A surprised “oh” escaped Mia’s lips at Misaki’s annoyed instructions. “So you are police officers! It certainly makes sense for Champions of Justice, now that I think about it. All right, understood!”
Mia lowered the speakers on a quiet spot by the riverbank and went back for the sunshade. She raised her wand, ready to cast the spell. “Fly with me in—wait, why are you following me?”
Ren, who Mia had just dropped off with the speaker, along with three other rangers, notably missing Misaki, were standing right behind Mia.
“Uh, well, you have to try everything at least once, you know!”
“Yeah, yeah!”
“I want to try flying too!”
“And I want an encore!”
“Hey, my magic is not your toy!” Mia wildly flailed her arms, fuming, at which Ren tried soothing her with a ‘there, there’.
“Hey, if you don’t hurry up, Misaki will get tired of waiting and leave. You okay with that?”
“Urgh.”
Letting an enemy escape would be a disgrace to her title as Supreme Ruler of Evil. Mia grudgingly twirled her wand.
“Fly with me into the skies!” she recited, and immediately the sunshade and the four people along with it were lifted up and suspended in midair.
Each person had a different reaction: one made swimming motions, another dangled their feet in the air, but everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.
“Say, Mia, how do you make this magic of yours work? You said ‘Fly with me something something’, so it’s, like, whenever you say this phrase, you can fly at will?” Shou inquired excitedly, his eyes sparkling with fascination. Mia shook her head no.
“There is no fixed phrase for it. I imagine the thing I wish to accomplish and hold this image in my head. Then, by pronouncing the words that come to me at that moment, I grant power to the magic.”
“I see, so concentrating while forming the words is necessary,” Subaru nodded sagely, hovering in midair with his arms and legs crossed.
“So you can basically do anything, Mia?” Aya joined in the questioning.
Mia answered in a detailed manner, “If I can give the intent a proper form in my mind, technically I should be able to do anything. In essence, however, I can only use the images I learned from my father… With some time, I could give form to ideas with my own power, though.”
Mia reached the place where she had left the speakers and safely landed the four people and the sunshade nearby. Then she waved her wand again. “Disassemble!”
The moment she finished speaking, the sunshade’s frame began to unravel piece by piece, then stacked up in a neat pile by itself. The four looking on from behind clapped, amazed by the sight.
“Wow, that magic is really neat! Wish I could use it too,” Ren whispered enviously, stroking his chin.
“Hehehe, unfortunately for you, it’s impossible for commoners such as yourselves. This technique is something only us sorcerers can use. It has to run in your blood!” Mia sneered, firmly shoving her cape aside to flash a daunting pose.
“Ah, so it’s something akin to heredity, huh.” Aya nodded in understanding.
“Well now, playtime is hereby over!” Mia gave her wand a whirl, softly floated up, flew through the air, and landed a small distance away from the five rangers.
“My apologies for the wait! Now let me drop you straight into the cauldron of Hell!”
“Hey, do you actually have to wave your wand to do magic?” Ren interrupted.
Mia’s shoulders slumped at his out of place question. “Argh, enough about my magic already! Waving it is the way my father taught me how to do magic!”
“He was a person with old-fashioned, questionable tastes, eh?” Aya quietly mumbled.
That was when Misaki took a swift step forward. “Ugh, I’m ending this, now. Hey, Mia, I can’t leave someone defying common sense and plotting world domination to boot like you wandering around! I’m gonna arrest you and end this ridiculous charade!”
Misaki pulled something resembling a police baton out of his bag and charged at Mia without waiting for her response. Mia laughed indomitably and parried the baton with her wand. They clashed with a resounding clang.
Mia swiftly began to cast a spell, “O earth, collapse!”
Following her words, the ground supporting Misaki’s feet dully throbbed, and a hole opened up underneath him.
“Wh-Whoa?!” Misaki yelped as he lost his balance, falling on his backside. However, he immediately got back on his feet and thrust the baton in Mia’s gut.
“Oof!”
“I hate doing this to a girl, but…” As Misaki pushed a button on his baton, Mia felt a jolt of electricity rush through her body.
“Aiee!” She hastily whirled her wand, flying through the air to put some distance between herself and Misaki. Mia’s body still tingled unpleasantly, and her hair stood slightly on end from the static electricity.
“Humph, to think you would resort to such petty tricks!”
“Wow, so the stories really are true. A normal person would collapse after taking a hit from a stun gun!”
“Mwahaha! Battles are unavoidable for those who aim to conquer the world! With a defensive barrier, an attack like that is nothing to worry about.”
“That girl’s trouble… Hey, wait a sec! Come on you guys, help me out here!”
The other four rangers were dawdling behind him. None of them showed even a grain of inclination for joining the fray. Subaru was at least observing the fight, his arms crossed; Shou, on the other hand, was playing a game on his smart phone. Aya, for some reason, was cheering the enemy on with, “Go, Mia!”, while Ren was smoking a cigarette he’d procured from his convenience store bag.
“You people… You know what, I’m telling the boss on you!” Misaki exhaled exasperatedly.
Ren, apparently troubled by the prospect of that happening, took one step forward, the cigarette still hanging from his lips.
“Well, I guess I gotta do it then… Getting a pay cut would be a pain, so I’ll just get this sorted real quick.”
Fixing his eyes on Mia, who tightly gripped her wand in anticipation, Ren handed his cigarette to Misaki.
“Hey, put it out first, would you?”
“Meh, forgot my pocket ashtray. Hold on to it for me, ‘kay?”
Having said that, he started towards Mia at a leisurely pace. Mia was outraged by how blatantly he underestimated her.
“Let’s see how you like it when I drench you in ice-cold water, you craven! With the ice—huh?”
As Mia was casting her spell, Ren suddenly broke into a sprint at incredible speed. Startled by Ren appearing right before her in a blink of an eye, Mia lost her ability to speak. Meanwhile, Ren cupped her face with his hands, touching his lips to hers.
“…?!”
Mia’s mind went completely blank with the sensation of having her lips sealed by a deep kiss. Hastily, she started hitting him on the back and pushing him away, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Mm! Mmph!”
She was suffocating. Gradually, strength seeped away from her struggling limbs. At last, when her head started spinning, he let her go.
“There ya go, all done!”
“H-Huh?” Mia, whose lips had finally been released, dazedly looked up at Ren. She realized too late that she couldn’t move her wrists. “Wha-?! H-Handcuffs?! When did you-?!”
“While you were enjoying my smooch. Was real easy too!”
“How vile!” With her hands handcuffed behind her back, Mia leaped backwards to get away from Ren.
“And you call yourself a Champion of Justice?! While committing such…such acts of barbarity, you dimwit!”
“But hey, if you don’t concentrate while pronouncing the words of a spell, you can’t cast your spells, right? So, I thought that if I sealed your lips you’d probably lose your focus, see?”
“T-To use such licentious methods is deplorable!” Mia’s face grew red and her shoulders trembled. She was so mortified that tears welled up in her eyes.
Noticing the state she was in, Shou clapped his hands. “Wait a second, Mia, was that your first kiss?”
“Oh my.” Aya’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Of course it was, you fool! I have never done anything like this! When would I have had the chance to!”
“Oops, sorry for that!” Ren apologized, insincerely.
Rattling her handcuffs angrily, Mia fumed, “I don’t care for your halfhearted apologies! Take responsibility for your actions, you bonehead!”
“What responsibility? Do I need to marry you now or something?”
“M-M-Marry?! Who said anything about that? …Dance, o blade of wind!”
This time, Mia succeeded in imbuing the words with her will. As she spoke them, the handcuffs were cut through easily as if they had been made of paper, and they clattered to the ground in pieces.
“Huh, so you can do this, too. A miscalculation on my part.”
“Do not underestimate me. You cannot hope to restrain me with such flimsy aluminum handcuffs!”
“Apparently not. How ‘bout I put a sturdier collar on you next time, hm?” Ren smirked.
That smirk was completely unlike the smirk Mia had spent years to perfect; it was a wicked expression unfit to appear on a Champion of Justice.
“C-C-C-Consider this your lucky day; I’m letting you off the hook! But I’ll get you next time, you’ll see!” Mia threw as a parting remark, repeated by many villains over the ages that found themselves in a certain set of circumstances when they were confronted with Champions of Justice. She then picked up the garbage bag before soaring up into the sky with her magic.
“You gonna run away?” Ren grinned up at her.
“Call it a strategic retreat, will you?! I have to go and rethink my tactics!”
“That so? Well, I’m looking forward to the next time we meet! Also, not that I care, but you’re flashing your panties.”
“Aiee! Stop looking!” Mia hastily tried to hold her skirt down.
“White, huh… Frilly, too! And with a lace ribbon, how cute!” Shou observed.
“Wearing such underwear is one of the privileges of being a young girl, don’t you think?” Aya chimed in.
Their underwear discussion made Mia’s shoulders shake again.
“…Mia,” Subaru quietly called out to the girl. He had mostly stayed silent throughout the encounter and hadn’t taunted her, so she looked down at him tolerantly. He straightened his previously folded arms and met her eyes. “You look small and frail for your age. Don’t neglect eating nutritious foods during lunch!”
“I-I don’t need your advice!” Mia shouted before she took off flying. The five heroes left behind watched her leave from the riverbank.