“Let me explain the rules,” Linze said as all the children gathered around her in the courtyard. “A group of suspicious people will be released into this makeshift Brunhild. The villains will vandalize the town and carry out all manner of crimes, so your mission is to apprehend them. If you kill...or, well, eliminate them, you’re out.”
After the explanation, Linne immediately raised her hand and asked, “We’ve just gotta capture them, right? Don’t need to hand them over to the knights?”
“Yes, we’ll deal with them after you apprehend them. You just need to capture them and then leave them there. If you don’t capture them properly, though, you won’t get points, so be careful.”
“There’s a point system?” Quun asked this time, also raising her hand. Linze hadn’t even mentioned a point system until now, so of course the kids were confused.
“The training will work on a point system, yes. Your points will decrease if you damage the town in any way, inconvenience the citizens, or eliminate the bad guys. They’ll increase if you successfully capture them.”
“What happens if we get lots of points?”
“They’re like reward points. The one with the most points will have any wish granted by Touya.”
“Any wish?!” the children’s voices all harmonized. Any was maybe a bit far. I wasn’t some big Green Dragon or anything. I prayed they didn’t ask for anything that went way beyond what I was capable of—the last thing I wanted to have to do was tell them I couldn’t grant their wish. Oh, and I wouldn’t take any wishes to give them more wishes.
Now that the talk of a reward had pumped the kids up, Linze explained the rules again. Catch the bad guys and you’d get points. Kill the bad guys and you’d get them taken away. Destroying the town in any way would also deduct points. If the bad guys successfully carried out any crimes, they’d all lose points. If their point total went below a certain threshold, there would be no reward. That would become the incentive for the kids to keep capturing the bad guys even if their personal total was high.
“Um, so for example, if I used a paralyzing bullet and it missed and hit a wall instead, I’d have points deducted?” Quun asked.
“Not by a lot, but yes, that would count as a point deduction,” Leen answered. “If you’re able to catch the bad guy with that, though, it might end up being a net positive.”
Unfortunately, even as professionals in this kind of thing, accidents did sometimes happen, no matter how much you tried to avoid them.
Incidentally, magic attacks being used in populated areas would also lead to a deduction in points—you were essentially being a nuisance to the civilians in that scenario. It was terrible for me to feel this way, but I would be pretty thankful if the kids racked up so many minus points that none of them got a reward... Though, if I wanted them to grow, we needed them to learn restraint. What a dilemma...
“Shall we begin?”
“Yeah!” The children all cheered in unison as they were sucked into the little diorama. At the same time, a bunch of hologram windows opened up around the device, showing what was going on inside. It really was identical to the real thing. The only difference was that the citizens were all black-and-white.
The kids appeared right in the middle of that fake town. They were all looking cautiously around them, surprised by the familiar location stretched out before them.
“Release the bad guys!” Doc Babylon exclaimed as she swiped a finger across the screen and a different window showed the bad guys tied up. Or at least, what she called the bad guys. Their whole bodies were covered in some tight black fabric, and they had masks over their faces... More than bad guys, they looked like certain Combatmen who would yell, “Yee!”
“Heh heh heh, let the games begin!” she cackled, an evil smile spread wide on her face as she tapped the screen again and screams erupted from the town. The enemies had begun wreaking havoc.
“You really are the evil mastermind...”
Though, really, the worst they were doing was eating fruit from stalls without paying, or arguing with shopkeepers, or chasing girls around. No large-scale crimes. Not that that changed the fact that they were crimes that shouldn’t be overlooked, of course.
“You do know these are the types of crimes currently plaguing many towns, right?”
“Exactly. Many dropout adventurers will commit acts such as these.”
As Leen and Yumina said, rougher towns tended to be crawling with these types of crime, and it wasn’t as if Brunhild was free of it either. Naturally, the citizens themselves didn’t carry out such crimes, but thugs from outside sometimes would. Honestly, those were the types that you had to be able to hold back for—bandits and wanted men were the ones it was fine to cut down.
“Th-Then let us split up and take down the bad guys,” Yakumo called out.
“Heh heh, I’m not gonna lose!” Steph enthusiastically responded, clenching her fists.
“Let’s do this! [Twinkling Heart Babylon Wave]!” Linne was the first to call out the magic words, thrusting her bracelet toward the sky, resulting in her being wrapped in a cocoon of light. With little pops of light, she reappeared in her blue magical girl outfit. “If you’ll excuse me!”
Like a rabbit, the girl leaped up and across the roofs.
“Hey, that’s not fair! Leylle, we’re going too!”
“O-Okay, Allis.”
Allis and Leylle transformed into their own outfits and followed suit.
Could you at least use the paths? You know, on the ground?
Linne running across the roofs was displayed on a different screen. Apparently, there were cameras automatically following each one of the children.
“Found you!”
“Nyee?!”
From atop the roofs, Linne spotted a bad guy rampaging through a market, sending vegetables flying everywhere.
They really did make their cry so familiar...
“Take this!”
“Nyee?!”
Linne jumped down and kicked the bad guy as they picked up another wooden box filled with vegetables. The fact that she didn’t use her special [Gravity] kick to increase the weight was probably her own way of showing restraint.
The vegetables scattered everywhere as the bad guy collapsed to the ground. At that same moment, they vanished into balls of light.
I see. Guess this is what happens when they commit overkill.