Saturday, November 25, 2017

Mahou Shonen Just Say No Chapter Five

<-----First Chapter

<-Previous Chapter


Yuuri stood at the train station, even though it was much too late at night for any trains to be running anymore.  It was raining; downpouring, which was odd for this time of year.  In late December it would be snowing, but the weather didn't always elect to make sense.  It had been a few weeks now, since Yuuri had threatened the director but failed to get Kanoshi's job back to him.  Horace was still fighting the level 8 monster in Kyoto; Oh One said that it was under control, but the monster was the sort which took a very long time to kill.  All of the magica in the area were taking shifts beating on it over the weeks.  As long as somebody continued to engage with the beast, it wouldn't cause any property damage.  Yuuri thought that an endurance test like that sounded miserable.
He was glad to have gotten Kanoshi moved into an apartment in the same building as himself.  Not out of some strange desire to be closer in proximity to a teacher who had gone on to become his friend, but because he knew that Kanoshi likely would have become depressed if he didn't have a solution to the eviction problem as soon as possible, and Yuuri didn't want to see him like that.  Now, as he stood and shivered in this December rain, he was just worrying what would happen if a monster like the one that Horace was away fighting right now came to his own city.  Who were even all the magica here?  He doubted that Ribbon Red had stuck around after killing her target.  Infernal, who had more formally introduced himself as Tsukune Madara, was promising in talent but lacked drive.  Kanoshi was a powerful healer, but that didn't mean much without DPS to heal.
There was Lullabye to consider, but Yuuri had never met the man himself, just hearing secondhand stories from Blem about the magica that distributor had contracted.  With Horace in Kyoto and Oh One following that prince anywhere, most communication with the distributors was over phone now.  The rest of Oh One's posse had scattered to check on their different magica around the world while their leader was preoccupied.  Yuuri still had no clue how the distributors texted so well, given their method seemed to be 'hack up a cell phone like a hairball then hit it with their faces', but he was glad that they did.  It would have been a pain, not to be able to keep in touch over a long distance.
"Hey," A voice snapped Yuuri out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see a young girl had just sauntered up to stand next to him.  She looked like a child, but moved like somebody with a lot of experience, "Your mark is showing," Yuuri was startled by her statement, and checked his arms.  In his preoccupation today, he'd rolled up the wrong sleeve fashionably when he got out of work.  He decided he was cold enough to leave them both rolled down, and flushed with embarrassment as he looked away.
"Sorry you had to see that," He apologized.
"That's fine.  You're Smokescreen, right?' She steps closer to him, staring right through his eyes from her diminutive height.
"...How could you possibly figure that out?" He asked, looking away with a frown.  Had he forgotten to put a glamour on while fighting a small fry monster in the past few weeks?
"Don't worry, you didn't forget your glamours.  I can just tell it's you because of what you did.  Yeah, I heard about it.  That director?  So soon after Moron-sensei became a magical boy... And you're the only other person he ever talks to.  It's not too hard to figure out you must be the one who did that," She explained, then crossed her arms in front of herself, "That impotence smoke, though?  That's personal.  He another one of the men who paid to have you blow 'em?"
"What are you-" Yuuri snapped, taking a step backwards to keep himself from hitting a child.  She doesn't falter at all, though, and just unbuttons her shirt with a blank expression.  Nestled perfectly between yakuza tattoos on her chest is a question mark, and moments later she's transformed, forgoing a glamour for the first time ever.  Yuuri just stared at her for a moment, then chuckled, "Red, huh?  Could've told me that before you demonstrated a freakish knowledge of my past."
Pretty Fighter Ribbon Red
"If you're going to open up about that past to a magica who's using a glamour, you should be prepared for any stranger to know," She lodged her weapon in the concrete, leaving it there as she stepped up to the platform and sat down, dangling her feet out over the tracks.  She gestured for Yuuri to join her there, and he did, "Hopefully, I'm the last mystery, though.  I can't imagine you blab about that to just anybody.  I'm ~special~, right Rukkun?"
He put his chin in his hands, glanced at her, then transformed as well.  It was weird to be sitting there in casual clothing when she was definitely not, "I told you because I was scared of you.  I didn't know your gig except that you targeted sexual deviants.  Kinda had to say that I'd been a victim if I thought you were gonna kill me for selling my services."
"I only kill those who truly deserve to die.  I was there to kill your client, though, so at least you have bad taste," She waved a finger in the air, "I forgot to say it sooner, but that's clever.  Using transformed glamour to keep your sex work separate from the rest of your life.  Innovative use of this curse we got.  So, we're friends, right?  Tell me about this director guy.  You never answered my question, if he was one of the guys your mom got paid to let fuck you up?"
Yuuri hesitated to answer, but he knew one thing for certain.  Red, whatever her real name was, had to have a reason for her victimology.  That reason was probably not unlike Yuuri's own purpose when it came to causing others harm.  With that in mind, he groaned and answered, "Yeah, he was.  One of the first that she let pay extra to go beyond blowjobs and heavy petting..."
"I can see why you'd want him to suffer," Red nodded, her pigtails bouncing on either side of her face, "Disgusting.  How long do those pellets last again?"
"The impotence one's a month, it's getting close to running out..." Realizing the amount of time that had passed was unsettling.  One monster could really take this long?  How would he handle it if something like that ever came to this city?  Well, "Red, what are you doing still in Tokyo?"
She blinked a bit at the conversational whiplash before answering, "A month, huh?  Well, I've been hanging around since I came by in October.  Tokyo's rife with crime.  Some of my Onii-sans have got monsters in Kobe covered without me... And the sweet shops in Tokyo are sooo good!" She giggles a bit and kicks her feet in top speed at that statement, "Mm, now I want some manju, but it's too late at night, ugh.  Maybe that cheesecake place is still open, though..."
"That's a respectable enough reason,"Yuuri chuckled, "You're pretty strong, so I'd be glad if you stuck around longer.  You've heard about the monster in Kyoto, right?"
She looks up at the sky with a sigh as she nods, "Yeah, I heard about it.  It's been almost a month, and I hear it's only half-beaten.  Blade's really mad that none of its current magica can go participate, since the thing's only weak to ranged weapons."
"Who else has Blade got, besides you?" Yuuri wondered.  He didn't know who any of Sugarcanesugarcane's other magica were, but it sounded like Red was aware of her comrades.
"There's pretty fighter ribbon stripe, who uses a shiv... and a few other ribbons, I think?  All I know is that we're all close-combat.  Brown had guns, but he's dead now," Red stood back up and looked around the landscape, "Blade should have another charge real soon, though, so maybe it can get ahold of somebody else with a ranged attack somewhere in the world.  It's been almost two months, that's about how long it takes to charge for most of 'em."
"Yeah, unless their ability's to charge extra fast.  Hey, Red?" Yuuri questioned, "What's Blade's ability?"
"Call me Sayaka, that's my real name," She tossed her hair back over her shoulder, "Blade's ability?  Its magica experience less-drastic loss of ranking.  That's how I can kill humans and still hover around rank twenty-eight.  Chikd's human-killers, for example, are all the way down around rank one-hundred, even though we target the same sort of people, and just about as often."
Yuuri stood up as well, "Sayaka-chan.  That's a cute name," He chuckled, messing around with his revolver, "Everything about you's pretty cute, except for the brutal murders of course."
She stared off down the train tracks, "I like to think even my brutality is endearing," She mumbled, then took a step backwards and pulled her gigantic axe from the concrete, grabbed Yuuri's wrist, and swung it out over the tracks.  Before Yuuri could even process what had happened, they were moving.  Fast... Too fast.  Sayaka's axe was embedded in the side of a train, and she was holding onto the handle with just one hand as she kept Yuuri with the other one.  He had no idea what was happening.  It hadn't looked to him as if a train was arriving, and at this time of night, there shouldn't have been one.  He was about to yell at Sayaka when she explained without even raising her voice, "This train's going straight to the level five monster which just appeared in Shinjuku."
"Wh- How do you know that!?" Yuuri questioned, trying to adjust his position so his body wasn't flapping around in the wind quite as much.
"Sugar must have explained it to you when you contracted," Sayaka answered. "The longer you're a magica, the more abilities like the ones the distributors have you acquire.  Two months, and you know when a new magica's been created. Five months, and you know when a monster spawns without being told by a distributor.  Nine and you can tell when magic's being used, and a year lets you know if somebody would be willing or not to become a magica.  Horace is the only one with that ability so far, but I'm getting close at eleven months.  We've got a working theory that two years allows Distributor-level teleportation, but that might not be the case since some magica have teleportation magic as their skill."
"I knew about those skills, but that doesn't exactly answer my question!" Yuuri was coming up on his five month marker himself, so he'd soon be getting that power-up, "And holy shit, Sayaka-chan!  Eleven months!?"
Sayaka Yamaguchi
She glanced back at him, then tossed him through a window into the train and followed after, as she was getting sick of speaking over high speed winds, "Yes, eleven months.  I was the first magica to contract in Japan, when Blade got here.  Of course I seized upon the opportunity to grow stronger, and be of even more use to my family...  Anyway, this train's going towards Shinjuku, and I can tell it's being controlled by magic, so I have to assume whoever's moving it wants to fight the monster."
"Your family," Yuuri thought it over for a moment, "Those tattoos, and you mentioned Kobe.  They're the Yamaguchi-gumi, right?"
She smirked at him as he got to his feet from being tossed, "Clever, Rukkun!  That's right, and I'm proud of it.  I was already a stellar enforcer and assassin, but now I have power beyond the limits of humanity, as do a few of my Onii-sans back home.  The yakuza may be old-fashioned, but we didn't keep selling heroin when we started getting shipments of oxy.  We stick to tradition, but you have to be on the cutting edge when it comes to illicit activities," She reached back out of the window and pulled her axe into the traincar as she explained.
"...Welcome aboard," Another voice spoke, and the two magica turned to see a third one there.  His emerald eyes had a faint glow to them, and a quiet song seemed to be emanating from the question mark on his neck, "Ribbon Red.  Smokescreen.  It's lovely to finally make your acquaintance.  I am Lullabye."
"Lullabye?  You're the one controlling this train?" Sayaka questioned, leaning against the handle of her weapon with eyebrows raised, "The one, the only, number nine?"
"Please, no need to act as if that's an impressive feat.  I only climbed that high because I'm trying to build up enough power to create a magica myself," Lullabye chuckled, raising a hand to his mouth, "I only fight higher level monsters like this one because otherwise, I don't make a profit on magic.  I really rely on using power to win, which makes it difficult to save up unless I'm careful about it.  I'm sure that once I've brought her back, I'll fall much further down the rankings."
"So, do you want some help on that level five?" Yuuri asked, stepping forward, "I've been working with Infernal on some small fry, and it seems like every participant in a battle gets the same rewards as if they'd done it solo as long as the number of fighters doesn't exceed double the monster's level."
"That would be appreciated," Lullabye nodded, then sat down in one of the train's seats, "I would have thought you'd prefer not to work with me, since I only go after the big catches..."
Lullabye
Yuuri sat down as well, but Sayaka stayed standing with her weapon, and he addressed Lullabye, "Nah dude, your reason for doing that makes sense.  I'm not about to hold it against you.  I waste magic on dumb things all the time, but I don't need to use it to win, so if we teamed up we could fight lower levels without needing any magic at all.  Sayaka-chan?" He turned to her.
"Just because we're friends doesn't mean I'll be joining any teams," She pouted, looking away from him, "I'll help defend Tokyo, obviously, but it'd look real bad for me to be the only magical girl among a bunch of grown men!  There's just no way I could ever agree to any official alliance."
Despite what she said, though, Yuuri had faith that Sayaka would be there if they ever needed her.  She was a powerful magica, very high up in the rankings.  She'd be higher if she wasn't a murderer; and she was much higher than Yuuri.  He knew there were two reasons for that.  She had a better magical ability than he did, and he didn't have the buffer against reductions that she did.  That was just the problem with being a violent person.
He didn't worry too much, though.  Sugarcanesugarcane didn't mind that he kept falling down the rankings, since it was actually in possession of the number three magica.  Oh One's posse would have had a monopoly on the top ten spots if not for Fizzy Pop, one of Chikd's duos who seemed to embody everything that magical girls should be, and had impressive power to boot, pulling the second place spot.
"Brace for impact," Lullabye warned the two of them.  Yuuri grabbed onto a support pole, and Sayaka positioned herself between the wall and her weapon.  Moments later, the train crashed directly into the monster, the back few cars completely collapsing against it.  Lullabye nodded to the others and flew out of the smashed window, the music from his mark cutting out and his eyes closing as he dropped control of the train.  Yuuri and Sayaka leapt out as well, getting onto the roof of the train which was embedded in the monster and taking up a battle stance.
The beast was tall, so the train ramming had only disabled one foot, but at least that meant the creature wouldn't be able to run too far, and the battle would be restrained to a single location.  Sayaka launched herself into the air immediately, swinging her axe around to come down on the left eye of the monster.  This one seemed to resemble a towering golem, but it shrieked in pain when she hurt its eye.  Piggybacking on that idea, Yuuri shot smoke pellets in Sayaka's direction to cloak her before the monster regained its sight on that side.
Lullabye, meanwhile, was playing another song, this time one which turned the asphalt below the monster's feet into quicksand, further securing it in place.  He started throwing out his weaponry then, little letter zeds which seemed to behave as throwing knives with sharp edges the whole way around.  Against a monster, something like those were just distractions, even more than bullets.  At least Yuuri did damage, but the 'health bar' which seemed to show the monster's endurance didn't decrease at all until Lullabye emptied his entire clip into its skin, and even then, just a small bit.  Yuuri could see how Lullabye needed to rely on his magic.
"Lullabye!" Yuuri shouted towards him, "Save your magic, right?  You've already done plenty, Red and I can do the rest!" As he said that, Sayaka landed on top of the thing's head and started hacking away with quick but heavy swings of her battleaxe, spraying the monster's clay-colored blood in every direction.  Even so, Yuuri noted that the bar above its head wasn't going down nearly enough.  Another one with a large health pool, or was it just high defense?
When he was about to yell to Sayaka to help him figure the thing out before they wasted their energy on potentially inefficient attacks, he was smacked to the ground.  He was so preoccupied that he forgot it could attack back.  He slid across the gravel when he hit the ground, scraping against the outsides of his arms.  He kept his marking safe and away from harm.  He didn't know what would happen if it was to suffer injury, but he'd been warned against it.
The golem raised its hand again in a fist, moving to bring it down on Yuuri before he could get back up, but before that could happen there was a loud, explosive noise, and the monster's fist was blown clean off, smashing into a building three blocks away as the wrist sprayed that liquid clay blood over the entire area.  Yuuri knew that noise by now; he got to his feet and saw, as he expected, Tsukune standing there.  As Infernal, he had a very interesting skillset; his weaponry was heavy-duty artillery weapons, such as rocket launchers on tripods, but they lacked triggers.  He could only ignite the gunpowder to fire them by utilizing his flame magic, which did make it hard for any other magica he was fighting against to commandeer them.  His ranking game in at 50, 12 ranks higher than Yuuri.  He thought that Tsukune would rank even higher if he actually cared about anything, but he always looked bored in battle and didn't have a cause he was fighting for.
The golem reeled back in pain, and Yuuri noted that having its hand blown off had put a huge dent in its health bar.  So it was weak to that sort of attack.  As it was recoiling from its injury, Sayaka couldn't keep her purchase on its head anymore, the chunk of rock that she'd lodged her axe into crumbling and sending her hurtling toward the ground.  Lullabye hurtled towards her, seeming to be a floating type magica, and caught her in the pillow that he carried as part of his costume.  After setting her down gently, he looked to the blast's origin and a grin split his face when he called out, "Tsukkun!"
"Hey, Zhou," Tsukune gave a halfhearted wave back, then moved on to aiming his next weapon at the monster's chest.  He doubted his ability to hit its head with something that had enough firepower to do huge damage, since the head was disproportionately small compared to the rest of the creature.  As he was distracted with aiming, the golem grew spikes out of its back, shards which it began to fire wildly.  Tsukune didn't even blink.  The rest of the magica present covered their faces as best they could, some of the rock shards grazing them.  Sayaka got one embedded in her wrist, which she didn't bother plucking out because bleeding would be more distracting than having a rock shard stuck in her wrist.
Tsukune didn't get hit with any shards, though, Yuuri noted when he looked back in that direction.  Kanoshi had arrived as well, and blocked all the shards which had gone in that direction.  He looked to the three magica on the ground, and Yuuri told Sayaka that she'd have to remove the shard if she wanted her injuries healed.  Kanoshi had blocked more shards with his shield than had even gone in the general direction of those three, so he had more than enough magic to patch them up before he returned to the sidelines to keep out of targeting range until he was needed once more.
Or that would be the case, if Tsukune didn't immediately fire off another blast as soon as Kanoshi was out of the way, blowing a hole clean through the golem's chest.  It investigated its own injury for a moment, looking down at the hole in its chest, then fell over, collapsing down onto the ground.  Due to its feet being mired in the road beneath it, its ankles cracked and broke, and that was the last straw for the rest of the beast's endurance bar.  It was defeated.  It dissipated into magic power which was given to each participant in its full amount, and left behind five orbs.  One for each magica belonging to a different distributor.
When Kanoshi had first seen that happen, he'd wondered how it could be that the creatures cared about the number of people who had fought against it.  He'd messaged Oh One asking about it, though, and received an answer.  The monsters were the only food source for distributors, and that was the core of what they were; the only problem was that Distributors couldn't fight them on their own, needing to imbue others with the ability to use the planet's magic to battle against them.
It was still a matter of feeding, however, and it only made sense that if the distributors' tools to that end worked to become more efficient, they would be rewarded with a greater yield.  With the golem defeated, the group of magica watched as the damage to the city undid itself, and life went on as usual.  It seemed that monster battles occurred in a similar way to Lionhardt's magic, only on a much greater scale.  A pocket dimension, which if not dispelled by destroying the monster, would impact the real world.
There was the issue of magica who believed they were stronger than they actually were.  If one of them initiated a fight and was defeated before anybody else arrived, then the monster would have a free pass to cause as much destruction as it wanted.  Since becoming a magical boy himself, Kanoshi finally understood.  It would be easier to fight monsters far from society, and there were plenty of those.  City centers could always use more magica, because there were far worse consequences if all of them were defeated.
Even Zhou, who had already gone back to his human form, preferred offering protection even when he was trying to collect power for a reason.  A monster buffet out in the hinterlands would get him there a lot faster, but he thought that if he was going to be a magical boy for such a selfish reason as bringing back a person he wanted to see again, the least he could do was use his position to help people.
"...Pretty Fighter Ribbon Red?" Kanoshi asked as he flew down to land in front of her, eyebrows raised, "You're that Korekara student who called me Moron-sensei?"
"Yeah, I dropped the glamour," Sayaka nodded, twirling her axe behind herself before she stuck it into the ground again, "I figure it's not necessary anymore, since most of us here in Tokyo already knew who was who.  It's better to be transparent with this sort of thing after a certain point."
"Well, I hope that we can work together to protect the city!" Kanoshi nodded, giving a short bow to her out of respect.  Her power really was impressive, since she was pulling rank 28 even as a killer of humans.  Kanoshi himself sat at rank 4, which he honestly found very strange.  Some said that it was a result of him being so new, it was calculated based on his power level and the fact that he'd given that level of power over to becoming a support.  That alone was a show of his willingness to help others, which stood out to the universal forces which seemed to decide rankings that nobody much understood.
Kanoshi had to work hard if he wanted to keep his spot, because if he made a mistake, that could easily plummet.  Given his lack of combat abilities, it did seem that maintaining a high ranking would be the only way to build up magical power.  Sayaka didn't need her ranking to stand on, since she had such brutality she could defeat monsters up to level three on her own without utilizing any magic, though anyone in the top 100 did get a bonus to the rate at which it built up.
"I'm sure as Hell not keen on working with lolicons, but I guess you've all proven yourselves to be better men than that.  Well, except for you, Lullabye," She turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes, "I don't know a thing about you yet."
"The name's Zhou Wang," He introduced himself with a wave, now feeling awkward that he was the only one to have transformed back yet, "I'm not a lolicon either.  I always liked people my own age.  Actually, I don't even know if I have any preferences anymore.  I've been kind of distracted from everything since I became a magical boy in October, trying to collect magic.  I want to bring back my little sister who was killed in the Korekara Massacre."
"...Mayu, right?" Sayaka questioned, tilting her head to the side as she dropped her transformation as well, axe disappearing behind her to leave only its gouge in the pavement, "A second year.  We never really spoke to each other, but I know that she was kind and sweet.I hope you succeed in your goal.  I'd really like to get to know her."
"I'm going to do it," Zhou held his hands in close to himself, balling them up into fists in his determination, "I can't just let her life end the way it did.  She had so much more time, and she never got to experience life for real.  It was always through a screen, because she thought she couldn't belong with other people who would judge her for her... uselessness."
"That's why we had that chatroom," Tsukune stepped in, also having discarded his magical form now, his voice sounding just as bored as ever, "Mayu-chan sought out NEETs and Otaku like her, because if we all felt that we ourselves had some degree of worthlessness, then she didn't have to be afraid.  We were all just the same.  Sometimes, the only way to live as somebody with little self worth is to find others with just as little."
"Zhou-kun," Kanoshi held his hands to his chest, "I know that you'll succeed.  You'll bring Mayu back, and then we can all work together.  Even if she's scared at first, all of us will be there to help her.  I guess that she's kind of a common threat between all of us, if we look at it that way."
"I've almost gathered enough magical power.  At this rate, it might just be a few more months until I have enough that I could bring her back... but once I do, I still have to find where they're keeping her," Zhou explained his goal, "I know that her body's being preserved somewhere as evidence for the Korekara Massacre, I just need to find where that is."
"That could take years," Sayaka mumbled, leaning back against a wall as she rebuttoned her shirt, glad that with the hour of the day there were no civilians to see the gathering of so many magica in one place.  That would be cause for alarm, "Korekara's board are infamous for their abilities to cover up anything and everything.  They convinced the entire country to barely bat an eyelash over the slow elimination of the entire graduating class of 2015, acted as if a pair of students who were murdered off-campus had never existed in the first place, and there's still nobody who really knows who Headmistress Kira is.  If they don't want anybody to know where their morgue is, then nobody will."
"I know.  But... If I can't use magic to at least discover that much, then what's the point?  Even if it does take years for me to do it, I'll find where they're keeping her body, and I'll bring her back," Zhou insisted, then dropped his arms to his sides, "...What are all of us doing awake at this hour anyway?  I'm basically nocturnal these days, but the rest of you..."
"I was up late playing video games," Kanoshi explained, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly, "Ruka-san sent Tsukki and I your coordinates, so we met up and came here to help.  Er, I mean, Madara-san!" Kanoshi looked to Tsukune, flushing in embarrassment, "I'm so used to using your online nickname, I'm sorry!"
"I don't care what you call me.  For all I give a shit, you could call me Doraemon and I'd still answer to it," He responded, then turned to everyone else to give his own explanation, "I'm nocturnal, too.  I sleep during the day, while my... Roommate, is at work, and I do freelance programming online to make cash myself.  Boring code monkey stuff.  Monsters appear more often at night anyway, so it makes sense for magica to adjust their schedules to match that, right?"
"Rukkun and I were hanging out at a train station, chatting," Sayaka jumped in, pointing her thumb back towards Yuuri, "I dunno why he was there, but I saw him and decided to have a little chat about how I managed to deduce who he was through the glamour.  Let that be a lesson not to rely on it too much, okay?  Magica, and humans who know a lot about us, still have ways to determine who might be a certain magica based on context clues."
"I was just there being introspective and shit.  I like the aesthetic of stations when the trains aren't running," Yuuri added in, then pulled his sleeve down to cover up his mark.  Zhou had already pulled the collar on his turtleneck back up, and Tsukune had unpinned his bangs.  Kanoshi was the last one to hide his, slipping the eyepatch back on.  Sayaka took a deep breath, then looked up at the sky as she shivered.  All of them had gotten thoroughly soaked by the heavy rain, and the temperature was dropping, too.  
The rain was changing to snow as they watched, staring as it left a light coat over the city which they protected.

Next Chapter ->

No comments:

Post a Comment