Toward Death (1)
"That was close. Really, truly… if things had gone even a little wrong, we both would have been dragged in and killed…"
"N-not exactly an everyday experience…."
The dimensional rift in Chumikan that the two of them had entered was already gone without a trace.
Utterly spent, the two girls collapsed onto the wetlands stretching along the riverbank.
Illusion's blonde hair was a filthy tangle of mud and dust. Countless cuts scored both of her arms, blood still streaming steadily from the wounds.
"Keh-ugh…."
Illusion retched and spat up mud. Scales patted her back with trembling hands.
"I've never… cough… seen a case like this…… What kind of Unknown just blows itself up……"
"…It was terrifying."
Scales's pupils were quivering faintly.
In that final instant—when Scales's Remegeton had carved through empty air, or more precisely, when the mana condensed along the scythe-shaped weapon had crashed down on Illusion and the Unknown at once—the Unknown had opened its enormous maw and swallowed every last Beta Ether particle it had gathered in its hand.
It had been the barest fraction of a second. Without Illusion's razor-edged instinct, both of them would have been torn apart at the atomic level along with the Unknown and left to drift forever between dimensions.
In the heartbeat before the creature could force those Beta Ether particles into a catastrophic overload, Illusion had poured every scrap of power she possessed into wrapping Scales in her arms and hauling them both out of the rift.
Illusion's power was nothing short of miraculous. She could create something from nothing, or turn something into nothing. In exchange for a mild mental instability, she could make almost anything she imagined real.
Reviving the already dead was impossible—but healing someone on the brink of death was well within her reach. It was that same power that had knitted Scales back together after every organ in her abdomen had ruptured.
Unwanted things, unwanted futures, unwanted existences—she could rewrite them all into mere Illusion. Events that had happened became lies instead of truth. The reverse was equally possible.
The staggering mana cost was a flaw, but after three solid years of grinding herself against her own limits, she now commanded the most vast reserves of any living magical girl.
The power to warp space-time and rewrite events to her will.
That was Illusion.
Thanks to it, she had forced her mana past every limit and clawed them free by the skin of their teeth—by turning the fact that her mana had been completely exhausted into a lie.
It was a power so overwhelming even she could scarcely believe it. With enough luck, she might even be able to bring down the Magical Girl of Entreaty, said to be the strongest of them all.
But—
"Keh-heugh……"
"You okay, Harsa?"
"R-right now… call me… Illusion……"
The strain on Illusion's body had been catastrophic. It felt as though several of her organs had literally burst. A searing pain stabbed through her abdomen like a needle driven deep.
Still—she was alive. So the organs in question couldn't have been vital ones.
If she got treatment soon, she would probably be fine….
"How are we supposed to get back?"
"…We wait for support. Someone will come."
Chumikan was a village among villages even by the standards of Russia's sparsely populated Far Eastern Federal District—barely a thousand souls. Infrastructure was practically nonexistent. Scales, the only one of them still mostly intact, scanned the surroundings, but there was nothing except endless wetland. Not a single trace of human habitation.
No roads. Not even a streetlamp.
The sun was sinking fast. Once the red dusk staining the marshes faded completely, darkness would swallow the place whole. There was no artificial light of any kind.
They would have to move under the thin moonlight, half-carrying the wounded Illusion—no, Harsa—and yet neither of them had the faintest idea where they even were.
Dangerous…
Scales's face, which had stayed composed even when the Unknown smashed her abdomen, drained of color at terrifying speed.
"…Illusion."
"Don't look at me like thaaat…… keh-ugh… I-I can't use my power… for a while, probably……"
Illusion's ability was offline. The useful trick of rewriting the fact of their presence here into a lie and materializing them wherever she wished was unavailable.
Scales sank down where she was, surrendering to despair. Her stomach growled. Come to think of it, she hadn't eaten a single thing since breakfast.
Sizzle—
A sound like meat searing rose into the air as their transformations came undone. The mana sheathing their bodies was dissipating on its own.
The school uniform Scales wore dissolved into starlight and vanished. Dust would have been the more accurate word. Bit by bit… it crumbled until nothing remained—not even a scrap of cloth.
"Y-you idiot… I told you… to wear underwear… keh-heugh……"
"…I forgot."
Harsa, the Magical Girl of Illusion, coughed blood and managed a faint smile. Her own sky-blue and purple dress had likewise crumbled to dust—but Scales was not completely bare.
She was wearing underwear: a bra that looked far too large for her frame, and a pair of distinctly adult panties that did not fit at all.
Illusion, on the other hand, was left entirely naked—smeared with mud, slick with sweat, and covered in wounds.
Skin as pale and clean as milk filled Harsa's vision. The first thing her eyes snagged on was the chest.
They were roughly the same height—around 160 centimeters—yet the difference in bust size was night and day. Where Illusion's was only slightly larger than average, or perhaps merely average, Scales's was generous enough to notice at a glance.
Harsa felt a small, sharp stab of inferiority and jealousy.
…Because of the size of her chest.
"What the hell do you even eat… to end up bigger than me……"
"Milk. Morning and night."
An airtight argument. Harsa gave up the debate and buried her face against Scales's knees.
They were quietly waiting for support when—
Whiiiiing—
Something tiny began to circle the two girls at high speed.
"Harsa… mosquito. It's a mosquito……"
"P-pull out Remegeton…!!! Swing it, right now…!!!"
Mosquitoes.
The infamous Siberian mosquitoes, no less.
Ordinarily they only appeared in midsummer, but abnormal global temperatures had melted the polar ice faster than usual, and the eggs trapped inside had been soaked by polar drizzle and hatched all at once.
Mosquitoes that should never have been seen this early in the summer.
They had formed swarms, hunting southward and farther south until they reached Chumikan—
—and discovered a rather unusual meal: one fully naked magical girl and one half-naked one.
"…If I swing this, you'll get caught in it too."
"B-but… I'd rather die than get chewed up by those things!!!"
Scales's Remegeton possessed the devastating ability to kill half of all organic life and half of all Unknowns within a narrow radius.
The catch: targeting was completely random. She could not choose which lives to take.
Furthermore, the number of enemies had to form a perfect balance—even numbers only, quantities that divided cleanly by two.
Twenty-six worked; twenty-one did not. One hundred worked; one hundred and one did not. Both organic life and Unknowns had to satisfy the condition before the scythe could harvest life.
Of course, zero of one type was fine. She could use it in a situation with only organic life present, or only Unknowns.
However—
"Organic life" meant every living thing. The dense weeds, the freshwater fish in the little river, the frogs, the fireflies, the birds overhead—every life-form within that narrow radius.
Including herself.
Her power was nothing short of Russian roulette, with a fifty-percent chance of death.
Which was why, when she was not partnered with Harsa, she never used Remegeton unless she was truly cornered.
She stuck to close combat alone.
Illusion's power, though, could rewrite that fifty-percent death into a lie. It could even negate Harsa's own death and remove her from Scales's targeting entirely.
Whiiiiing—
As a colossal swarm of mosquitoes closed in, the terrified Magical Girl of the Scales drew Remegeton without thinking.
Harsa was still well within range. If she swung, there was a coin-flip chance that both of them would die.
Sweat slicked Scales's palm as she wrestled with the choice—
KRAAAAAASH!!!
An off-roader roaring like thunder came barreling straight toward them at breakneck speed.
"Get on!!!"
It was the Magical Girl of the Star Cluster. Black hair streaming, clad in black armor traced with starlight, she was driving the off-roader flat-out toward the two of them.
"W-wait a second!!!"
The vehicle skidded to a halt inches from running them over. Star Cluster immediately scooped both girls up and tore away from the scene.
"We're returning to the Bureau as-is. Both of you… whatever you do, do not open your eyes!"
Abandoning the off-roader, Star Cluster launched herself skyward with every ounce of strength she had. The two girls, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, simply squeezed their eyes shut and clung to her shoulders.
…The Bureau.
Whether from blood loss or sheer exhaustion, the Magical Girl of Illusion—Harsa—felt her mind begin to blur. She remembered the advice Waning Moon had given her.
The location of the core… how did she know?
Even she and Scales, standing right there on the battlefield, had been unable to pinpoint the Unknown's core—yet Waning Moon had known.
It made no sense. Waning Moon's Remegeton had been completely destroyed. Years ago they had confirmed she was nothing more than an ordinary person with not a scrap of mana left.
So how had she identified the core's location instantly through a monitor?
Illusion's sharp instincts began to thrash.
Suspicion thickened by the second.
The Unknown that had appeared in Chumikan had been different in so many ways from every previous specimen. It had seemed capable of higher thought. Its attacks had been varied. And at the very end it had tried to take them with it in a suicide blast.
Every Unknown they had faced until now had been little more than a beast driven by instinct—creatures that charged magical girls without a plan and would gladly die if it meant ramming a magical girl's gamma-ether-saturated corpse down their throats.
But this one—
It had been feeding on Oksana's corpse and still managed to respond to their interception.
…No way.
If there was some connection between Waning Moon and the Unknowns—
If Waning Moon, who clung so desperately to life that she had reduced herself to a grotesque shell, and the Bureau, which had captured and researched countless Unknowns, had joined hands—
No. "Joined hands" was imprecise.
Waning Moon was currently the Bureau's director. She held authority over research and the life-and-death of every magical girl.
Waning Moon controls the Bureau was the accurate phrasing.
So what if… what if Waning Moon was using the Bureau to scheme something?
What if she was experimenting with Unknowns that casually outclassed magical girls, all to purge a surplus of them?
And what if one of those experiments had escaped by accident and appeared in Chumikan?
…It all fits.
The Magical Girl of the Waning Moon.
Harsa's suspicion toward Ian-na had reached its peak.
She had no idea how many magical girls had been sacrificed since Waning Moon took the director's seat. What she did know was that the Bureau was clearly preparing to discard its magical girls.
And Waning Moon was at the center of it.
Revulsion and rage flooded her at once. The mere fact that she had once idolized such garbage made her want to vomit.
…A magical girl must never cling to life.
That was what Waning Moon had always said.
You bastard… so the moment it was your turn to die, you got scared, is that it?
She had cut a deal with the central organizations—help them purge the magical girls, and in return she would keep her own life.
Harsa ground her teeth without realizing it.
Someday, she would end Waning Moon's life with her own hands.
Star Cluster's voice came through the speakers.
"Confirmed! The Magical Girl of the Star Cluster has recovered both magical girls!"
"…Thank goodness. If we had forcibly restrained Star Cluster, those two would have suffered far worse."
Ho-jun nodded with a look of quiet satisfaction. Those two were not targets for purging—they were magical girls of overwhelming combat value.
It seemed their voices from the Control Room were not reaching the two girls at all. For some reason, every radio channel in the room had carried only the pair's conversation.
That, too, must have been Illusion's power. He didn't know the exact mechanism… but the way both of their life signs had vanished, and the way Beta Ether readings in the area had spiked to abnormal levels—those had almost certainly been her doing as well.
Technicians were currently swarming the equipment, trying to fix the apparent malfunctions.
"Director, excellent work."
"I-I… didn't do anything…… It was all you, Ho-jun."
"…Thank you."
Ho-jun stroked my hair with a gentle hand. That made twice today.
It was starting to feel like a habit. Honestly, it felt good. Ian-na's body responded that way.
This body had never once known love or care from anyone… so perhaps it was only natural.
…Anyway.
…Done!
With this, I had avoided any deterioration in my relationship with the two of them.
Illusion, with her prickly personality, would definitely come back with a flushed face and apologize.
She would say that thanks to me they had been able to defeat the Unknown, and she would not forget to offer her thanks.
I would just smile faintly and tell her it was fine. If possible, I wanted to invite both of them to my room, share stories from my memories, and deepen our bond.
I couldn't simply blurt out things like Actually, I'm being controlled, or There's a chip in my head. Ho-jun uses it to control my mind.
All I needed was for them to notice that my behavior was unnatural. They were sharp; they would piece the puzzle together soon enough and figure out my situation.
For now, I had to get closer to both of them—especially Illusion. Close enough that they couldn't live without me. That was the only path to survival I could see.
The one who would eventually take my life was the protagonist, the Magical Girl of the Scales—but the one standing beside her and exerting enormous influence was the Magical Girl of Illusion.
Mentor and student, you could say… In any case, Illusion had shaped Scales profoundly.
For the moment, though—
I would simply wait for their return.
I found myself looking forward, more than a little, to the sight of Illusion apologizing with her face burning red.