“⋯⋯.”
Click-clack
Only the sound of my footsteps echoed through the path leading into the cold silence of the Kremlin Palace. The vast city of Moscow was engulfed in an unsettling quiet.
Boom
Guuuuuuuuu
The sounds of Sirius supporting the entry team by hitting enemy shots through inverse causality and a beast trying to shoot it down with high-powered lasers softly resounded in the distance.
Gigantic warships and magical girls.
Countless puppets and monstrous beasts that seemed to have stepped out of myths.
Their battle raged fiercely under the protection of inverse causality.
“⋯⋯.”
Click
I couldn’t help but stop my steps upon seeing the scene inside the Kremlin Palace.
At the very deepest part of the Kremlin, in the corridor leading to the president’s office, girls dressed in colorful dresses filled the space.
Bam!
“⋯Huh?!”
Suddenly, a trumpet sounded, and middle-aged male musicians in elegant suits standing at the top of the stairs began to play a wedding song.
Creeeak
And the hundred girls filling the corridor seemed to dance in mid-air as if with imaginary partners.
A partner-less dance.
A ball of puppets that had lost their sanity.
Creeeak
The awkward dance of beautiful magical girls surrendered to the slow, awkward tune of the wedding song, their minds lost.
“⋯Stop this ominous welcoming and come out.”
“Oh? I thought you’d like this. I secretly thought we had similar tastes.”
From the very back of the corridor leading to the president’s office, a girl with fluorescent green hair and a black coat approached.
With a deep Middle Eastern accent and tanned skin.
A Magical Girl of [Puppet].
“Doctor⋯!”
“Aha, I’ve never heard my moniker from my own mouth! Let me formally introduce myself. The Magical Girl of [Puppet]…,”
Deception Magical Girl Unique Skill
Dream World
Cognition Acceleration
“⋯Girl. I discarded my name a long time ago, and those who’ve been with me call me Doctor.”
“Tch.”
“Kihihih, I thought you’d try to incapacitate and kill me right away, so I’ve already prepared for that.”
The puppet resembling the Doctor grinned.
“Guess it was pretty obvious, huh? Seeing you come all the way here.”
“For you, it’s all a game. That’s why you were waiting in a place more meaningful than hiding.”
“What if I were a villain who hated all humanity? What if I had already prepared to launch nuclear strikes?”
“If your true aim really was the destruction of humanity, you would have fired the nukes ages ago.”
“And what if I were a tremendous villain who had already pressed the button in the president’s office?”
“Don’t lie.”
The playful aura I felt from her boiled my anger.
Everything was a game to her, just a girl who laughed while watching people be confused.
A girl who played with others like toys, without any animosity.
I drew my Silver Sword. The puppet ball filling the cold corridor. I aimed to sever the malice that had taken root there. The sword strike, shining like a flash.
Shhaaaaaaak
A silver ripple followed the sword strike, cutting through the space.
A power granted to a magical girl who governs wars.
A blade wave that slices through legions.
The silver wave, shimmering with a chilling light, advanced toward the girl who mocked the world.
As that wave brushed past everyone in the corridor, it finally reached the Doctor at the end of the passage. The Doctor merely smiled leisurely and presented her neck.
Drip
“Hmm?”
Expecting her own head to fall, the Doctor rubbed the blood flowing from the scar on her cheek.
“⋯Heal.”
Thud
Like a puppet show had ended, all the puppets collapsed at once.
The hundred magical girls in the corridor and the middle-aged men in musician costumes lost their minds. They bore a line of scars on their cheeks and were plunged into a state of stupor from the healing of deception.
Before I knew it, only the Doctor and I stood in the corridor.
“Kihihih, this is quite disappointing. I had something else prepared for this moment.”
The Doctor murmured, looking deflated.
“After all, the apostles serving the gods don’t understand fun.”
Apostle.
It felt like an important keyword.
“⋯I serve no one.”
“Looks like you’re on a different side than [War]? Hmm. Well, it’s not important, so let’s move on.”
[War]… I see.
Now, I finally understood whose orders these beings obeyed.
The Born 3-Star Magical Girls already existed in some way.
“So why do you aim to save humanity?”
“Because we decided to protect the magical girls and this world.”
The Doctor pondered for a moment, then tilted her head. She waved her hands and said,
“That… when humans talk about the world, they usually mean a very narrow scope, right? It’s rare for someone to live more than 16 kilometers away from where they were born until death.”
“Stop with the nonsense and get to the point.”
“Kihihih, don’t cut me off when you don’t even know where my true self is! Listen! Isn’t that the courtesy of a puppet show?”
“⋯⋯.”
“What I want to say is that humans don’t have that broad of a perspective. Their own country, their own neighborhood, their own home. Just stepping out of that is enough for them to not recognize the world as a world.”
As I heard those words, I quietly checked the state of the barrier. The more I focused on the conversation, the more I noticed the direction the Doctor’s mind was narrowing toward.
“Your ‘such’ perspective is a kind of madness… or rather, a god’s perspective, shall we say?”
I paused for a moment at that remark.
“Usually, humans only try to save a few related people; they don’t try to save everyone like you do.”
The Doctor finally let out a deep sigh. Relief spread across her face, realizing the puppet-wielding counterpart wasn’t a terrifying god’s apostle but a madman not much different from herself.
“Isn’t it you who doesn’t see the humans of this world as humans? We’re exactly the same.”
“⋯⋯.”
“Kihihih, I can’t figure out why your epithet is [Start]. If it’s deception acting human to save everyone, that might make sense.”
Above.
The mocking mind gathered in one place. The instant a fragment of a mistake burst forth. Even now, this girl wasn’t serious at all.
Paaah!
Zing!
Rumble
A silver cross engraved on the ceiling.
In one swift motion, I swung my Silver Sword, cutting through the ceiling, and I soared upward, breaking through the crumbling roof.
“Wha?! Wait a minute!!”
Leaving the Doctor’s startled voice behind, I ascended to the roof, basking in the dazzling sunlight.
Cold wind.
The chilly panorama of Moscow.
A fluorescent green giant.
‘Griffon…?’
In that moment, as I spotted the massive 10-meter Griffon, another Doctor hesitated, perhaps changing control.
I swung my silver blade horizontally, creating a gigantic ripple.
Zing!
The sword I had replicated with Yuki’s insufficient starlight from the friendly competition not long ago was just a solid flame sword.
But my sword of war, filled with starlight, became a massive silver wave of over 50 meters, rushing towards the Griffon and the Doctor.
Shhaaaaaat!
Before the silver blade wave, the Doctor shouted,
“Jeez! Scatter the feathers!”
The massive fluorescent green Griffon spread its gigantic wings, glowing. Feathers bursting forth from the tremendous wings, threatening to completely cover the Moscow sky.
And then, an explosion.
Kwaaaang!
As the dazzling clash of silver and fluorescent green subsided, a devastating scene unfolded.
The explosion of the Griffon, which had resisted the silver wave, shattered the terrain over a 100-meter radius. Those gathered in the Kremlin Palace became bloodied beneath the fragments of the building. They turned into cold corpses, colder than the winter wind to the point of feeling warm.
“Jeez! Keep exploding!”
Kwaauuuwuwu!
The roaring Griffon skyrocketed, scattering feathers indiscriminately, and the explosions grew larger and larger.
Kwaang!
Kwaang!
The rain of flames.
A burning city.
The colossus bringing destruction.
The girl who had birthed puppets before even the monsters summoned by the Evil God reproduced the hour of annihilation.
“Kihihih! Yes! Before the gods mess things up! It’s fun…”
Thud
Deception Magical Girl Unique Skill
Dream World
“Yes, a perfect puppet.”
“No, when was this again?!”
“I set it up all around before I came in.”
I released the illusion barrier and turned the situation back to a confrontation, wielding my Silver Sword as a scythe.
Slash!
It radiated a mysterious light like a crescent moon reflected at midnight.
The sorrowful silver scythe, filled with moonlight, passed through the Griffon, grazing the Doctor.
“Guh?!”
The sensation of severing a soul.
But only a mere fraction was struck.
‘This is not the true self after all.’
I seized the collar of the Doctor atop the Griffon and hurled her upward toward the Moscow sky with all my might.
Whoosh
The shocked Doctor, paralyzed from the impact on her soul, was unable to release her control over the puppets and flew into the air…
Thud!
“Ugh… What the hell?! What’s this?”
A scale floating in mid-air.
The Doctor landed on a scale made of black and silver. On a scale plate where the uncomfortable black and silver coexisted, the Doctor remained immobilized, still impacted by the shock of the soul attack.
‘I need to scatter the puppets quickly…!’
Click
The black scale symbolizing greed moved downward.
The silver scale symbolizing release moved upward.
It signifies absorption.
“Grrrrrr!”
The Doctor writhed in agony as starlight was absorbed. A faint fluorescent green line shone toward the countless puppets she controlled.
Most lines extended toward the battlefield where beasts and ships fought, but some spread throughout Moscow.
The Doctor had prepared 121 puppets within Moscow.
Calmly, I pulled out my Silver Bow while the Doctor writhed in pain.
It was a weapon designed to shoot arrows blessed by the whispers of the gods during the time of focus…
Deception Magical Girl Unique Skill
Inverse Causality
I launched an arrow charged with the starlight of deception that flips causality. The fired arrow advanced towards the sky, leaving behind a brilliant rainbow trail.
Shuuuuuu
1.
2.
4.
8.
16.
The arrows split slowly as they flew through the air, and by the time they began to descend, they became a rain of thousands of arrows. The silver arrows poured down from the sky, painting a rainbow trail like a web over Moscow.
Pababababat
Like a bird unable to escape under the web of the sky.
After the arrows of impossible focus passed, realizing a power that should not exist…
“That’s an incredibly unreasonable power…”
The Doctor, who should have been a puppet before my eyes, returned to her true form.
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