Memory Recovery (6)
Memory Recovery (6)
The Crimson-Winged Crows excel at detection and mobility, but they are not a particularly effective offensive magic.
The Heaven-Folding Art that folds the sky for rapid travel, combined with an ability to detect Star Power, means she can arrive at the scene quickly—a clear advantage. She can also use the crows for instantaneous travel and communication between magical girls, placing this magic high among support abilities.
Combat changes the picture.
The Heaven-Folding Art provides swift movement, but because it is specialized for long distances, it is unsuitable against close-range foes. Even a slight miscalculation sends the user sailing past the target.
Moreover, each Crimson-Winged Crow is linked to Pink Deneb’s consciousness individually, so every manipulation must be performed separately. Simultaneous control demands extreme concentration.
Even with the enhanced focus of a magical girl, moving her own body while directing a large flock of crows is limited to ten minutes at most.
On top of that, the attack power of a single crow is modest.
The efficiency is poor relative to the concentration and magical power consumed at once.
These combat weaknesses earned Deneb one humiliating title:
Most Defeats.
Compared with Red Vega and Orange Altair—the teammates she was often paired with—her win rate was even more dismal.
She was what people called the weakest link.
That sort of talk had always trailed Pink Deneb like a tail.
The Arabic root of the name Deneb, “dhanab,” means tail.
True to that origin, countless jeers had become the bristling hairs adorning her tail.
A tail woven from wretched labels.
Pink Deneb knew it. That was exactly why she was there.
When it came to facing Virgo, there was no better person for the job than her.
“You need to evacuate civilians, so hurry up and crush that bitch!”
“You get them out of here! That woman is...”
“Bawk-bawk! Cluck-cluck-cluck! Hey, junior, is this a chicken?”
Virgo laughed, imitating a chicken’s cry, and threw the bird perched on her hand.
As that one bird plunged downward, the countless birds arrayed on her back followed, beating their wings toward the ground.
Each tore through the air with the momentum of a blade.
Pink Deneb and Watcher scattered to avoid the flock of Crimson-Winged Crows.
[DUBHE.]
He turned the buckle at once. The name of the star rang out above the cacophony of beating wings.
Dubhe.
His greatest power, and among the forces he currently possesses, the one closest to Ursa Major.
White claws materialized on both hands.
“You crow-brained feathered shithead! How does this look like a chicken to you?!”
“Oh my, how cruel. You shouldn’t use bad words!”
Pink Deneb spread her birds out as though to oppose Virgo with them. She realized immediately it had been a mistake.
“That pet of yours, which can’t contain its violent streak, ran away from home to be here too!”
The entire flock of Crimson-Winged Crows sweeping toward Virgo was reduced to ornaments decorating her back. All of them. Stolen.
“That’s why I told you to run!”
“Shit, sorry!”
“I’d really appreciate it if you’d fix that temper of yours!”
“What the hell do you know!”
Watcher immediately used the Crimson-Winged Crows as stepping stones and leaped into the air.
Distant starlight welled up in the two bear-like claws. Gradually, white starlight mixed into the green-tinted radiance.
“I’ll cooperate for now! You grab the civilians and run!”
Playing hero while wearing a monster’s face won’t do a magical girl’s image any favors, and I’m not enthusiastic about it.
But right now I don’t have a choice.
Pale-green starlight blazed brightly from the claws. Sharp flashes whipped like snow squalls.
[SET. White Bear Twin Thunder Strike.]
A glimmer of dawn moved across the sky now fully draped in darkness. It swept the heavens, cold and swift, spreading light as it went.
Bolts flowed like river currents, passing through the Crimson-Winged Crows. Flames trailed behind the brilliant flashes. The birds transformed—into clumps of feathers, into ash.
Thunder followed the lightning.
Kwa-kwa-kwang!
A succession of roars, like trees splitting apart, erupted in the air.
Hundreds of birds were reduced to ash in an instant. A surreal sight.
[White Bear Twin Thunder Strike manifestation successful. Replication Rate 100%.]
Beneath the sky where lightning danced, Pink Deneb flew. This might not have been a residential area proper, but it was still part of a city. It wasn’t uninhabited. Before she’d arrived, the rays Virgo had scattered had already melted a substantial number of buildings.
Terrified faces were visible through gaps in the molten concrete. Pink Deneb reached out her hand. The Crimson-Winged Crows moved in response.
The bare minimum needed. They smashed through concrete, widening the gaps further. They slipped inside and wrapped around the people. Through the widened gaps, crows carrying people flew out.
It looked like magic carpets of birds gliding through the sky. The crows formed themselves into mats beneath the people’s feet and bore the frightened civilians away, one by one, toward safety.
Then, a few of the birds began vanishing mid-flight.
“Ah, aaah! Gah! Help meee!!”
“Haha, feels like I’m playing Jenga.”
With a light, playful flick of her fingers, Virgo drew exactly as many birds to her side as the number of times she’d moved them.
“Ah, shit, seriously...”
Pink Deneb replenished the flock with as many new birds as she’d lost, but every single one was promptly stolen by Virgo. It was almost purely one-sided mockery. A person sitting atop the birds’ backs shuddered, trembling.
“You should focus on me! If you ignore your senior like that...”
“You’re one to talk.”
Behind Virgo, a shadow approached, its gleaming claws raised.
“Shouldn’t you be focusing on me too?”
Kwaang!
Like a bear swatting a ball, he swung his right arm lightly. Virgo nearly toppled downward but used the stolen crows to cushion her fall and prevented the crash.
He landed atop the crows once more.
“You’re the one who called this Round Two, aren’t you?”
Standing on the organically shifting platform of birds, he gathered lightning into his claws again. Amid the resounding radiance, he asked his question.
“Have you ever seen a star?”
Virgo smiled as she answered.
“Who knows.”
Violet starlight gathered on her fingertip to match the white-green radiance.
“Even if I had, I’d have forgotten it!”
The two lights met in the middle. Ku-gu-gung! Thunder rolled, and a haze of light, like twilight mist, drifted through the sky.
Pink Deneb stared blankly at it before shifting her gaze back to the civilians.
“Evacuation order: wounded, elderly, and children first! Anyone with two working legs, just run! You, and you! Run! Now!”
“C-can’t I ride one of those birds too...?”
“What? Your legs are fine and you’re talking nonsense! Just run! Run for your life! Because if you don’t, you really will die!”
Piyung. A ricocheting beam flew toward them. Pink Deneb quickly interposed a Crimson-Winged Crow into its path. With a flash, an object was reduced to ash in an instant. Even without direct contact, the heat was immense.
“Eek!”
“Run!”
The citizen who’d been pleading scrambled away. The situation was urgent.
There was no time for detailed explanation, no time to command people gently and politely using honorifics. People are cunning that way—when you speak politely, sometimes they just don’t process the information.
In an emergency, you give orders forcefully and violently. That way, even people who haven’t grasped the situation will work their feet hard.
Action first. Understanding can come after.
If you can just keep them alive, there’s an “after.” But the moment they lose their lives here, there’s no after at all. Life is the highest value.
She couldn’t care less about a moment’s rudeness or unpleasantness.
“Hahahaha!! Junior, I really like these friends you gave me!”
“I said focus on me!”
Kwarreung! Despite the absence of a single cloud, a storm raged in the sky. Lightning rampaged through the dry darkness, and amid the bolts flew the stolen crows and Virgo herself.
Unlike before, she stayed airborne, darted everywhere, and spread destruction without end.
The damage grew steadily.
Pink Deneb decided to leave Virgo to the Big Dipper Monster for the time being.
The fact that this monster had committed violence against the junior she treasured, and was deeply connected to someone she held dear.
The fact that leaving a monster to fight another monster would inevitably draw accusations of incompetence.
The further fact that she’d mixed curses and commands when dealing with civilians again today, meaning another controversy over her violent conduct and attitude was certain to follow.
All of these facts—she ignored them.
Give it all away if you have to.
The humiliation of being forced to rely on a monster. The anxiety over the harsh glare of others. The guilt that her fans would suffer obstruction and hardship from rival fanbases. And everything else. She threw it all away.
Today’s pride won’t keep these people alive tomorrow.
I’ll use everything that can be used. I’ll abandon everything that can be abandoned.
Tomorrow’s crises can be dealt with when tomorrow comes.
Right now, in this moment, she was the only one who could save them.
Truth be told, Pink Deneb’s heart was in turmoil. Considerably so. Virgo had appeared not far from her own home, and on top of that, the Big Dipper Monster was the one fighting her.
The timing was another thing.
It was exactly the hour someone would be walking home, having left her apartment not too long ago.
As she checked the wounded with her crows, she hadn’t spotted among them the person she’d been talking to at home until just earlier.
One knot of anxiety—had he already died? One knot of relief—had he taken a different route?
And finally, one knot of suspicion—was he already here right now?
These three emotions bloomed profusely, each a separate flower. Beside them, another flower bloomed. The many things that had happened today: the suicide counseling, the meeting, the amnesia, the regret, and so much more.
Flowers of anguish.
That bouquet swayed in the wind in the very midst of battle. With each beat of her wings, a petal fell.
The petals began falling faster. She abandoned them. Discarded them. Didn’t hold on to a single one. On a chaotic battlefield where you have no room to think, you can’t afford to leave behind even a shred of such delusion. The bare branches became her sharpened weapons.
Give away what you can give.
Give away not only your momentary pride, your image—but also your doubts and fears.
Think only of surviving and saving others.
“Alright! You’re the last one! Now get out of here quick...”
Deneb exhaled in relief as she evacuated a young woman who looked to be of university age. Her relief was short-lived.
“My junior~”
Tah-ang! Virgo flew in and shoved her with a shoulder.
“What are you doing? Didn’t you miss me? I sure didn’t miss you!”
Taking advantage of the moment Pink Deneb stumbled, Virgo straightened her index finger and pointed at the fleeing woman.
As Pink Deneb scrambled humiliatingly against the ground, she moved her hand.
Pink feathers danced like flower petals. The antique crow shot forward, straight as the path connecting the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.
“Bang!”
Chwarararak! The sound of wings drummed the sky, crisp as firecrackers. Dozens of Crimson-Winged Crows enveloped the woman and flew. Virgo’s beam blazed through the now-empty space.
“Giving me another present?”
Virgo immediately seized most of the crows. At the same time, she began concentrating light at her fingertip again. Pink Deneb replenished the flock in equal number, but it was a losing battle.
Just a little more and the woman would fall to the ground.
Watching with keen interest, Virgo suddenly felt like she was flying through empty air. Her shoulder was seized, and she was thrown clean over.
“You crazy bitch, you call stealing a ‘present’?”
Kwaang! She hit the ground before her intended target could. The light she’d been gathering swept uselessly through the air. That opening allowed Pink Deneb to successfully evacuate the woman to safety.
Pink Deneb knew her power was ill-suited to combat. So while she had tirelessly trained her magic, she had also trained in something else: martial arts.
Techniques originally devised so the weak could overcome the strong—skill that surpassed raw power.
She tried to follow up and pin Virgo down, but Virgo took back to the air first. Despite having had her joint twisted, she rose perfectly fine and lifted herself into the sky again. Pink Deneb clicked her tongue at the grotesque sight.
“Hahaha.”
Virgo stared at her blankly and laughed.
“You’re really strange too.”
She raised a finger and pointed at her.
“You don’t want to do this job, do you? It’s written all over your face. At least try to hide it! Most magical girls find some sense of worth in saving people... but not you. You’re just fed up with it.”
It was mockery.
“My junior really does take after me, it seems. You’re forcing yourself to do this, aren’t you? This job.”
“Is a monster’s whole deal just running her goddamn mouth? You’ve got a real gift for tongue acrobatics. Truly impressive bullshit.”
“Hehehe, pretending not to know, are we?”
Virgo slowly gathered violet starlight at her fingertip. In the late evening hour, a replica of twilight blazed.
“You really are amazing! You went and evacuated every last one of them! That woman just now was the last! But...”
The attack was being prepared with excruciating slowness. Blatant mockery.
“What’s your plan? You’ve used up all your magic, haven’t you? You probably can’t even fly anymore. Oh, wait—you can’t even move a muscle, can you?”
She was right. Pink Deneb couldn’t move a single finger. The Crimson-Winged Crows are a magic that burns through power rapidly even under normal circumstances. With Virgo’s theft layered on top, the drain had been punishingly fast.
Magical depletion is proportional to physical stamina depletion. That last maneuver had drained all remaining magic and all her physical strength at once.
“My poor junior. You’re covered in wounds and grime from protecting all these people, but when it comes down to it, there’s no one to protect you.”
Virgo’s sneer grew increasingly vivid. It was also a deeply satisfied smile.
“Will you become the answer to my question?”
At her fingertip, the violet light gathered brilliantly. Ready to fire. With sheer will, Pink Deneb forced her body to move. Toward her own gemstone.
Kwaang! The beam discharged, melting everything within its radius.
Smoke billowed into the nighttime street, thick with darkness.
When the smoke cleared, Virgo’s eyes twitched.
Where the beam had passed, there was nothing. Literally nothing.
Virgo quickly turned her head.
Pink Deneb, gasping for breath in a daze, was staring somewhere. Behind Virgo.
“It really is hard for me to chase you lot down. You vanish from my sight so quickly.”
Virgo had decorated her back with the Crimson-Winged Crows she’d stolen from her, preening proudly. Using those very crows as a springboard, someone launched upward.
“Thanks to that, I shot well past the seven steps.”
His leg blazed with green light so intense it could have been forged from moonlight. It was like a pillar of radiance.
“This—!”
KWAAAAAAANG!!!
[Seven-Star Step Kick manifestation successful. Replication Rate 101%.]