✦ ✦ ✦
Kana was not simply physically strong—she was tough in another way. It was fair to assume that she had been lurking somewhere until Old Blue and Frederica’s fight had ended, waiting. And just now she had been waiting until the mercenaries left this place. There was truth in the anger Frederica sensed, but she was calm on the inside. She had a canniness that Grim Heart and Puk Puck had lacked.
Frederica couldn’t help smiling. There had been another magical girl who had conducted herself wonderfully up against an opponent who had both cunning and overwhelming strength—Old Blue, who Frederica had just fought.
She had pushed Frederica to the edge. She had fought in a rational and systematic way, and yet it had also been magical-girl-like, in a sense. Though it felt rude to say this had been a surprise, the way she had used all the cards at her disposal—her magic, subordinates, technique, and martial arts—and come at Frederica with everything she had was the way of a protagonist. While Frederica had been going blue and red in the face and hard-pressed in that fight, now that she thought of it, maybe she had been enjoying herself. While it had been for a brief time, that rich experience had stimulated something deep in her brain, inspiration she usually didn’t use.
With her arm still in her opponent’s grasp, Frederica made it seem like she was striking the elbow with her opposite arm and slid into Kana’s range. They were touching. She could even feel her heartbeat. Warmth. And scent. Before, Frederica had also enjoyed the scent of magical girls, especially their hair. Now she was able to enjoy it with even sharper senses.
Averse to being so close, Kana tried to back up, but Frederica kept right on her as they moved around. Front, right, diagonal, she didn’t let her peel away. This distance was best.
Old Blue’s fighting style was vision based. Using her magic, she could perceive the true nature of her enemies, reading their moves and controlling the exchange by moving more than just quickly.
Unfortunately, Frederica’s eyes didn’t come with such a handy power. So then she would use all her sensory organs aside from her eyes to read her enemy. A magical girl’s feel, her smell, her sounds—it would tell Frederica about everything she loved in a far greater volume of information than before.
Forward, back, slipping away to the right to avoid Kana’s attempt to catch her in her arms, she fired three short strikes at her, evaded an elbow, then returned to her original position, right in front of Kana. Her greatest priority was maintaining this position close to her.
Frederica ran her fingers along her thigh and took a crystal ball in hand, then threw it into the air.
✦ ✦ ✦
Kana
The crystal ball Frederica threw at her ignored the laws of physics and stopped right there—in midair.
Is that a new body that she had made for her?
Affirmative.
Is the crystal ball a new magic? What magic is it?
Even as Kana was thinking, she kept moving. While placing the crystal ball behind her, she never let her attention slide, never letting up on her attacks on Frederica.
This kind of magic sucked things into one crystal ball and moved them toward a different one. So something would fly out of it at her, or Frederica would toss something in. It seemed like there were many ways to use it. It would be best to stay on her guard. Frederica could increase the number up to fifty, but the more she increased them, the more she would lose control. For finer control, it was five at most.
Kana struck with her right hand, and Frederica dodged her elbow, so Kana came back with her left palm-heel. She used those as distractions to try grabbing Frederica, but Frederica slid away like an eel and hit Kana in her blind spot. It was the same as before.
Even as she was attacked, she continued asking questions in her brain.
Does she think that she can make good use of the relic?
Affirmative. Reckless magical girls were overconfident in themselves. Even Kana saw Frederica as a magical girl with great powers, and now that she had swapped her body, it wouldn’t be strange for her to have even firmer confidence.
No matter how angry she got, even if she wanted to tear the enemy in front of her to pieces, when using her magic, she had to be calm and collected. Incarnations were made to be that way.
“You’ve seen plenty of magical girls who’ve let their almightiness spell their doom, haven’t you?”
She said that question out loud. Affirmative.
Frederica parried Kana’s hand and nodded. “Indeed I have. I will do my best not to make the same mistakes.”
“You’ve made the necessary preparations?”
“Of course.”
Kana couldn’t get away. She was forced into an exchange of blows close enough that it lessened the impact of her strikes, and if she tried to grab at Frederica, it was dodged with those sickening movements. It was a strange form of martial art. Frederica was breathing hard, but with no sign that she was suffering—in fact, she even looked like she was in ecstasy. Kana was uncomprehending, and she couldn’t read her intentions, and that made it creepy.
“You’re not going to listen to my attempts to persuade you, are you?” Kana asked.
“That’s right.”
Kana then asked herself: What is the goal of this form of combat?
To use all five senses to read the enemy’s movements. That answer did make sense, but even so, Frederica was too tenacious for Kana to break away from with her techniques, and using her pure strength as a shield as she struggled wildly was also not working.
“Don’t you want to hear what happened in these ruins?”
“That sounds fascinating, but I’m afraid I do not have the time right now.”
Kana stopped asking her questions out loud. If Frederica wasn’t going to talk, then she shouldn’t have this exchange with her. Any further talk would be pointless, maybe even detrimental. Kana was being slowly brainwashed, and soon, even her body would end up being controlled.
“Hmm? I can’t hear what you’re saying,” Frederica told her.
Kana continued to mutter words she didn’t intend to have heard under her breath.
Frederica gave Kana a bored look and shook her head. “I wonder if rejecting communication is a specialty of the Three Sages. I had such high hopes for someone as fun as you… What a shame. How was your life at school? I heard you were freeloading at Mephis Pheles’s house. She’s quite good at taking care of people, surprisingly.”
Kana undid the chains that had been restraining Frederica. She struck, dodged, punched, evaded, went to step on her foot—Frederica dodged as well, but Kana’s goal was elsewhere. By stomping down hard, she charged herself up. The rubble in the area flew away from the impact, and cracks radiated out along the ground.
Kana leaped. The intense explosions had left no buildings standing in the area, making only rubble, and there was no roof to get in her way, either. When moving vertically, Kana’s superior physicality would matter. But Frederica used the floating crystal balls as footholds to keep up with Kana. The two of them clashed together thirty feet up in the air.
The crystal balls followed them closely, taking up position behind Kana. But there was no sign that they would move. Staying alert, she met Frederica’s fist with her elbow, but it was turned aside.
In the corner of her vision, the courtyard passed by. Were their classmates safe? While she was worried, she asked no questions about it.
The flowers had been stomped and scattered around. The flagstones were just left there, shattered. It was a dreadful sight, but far preferable compared to that time.