Magical Girl of the Waning Moon (4)
"..."
A peculiar silence settled in, and every gaze turned toward the source of the voice. Even the Doctor, sensing the stillness that had fallen over the Control Room, wore a look of blank astonishment.
"Not much of a reaction. We're on the move. Don't send any interference our way."
Everyone looked to the large monitor at the front, but the only face it displayed was the Doctor's. The voice wasn't coming from the monitor. It was coming from lower down — from a small speaker mounted on the wall.
"H-how did you even access the backup channel...!!!"
"We've lost contact with all the other magical girls! We can't even reach Entreaty!"
While the Bureau agents scrambled to restore the communications network—
"Magical Girl of Illusion, that's quite the mischievous prank. Did you jam the Control Room?"
"It's not jamming. For some unaccountable reason, everything just… 'broke.' All of it."
"…This won't be let go lightly."
"Angry? You work magical girls practically for free. Look the other way on this one, Director."
Illusion singled me out deliberately. Not Ho-jun, the Deputy Director watching the speaker with an expression of keen interest — me.
"..."
"Ugh, you're still alive looking like that…? Waning Moon? You've gotten grotesquely worse in just a few years."
As if she could see straight into the Control Room. The Magical Girl of the Scales's words.
Can she see me?
Me, clinging to the Adjutant's sleeve, trembling.
"…I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize for that. And I'm not the one you should be apologizing to. You killed a comrade. You're complete garbage. You know that?"
"I… didn't force her… to…"
"You didn't force her? You killed her. You forced her. Oksana died for nothing because of you. You drove her into that death trap. And since you survived, everything's fine, is that it?"
"N-no… no…… it's not… I-I… it wasn't me…… no… I'm sorry… sorry, sorry…. sorry……"
"Whatever. The weak die. Unlike someone who straps on machines, survives in disgrace, and kills her own comrades."
"U-uh… I'm sorry… sorry……"
The Magical Girl of Illusion.
One of the pure magical girls who had never been listed as a target of Pest Control.
A quick-witted girl who despised tedious work and was always full of mischief.
That was the Illusion I had always known.
But now she was showing a side that was extremely calm.
The lightness was long gone. In a grave, slow voice, she was tightening the noose around me.
She was swallowing her anger and pressing the attack. To the death, if she could.
If I had been in the same place as Illusion, I wouldn't have made it out unharmed. She was a magical girl whose actions were utterly unpredictable.
My response, my attitude, the miserable death of a magical girl — there was no doubt these had enraged Illusion.
"I watched everything from start to finish, on camera. All I see is you thrashing around because you want to survive. The Waning Moon I knew is dead. You're not Waning Moon."
"..."
I couldn't answer. More accurately, I couldn't bring myself to. Because it was true.
Even knowing Oksana's personality, I had leaked the information, and in the end I had walked her into a death trap.
Not some ordinary magical girl.
A dear friend and comrade I had fought alongside for over a decade — a magical girl close enough to stake her life on saving me.
I had killed her.
Me.
My head throbbed. It hurt as if my brain were on fire. Something in Ian-na's body was sending abnormal signals.
"U-ugh……"
"Director…!!!"
All the strength left my body and I crumpled forward. The Adjutant rushed over to support me, and from the speaker came mockery and scorn.
"What an ugly sight, Waning Moon. Biting your tongue and dying would look better. How does it feel, living on as the Bureau's puppet, their toy? Did you offer up your body, too?"
"……That's enough, Illusion. Stop it."
"The magical girl the Doctor treated like a daughter died because of Waning Moon. You've gone soft, Doctor. Did watching Waning Moon collapse stir up some pity?"
"This isn't the time to be arguing about that…… First, we need to follow protocol and eliminate the Unknown—"
The monitor screen switched in an instant.
"We're already there. Look."
Once again, a cloudy, overcast sky filled the display. Grass thick enough to reach the knee grew densely along a small river.
"First time in Russia? How does it feel?"
"…Hazy. Looks like rain."
"Not that flat take. Something more like 'the land of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky' — no grand literary impressions?"
"It's a swamp in every direction. What nonsense. Just find the rift."
The screen alternated between the faces of a blonde girl scanning her surroundings and a girl with scarlet hair.
The girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin was none other than the Magical Girl of Illusion.
The girl with long scarlet hair, wearing an ordinary school uniform you could see anywhere, was the protagonist of this novel — the Magical Girl of the Scales.
Unlike other magical girls, Illusion wasn't wearing a dove-gray Reliquis Suit with its superior defensive performance. She wore a dress of mixed sky blue and purple, fashioned by applying her Remegeton.
It was one of the primary abilities of magical girls who possessed a Remegeton — transformation.
Magic: processing and reprocessing energy from another dimension, reshaping it into a form that suited one's body.
The Scales's school uniform had also been produced through transformation.
"Well, fine. There's a dimensional rift twenty meters ahead. You'll be able to pinpoint the location clearly from the air."
"Beta Ether readings have broken fifty point two percent…… For a single rift, that's the highest since East Japan…."
Ho-jun's expression shifted subtly. Perhaps he had grasped the gravity of the situation. After a long quiet period, an Unknown had suddenly appeared at Medium-class strength — he must have been rattled.
"…Director."
The Adjutant quietly approached me as I clung to the armrest of my chair, trembling, and administered a sedative.
"H-haah… thank you……"
That made two already.
The syringe sank into my neck, and an orange liquid began to course through my body.
I started to stabilize somewhat. Thank goodness the medicine took effect immediately. I hoped I wouldn't develop a tolerance.
Ian-na's body was far too incomplete. The body itself, reduced to rags, still managed to function somehow, but the head — the software, so to speak — kept throwing errors.
The slightest loud noise made me clamp my hands over my ears and tremble. I couldn't look straight at my own face reflected in anything, couldn't properly meet people's eyes, couldn't carry on a conversation naturally.
The one saving grace was that my intellectual capacity was unimpaired. I could maintain my reason completely, and the control chip embedded in my brain wasn't activating either.
"H-hey……"
I gathered my courage and called out toward the monitor.
"Trying to kill us too?"
"Th-that's not it… the Unknown that appeared this time… its weak point… is the left shoulder…"
"Not even funny. I'll carve your advice into my bones. Thanks, Bureau whore."
"..."
Illusion's face appeared on the monitor as she looked down at the camcorder with open contempt.
"Please don't push yourselves. The Scales has little combat experience. Protect her while you fight."
"It's fine. We're the strongest."
"Found it. Down there."
"Great! Let's run for it! Hold on tight!!!"
In an instant, brilliant light filled the screen, and both figures vanished.
And what connected next was—
"Ah, you can see, right?"
Oksana's head, not yet torn apart and eaten.
The small camera attached in place of her eyes.
Behind the Unknown that sat on the ground, devouring Oksana's body—
two magical girls appeared.
Crunch-grind.
The Unknown stopped moving. It had sensed that magical girls had entered its space.
And then.
BOOM!!!
It closed on the magical girls at a speed the naked eye couldn't track. Just as with Oksana, it was aiming for the neck. With a blade formed by transforming the edge of its hand, it meant to sever both magical girls' heads.
But.
Even though the two magical girls simply stood their ground, the Unknown's attacks never connected. The Unknown swung both hands at tremendous speed, trying to shred their bodies to pieces, but the strikes kept missing.
No — more precisely, the Unknown's attacks were veering away from the two magical girls. The assault was so fast the air currents themselves showed on the monitor, yet not so much as a hair on either of them was touched.
Illusion blocked every one of the Unknown's attacks without even drawing her Remegeton. It would be more accurate to say she slipped past them as naturally as flowing water.
"Watch closely, Oksana. I'm going to cut off its head for you."
Muttering to herself, Illusion took a single step forward.
CRACK!
Both of the Unknown's arms vanished without a trace. Looking almost bewildered, the Unknown glanced around where its arms had been — then its limbs were severed clean off, and it collapsed onto the rock-like ground.
"…Illusion has gotten stronger."
"Lately she hasn't even been drawing her Remegeton…"
Ho-jun was extremely wary of a magical girl's power. A magical girl whom no attack could touch, who could cleanly sever both arms with a single step forward — if she ever turned hostile…
For humanity, it would be nothing short of the worst-case scenario.
"You finish it. I'm not dumping it on you because I'm lazy. I'm giving you experience."
"Okay."
"I'll recover Oksana's remains."
The Scales clasped both hands over her chest, closed her eyes, and prayed.
Light.
Streams of light poured from the Scales's chest.
And in both her hands appeared a giant scythe bound in chains.
A strange scythe that glimmered with a soft white light, the kind that could enchant you just by looking at it.
"Is that the Scales's Remegeton…?"
"Yes, sir. It can kill half of all organic life and half of all Unknowns within a ten-kilometer radius. Extremely powerful!"
"We'll need to exercise the highest level of caution…"
The Scales raised the scythe high.
"Get ready."
What the Scales's Remegeton cut was not the enemy.
Empty air.
By cutting through empty air, the Scales could activate her Remegeton's ability.
And so, at the very moment the Scales was about to swing the giant scythe with all her strength—
"Guh-haaagh……"
The Unknown, having fully regenerated its limbs, slammed its fist into the Scales's stomach with everything it had.