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| Misa Jiang |
Pretty Fighter Ribbon Green was in the running to become Blade’s favorite. That was what it told her, anyway. She was in the running, if Ribbon Red couldn’t be found, to become Blade’s best friend. It was told to her in a matter-of-fact tone, but she could tell anyway that this was just Blade’s way of masking how worried it really was for Red’s well-being. Where could she have been for the past few weeks? Nobody had any idea what could have become of the five magica who’d vanished off the face of the planet while on a mission to investigate another mysterious disappearance.
Green knew that it couldn’t be the same, though. That much was clear from the evidence. The fact that Oh One could still tell that those five were in Japan was enough for her, though perhaps if she had been privy to anything but texts and phone conversations from the only other sapient species on this planet, she’d think differently about the situation. As it was, she was concerned for those magica, but she was sure that they’d turn up at least. Would they turn up okay, would they turn up unchanged? That was up for debate, but why did she have to be involved in those things anyway?
Pretty Fighter Ribbon Green, known to most as Misa Jiang, had bigger problems than worrying about magica in Japan, when she had to worry more about citizens in Japantown. As far as she could tell, she was the only magical girl currently working to protect San Francisco; And she was blind. There were no shortage of magica throughout California, and before she had contracted they were willing to pop over to fight some monsters if they were in a position to, but now the burden of guarding the city rested with her.
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| Pretty Fighter Ribbon Green |
She got outside help sometimes, but sometimes wasn’t enough to keep her from feeling bitter. This was the biggest responsibility she’d had to deal with in her entire life. She had contracted because it was something to do; she lived with her family who paid all of her expenses and would never take independence as an answer with her disability a bigger hindrance in their minds than in hers. She had a part time job anyway, but she only worked three shifts a week, and those were in the mornings. She didn’t count on how many monsters there would be, though.
She didn’t even have time for her other Magic anymore. The card game, Magic The Gathering, that is. After magica had become a real and feared phenomenon in this world, the game came under a degree of scrutiny, but it wasn’t so easy to shake nerd culture, and the game couldn’t exactly be changed at this point to reflect the concept of magic suddenly becoming such a widespread icon of misery. The controversy died down, and the connection was forgotten. Misa had at least expected to have Fridays free to meet up with her friends at her favorite comic book store to play, but monsters ate up all her time. If she ignored them, though, they’d eat up all her friends.
“Were you expecting to hide your mark with kneesocks? That’s a bonehead move if I ever heard of one. Socks slip,” A voice broke Misa out of her thoughts, and she froze where she stood. She moved without a cane or a guide dog, mostly relying on landmarks to find her way around. Right now, she was holding onto a railing that she was very familiar with. This voice was not familiar at all.
“I’m not trying that hard to hide,” Misa answered with a shrug, “I’ll cover up out of courtesy, but what do I care what a stranger thinks of me? Anyone whose opinion I want to hear already knows,” She paused, then let a smirk onto her face, “Well, unless you wanna thank me for protecting the city.”
“...Thank you indeed,” Another, equally unfamiliar voice said, “You’ve kept it well, Ribbon Green.”
Misa froze to hear her name. Should she have been using a glamor after all? It seemed unnecessary when she was alone all of the time, but-
“Allow me to introduce ourselves,” The original voice spoke again, “We’re Angels.”
“Angels…?” Misa questioned, freezing up even more. She’d heard of Angels. They were a duo who hovered around the one-hundred mark. Their power was strong and they fought plenty of monsters, but they also had a tendency to kill humans, and had once or twice offed a particularly abusive magica, “Aren’t you from Nagasaki? What are you doing in San Francisco? Uh… You barely have accents, so are you transformed right now?”
“We are. There’s nobody around, and unlike you, we use glamors,” The second voice answered, “We’ve decided to move, for reasons relating to our lives as humans more than our lives as magica. With some false papers to fudge our ages, there’s more job opportunities for us here.”
“However,” The first voice again, “We would never move in on your territory without consulting you first. You’ve been doing a great job… We would understand if you want to keep the spoils of war for yourself.”
“Truth be told, I was just thinking to myself how nice it would be if I had some help around here. It feels like I’m fighting multiple monsters every single night around here…” Misa sighed, putting more of her weight against the railing, “Hell, if you could at least take Friday nights, that’d make you the bomb dot com.”
“Ah…” The first member of Angels seemed a bit surprised at how easily Misa decided to let them in, but of course she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, “Well, thank you, Green. That’s very kind of you.”
---
“I mean, not really,” Misa said, shrugging her shoulders. Despite never having been able to witness visual social cues, she’d picked up on using them in high school with the help of a boyfriend who may have been more interested in manipulating her body than actually teaching her anything. That was a weird thing he was into, and her blindness just gave the opportunity for her to indulge him. She was glad to have it, though. Speaking felt more natural with physical cues, “You’re helping me, here. Anyway, what can I call each of you? Since as magical girls, you have the same name and all.”
“That’s a good question,” The second member of Angels said, “Using our real names would be a bad idea, since people think that we’re dead. You can call me Xizhi, like the Sage of Calligraphy.”
“Jeeze, that’s specific. Did you already think about this?” The other one teased, “You really thought you’d need a codename? Well, okay, I thought of one too. Addams.”
“Like the Addams Family?” Misa asked, “That’s edgy. I didn’t know Nagasaki had Goths.”
“I’m not goth, I just like dead bodies,” Addams defended herself, “And it isn’t edgy! My own childhood dreams aren’t edgy! Xizhi, tell her that I’m not edgy!”
“She’s absolutely edgy,” Xizhi said, “Anyway, Green. We’ll take responsibility for Friday nights, and the rest of the week, we can cooperate with you. As long as there aren’t too many others passing through or anything, it’s just two different distributors between us, so even level ones can still give us equal rewards, if I’m remembering the collaborative rules right.”
“Mm,” Misa groaned, “Cooperation? I mean, yeah, sure, sometimes. I’m just super tired, though. It’d be nice if you could just handle it yourselves some nights, just so I can finally catch up on sleep.”
“Er... Okay,” Addams said, “That’s kind of weird, you know. Most magica don’t want to lose any opportunity to get stronger or get the rewards for fighting a monster. Are you sure?”
“I don’t need to get stronger or collect any magic, or other rewards, or anything,” Misa said, “I don’t have any goals. I became a magical girl because I wanted to make my life more interesting, not for any other reason. Seems like everybody else has something they want to accomplish with magic, but I can’t help thinking that’s a good way to end up screwing yourself over. Monkey’s Paw and all that.”
“Huh?” Addams questioned, “You mean, you became a magica without any ulterior motive, even knowing how bad it is?”
“Yeah,” Misa said, “Bite me. I don’t care. I wanted to fight monsters as a hobby, then it took over my life. Seriously, the fact that you two are here now? That’s a total relief. I’m grateful as Hell.”
“We’re glad to help,” Xizhi said, “We have our own reasons to want to fight monsters. We can take over any time that you need us to.”
~~~~
“Hey, hey,” Zhou heard a voice he wasn’t expecting to hear anytime prior to completing his goal, but it was clear as day, “Whatever you do, don’t turn around, okay?”
“...Mayu?” Zhou asked, hesitant, as if the voice would disappear if he identified it.
“Keep moving and don’t turn around,” Mayu’s voice said, “If you stop walking or if you turn and look, then I won’t be Mayu anymore. I’ll be a big scary monster, worse than any of the ones that you’ve fought before. So just keep going. I’ll talk to you from here.”
“Okay,” Zhou said, just now taking in his surroundings as he started to walk. It seemed to be an awfully manmade place. Smooth floors and smooth walls, and barely any light to help him see those things. It was unsettling, hearing his own steps echo and Mayu’s behind him, “What’s going on here?”
“I don’t know,” Mayu said, “I actually don’t have any idea why you need to keep moving forward, and not look behind you. I just know that it’s what you have to do. So how have you been?”
“Not very good,” Zhou said, “But I’m trying my best.”
“Why?” Mayu asked, “For my sake? I don’t think I ever did anything to deserve people trying for me, you know. It isn’t as if I ever tried a day in my life.”
“Sometimes people just love other people,” Zhou said, “And trying doesn’t need to factor into it at all. You were good enough at something to get into the school that killed you. And I know that you had friends who cherished you just as much as I did. You definitely deserve people trying for your sake.”
“You can say that,” Mayu said, “But I know that you’ve thought it too. I’m useless. I was useless. And because you became a magical boy for my sake, my uselessness is rubbing off on you. It’s my fault you’re so tired all the time. It’s because you’re doing it to bring me back. Why would you want someone like me, who’s only brought you trouble, in your life again?”
“Because you didn’t deserve to die,” Zhou said.
“There are plenty of people who didn’t deserve to die. Even just in Korekara. Why not save them all?” Mayu asked.
“Because I knew you. I didn’t know them,” Zhou answered, “And I only just got enough power for you, after months as a magical boy. Who knows, maybe by the time I find your body, I can bring back some of the others too, maybe I’ll have enough power then. Can you tell me who to save?”
“No,” Mayu said, “You didn’t know them, after all. Neither did I, really. I didn’t make friends. I just know that there was no way everyone who died there but me deserved it. I might have deserved it. I never did anything to make my life worth living, after all. I just sat around, playing games, all the time. The only thing I ever did for you was pick a lock. That’s it, isn’t it? There’s no reason for you to have any desire to bring me back. You have so much power now, no lock could stand in your way. That’s all I was ever good for.”
“Mayu, don’t talk about yourself that way…” Zhou said, wanting to turn around and shake her by the shoulders, “Were you always this self-deprecating.”
“Don’t you turn around,” Mayu said, “Only a little. Not this much, for sure. But that was the real me. Wouldn’t it be funny? Wouldn’t it be funny if what I’m saying to you is what you think of me? What you’ve secretly thought of me all along? Like you’re only trying to bring me back because you don’t like how it feels to live your life without a parasite like me?”
“Shut up,” Zhou said.
“You could make me shut up,” Mayu said, “If you turned around. But then you’d have to fight an especially horrifying monster, so I guess you just have to decide which is the lesser of two evils. By the way, I forgot to mention earlier. Walking’s a little too slow. You might want to go faster.”
“Okay,” Zhou said and sped up his step, continuing down the seemingly endless corridor. Occasionally it would seem a little less empty, like there was something on the ground, but when he turned his eyes to look it would be gone. A mouse trap, an empty water bottle, a frog? He thought for sure that he saw all of those things, but never in his direct line of sight, “Do you know how I ended up here?”
“Don’t you?” Mayu asked.
“Only a little,” Zhou said, “I was in the train station, and then I was here. I don’t know how this happened, though. I can’t imagine how I got from point A to point B.”
“That’s dumb,” Mayu said, “You’re really dumb. Did you know that? Did you know that you’re really dumb, if you can’t even figure out how you ended up here with me?”
“Is this the afterlife?” Zhou asked, “Am I dead too, and as punishment for becoming a magical boy, I’m with you, but it’s not quite you, and I can’t turn to see if it’s you or an impostor?”
“That’d be a really special Hell,” Mayu said, “But no, you’re still alive. For now, anyway. It’s not that easy to kill a magica, after all.”
“I wish that I understood what was happening here,” Zhou said, and it was more a matter of fact than anything else. It didn’t demand or even ask for any sort of response, it was just a statement tossed out into the echo chamber before him. He wished he understood. And that was it. Mayu became quiet behind him, and all he could hear was footsteps. His footsteps, running. Hers, walking behind him. Both sets, reflecting off of the smooth walls and ceilings of the most empty place that Zhou hade ever been.
This went on for what seemed like forever. Zhou, for once in his life, wasn’t getting tired at all. Nothing was changing either. It was like an eternal trek to nowhere, with the one thing he’d been chasing after this whole time trapped, unobtainable, behind him. He decided this had to be a vision, but he wouldn’t underestimate the power of visions. He knew that Lionhardt, who wasn’t very strong at all, could create a pocket dimension. Then there was Red’s ability, he thought. She could make an illusory maze, but she was limited to mazes, right? This was not a maze. A maze had to have turns. Had to be confusing in nature.
This was a corridor. As strange a corridor as it was, corridors were not confusing. There was nowhere to turn. Zhou didn’t think that Red would betray them at this point, either. She wouldn’t stand to benefit from it in any way. Betraying just him? No way, he didn’t do anything to get on her bad side. He’d never done any of the things that she seemed to think were worthy of punishment. Though he supposed she could just be bloodthirsty after all, but if that was the case, why wait this long to act? He knew that while he and others may have been higher ranked than her for various reasons, if it came down to a fight, even four against one, she would win. She was beyond capable even before she became a Magical Girl.
If she wanted them dead, or wanted to do whatever this was, then there was no reason for her to wait to do it. She gained nothing from earning their trust and then betraying it outside of a fast food joint in a train station. There would be far better times to turn on them than this.
“You’re thinking again, aren’t you?” Mayu asked.
“How could you tell?” Zhou answered with a question.
“You’re slowing down,” Mayu said, then with some urgency, “You need to run!”
“Why do I need to run?” Zhou asked.
“You need to know when to run away,” Mayu said, “Because it might not be me behind you, you know. I could have been the horrifying monster this whole time, but with your little sister’s voice, right? You know that’s possible. It’s probably more plausible than this being me.”
“I know it’s not the real you,” Zhou said, “But it’s not just to voice. You’re still Mayu in some ways. If I had to kill you, though, I could do it. There’s definitely one thing that makes me certain that there’s no way you’re the real Mayu.”
“Why’s that?” The fake Mayu asked, innocently.
“Because,” A different voice sounded out from behind Zhou, and on instinct, he turned around, only to bring his arms up to protect his face when he saw an incredibly bright light, and after the sound of an explosion, that voice spoke again, “The real Mayu would have given a verbal tic by now. Am I right, Zhou-kun?”
“Madara-kun…?” Zhou questioned, peering past the burnt wreckage of what looked like a crash test dummy on the ground to see Tsukune was standing beside one of his turrets back down the corridor, “Are you… Really you?”
“Last I checked, yeah,” Tsukune said, lifting one of his hands to look it over, “But, wow. I am offended. You’re actually seeing me, instead of me reskinned to somebody else in your life. Are you actually intimidated by me?”
“I mean, kind of? You were one of Mayu’s friends, you probably knew her really well, and you’re also strong, and cool, so… I’d definitely say that you’re intimidating,” Zhou said, “But what’s that supposed to mean, anyway?”
“I figured out how to hop between visions and snap you guys out of them,” Tsukune said, “But for everyone else, I didn’t look like me, I looked like somebody else who’d already shown up in the vision. I guess you wouldn’t have anyone but Mayucchi in yours though, right? If that’s the case, then it makes sense that I’d appear as myself. Mayu couldn’t get shot by Mayu. Anyway, you’re the last one. Come on.”
“How’d you snap yourself out of your vision?” Zhou asked, “And what are these things, anyway?”
“Huh? Oh, right. Well, it was pretty easy for me. I just disobeyed whatever the people in the vision told me. Stay there, and I’d go somewhere. Point me in a direction, I went the other way. Made the whole thing kind of disjointed, like if you watched a movie by flipping at random through the scene select screen instead of just hitting play. Whatever these things are, which I really don’t know, they were made ahead of time. Screw with the natural order of things and it’s bound to fall to pieces,” Tsukune explained, tapping his turret and letting it dissipate into specks of magic, which he caught in his hand.
“Who’d do something like this to us?” Zhou asked, “And why?”
“Let’s get out of here and meet up with the others,” Tsukune said, “Then we can all put our heads together and figure it out. Hey, you’re lucky, by the way. You cracked the vision’s integrity way sooner than everyone else did. They’re all at least mildly traumatized. You pulled the long straw this time around.”
“Forgive me if I’m not jumping for joy,” Zhou said, “How do I know you’re not also some weird part of this vision, huh?”
Tsukune just stared at him for almost a full minute, then shrugged before speaking, “I mean, you don’t. It’s not like I have any way of proving that I’m the real Tsukune Madara or anything. But even if I am just part of the vision, what’s it matter? You could at least try letting me take you out of here. If it doesn’t work, you didn’t really lose anything.”
“That’s fair,” Zhou admitted, then stepped toward Tsukune and held out a hand, “Fine, then. If you’re really Madara-kun. Take me by the hand and lead me to the land.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Tsukune said, then grabbed Zhou’s wrist and wrenched it toward the ground, dragging him down. And just a moment later, they were no longer in a corridor at all, but what seemed to be a normal hotel room. There were two queen beds. Kanoshi was sitting on one, Yuuri on the other, and Sayaka was sitting at the desk in the corner, “Welcome back to the world of the living.”
“Hey guys,” Zhou admitted, this did seem real.
“Hey,” Sayaka waved from the corner, standing up as she did, “So we’re all here now?”
“Looks like it,” Kanoshi said, rolling his shoulders, “Tsukkun, it didn’t take very long for you to get Zhou-san…”
“Yeah, cause unlike all of you buffoons, it didn’t take very long for his vision to crack,” Tsukune explained, “Ny’all got issues.”
“Ny’all?” Sayaka questioned.
“I thought I’d make my statement less offensive through humor,” Tsukune said, “Did it work?”
“Not really,” Yuuri said, “But I mean, you’re right anyway.”
“I am,” Tsukune said, “If you weren’t so caught up in your problems, then maybe you wouldn’t have even needed me to rescue you. That’s a serious issue, clearly. You need to learn to distance yourself from your fears and troubles.”
“That’s easy for you to say, without knowing the majority of what we saw, or what it means to us,” Sayaka said, “It’s not like I’m easily frightened, you know.”
“I’d wager that what I saw was more objectively terrifying than any of you,” Tsukune said, “So I don’t need to know what you saw or what it means to you. I was able to break my own vision, and none of you were. That means that in at least one way, I’m stronger than all of you.”
Sayaka scowled and grabbed at the collar of her shirt, but Yuuri jumped up and grabbed the back of her hand, pressing it against her collarbone with enough force to keep her from following through, at least for a few seconds while he hissed, “You better not transform here. I’m pretty sure that none of us can exactly afford to be on the hook for property damage. There’s no monster around, so even just pulling your weapon here would cause some permanent bullshit.”
“He’s an asshole!” Sayaka protested, shouting past Yuuri, “Who do you think you are, calling yourself stronger than me, huh? Even if we just go by the official rankings, I seriously outclass you!”
“Yeah, probably,” Tsukune said, turning away with his arms crossed, “But you’re kind of an idiot emotionally, you know. Get a handle on your temper, and then maybe we can say you outclass me in emotional fortitude. But evidently, I’m the most stable one here, and you just have to accept that fact.”
“It’s true,” Kanoshi said, standing up now and looking around at everybody, “Tsukkun is the only one who was able to break out of his own vision. The rest of us just stumbled through them, exactly what whoever did that to us wanted, probably.”
“I might know who,” Sayaka said as Yuuri released her, clenching her fists at her sides instead, “I’m the most veteran magica out of the lot of us, so I’ve kinda heard some stories about a very weird magical girl. She does everything she can to stay exactly at the thirtieth worst spot in the rankings, and her powers work in kind of a unique way, like all Desire Train magica. She doesn’t get magic power from defeating enemies, but from instilling fear. She’s called Future Style.”
“Thanks for the introduction, darling,” Someone’s voice sounded out in the hotel room, and then a magical girl in an outfit that resembled something that a pop star whose gimmick was to ‘be weird’ threw open the door of the wardrobe from inside. She stepped out and put a hand on her hip, looking at them all over dark sunglasses. There was a lot of black in her outfit, but it was unmistakably strange, “But, seriously. Not one of you actually finished the shit I prepared for you. At least I didn’t try that hard or anything.”
“What the Hell was that all about!?” Yuuri snapped in her direction, “How did you know all of that about us?”
“I don’t know anything about you,” Future Style said, “And I don’t care, either. My powers did all the work. And if you want to know why you, then that’s easy. Five magica all in one place? It’s a goldmine. Magica have always got stronger fears than humans do! With a human, I run the risk of using more magic scaring them than I’ll get for it. Magica? I always make a profit. And that’s it.”
“You put us all through our own personal Hells, just because you wanted to get some magic power?” Kanoshi asked, “Wow… I never thought I’d say this to a person, but you’re truly rotten.”
“Wow, I’m so hurt,” She said, holding a hand to her chest, “I’ve never been called anything worse than rotten in my entire life. Anyway, yeah. It’s just what I do. Don’t like it? Too bad, so sad. I don’t care.”
“Rukkun and I should have both been able to tell that you were here,” Sayaka said, “But we couldn’t detect you or your magic. How exactly did you accomplish that?”
“I promised I’d keep that a secret,” Future Style said, “But you know, what good’s a promise anyway? I guess I won’t break it. I’ll bend it, though,” She flipped her hair back over her shoulder, then gave her answer, “There exists a magica whose entire power is to conceal the location of another one. They made it seem to the distributors like I was still back in Boston, when I came here to see what kinda fear I could drum up from numbers four and nine while I heard you were traveling together… Oh, and I guess the rest of you, too.”
“I’m number twenty-fucking-seven!” Sayaka shouted out, “I can understand excluding fifty and sixty-two, but I’m still a pretty rare find.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Future Style said, then turned away from the group, toward the door, “Anyway, this is a hotel in Nagasaki, so it’s not like I even really interfered with your whole shitty mission. Unless you look at a calendar I guess. I’m done with you guys, I’m out.”
“Wait!” Kanoshi called to her, and she stopped where she stood, but didn’t turn to look at him, “How did you know that we’d be traveling together far enough ahead of time to come here and plan this?”
“Tch,” She scoffed, raising a hand as she kept walking, “Pretty sure you can figure that our without an answer from me. If you can’t, I guess you really are dumbasses. Seeeya!”
And with that, she was gone. Yuuri ran to the door and opened it, but despite only hesitating for a second, she was nowhere to be seen out in the hallway. He stepped back and shut the door again, sighing as he turned back to his teammates, “What a bitch.”
“She said that we shouldn’t look at a calendar,” Tsukune said, then reached into his pocket, finding his phone was completely dead. He looked to the pile of bags in the corner of the room, then retrieved his charger. It only took him a minute to get it powered up, to find that the date read September fifteenth. They’d left Tokyo in July. He muttered to the others, “Well, whatever those visions were, time was definitely weird in them. We lost three months.”
“Three months?” Yuuri asked, then groaned, covering his face, “Well, I’m definitely fired. From my day job at least.”
“Me too,” Kanoshi said, sitting back down on one of the beds, “I guess we’ll both just have to find something else, somehow.”
“Here’s a hot idea,” Sayaka said, “Stealing. I mean I wouldn’t recommend it if you can avoid it, but damn is it easy when you’re a magica. Just follow the big rule, right? You steal from big rich chain stores, nothing that’s local and struggling.”
“I won’t need to do that,” Yuuri said, “Like I said, I’m losing my day job. There’s always more work to be found, it’s just exhausting. So let’s just drop it, okay?”
“...Okay,” Sayaka said, then changed the topic on her own, “Regardless of our lost time-”
“Oh, thank God,” Tsukune interrupted her, and she turned to glare at him. Her glare only grew more intense when he elaborated, “SIF didn’t have a Maki event during our lost time.”
“Nobody cares about your trash waifu, Madara!” Sayaka snapped, then took a deep breath to calm herself before continuing her statement, “Anyway. We’re in Nagasaki now. Has anyone seen Blade?”
“I guess that it didn’t get captured with us,” Zhou said, “Do we really need your distributor here? We can investigate without it.”
“Yeah, we do,” Sayaka said, “It’s my friend, and while you’re all adults, I’m a teenager. I need some trustworthy supervision around you guys,” She noted, then rolled her eyes, “Not that you’re competent enough to be a threat to me, if we’re being honest.”
“Even without competence as a factor,” Tsukune said, “I’m pretty sure Zhou-kun is the only one who even might like girls. You couldn’t have picked a safer group of adult men to hang around.”
“I totally could have,” Sayaka said, “A group of yakuza, who I could actually rely on in a fight, maybe? And that’s just off the top of my head. I get your point, though. And my point? We need to put this bullshit behind us and focus on what we came here for. And we need a Distributor to point us in the right direction, so, Madara-kun? Since you’ve actually got your phone charged, call one of them. I’d prefer Blade, obviously, but I guess it’s your choice who to trust.”
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