Magical Girl Raising Project, Vol. 6

A second and third rainbow struck. She couldn’t evade them.

Sliced to shreds by the Technicolor rainbows, Archfiend Pam breathed her last.

Pythie Frederica (Time remaining: ten hours, twenty minutes)

When Pukin had insisted they go save Sonia, Frederica had agreed—in form. She had no sincere desire to save Sonia. What she wanted to do was defeat Archfiend Pam. Frederica judged that in order to eliminate Archfiend Pam, the most powerful magical girl within the barrier and also the greatest obstacle in their current situation, it was best Sonia be their noble sacrifice. So Frederica should not butt in to save Sonia but rather aim for the moment when Pam was finishing Sonia off, when Pam’s attention would be most focused, to catch the Archfiend by surprise. If the three of them were to attack all at once, they’d have a chance at winning.

Leave the timing to me, Frederica had assured Pukin, and she’d deliberately held off the attack. Then, under the pretext of saving Sonia, she’d rushed in, knowing it was too late.

It had all worked out perfectly—or it should have. With perfect timing, they had caught their opponent unawares and prevented Archfiend Pam from using all four wings to the fullest, so that even if she blocked the first attack, she would be short two wings—or in other words, she would have to physically evade their two attacks and succeed at it both times. All Frederica had to do was attack as a diversion, while Pukin’s strike only had to skim her to be fatal.

But Pam had been ahead of Frederica. Even with all Frederica’s vast knowledge, she had been unaware of Pam’s fifth and sixth wings. An ace in the hole for when the need arose, Frederica supposed.

Pam avoided Frederica’s and Pukin’s attacks with her hidden wings, then set the black humanoid on Frederica, which prevented her from helping Pukin. But even as the situation deteriorated into further desperation, Frederica was rapturous. This plan, conceived by a dirty magical girl like Frederica, which involved sacrificing an ally in order to take down an opponent, had been demolished. This was exactly what made Pam the Archfiend.

Even as she was thrown back by Pam’s wing and slammed into the wall of the hole, Frederica was intoxicated—and then she saw it: that suddenly appearing rainbow. For some reason, sharp, material rainbows were stabbing through Archfiend Pam.

Her intoxication evaporated, and she was yanked back to reality. Archfiend Pam’s body, arms, legs, head, and hair! All of them scattered with a massive gush of blood. The flames vanished, and Sonia was already less than ash. Pukin was gone, leaving traces of her blood behind. Frederica blinked. She had no time to be dazed.

Rushing up out of the hole, she emerged to find three girls there.

One was dressed in a manner reminiscent of a postal delivery girl and was holding her knees, trembling.

One, who carried a rainbow on her back, wore a smirk on her face.

The last one…was lying in a puddle of blood. Her transformation was undone, and her trademark brutish guitar was also gone.

Frederica figured out what had just happened. Her party had been clams. While all of them had been scrabbling around in the mud in the sandpiper’s bill, the fisherman had come. While the clams and the sandpiper were locked in struggle, the fisherman harvested all of them.

A tiny fairy flew out from the rainbow girl’s clothing. What should have been such a cute face was instead twisted into an ugly smirk, surprisingly similar to the one on the rainbow girl’s face.

“We did iiit! Archfiend Pam and some other girl are dead! I dunno who she was, but she must’ve been strong if she was fighting Archfiend Pam. That means we got rid of two strong girls! All right!”

“I’m not sure she’s actually dead. But at least I took out Archfiend Pam.”

“Yeah, yeah, you sure did! That was a super underdog victory. Now you’re number one in my mental ranking of magical girls I want to get hugs from, Rain Pow!”

“I’d rather not hug you, Toko.”

The two of them held their stomachs and cackled.

“Now there’s just that one who ran off. And one of Cranberry’s children was there, right?”

“Oh, I don’t think she’ll be much of a problem. I fought her a bit, and she wasn’t that strong.” The rainbow girl gave the postal delivery girl a rough shove with her foot. The postal girl fell over, looking up with frightened eyes. “I even managed to beat this dead weight all on my own.”

“I’d expect nothing less of you, Rain Pow! So there’s no problems, eh?”

“If anything’s a problem, I guess it’d be the one who ran away and this other one.”

The two of them looked over at Frederica, who was now out of allies. She had no crystal ball with which to use her magic, so she’d have to do things using her words. She had to escape this pinch, be it through negotiation or wheedling. “I have a suggestion.”

“And I won’t hear it.” The moment Frederica opened her mouth, she was shot down. “I’ll kill you. That’s all. I’ll get it done quick, then kill the one who ran, too.”

This was not someone who could be convinced. And judging by the situation, it seemed fleeing would be difficult, too. Without her crystal ball, the rainbow girl was too much for Frederica to handle. She was too spent to turn around and continuously avoid rainbows as she ran, and besides, she was fairly wounded.

Frederica looked at the girl who was collapsed in a puddle of blood. It was her student. She’d been Pythie Frederica’s number one student, someone who could make friends with anyone.

Realizing that Frederica was looking at the body, the rainbow girl’s smile got bigger. “It would’ve saved me some time if you’d been the one outside the hole. That was my bad.”

The fairy smiled in tandem. “I never would’ve thought I’d end up killing Pythie Frederica. Why’re you here? Weren’t you arrested? Hey, Rain Pow, this one’s pretty famous.”

Frederica observed herself objectively and was surprised. She was angry Tot Pop had been killed. Pythie Frederica would use anyone for the sake of her goals and her pleasure; ethics and compassion were less than trash to her, and at the end of it all, she’d been imprisoned for this but had still never changed her ways. She had freed two monsters, Pukin and Sonia, and basked in self-satisfaction over it, too.

Another, calmer part of her was watching her own anger and hatred from a distance. How surprising that even someone like me can feel anger, she coolly observed as she edged forward, her feet never leaving the ground.

The two opponents’ smiles vanished, and rainbows of various sizes, lots of them, floated all around the magical girl. They seemed to fill every space. Frederica already knew just how sharp they were.

The rainbow girl whistled. “Look, Toko. She’s gonna fight for serious.”

“That’s disappointing. I was looking forward to seeing how that escaped convict would beg for her life.”

“You’d think someone with a name like Pythie would be more pitiful, huh? She doesn’t seem to get the picture, does she?”

Frederica moved forward, having resigned herself to the fact that she couldn’t win this without her crystal ball.

The rainbow girl grabbed the postal girl by the collar and whispered in her ear, “Hey, Tsuko, you’re gonna be my hostage later. So I won’t kill you, for now. But if you try to run, I’ll kill you first thing—before I even take care of that old hag over there. You got that?” She wasn’t really trying to keep her voice down. She probably just wanted to threaten the girl. That even Frederica could hear her proved as much.

Face pale, the postal girl jerked her head up and down a few times. The rainbow girl smirked and tossed the postal girl back.

Hana Gekokujou (Time remaining: ten hours, fifteen minutes)

The pain in her body was easing up, albeit slowly. She understood that her wounds were healing faster than her natural recovery capabilities would have. She was gradually gaining more energy, too. Hana pushed herself into a sitting position and brought her hand up to her right bunny ear. It was quite splendidly cut in half.

“You should stay down.”

“No, I’m okay. And more to the point, lying down on concrete at this time of year is freezing cold. That’s enough to suck my energy all on its own.” She laughed a “ha-ha.” It felt like it had been a really long time since she’d last laughed out loud. She had been quite sincerely ready for death, privately thinking heroically grim thoughts of either dying in a way that wouldn’t cause problems or ending it herself if she was captured. If rescue from that situation was possible, then anything was.

Hana touched her right bunny ear again. It really was severed after all.

Will this grow back?

If it wasn’t coming back, that might make things a little difficult. A half cut-off ear had way too much punch. Making people wary of her on first meeting would limit her work, like it did with Ripple. Hana was sure Ripple was a pretty good person, but she looked intimidating, and it made for a pretty extreme impression. Well, pushing the contrast between her appearance and personality to the foreground could be an option. She’d have kind of liked to ask Ripple about that.

As Hana wondered what had happened with Ripple, she glanced in the direction she’d run off. The alley emerged into a big road, coming to a dead end at a clock shop with its shutters down. Hana couldn’t see anything beyond that. She still believed Archfiend Pam would resolve things by herself. She felt an absolute sense of security on that point, such as a fetus feels toward its mother. But what about Ripple? She hadn’t gotten involved in that attack, had she?

With her wounds healing, Hana was starting to feel good enough that she could worry about others. She sharpened her hearing, focused her attention on the direction Ripple had headed, and picked up on footsteps racing fast toward them. It wasn’t Ripple—her single-toothed geta made her footsteps sound unique.

By the time the thought hit her, she could already see the enemy. It was the fencer magical girl who had been with Frederica, the one she’d called “Your Excellency.” In her right hand, she held a naked rapier, and in her left, she held her stomach. She was bleeding horribly from the face, and her orange hair was dyed red. Her nose was crushed into ugliness, and her expression was that of a demon, her clenched teeth bared.

Hana stood and shoved Mana and 7753 to the ground.

Pukin looked surprised. It seemed she hadn’t expected to meet them here. From her expression and her wounds, Hana could tell she was fleeing something. Archfiend Pam? Or Ripple? In which case, they could corner her. Pukin was desperate. She didn’t have the spare energy to kill them, and running would be her number one priority. But if Hana were to just stand in front of her, she would be struck aside. Hana wasn’t fully prepared, either.

She thought about what she should do. A crisis lay before her. Could she make herself move? Though her wounds had healed a bit, she was still far from fully recovered. She still couldn’t put up a decent fight. So once Pukin entered her range, Hana would crank up her senses. With those wounds, if Hana were to sharpen Pukin’s sense of pain, she would collapse, incapacitated by the agony. Then Hana could let Archfiend Pam or Ripple finish her off.

Hana watched Pukin close in with a single motion. She shattered the concrete, leaving a clean footprint in her wake. Both her stab and her step were frighteningly fast. But if this was a contest of speed, then Hana was no lesser.

The very moment the enemy stepped into her area of effect, Hana activated her magic. One-on-one and against Pukin, there was no need or reason for her to hold back. She sharpened Pukin’s sense of pain to the limit—but Pukin’s thrust didn’t stop. Hana slipped under Pukin’s sword, taking a shallow slice to her rabbit ear, but somehow managed to avoid a direct hit.

She knew she’d activated her magic. But Pukin hadn’t reacted, just stabbing straight forward with her sword. Next, Pukin spun around with another thrust, and the unexpected attack sliced open Hana’s right shoulder, and she fell to her knees.

Pukin’s left hand reached out to her dagger in its sheath. When it was halfway drawn, Hana rose one step faster, smacking her enemy in the jaw with the heel of her palm. Pukin fought it, but Hana put her whole body’s weight behind it to slam the back of Pukin’s head into the wall.

Pukin gave a soft moan as she slid down the wall. Hana pressed the center of her own chest with a hand and warm blood gushed through her fingers. Pukin’s dagger was thrust hilt-deep into her.

Hana dropped her hand from her chest, and the blood poured out even more dramatically, dyeing her kimono red, dripping down inside her clothes all the way to her thighs. Tightening her fist, she brought it in front of her face. She glared at Pukin as if to say, “Now, it’s serious.” She couldn’t fall yet. Archfiend Pam or Ripple would come soon. She had to hold on somehow, until then.

Looking at Pukin’s face, she noticed the faint cut running across her cheek. Hana was fairly certain that a cut from Pukin’s sword would cause her magic to do something to that person. Considering how the wedding dress girl had been acting, it was probably brainwashing or subordination. Pukin had known what Hana’s magic was and so had cut herself with her own sword before charging in to give herself something that would resist it. She’d forced herself to believe the pain was something else. It had to be something like that.

Hana was beyond using her magic now, but she didn’t let it show on her face. With a composed expression that said, “This blood is nothing,” she took a step forward.

Pukin pointed her sword at Hana, but when she heard a sound like a crashing car coming from the direction she’d run, she grimaced. With a click of her tongue, Pukin left, cape fluttering behind her as she ran off. The entire event passed in only a few seconds of time.

Hana leaned back against the wall of the building in the alley. 7753 and Mana got up and clung to her, the two of them crying. The heat burning in her chest gradually faded. Cold spread through her whole body, infecting her thoughts, and her mind went hazy, too.

They had failed to corner Pukin. But if Mana and 7753 were safe, then she’d managed to fulfill her role as their guard, at least, and with this she was mildly satisfied as her consciousness faded.