The girls gathered in the plaza had a lot in common.
They hated home.
They despised the smell of trash bags rotting away all over the house.
They couldn’t stand the gritty convenience store rice they ate all alone.
When they ran out of that annoying house towards the plaza,
they were curious.
Why do adults say they have no money but go spend it on that street?
Why do they throw away the things they liked and head toward that street?
Why do they go out and never come back?
The three girls each held onto something their families had loved, waiting.
Hoping their families would find those items and return like the old days.
They waited for years in the plaza, overlooking that street.
Ding!
Ding!
On the rooftop of a building, there was someone who had followed me here.
A curly-haired girl in a flight jacket, who introduced herself as Lena.
With her eyes hidden behind aviation goggles, she smiled and greeted me.
“It’s an honor to meet the noble [Start] Magical Girl!”
“…….”
Hearing her words made my anger gradually boil.
What? Noble? An honor? Is she out of her mind?
Faces of the terrified people running away.
Expressions of those who cried, holding onto the police who saved them.
I was enraged by this girl who had caused chaos in front of all those innocent people, grinning away.
A fury I hadn’t felt even towards the guards who had shot at me.
The anger flared up right at this moment.
The anger towards this girl who had nearly harmed innocent people—or might have.
“Stop talking nonsense. You’re causing chaos and acting like this.”
“Oh… that’s true.”
“You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Don’t worry, apart from wrecking Kabukicho buildings, Kohane and Nanami promised no harm would come to the general public!”
Lena said with a carefree smile as if it was no big deal.
“I just… let off some steam until you got here.”
“Let off steam?!”
I felt a throbbing in my head thinking about Lena’s rampage I saw on my phone.
Is letting off steam all a Magical Girl can do?
“There’s no way no one would get hurt by shooting in the city.”
“Don’t worry, they were blanks. I promised not to engage in real violence until I saw you.”
“……”
I couldn’t grasp this girl’s psychology at all.
Lena was undeniably one of the most difficult characters to understand from the original source. All we knew about her backstory was that she executed something alone after receiving the power of blooming through struggles with the Union.
‘Does she think she’s indebted to me since that last broadcast?’
I felt more threatened by this girl showing pure yet sharp malice and worship than those who approached me to harm me.
‘If left unchecked, they might cause an even bigger accident.’
Magical Girls precariously balancing on the edge of reason and emotion.
I thought that if we let this moment slip, they might reach a point of no return.
Why do they seek my acknowledgment while destroying Kabukicho?
Why do they have solemn determination while doing it?
What is the truth of their feelings?
“……”
Let’s give these girls just one chance.
Is what they hold pure malice, or is it just a fleeting impulse?
Tap!
Tap!
I tapped my staff on the ground, and I saw Lena turn her attention to me.
“Why do you think you need my acknowledgment to smash Kabukicho?”
“That street…”
Lena paused for a moment, looking over the Kabukicho sprawling beyond the buildings, unable to continue.
The street, tempting people with its glamorous nightlife, was filled only with cold silence due to the daytime commotion.
Numerous emotions passed through Lena’s eyes as she simply stared at that street.
Anger,
Sadness,
Pain,
Despair,
Loneliness.
“That street has swallowed everything.”
“……”
“It took our happiness, past, dreams, future—everything.”
“……”
“Slowly rotting away behind the shadows hidden by the light from that street…”
Lena pointed at me with her trembling fingers.
A mixed expression,
An expression that wanted to scream,
An expression longing for someone to notice.
With a face full of so many expressions, Lena looked at me, slowly placing her trembling hand over her chest and closing her eyes.
It was reminiscent of a prayer posture.
Not to bless or wish for someone, but simply to rely on and worship someone.
“You… only you made us believe we could shine on our own.”
Was Lena recalling the dream of a debutante?
“Unlike that street, which treated us as if we didn’t exist and took everything away from us, you gave us dreams and strength. We wanted you to recognize our feelings.”
Or was it a past nightmare?
The blue eyes of Lena gazing at me with earnestness as she slowly removed her goggles were impressive.
“Could you please watch over us as we are, just this once?”
“……”
“If you recognize our feelings just once, I’ll do whatever you say.”
What she showed was filled with mild rage, subtly rotting and infested with mold.
Even if they take out all the civilians from that street and run wild, another Kabukicho will simply spring up elsewhere.
I don’t know what kind of past they hold, but I was sure that smashing that street wouldn’t lead to any resolution.
Even so, if I don’t do something right now, that anger won’t settle.
The anger that had likely been gradually filling up inside them for quite a while must have been spending hellish days.
If there was a single beam of hope in those hellish days, for these girls, it must have been this unreasonable anger.
Knowing too well that it was unreasonable, they just wanted to vent their anger hidden behind my name. Therefore, I couldn’t agree.
“That can’t be a reason to hurt someone else.”
“……”
“Then are you confident?”
“What confidence?”
“Confidence that even if emptiness comes after letting your anger take over, you can rein it in.”
Lena burst into a weak laugh, answering confidently as if it were the most natural question.
“Of course! No matter how hopeless we may seem, if we just destroy that street…”
“The ones who drove you to despair weren’t just from that street.”
“……”
“Isn’t it the people inside that street that you really want to get rid of?”
“… Ha, but to you, the [Start] Magical Girl…”
The desire to have their justified anger acknowledged and the impulse to unjustly enact revenge tangled up in confusion.
I intended to point out that contradiction to see their true intentions.
“If you were worried about tarnishing my name, then you shouldn’t think about getting permission through my name.”
“……”
“You’re cowards. Just pretending to worship me while thinking of escaping responsibility.”
Lena’s face was gradually twisting.
The superficial smile she had maintained by degrading themselves to trash vanished, showing the rising waves of distrust between her wide eyes.
‘Yeah, I was just a place for them to escape.’
The anger hidden beneath the thin mask seemed ready to burst at any moment.
Perhaps it was the responsibility I had left to Sumire in the original work. If that was the case, then what I needed to show was whether their anger itself was genuine.
“So what do you plan to do?”
“Prove it yourselves.”
Thwack!
A crisp sound echoed.
Suddenly the place where we stood changed from the rooftop to in front of Kabukicho.
“L-Lena?!”
“Lena?!”
“You guys!”
Hana and Ichika had brought over two girls they had subdued.
Nanami and Kohane had also moved next to me.
Thwack!
With a cheerful sound, the glass stars each girl called their own began to shine.
Two radiant gleaming glass stars.
Fluorescent orange,
Ivory,
Khaki.
From the three-colored glass stars, the consumed starlight surged up, dazzlingly shining as if the chaos earlier had been an illusion.
“Don’t hide behind my name; prove it yourselves.”
Holding the shining glass star while pointing at Kabukicho, I said,
“Show me what you really want to do.”
“……”
“……”
“……”
After a brief moment of staring at me, Kohane seemed to have made up her mind and stood up.
Nanami fixing her broken helmet summoned her bike again.
Lena merely stumbled forward, her expression hidden.
A brief silence.
Then a storm of destruction surged toward the street before our eyes.
Armored beings spitting fire,
A bike rushing out with a flash,
A barrage of machine gun fire.
Click—Vroom—Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Boom!
Brrrrrrrrrrr!
As the girls’ pent-up anger poured onto the distractions of the street, chaos ensued.
“AAAAAH!!! Help!!!”
“Oh my god, what is this?!”
“No!!! My store… my store!!!!”
Memories of my father.
Two machine guns appearing behind Lena were smashing through the neon sign-adorned roofs.
People hiding inside shops were crushed under the ruined debris.
There would be no way to accept foreign soldiers coming in to make local girls their concubines.
Memories of my mother.
Nanami sped through on her motorcycle, smashing through the signs that tempted passersby.
So that no young mother who dreamed of a night of escapism would be lured in by the signs.
So that the bikers there wouldn’t disappear after locking eyes with a passerby.
Even if people stumbled from the shards of signs, she didn’t stop.
Memories of my brother.
Kohane reloaded her rifle and pulled the trigger.
A nasty establishment that exploited innocent otaku customers and squeezed their wallets.
A place where innocent brothers, just fond of assembling model kits, would never set foot.
Even if young women came out stained in cosplay outfits.
The sounds of destruction echoing across Kabukicho were the screams bursting from their wounds.
The cries of time that no one cared for before.
Every night they cried and were filled with rage, suffering.
“We are!!! Here!!! Now!!!”
“Look at us!!”
“We are…”
The children who held toys while waiting for their families had turned into girls.
Time and souls were bound to the streets of Kabukicho.
“We are…”
“Ugh…”
“Ugh…”
The girls, who had been pouring out their anger without restraint, sat down, rubbing their hearts.
Kabukicho, completely in ruins.
The screams and echoes of fear overflowed.
They could no longer endure all of it.
“Things like this… things like this…”
“What we want… what we want isn’t this…”
Emptiness.
Destruction to reclaim lost time and souls. But the more they burned buildings and wounded people, the more etched were the wounds on their souls.
Their anger wasn’t meant to harm anyone in the end.
“Got it.”
“Then there’s still time to turn back.”
“It’s not too late yet.”
[Deception] Magical Girl Unique Skill
Dream World 夢幻世界
Thwack!
I lightly tapped my staff again.
Everything had been an illusion.
A test to see their true feelings.
I decided to return dreams to the girls who had fallen into despair.
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