The Meaning of Protection (4)
The Meaning of Protection (4)
The recent string of disappearances had been definitively linked to a monster.
- so what are the magical girls doing (genuinely asking)
└they dgaf if you die or not lol just give them your money
└ughhhh that’s so mean up there people are just walking wallets why complain
└oh fuck that typing style.
The reaction was the same everywhere. Places that had always been skeptical about magical girls remained skeptical. Even communities that had once been favorable now struggled to muster a proper response.
- no wait, what did we even put the magical girls in charge of? why are you so desperate to chew them out?
└we put our tax money in charge, old man.
└this is because the magical girls can’t catch the monster lmao.
└if you’re gonna defend them at least defend the right things, this is why you idiots always get roasted.
- magical girl stans please wake up. do you want to keep burning your emotions like this until a monster snatches you up and then you regret it? you have to criticize them when they deserve it
└2222 magical girl fans are so extra. how about they do their actual job first then talk about stanning or not
└does this look like healthy criticism to you? you’re turning kids into garbage;;;
└aaaand there they are, people have gone missing and you still can’t get a grip?
└i don’t even get why stans exist in the first place, putting grown kids in lolita-style dresses feels like they’re baiting pedophiles and it’s fucking creepy... bleeegh bleeegh bleeegh
Every page, every feed—nothing but posts blaming the magical girls for failing to find the missing people and failing to find the monster behind the incidents.
Red Vega didn’t deny any of it. This was the kind of reaction they deserved right now.
There were victims, and the people around those victims were crying. The streets were full of people terrified that a monster might snatch them if they took a single wrong step. These people had no power. They were the ones who could only be swept along by monsters.
The one thing they had to believe in was a magical girl, and that magical girl wasn’t delivering.
The reaction was only natural. No—it was actually mild. After living through monster-driven chaos so many times, both the magical girls and the citizens were getting used to it.
And at the same time, another idea had begun to surface.
- shouldn’t we seriously just abolish these magical girls?
The Magical Girl Incompetence Doctrine.
Nonsense, of course. The moment they were abolished, the citizens would lose the only heroes who protected them. It was nothing more than grumbling from people who found those heroes unreliable. It would pass quickly enough.
She thought back to all the reactions she’d seen the night before, then shook her head firmly.
None of that mattered right now. Lives were at stake. This was not the time to fill her head with someone’s criticism.
She stepped forward, tense. Into the rubble of a district collapsed by a sudden explosion. Her small shoes climbed over the fragments of buildings as dusk began to settle and the gloom crept in.
[This is where Libra’s reaction was detected. The other magical girls will arrive soon—huh?]
The mascot was just explaining where they stood. In that instant, a thin membrane like cellophane wrapped itself around the ruins.
“Wh—what?”
She tried to pull her foot back, flustered, but it was already too late. The barrier that encased the ruins in a sphere left not a single gap.
Red Vega immediately wreathed her fist in flame.
She retreated a few steps, then took off running with the same momentum. A running start. That running start became the wings that would lend her greater force—that would carry her higher.
Before long, flames began to erupt beneath her feet as well. They became propellant, launching Red Vega skyward. She hurled herself up like a fighter jet taking flight and struck the barrier with her flame-wreathed fist.
Deng—!
A sound rang out, clear and pure as a struck bell. The flames erupted outward, but her fist could not pass through. The sensation was fundamentally different from striking a wall—more like identical magnetic poles repelling each other.
A barrier that rejected magical girls alone? Red Vega clicked her tongue and pulled back.
At the same time, she relayed the situation through her mascot, then thrust her fist forward again. Boom! The heavy impact shook the darkening sky.
“It’s useless.”
A voice came from below. She turned. A giant figure stood there, a pair of scales borne upon his shoulders.
Libra Monster.
It was Libra.
“Libra!”
“You look well. Excellent. Keep stoking that hostility.”
His scales tipped. Shining masses like gold ingots rose on one side—and when they vanished, the balance leveled out.
“I have high hopes for you.”
Then, in one corner of the ruins, smoke began to rise. Black clouds resembling car exhaust—or the smoke of an old steam locomotive—bloomed richly into full flower. It was a flowering that would last only a few seconds. And from the black blossoms that opened and scattered in that brief span, shadows like seeds came spilling out.
The kidnapped. People bound in chains came pouring out. Red Vega moved toward them at once.
“Red Vega—will you be able to satisfy me with your answer?”
Libra stepped into her path.
“...Move.”
Red Vega ground her teeth and glared at him. The golden giant gazed at her with satisfaction and spread both arms wide.
“Flourish!”
[Requesting support. S-rank monster Scutum has appeared.]
[Uh... no support? We’ve got an S-rank monster here—Pegasus!]
[Is there no support?! S-rank monster Boötes has appeared!]
“...What?”
The news was despairing. Not just any monsters, but multiple S-rank monsters appearing simultaneously. Every single one of them was a walking calamity, and they were all revealing themselves. On the same day. At the same hour.
“There is no one here to help you!”
A coordinated outbreak of S-rank monsters.
But this place was enclosed by a barrier. Intrusion was difficult.
Other magical girls would obviously head to support the other locations rather than spend their efforts breaching this barrier to come here.
And that was exactly what they should do.
If you were a magical girl, you were meant to struggle to save as many people as possible.
A magical girl was already here.
There was a hero here.
None other than Red Vega herself.
“But those who need protecting are overflowing!”
Behind Libra, the faces of the kidnapped appeared. A crowd of the weak, frozen with terror.
Red Vega felt no fear. She forced that upon herself. If she feared the monster, what would those people feel—the ones with nothing to believe in but her?
She turned her gaze to the weak.
They were afraid. Yet beyond that fear lay faint relief, worship, hope.
That was what she was.
- R-Red Vega, you can do it~!!!
- Hey, you idiot, be quiet! Shh!
- You can do this! Don’t give up!!!
- Please save us!!!
They were wishing. Wishing for a hero to be here.
How could a hero fear the enemy?
She could not be afraid.
Be brave.
Through her mascot she heard that the other magical girls had just reached the sites of the S-rank monsters they’d called for support about. She felt a small measure of relief. No one asked to come here. She felt nothing about that.
[For us... they said to wait.]
She had already steeled herself. Heroes were meant to face adversity. A lonely battle like this was nothing.
Besides, it wasn’t even a lonely battle.
She just had to hold on a little. Just a very little.
The magical girls who were protecting citizens from the S-rank monsters and would return—they would come as reinforcements.
Until then, she just had to protect the citizens from this monster.
“So—what will you do?!”
“You’re stating the obvious!”
Red Vega clenched her fist. The same fist she had clenched every single day since becoming a magical girl. She clenched it so hard that blood ran from her palm, and along that blood, crimson passion blazed up.
Flames flowed.
“I’ll defeat you and save those people! That’s all there is!”
The flames that scorched the earth produced endless dry ash. Acrid smoke and embers scattered on the wind, parching her throat. Forcing out ragged breaths, Red Vega shouted with solemn resolve.
“Like a red comet into your heart...!”
She remembered the might of the S-rank monsters she had seen, the overwhelming power so far beyond her reach—and even so, she stepped forward.
She had no fear.
“Red Vega is coming!!”
She shouted it loud enough for every single person behind her to hear.
Red Vega surged forward. Like a butterfly with wings wreathed in flame.
**
It’s impossible.
At her current level, Red Vega cannot defeat Libra.
Of course, her potential is immense. She might achieve sudden, explosive growth.
But she isn’t there yet.
Even for a magical girl—where crisis-driven growth straight out of a comic is actually possible—that growth is not a universal solution.
Fighting Libra now is too soon.
Han Jae-jung gritted his teeth. He gripped his body, shaking from trauma, and forced his eyes to stay fixed on the screen.
—Magical Girl Red Vega is currently confronting the Libra Monster, but a severe struggle is anticipated. According to information obtained by our production team, the barrier is a wall that defends only against magical-girl intrusion, and...
A reporter who must have received advance notice was watching their standoff with a look of fascination. In one corner of the screen, people crying for help were waving toward the camera.
It was strange. Why were there so many kidnap victims? They rounded up that many people in this short a period? He checked the calendar. Barely one day had passed since he collapsed.
Which meant that barely a day had passed since the standoff with Libra began.
So why were there so many of them? The unease lingered.
Soon, Han Jae-jung reached one conclusion.
“Because I... don’t watch the news...”
It had already been underway. Libra’s plan had been in motion since before that day. Deneb’s words came back to him. The only person who had returned among the kidnapped. The kidnappings had begun long ago.
In the original work, Virgo interferes with Libra’s plan, and in the end it never comes to fruition. Would that happen this time, too? He didn’t have much hope. Virgo had already suffered a crushing defeat against Libra when she lost to him. It was hard to imagine her acting up again.
She was the mercurial sort, after all.
‘What do I do? The chance of other magical girls helping... none. Libra used a transaction to throw up a barrier that blocks magical girls. On top of that, there are monster reports elsewhere... How much did he burn on this, you lunatic?’
He was anxious. The magical girls who should have dictated a battle of numbers were instead at a numerical disadvantage, and the only one facing Libra—not even in the same class—was Red Vega.
Knowing her, she would fight without giving up until the very end.
’...She’ll die.’
Han Jae-jung had already settled on that probability. Just as Libra had created a Pseudo-Divinity State by sacrificing his stars, a magical girl could do something similar.
Except a magical girl with only one star would simply sacrifice her life to heighten her starlight.
Staking her very life to raise the Power of Peace to its limit.
Even if she won the fight, her power would be lost. If she lost, death was certain.
“This is insane...”
At that moment, a voice came from the Belt.
[Quest appeared.]
It felt like it had been a long time. Han Jae-jung grinned crookedly and reached for the Belt.
[Go to the designated location and defeat the Libra Monster.]
Next, surely, would come the voice warning him of the penalty for refusal.
[Do you accept?]
“...What?”
A voice he never imagined answered him instead.
“...Accept?”
It was giving him a choice? All of a sudden?
No—it wasn’t sudden at all.
In his current physical state, accepting even one quest was difficult. He couldn’t comply even if it were forced on him, so it must have granted him a choice.
The guess came easily, but it didn’t lessen his disorientation.
Freedom was crushing. He had to make the choice entirely with his own hands, so the responsibility was entirely his own as well.
[If you accept, you will die should you fail to complete the quest.]
The price was different. Not death for refusing—death for losing.
Death.
How many times had that dreadful word wrapped itself around his body since he opened his eyes? He was sick to his stomach over it.
He remembered the moment just before he lost consciousness—treading the threshold of death under Libra’s finishing move.
He remembered before he’d gained the power to transform—bleeding as monsters chased him down.
He was afraid.
[There is no penalty for declining.]
As if the Belt was being considerate of that feeling—as if it was being considerate of his body—it told him that this time, he could give it up.
That he didn’t have to do anything. That he could just rest.
He stood at a crossroads of choice.
[Do you accept the quest?]
His heart began to pound like mad.
It was like a war drum.