“Steph, can you hear me?”
“Kuon! The baddies keep disappearing! I can’t catch them!” Steph wailed. It was a lot to expect of such a small child to know how to control their strength. It might have been best if I’d asked for the settings to be adjusted a bit...
“Listen to me, okay? [Prison] itself was intended as magic to capture enemies. There’s no need for you to tackle them.”
“OH.”
“Huh?”
His words were so obvious, yet even me and Sue couldn’t help but let out a noise at the realization. Steph didn’t quite seem to understand, though.
A bad guy chasing a girl down the street just happened to pass by Steph at that moment.
“Um... [Prison]?”
“NYEEEEEE?!”
A rectangular [Prison] that looked almost like a coffin materialized around the bad guy, and then they both fell with a bang. Steph bounced over and tapped him with her staff, capturing him in the ring of light.
“I did it!”
“Congratulations, Steph.”
“Thank you, Kuon!”
That tearful face from only moments before had completely changed into a wide smile as she cheerfully charged into the next bad guy. Kuon couldn’t help but give a satisfied smile at the sight.
“What a girl... Hm? Why are you looking at me like that?” Kuon frowned in our direction. Our big grins had been caught.
“Oh, nothing at all! I was just thinking how good of a big brother you are.”
“Yes, exactly. I’m so proud to have you as my son. You’re so kind, always thinking about your family.”
“Indeed. You gave splendidly precise advice! You make a good older brother, Kuon!”
Showered in our praise, Kuon turned bright red as he whipped his face away from our direction. Was he embarrassed? He was usually so composed. I was happy he was a big brother who cared so much for his sister too, especially ’cause I couldn’t do anything for my own little sister...
I wanted to bring my kids to Earth once we’d dealt with the wicked devout, and I hoped I could introduce them to Fuyuka then. Though it would be a bit weird—their aunt would be younger than them. Then again, the kids were from the future, so did that technically still make her older? Time shenanigans really were convoluted.
Now that Steph had learned how to capture the bad guys, everyone was managing to build up their points. In the interest of fairness, only Doc Babylon was aware of their scores. We didn’t even know how many points you received for a successful capture, or how much you’d lose for eliminating the villains. If it turned out the points lost for eliminating the bad guys were greater than the points for catching them, that would mean Steph would have a hard time catching up after all those points she lost at the start.
Still, it didn’t mean it was impossible for her to win. [Prison] was the most suitable Null magic for capturing enemies. She could completely turn the whole match around.
“But, you know...while I know that all the crimes these bad guys are committing are meant to be considered light crimes...”
“I know exactly what you’re thinking right now. How severe is peeking or groping girls?”
“I don’t think killing someone who did that should result in a point deduction even if they were to hit them as hard as they could.”
Leen, Linze, and Sakura were all narrowing their eyes at a bad guy who was running around peeking into public baths and feeling up girls before then running away. Why did I feel like I was being criticized as a man even though I had nothing to do with this? I’d never even peeked or felt up a girl before... Wait, that was a lie. I’d peeked multiple times before, but not because I was trying!
Realizing I shouldn’t let my panic show, I concentrated on watching the kids capture more of the bad guys.
“By the way, how does this all actually end?” Lu suddenly asked.
“Hmm... Maybe it’s about time for me to release the big bad,” Doc Babylon muttered to herself. What big bad? They weren’t about to suddenly become gargantuan and attack the town like in a good ol’ hero show, were they?
A new villain appeared in the main street.
Oh, they look different this time. They’re wearing a white coat. Hang on...
“Hey, that’s the exact same coat as mine.”
“I wanted to make them feel like a boss character. I stopped at just the coat ’cause I realized it’d be kinda bad for your image if I made it look exactly like you.”
This was already bad enough for my image! Was she saying I looked like a final boss just because of my jacket?!
“Unlike the previous villains, this one will fight back, so you better watch out. Catch the big bad and the game will come to an end. Good luck out there!”
“It retaliates? You made sure this’ll be okay, right? It’s safe, yeah?”
“I mean, this is an experiment to test this all out, isn’t it? C’mon, don’t look so worried. I made sure that it wouldn’t actually try to injure anyone. Just watch.”
How was she meant to pull that off? Was its weapon some silly paper fan or something?
“There he is!” The first to come face-to-face with the big bad was Linne. She made a mad dash for him, swinging her staff. The moment he saw the girl, the big masked bad with his white coat pulled something out of his pocket.
Is that...a gray Brunhild?
When he pulled the trigger, some glowing cobweb-like thing shot out of the gun, covering Linne.
“Huh, what is this?! I can’t move!”
Linne, now stuck to the ground with the web, desperately struggled to break free.
Honestly, she, uh...kinda looks like a bug caught in a web...
The fact that it was my own daughter in there didn’t help how bad it felt to watch.
“That glowing web won’t disappear until a set amount of time has passed. Linne, you’re on the bench for now, I’m afraid.”
“Nooooooooo!”
So that was what she had meant when she said that it was programmed to attack in ways that wouldn’t hurt the kids: it was using a more advanced form of Quun’s net gun.
The capturer becomes the captured... A little ironic, really.
The big bad left Linne struggling on the ground and began his escape.
Hey, he totally just felt up a girl’s butt on the way out.
“He just felt up a girl like it was normal...”
“It almost feels like I’m watching Touya do it...”
“Hey, don’t drag me into this!”