicion Ho-jun held about Ian-na solidified into certainty.
His gaze fixed on her, but Ian-na pointedly ignored him and stared blankly at the screen.
Resolve.
Ho-jun made a decision.
He would find out what had happened to Ian-na. Without fail.
But not right now.
Later.
He intended to take his time examining her carefully.
With a better method than simply interrogating her.
“Director, I can accept that the creature is a magical girl, but we’ve never seen a case like this before. What exactly is happening right now….”
“…There have been. Exactly two times.”
So-rim’s eyes went wide as he turned to Ian-na.
“What kind of cases were they…?”
“When a rampaging magical girl isn’t dealt with in time. When a magical girl losing her sense of self cradles a powerful wish. When she’s completely drowned by her power, or becomes obsessed with it — she enters a cocoon.”
“…A cocoon?”
“Mm. Just like an insect spinning a cocoon when it turns into a pupa, a magical girl wraps her body in a cocoon made of her Remegeton. And then she evolves into something like that.”
It was a rather shocking revelation.
The agents listening intently to Ian-na all recoiled in open horror.
Seeing their faces, Ian-na allowed herself a small private smile and went on.
“Ho-jun. Do you know what judgment you need to make?”
“…Director, please don’t worry. We’ve already deployed every magical girl in the vicinity. We’ll be able to take it down shortly.”
“No. That’s not it.”
The coldness of her response was unlike Ian-na at all.
Ho-jun forced himself to stay calm.
If he had his way, he would have torn open Ian-na’s mind then and there — but there was work that needed doing. Somehow, they had to deal with the grand gift the Detention Bureau had sent them.
A dimensional zone.
Precisely speaking, the creature had created a dimensional zone containing the abandoned building out on the open sea in the middle of the East Sea, then lured magical girls into it.
It seemed to be growing stronger. Fitting for a magical girl that hungered for power above all else.
[Krr-gegegegegek]
It was slowly tearing into and eating the corpse of the artificial girl it had killed. Ripping the body to shreds with its jaws and packing the pieces into its own belly.
As if it were no different from an Unknown.
In a short span of time, Ho-jun finished every calculation.
It had to be eliminated immediately.
They could not allow it to emerge into the real dimension.
“I’ve requested reinforcements from Strages Unit 2, Illusion, and Libra. Formula Units 34 through 45, currently on patrol, are all en route to the site.”
“…That’s the wrong answer too.”
The moment Ian-na spoke those words again in that icy tone, the veins stood out on Ho-jun’s neck. Without realizing it, he clenched both fists and glared at her.
As the atmosphere turned viciously cold, Ian-na’s trembling body flinched, and she opened her mouth with hesitant little movements.
“That’s not what I mean… Ho-jun, you… you already know. Wh-who… y-you should… s-send…….”
Ian-na’s voice trailed off into a whisper smaller than an ant’s.
If magical girls were deployed as planned, they would all fall to that thing or be critically wounded. Even Illusion and Libra would fail to hold their ground and flee. That was how it had gone in the original story.
Which was why her frayed nerves had driven her to press Ho-jun so hard. She did not want to watch other magical girls die.
If she hadn’t been given the sedatives, she would almost certainly have wet herself under Ho-jun’s murderous stare just now. No — she would have done far worse than that.
Ian-na caught Ho-jun’s sleeve with the lightest touch. A silent plea for forgiveness.
Ho-jun answered by roughly ruffling her hair, pressing down on her head with a rough hand.
“…I see.”
Ho-jun knew exactly what Ian-na was trying to say.
This was not the time to thin the ranks of magical girls. This was the time to hunt that thing down.
Steeling himself, Ho-jun spoke in a low voice.
“Issue a full standby order to all other magical girls. And send a support request to the Magical Girl of Entreaty.”