Mephis Pheles
The haze that had been in her head cleared. But even then, she didn’t feel refreshed. Even if there was more or less an explanation for the realities that had been flung at her one after another, none of it made sense, and it just made her feel more confused.
“Fucking shit!” Mephis yelled.
“I’ve already explained everything,” Kana calmly replied.
“So what?!”
“I don’t have time to tell you everything in detail until it all makes sense to you.”
Mephis had thought she was already used to it, but Kana’s weirdly calm attitude was so irritating.
She remembered everything. She’d basically been fighting under the orders of the principal. In other words, she’d been being controlled by the principal. She hadn’t thought it was strange at all, had not noticed it was unnatural, and had accepted the situation as just what it was. When she had realized the truth, Mephis had reached out to grab that principal’s long ears, but Kana had stopped her, and she hadn’t been able to do it. “Lemme sock her one, at least,” Mephis had begged, only for Kana to refuse: “Now’s not the time.”
“This is basically all her fault!” Mephis yelled. She was pointing at the principal, who looked absolutely miserable. The small stone room made Mephis’s voice echo so loud that even she herself couldn’t stand it.
“Mephis, don’t be so loud,” Kana told her. “They’ll hear your bickering outside.”
Mephis had no choice but to lower her voice. “It’s not just our minds. She was even messing with our bodies, wasn’t she?”
“She was.”
“Fuck that.”
“Once all is said and done, I’ll have her fix everything. I’m not lying—I have her under a magic contract.”
“So she can definitely fix this stuff?”
“I make no guarantees.”
“Goddamn it.”
“Right now, we have no choice but to cooperate.”
“Shit… Let’s just hand her over and surrender.”
“Giving Frederica the relic could mean the end of the world.”
“Frederica’s, like, our boss, right? So getting in her way would be counterintuitive.”
“No, Frederica hijacked the Caspar Faction. I’m the real boss.”
“…What?”
Kana’s expression was deadly serious. She didn’t seem like she was joking, but then again, she always said ridiculous things with a serious look on her face. Mephis looked at Tetty, but she was just curled up in the corner of the room and trembling, and it didn’t seem like she would help. Looking over to Snow White, she had both hands in the air, with Halna and Calkoro giving her some kind of inspection.
Snow White also looked ridiculously serious as she nodded and said, “That appears to be true.”
Not knowing how to reply, Mephis just spat, “Shit,” and kicked the wall as hard as she could. Even with the leg strength of a magical girl, the kick didn’t leave a single crack.
“Mephis,” said Calkoro, “we just have to cooperate for now.” She gave Mephis an apologetic look and immediately turned back to Snow White.
Mephis kicked the wall one more time. It didn’t even budge.
There had been no contact from Lillian and Kumi-Kumi since they’d gone into the ruins on the principal’s orders. Though Rappy was an enemy, she had apparently been taken into custody for the time being. The Lightnings had come to attack in large numbers, and Mephis had also defeated many of them. Pshuke and Diko had leaped into the crowd of foes, and they hadn’t been seen since. Since parting ways with Miss Ril, Dory, and Arlie, they didn’t know what had happened to them. Sally’s whereabouts were unknown. And nobody had even seen Ranyi.
“…Oh—what about Adelheid?” Mephis asked.
Kana started to open her mouth, then she stopped for a moment. Mephis understood belatedly what Kana was about to say and was hesitating over. Mephis was slow to get it because she’d never once seen Kana talk in that way before.
“She perished.”
Mephis reflexively swung her hand, but she stopped just before it could strike Kana’s cheek. Have some goddamn tact, Mephis thought, angry for no good reason. But she figured that Kana had to be suffering in her own way, and that was why she’d hesitated for the first time. That, and how gruesome she looked, with her uniform and hair all stiff from dried blood, stopped her slap.
Mephis kicked the stone wall yet again. Her last discussion with Adelheid had been an argument. It was beyond messed up that that was the end of it. She kicked the stone wall and kicked it again. Next, she punched it. She could never meet her again. She would also have no chance to make up.
“Shit,” Mephis spat.
Now that she said it out loud, everything sank in. This really was shit. It was hopeless.
Mephis lifted her chin. Tetty was trembling in the corner. She was facing the wall and holding her head, trying to not look at anything. She probably didn’t even want to see reality.
She could understand that feeling so well it hurt—just what it meant to be told to do a job in this situation. Understanding that it was because there was nobody else to do it made her want to punch and kick the stone wall. But even so, even if it was painful, she understood that in the end, there were things that she had to do.
“Shit,” she repeated, this time not as angrily.
Seeing someone more upset than her helped Mephis Pheles calm down just a little bit. Not because she felt she was better than whoever was shaking and crying, but because it made her think there was someone she had to help.
Mephis walked up to Tetty.
✦ ✦ ✦
Tetty Goodgripp
She didn’t get anything. She didn’t understand any of it. It was all just scary. She couldn’t even stand. She didn’t want to remember what she had been doing. But even though she didn’t want to remember, she couldn’t help but do so.
Whatever they were talking about, it just went in one ear and out the other, and she couldn’t digest what they were saying. She didn’t even really know what expressions they had as they talked. She had no idea what they were feeling. Tetty couldn’t see what was in front of her, and she didn’t want that.
She felt nauseous, but she couldn’t vomit, and though it would be easier if she could die, she couldn’t. What she’d just been doing remained clearly in her memories. Just when had the control begun? Just when had she stopped being herself? Even just thinking she wanted to be a great magical girl, she wanted to live as a career magical girl—had that been a sin?
Had her mother saying that “I know you can do it” been a delusion, or a dream, or a fake memory from when she’d been controlled?
Tetty no longer knew what was true and what was a lie. The sense that the ground at her feet was crumbling out from under her wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t see the end of it. She felt like she was going crazy, but she understood better than anyone else that she was in her right mind. It didn’t make sense, keeping her senses even as her awareness and memories were all mixed up and feeling like it would all turn upside down.
The magical-girl class had been tough, but it had been fun. Though the job had been beyond her, Tetty had done her best as the class head. She had hoped for everyone to be able to get along. Had that feeling really been her own? Surely, the principal would’ve also wanted the same thing. She was the one who’d picked Tetty to be the class head.
It had been tough as the class head. Magical girls were more than just highly individualistic, and she’d had to bring them all together somehow. But still, it had felt worthwhile. Every day, she’d always been thinking things like, Let’s do this here; let’s change that more there; I have to give that girl a little more attention; let’s show some care to that girl; it’d be nice if the teacher would be a little more motivated. It had felt tough at the time, but in retrospect, maybe she’d been happy.
That had surely been because there had been a future, something to aim for. That was something she didn’t have now. Or rather, she’d never had that from the start. There was only a stupid magical girl who had been tricked by fraud and grown full of herself.
Tetty didn’t have anything. No possibilities, no future, nothing.
✦ ✦ ✦
