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Night had fallen over Seishin High School.

Makina Shikitani stood on the moonlit roof. She leaned against the fence, arms folded, and gazed towards the roof’s center.

A suit of crumpled armor lay there.

There was a faint sound. The sound of metal scraping, metal warping.

The bent, flattened armor had slowly begun to regain its shape. The scattered parts moved, and gradually, began to assemble in one place.

“Kanako Orihara’s awakening happened sooner than I expected,” Makina said. “But it’s a bit out of control... It will be useless to me if it’s too chaotic. She’ll need guidance.”

The armor that had fallen from the sky had begun to move. A fascinating phenomenon, to be sure — but useless, Makina judged, for what she had planned for this school.

“That’s an odd thing to be saying to yourself. Are you speaking to me, by chance?” The voice was coming from beside her.

Makina looked to the side, and up. There was a large bookshelf there, and on top of it sat a girl with red hair.

“Every time I see you, I wonder,” Makina said. “Why are you always sitting on that thing when you appear?”

“It’s convenient for getting around,” said the girl. “It’ll walk around for me, see?”

“It has legs?” Makina asked. That was the first she’d heard of it; she had always assumed it teleported or something.

“That’s right. It grows them when it’s time to move.” As she spoke, the girl — Ende — jumped down off the shelf.

“A suit of armor fell from an island floating in the sky... it seems interesting. You really find it useless?” Ende pointed to the armor, which was rattling eerily.

It was hard to tell from where they stood, but there was something writhing around inside. The armor was beginning to be filled.

“I can’t see the flying island...” Makina commented.

“Oh? You haven’t read her book? But you can see the armor, right?” Ende asked, as if she found that very strange.

“I said her powers were out of control,” Makina said. “Materialization should be the final stage, but it’s already happening, piecemeal. Though perhaps that’s a sign of her talent...” Makina furrowed her brow.

“Is that a problem?” asked Ende. “It still means that everything will materialize in the end, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t want all of Glowsphere recreated; I want something more compact. And if this continues, it’ll be too much for Kanako Orihara to handle. If she calls forth a world-consuming Demon Lord, she won’t be able to control that, will she? Annihilation is the only future presented in the story of the world of Glowsphere.” Maybe that was what Ende wanted, but Makina’s goals lay in a different direction.

“Well, setting that aside... here are the documents on Kanako Orihara that you asked for,” said Ende. “I tagged all the most important points.” She opened the bookshelf, pulled out a volume, and handed it to Makina.

“If only you were this accommodating all the time,” Makina said as she opened the volume.

“I am this accommodating all the time.”

Ignoring Ende’s protest, Makina changed the subject. “Speaking of which, we have a new member, don’t we? With mind control powers and the ability to manipulate cause and effect... I’m envious, I have to say.”

“Monika, you mean? She did have quite a lot of potential,” Ende said. “But she tried to become human again and messed up at the outset. Right now she’s lost nearly all of her power. It’s a pity.”

“Really?” asked Makina. “I thought that with her power, it would be easy to make humans do whatever she wanted. I may talk big about things like manipulating destiny, but all I really do is mundane negotiation and trading. It’s pathetic.”

“Creating a whole publishing company to make one girl an author is mundane?” Ende asked, baffled.

“What else could I do?” Makina asked. “One of the conditions to trigger ‘Isekai Writer’ was for her to publish a book. Who would have thought opening up an agency account would take such a long time?”

Makina flipped through the volume, and decided upon her next course of action. She pulled out her cell phone and called the publishing company she had founded.

“It’s me. About Kanako Orihara. She submitted a number of plots, didn’t she? Yes, push that one. The school story. Demon Lord? Can’t we just cancel it?”

“Um... that’s a bit reckless, isn’t it? As a book lover myself, the thought stings a bit...” Ende said as she listened in. It was a rare sentiment, coming from her.

“Fine,” Makina said, changing her instructions. “You don’t have to cancel it, just tell her to give her full priority to the school story for now.” She hung up the phone.

This was how Makina’s “manipulating destiny” worked. She could investigate her target’s situation, speculate about cause and effect from Ende’s materials, and change the environment to create the result she desired. But she wouldn’t know for sure how things would turn out until she tried them. In practice, things rarely went as she expected, but for Makina, that was part of the fun.

“By the way, I suppose you didn’t take my warning, did you?” Ende asked.

“Hmm? About Yuichi Sakaki? I did. We talked, and that was the end of it.” When Makina had announced that she would be coming to the school, Ende had warned her not to get involved with Yuichi Sakaki. Makina wasn’t sure why, but knowing that nothing good would come of turning Ende against her, she had taken her words into consideration.

“...Ah, well,” Ende said. “However it turns out, it’s your decision.”

It was an evocative way of putting it. Did Ende like Yuichi? But her words, taken at face value, suggested Ende didn’t care how things turned out for him. Which meant that if Makina killed Yuichi Sakaki, Ende wouldn’t have a problem with it.

Over the course of their conversation, the horse armor had been changing, as well.

This process was much easier to follow than the human armor had been. The parts had begun floating in air, as if a horse was wearing them. Then, from within, dark red threads appeared, tying together to form the outline of a horse. It was as if an entire equine circulatory structure had simply appeared out of nowhere. A little later, white bones began to appear amidst them, and flesh and organs filled in the spaces between.

Then, in the blink of an eye, it was covered in skin and even letting out a neigh.

Beside the horse stood a man in armor. He seemed to have been revived in much the same way.

“What should we do about him?” Makina wondered. “Well, as long as he’s here... I suppose I should make use of him.” Makina walked up to the man in armor, who was looking around in confusion. “Do you understand the situation you’re in?”

“I fear not,” the man said. “I know not where I am, nor who you are, dear lady. All I know is that Lady Lasagna is missing.” Despite saying he did not know, his attitude was one of confidence.

“Look up at the sky, if you please,” she told him.

The man in armor did as he was told. “The castle is upside down... what is the meaning of this? Is this the Heroes’ doing?!”

“From this world’s perspective, it appears to be in something of a pocket space. I don’t know if Demon Lord Lasagna is here, but even if you find her, you may not be able to return under your own power. Now, I do have a suggestion...”

As the man in armor stood there in confusion, Makina began to explain.