Sally Raven
The darkness gradually cleared. The snake of darkness that had been wrapped around Sally, protecting her, uncoiled itself. Sally first searched for Dark Cutie and, when she found her on her knees, tried to race up to her, but her feet wouldn’t move. She tried to ask Dark Cutie if she was okay, only to spew blood and spit from her mouth.
Dark Cutie stopped her. “Don’t force yourself. You’re badly wounded,” she said, her voice quiet but still audible.
Sally sank down on the spot, unable to stand, shoulders moving up and down with ragged breaths. She somehow turned her head to look around the area.
The earth had been dug up, and the buildings were all destroyed. And many Princess Lightnings were lying there. Sally had never understood until the end why there were so many Lightnings, why the Lightnings had been attacking Sally and Dark Cutie. She had always been an inscrutable magical girl, ever since the time when she had been their group leader, but not the sort of inscrutable where she would attack their group members without so much as a by-your-leave.
Sally tried to talk about Lightning, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Dark Cutie shook her head; she somehow sensed what Sally was going through. “Thank those two over there.”
Sally turned to where Dark Cutie was looking.
Sally’s crow still shone bright even with one wing and its beak missing. Staring back at Sally was a magical girl in a Cutie Panda mask that was broken in half and hanging off her face.
“No need to thank me,” she said. “I was just defending myself.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say.”
“Are you making fun of me…Dark Cutie?”
“You know who I am?”
“Of course I do. You’re famous.”
The masked magical girl got up. She moved her monkey-like tail slowly, and the fangs that peeked from her parted lips were just like those of a beast. Sally tried to call out to Dark Cutie to be careful, but her voice still wouldn’t come out, and she coughed.
“I’ll kill you.”
The moment the masked magical girl tried to leap on her, the wind blew. She vanished. Sally looked over to Dark Cutie, thinking to defend her, but Dark Cutie was looking up at the sky.
A magical girl in a red dress was flying in the sky astride a broom. She held the flailing masked magical girl under one arm and was saying something to her. Then she flew off like the wind, just the same as she had come.
Sally was about to say, “What on earth was that?” and then she looked toward Dark Cutie. The magical girl had disappeared, leaving behind a small bloodstain.
Sally had no real idea what was going on.
But she was glad. She had been able to fight together with Dark Cutie. She also had regrets. She’d wound up being protected in the end. And she’d gotten not only Dark Cutie but also Pshuke badly hurt—and had even been defended by an enemy who had used a Cutie Healer mask for wrongdoing.
She still felt elated. She scolded herself: Don’t give in just yet. Then she encouraged herself: You can still keep going. Her classmates might be fighting. They might be worrying, wondering what had happened to her. She had to go to them.
With determination, Sally was about to take a step forward. Her heart moved, but her feet wouldn’t. Her crow cawed.
✦ ✦ ✦
Halna Midi Meren
Snow White stood in the front, then Mephis, and then Tetty followed. Watching the three magical girls vanish into the darkness, Halna forgot all about her situation and indulged in sentimentality, then immediately remembered and crushed a stone with her foot.
She’d used fusion on Snow White. Fusing a magical girl and a homunculus was not difficult. The energy supply from the ruins had been cut off, but with lots of help from Calkoro and Kana, there would be no problems.
That was how Snow White was able to gain a homunculus body. With a powerful resistance to magic and greatly enhanced physical abilities, she could enter the ruins. She wouldn’t be able to return to her original body, and her lifespan would shrink considerably—but those were petty issues.
That was what Halna had wanted from the beginning. Plus, she had two fused magical girls at her command. That made it easy to tell at a glance who was in control.
Putting in the real Snow White instead of an artificial personality changed the fusion’s look, too. The spitting image of Snow White, just like with Mephis and Tetty. She could even use her magic. To the uninformed, there was no telling that Snow White’s body was a homunculus.
But the leader here was not Halna. That one thing ruined it all. She had also not been allowed to apply the mental control. It was aggravating, but she had to obey.
From the corner of her eye, she looked at the magical girl with a bloodied uniform. What an absurd getup. She didn’t want to acknowledge that this was an incarnation of one of the Three Sages. But she was forced to acknowledge it. She was sitting on the stone floor, finger to her temple as she pondered something. She was not just thinking. She said she was using her magic to gather information.
Halna had heard that Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami, the Caspar Faction’s incarnation, was skilled at information gathering. It was said of her that she had full knowledge to the ends of the earth while sitting on her castle throne, and she had even ascertained where the First Mage was now.
Halna wished to change the Magical Kingdom. She wanted to revolutionize the magical girl system. She wanted to make it so that the tragic incident of the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, would never occur again, and she had been working to that end. It was not all pretty work. She had also done many dirty jobs that she couldn’t tell others about.
But she was still a mage working in the system. Unlike the robbers who were surging down on them now, she did not want to destroy the Magical Kingdom, and she held reverence for both the First Mage and the Three Sages. The First Mage was an actual god, and the Three Sages were their disciples, having received their direct teachings, and they were also equivalent to gods. If they had simply been outstanding pioneers or great leaders, then you could kick down as many as you liked, but that wasn’t the case with gods. Halna had never had the desire to destroy the system itself from the root.
Maybe she would’ve been better off treating what Kana said as a lie. But there was more than one reason it made sense. Halna had thought it over. She had hesitated. And because she had been unable to act right away, she had failed at getting what she wanted. Now that things were like this, there was nothing for it but to treat Kana like the incarnation of the Caspar Faction. She had to have a reverent attitude and obediently accept her demands, and so Halna was now being used at her whims.
She looked in the other direction. Calkoro was on her knees, flicking the beads of her abacus.
Calkoro’s lack of gratitude made Halna want to explode with anger. Since she couldn’t butt heads with the Caspar incarnation, all of Halna’s rage got redirected at Calkoro, who had so quickly stopped caring that Halna was her boss. As soon as someone more important showed up, Calkoro clung to them and wagged her tail. She was both a rat and a dog. There was nothing more irritating.
But Halna couldn’t vent her anger at her right now. Not only did she not want to do that while Kana was watching, right now Calkoro was necessary personnel. Regardless of what sort of revenge she might have later, in order for there to be a later, right now they had to cooperate—no matter what an aggravating person she was.
It wasn’t as if Halna would have no more chances. There was hope to turn this around. If the thieves showed up, of course there would be confusion in the entrance area. If she used magic with an area effect, for example an acidic mist or a whirlpool of flame, it would sometimes catch allies in it as well. She would skillfully adjust the range to avoid destroying the entranceway. Halna was capable of that.