The day after Tokyo's magica had worked together to do battle against a particularly durable level 5 monster, every one of them was returning to their regular routines. Just because things had taken a turn for the unusual the previous night didn't mean that anything would change when the sun rose.
Yuuri was watching the news on his terrible television in his less than terrible, for the neighborhood, apartment. He wasn't the sort of person to care much about the news until he'd started working at the grocery store, which had about six different varieties of the news on its televisions. Thanks to that, it had become a habit for him to actually know what was going on in the world. It would just feel strange for him not to continue watching at least one of those news networks at this point, and today he'd decided on a local one.
"It seems that the Tokyo Metropolitan Area continues to be plagued by magica. Earlier this morning, the director of Aoba Public Middle School was found dead in his office. The situation of his death matches what we've been seeing from time to time since October, a truly brutal murder evidently performed by a magical being. Unlike the previous victims, who seem to have been killed with a single blow to the head, the director was found with antemortem wounds covering his body which, experts have stated, are likely the result of an axe. We'd like to urge everybody here in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area to exercise special caution to avoid this magica, and if anybody knows anything about its identity, you'll see the tip line number scrolling across the screen now."
That news didn't shock Yuuri, but he decided he would give Sayaka a call anyway. The five of them had exchanged contact information last night, though Sayaka had assured them that she wouldn't need to be notified of any battles, with her experience lending her every opening she needed to know when a monster was attacking, and if it had yet been engaged. She picked up on the second ring, though, "Rukkun? Whatcha want?"
"I heard that the director of Aoba Middle was found dead this morning," Yuuri explained, getting straight to the point of his call. He couldn't help but let his voice reflect the amused smirk on his face. Just because he refrained from killing anyone himself, didn't mean he couldn't be glad the bastard was dead.
The line was silent for a few minutes before Sayaka spoke again, "I know you know what I do, what my personal mission is... You never would have told me the full extent of how he hurt you if you didn't want me to do this, right? Since I know you personally, I threw in a little extra hurt for the guy. Maybe I'm a merciless assassin, but one-shot one-kill is only fun if you aren't pissed off."
"Awh," Yuuri threw on a mock tone of affection, "You were pissed off on my behalf? I'm touched."
Sayaka, on the other end of the phone, looked out over the city. She'd slept on a nearby roof that night, taking it in stride thanks to the position of her mark. Even when not transformed, she had that level of magical endurance, which meant she couldn't possibly die of exposure. Couple that with the level of pain she could withstand, as a member of the yakuza with full tattoos and one prosthetic finger, and sleeping on a roof in the snow was a breeze.
"Just let me know if you ever want me to do it again," Her voice was quiet as she said this, then she shut the phone and let it fall down to the streets below, to be crushed under a car. She could get another with the same number, no problem. However, she wasn't keen on showing weakness, and unwarranted sympathy like this was nothing but that. Why should she make an offer like that to somebody whose only real connection to her was the fact that they'd both taken on the burden of magic?
She looked down at her hands, and clenched them into fists as she dropped them back to her sides and turned around, leaving the building again via the fire escape. Getting a place to live... Wasn't super plausible for her. She was physically about fifteen, and technically sixteen. Not to mention, a magical girl. Even yakuza connections couldn't get her easy real estate. Maybe if it was just her age and lack of a credit score, a bribe and a threat could suffice to get her a steady place, but even with her mark's inconspicuous placement it was hard to hide that she was a user of magic.
Maybe for some, it was as simple as covering up, but she knew her entire life that couldn't be enough. Covering her tattoos and using a fake name didn't keep others from getting suspicious she had yakuza connections. Covering her magical marking could never be enough to keep something she had pride in a secret. It was there in the way she spoke, the way she carried herself. Her sharp temper often gave her away, because with her outbursts came the revelation of her convictions. Yakuza convictions. Magical convictions. There were views she held in such intense regard that gave her away the moment somebody spoke a wrong word.
It wasn't her fault.
Even with her convictions, she knew they were out of place. Her burning hatred for perverted lolicons seemed odd to some of the yakuza here in Tokyo, the ones who hadn't grown up around her. Trafficking of young girls was a part of the yakuza business plan, but that was different to her, she'd been dulled to it since she was a small child. Young women from Korea, Malaysia, China, promised good jobs then sold off... She'd had the idea put in her that it was their own faults for trusting so blindly in foolish ideas. She believed that.
There was a difference between selling young women and abusing children, which she held firm on. Trafficking was an atrocity too, she didn't deny that, but it was an atrocity which she couldn't be bothered to become angry with. Why should she, when it was paying for her lifestyle and was a long-standing facet of organized crime? She never claimed to be a good person. If she did, she probably would have hesitated before deciding she would use her magic to rid the world of those she, only on her own judgement, decided were scum.
She was getting a good feeling, though, that she'd find some place to settle down sometime soon. She passed by the apartment building which both Yuuri and Kanoshi called home, and stared at the steps before continuing on. Even that place wouldn't take her, she'd tried before. One factor which kept a normal person from renting a normal apartment would fly there, even two. Her own cavalcade of them? She was a disaster waiting to happen.
Kanoshi spotted Sayaka through his window as he drank his coffee at noontime, having slept late after staying up to play games and fight a monster the previous night. He'd had an unsettling dream when he did return home and sleep, and thanks to it, wondered if he should call out to Sayaka and invite her inside. He decided against it, though. He decided that he ought not act on subconscious thoughts.
It was because she looked so young. A high school first year wasn't far removed from a middle-schooler, and while he knew and respected how worldly she was at her age, he couldn't help but feel protective of her. That image in his dream, of the childish magica being strangled inside the huge fist of a terrifying monster left him wanting to work for her protection, but he knew she wouldn't want or appreciate that. She was the type to insist on forging her own path forward, no matter how much others wanted to support her.
If Kanoshi were a member of the yakuza himself, one of her 'Onii-sans', then maybe she'd let him say that he wanted to protect her, but they were from different worlds. He wasn't one of her people. With that thought resolved and the dream pushed to the back of his mind, Kanoshi finished the third cup of coffee that he needed to feel functional that morning, then hopped onto his computer to play more video games. Was it pathetic to do this after he'd already been up till the most unfortunate hours of the night before playing games? Yes, it kind of was, but he didn't care.
After all, eSports drafts were soon, and he'd been in the top 500 on Japan's competitive servers since a month after the game launched. Some people considered him, 'ChikaMikan', the top mercy player for the region, though he wasn't so sure about that. It wasn't like his playstyle of mostly pocketing one player was a very good way to play the game, he just happened to be a master of pocketing. One very specific niche that he excelled at. Things were looking good for him to be invited to a Pro Team soon, but if he didn't, he'd already had interviews with people at the grocery store where Yuuri worked, and he was frankly overqualified, so he had that lined up if eSports didn't work out for him.
The new apartment was small, smaller than the space he was used to having at his disposal, but it was still enough for what he needed. He kept it a little bit less clean than the last one thanks to the feeling that he lacked storage space, but otherwise, it worked for him. He had never needed an apartment the size of the last one that he had, and Yuuri wasn't lying when he said three people could live here without too many problems. There was no real living room space, but the kitchen could fit his kotatsu in it, and though the overall square footage of the place was less, there were three other rooms rather than the two of his last one.
What he'd need a second bedroom for, he didn't know, but it was nice to have, and the change in layout made Kanoshi realize just how much extra space he'd had before, space that was just empty floor he never really used. It wasn't that he enjoyed this place over the old one, but he did work to rationalize it in his mind that it wasn't so bad. He wanted his old apartment. He wanted his old job especially, but he knew those things were impossible now, and he was forcing himself to come to terms with it.
Three hours later, after Kanoshi had played several rounds which he won, across town, Tsukune Madara was just waking up. His roommate was already at work, which he was grateful for. He didn't want to deal with her any day, but after battling a monster he was especially loathe. What he'd said to Yuuri about coming to Tokyo for the sake of helping Kanoshi was only a half truth. The other half of the matter had to do with his personal life.
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| Kyoko Shirato |
He considered himself none of those things to her. She was a scoundrel, a con artist. She had found him right after the massacre, when the two of them were both living on the streets, and she was an excellent actress who made him believe she was something of an angel, come to offer an alliance to get them both out of the hole they were in. She was a devil, though. He'd made a deal with the devil, that's the sort of person Kyoko was.
A deal was the right thing to call it, though, because she'd followed through on her promise. She'd gotten them out of that hole, gotten an apartment which they could both live in comfortably. She paid bills, and rent, and for food for the both of them, but at what cost? Tsukune didn't begrudge her the way that she made her money, of course. She could be charming, and she could use that to her advantage. She was an unabashedly sexual woman, and she could manipulate that fact about herself even if she didn't quite realize what she was doing.
Kyoko could make promises to get things out of people, whether she followed through or not. Then there was the flip side, where certain men and women would be glad to pay her just to make her leave them alone. She'd used those skills to pull herself and Tsukune out of the gutter, then gotten a job at a nearby concert venue. Tsukune had to admit that the only time he found Kyoko especially tolerable was when she played her guitar. She had real skills, so it was no wonder she was able to get hired as a stand-in guitarist for any bands who might need her services.
That scoundrel, Kyoko... Tsukune might actually admire her for all of her abilities, if not for his own strained relationship with her. There was a price to his existing in the same space as her, he knew. Existing at all always seemed to have a price, and Kyoko exacted a sharp one. If Tsukune was going to continue to profit off of her behaviors, he needed to do a few things for her. Buying her alcohol was one of those, as she was still too young to do so. Keeping the apartment clean. She'd discovered early on that he could burn water, so cooking was out of the question.
In general, he was at her beck and call. It wasn't a pleasant arrangement, but even though he could get away from it now that he'd become a magical boy, he didn't. Was it Stockholm Syndrome? He wondered about that. He had no reason to care about Kyoko at all, but he never took a single out that he had to get away from her. He could have just let himself die, plenty of times. He could just use his magic to go somewhere else and never think about her again. Even so, Kyoko was an idol once. Not like his fictional ones, but she still was, and she still made good music.
Even if she'd only escaped Korekara out of being absent that day, she was a survivor. Even if she was a bad person, she'd still extended a hand to Tsukune, and she never hurt him with that hand. Even as she hurt others, she showed him that kindness of never going too far. It wasn't that she even fully understood that what she was doing was wrong, but something about Tsukune kept her from seeing him in such a way that she would cross that line with him.
To her, he probably seemed like a kicked puppy. A pet project, somebody to say she was working hard for instead of just herself in the wake of an awful tragedy. She'd only escaped with her life because she was such a recent transfer, who got lost in the cracks, but she'd still made connections at that school before it was all destroyed, and she knew she could have easily been there. Tsukune could see it in her eyes, sometimes, and the way she spoke if ever the incident came up. She was not a careless bad person, but an unknowing one, and she still felt guilt over her "luck" in surviving the massacre despite anything she'd done.
So perhaps that was why Tsukune stayed? He was Kyoko's kicked puppy, but she was also his. That was how he saw her. A kicked puppy underneath everything which she did wrong.
He had magic, and she didn't. He avoided speaking to her, only needing to indulge her requests a few hours a week, and as long as he did that and turned his blind eye to it all, he'd use this magic he held to protect her. Kyoko Shirato... Whatever it was that made her want to help him, of course he'd return the favor.
He was a devil too, after all.
After musing on his relationship with Kyoko, Tsukune checked to see if Kanoshi had woken up yet. The most recent log-in on his dgf account confirmed that he had, but thanks to Zhou's lack of NEET hobbies, he had no way to tell if he had yet woken up.
Zhou had, though he expected to go back to sleep in the next twenty minutes. He lived in a house which had been marked as being for sale for two decades now, which had never sold. A bit outside of the Tokyo area, but still close enough to a train station that getting into Tokyo wasn't a problem. The house looked nice, and it wasn't haunted or anything, but there was too much structural damage. Things were always falling apart, so much so that by the time Zhou got to it the entire interior was, for lack of a better term, boneless. 'Open Concept', but the second floor was on the verge of collapsing in, and the foundation was uneven too, another time bomb of the architecture.
A time bomb of the architecture for a human, that was. Zhou made it his home, utilizing his magic in quiet ways to keep it standing. It made him feel bad at times to continue using magic for this sort of thing, but Sayaka did bring up a good point; he was already approaching enough magic to bring Mayu back, but didn't have a single lead on where her body could be. There was no way to turn her into a magical girl without her body, after all.
Was it selfish of Zhou to take liberties to live somewhere this nice, to live comfortably? Yes, he decided, it was. He had also decided when he became a magical boy, a year after his sister's death, that he wouldn't apologize for being selfish anymore. It helped to know there were others waiting to greet Mayu when he pulled her back into the world of the living, but it was only his own desire to bring her back. His entire life, he felt bad taking anything he felt he didn't deserve, but he'd discarded those worries.
Why should he worry about something like that? Didn't he deserve to be happy? Didn't he deserve to do anything to achieve that happiness for himself, given that he didn't drag anyone else down as he did? He wanted to live in this nice house. He could afford nice food because he didn't have to pay rent, or bills either since his magic could easily substitute for electricity and heating. He would take those things, because nobody suffered for it. Nobody else wanted this house anyway.
So it was fine for him to take. It was. This city owed it to him, anyways. He was the highest-ranking magica in Tokyo. Well, unless The Prince decided to stick around long-term, but somehow, Zhou doubted that would happen.
-----
Horace was not so well-kept at all times.
Right now, in fact, he was exhausted. Panting, unclean, with all of his hair fallen out of his ponytail and into his face. He was sweaty, overexerted, he found himself disgusting. His head wouldn't stop pounding. He'd made Oh One obscure the truth of this battle; Sure, a number of lower-ranking magica were taking shifts in the battle, but the higher ranked ones weren't taking any breaks.
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| Fukushima |
Horace didn't bother making himself presentable at all before collapsing onto the ground.
One of the other magica who'd participated, Fukushima, approached Horace, then dropped to her knees beside him as well. She took deep breaths, then spoke to him, her words strained. Despite her mask, Horace could tell that she was forcing a smile, "We really did it, huh...? We beat that thing?"
"We sure did," A lower-ranking magical boy who'd taken shifts to attack stepped up, limping and weak as well, "Fukushima-san, you're rank fifteen, right? And Prince Horace, and..." He glanced around, "Fizzy Pop are here too, right? If we had so much trouble taking down a level eight..."
"Nine and ten seem impossible, right?" Horace spoke up from the ground, his voice blank, "But... That's not correct. I had to hold back to avoid injuring other magica with my telekinesis. Were I to truly go all out, I could have beaten this monster on my own... In double the time. With Fizzy Pop also going all out with me, the same amount of time. Were Uamake to join in, it only would have taken one week. But that's not realistic. I'm this tired now... I dread to think how I'd feel had I given it my all."
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| "Pop" |
"What's up...?" He questioned, blinking slowly. It seemed that Fizzy had given all of her remaining energy over to Pop, with that exuberance which hadn't been present during the battle. Those two had a very useful magic. Both of them were archers, and for every shot one of them made which landed where intended, the other's damage output doubled, up to a cap of 2048x. Rewarding Marksmanship, was the name they called that power by.
"We were grabbing our orb and found a weird letter with our name on it! There was one for you too, so we picked it up. Oh, and we brought your orb too. Here you go!" She grinned as she tore the items from Fizzy's hand then tossed them at Horace, "Oh, don't let me forget next time we see each other, when we're in better shape. I owe you a bear hug! Awesome work, and it was great to meet you, even if it had to be while fighting a big ol' beast."
"You'll certainly be seeing a lot more of me. I have a few reasons I'd like to remain in Tokyo for a bit longer yet," Horace explained, bringing his arms up to tie his hair back. How was he regaining his strength so quickly? He looked around to see another duo of Chikd's, called FMV, who were from South Korea. They were magical boys at rank 80, but had been much higher in the past, falling only because other magica were more active and had more raw power. FMV's power was interesting. One healed injuries, the other healed stamina, their only combat prowess on their own being their weaponry, throwing spears. He waved a hand in thanks towards their direction, knowing that his small revitalization was thanks to them.
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| "Fizzy" |
"You got somebody to go back to, Fukushima?" Horace wondered.
"Me?" She questioned, pointing at herself, then shook her head in response, "No, not anymore anyway. I'm not about to reveal my identity, but I lived in Korekara. After the massacre at the school... Who would wanna stay there? My friends and I used to all run around together, saying that it was our duty to protect the girls in that town. How could I stay there after such a failure?"
"I'm very sorry to hear that," Horace frowned, extending a hand toward her, "Are you at least finding new purpose as a magical girl?" He'd known of the massacre long before he ever set foot in Japan, the entire world knew what happened and collectively decided not to trust the company responsible for that AI anymore. It wasn't until he met Kanoshi, however, that Horace was honestly hit by how awful the situation was, the idea of it. So much death, all in one place, and of such promising youths was terrifying as soon as it became real.
Hearing that something had happened was one thing, but meeting somebody who'd been personally impacted by it was another. Horace had met Kanoshi right around the one-year marker of the horrific event which had changed the course of history for the worse, and had seen firsthand that the teacher was still grappling with the fact that several of his own former students had been there. With that perspective, it was impossible to stay an onlooker, and meeting someone else who'd been even closer to the tragedy...
"It's not a big deal now," Fukushima sighed, holding her hands to her chest. She'd looked so strong before, but was now showing weakness as she spoke about her connection to the town where nobody survived, "It was at first, but it's been a while now. I lost my friends and I lost the very thing I wanted to defend with my life, but that was just another chapter in my life. I've moved on to other things."
"That much is clear," Horace nodded in agreement, then looked down to the letter he'd been handed. It had his name on it, and nothing else. He was a bit wary of what could be inside, but there was nothing which posed a real threat to him, so he supposed there could be no harm in opening it up. There were no traps inside, just an unceremonious piece of computer paper. Typed on it in a boring font, badly spaced, was a short explanation that this was a letter of commendation.
"What's that?" Fukushima leaned over, narrowing her eyes at it, "I... Can't read that very well, but is it a letter of commendation? My distributor, Desire Train, told me that its highest ranking magical boy Diamond Dust, over in America, got one of those in the mail. It doesn't know anything about why they're being sent out, but it thinks that they're just harmless bits of praise being given to the best magica that each distributor has."
"Well, that would make sense, but I'd think that if the cosmic forces which determine the rankings wanted to applaud us for our hard work, they'd put a bit more effort into the letter. This is just pathetic," Horace groaned, but stuffed it into his pocket, "Well, I really should head back to Tokyo. I left Guardian Angel to fend for himself when I came over here..."
"For himself?" Fukushima questioned, leaning towards him, "No, that can't be true. I heard that Tokyo's magica just defeated a level five rock-golem type in one night."
"Really? But..." Horace frowned, "I thought that Tokyo's magica were only Guardian Angel and Lullabye."
"Huh? No way," Another magica who'd helped in the battle walked up, speaking English. Someone with a travel ability who'd come to help out, "I stopped by there on my way to this fight, and there were three more. Smokescreen, Ribbon Red, and Infernal."
"So that's where Smokescreen operates..." Horace noted. Thanks to Oh One, he did know that the magica Smokescreen was in Japan, but had no idea what part of the country. Sugarcanesugarcane said that particular magical boy wanted to be left alone by others.Horace had to wonder what changed, if he'd suddenly become involved enough to be known amongst magica as one of Tokyo's protectors.
"Ribbon Red?" Fukushima questioned, wide-eyed, "Who... Who is that?"
"What do you mean?" The magical boy who'd mentioned the Tokyo magica wondered, "It's not like anybody knows who she is outside of being a magical girl. She's always using glamours."
"What I mean is that 'Ribbon Red' is exactly the sort of title I'd expect somebody that I used to know to end up with," Fukushima explained, standing up straight, "You're going back to Tokyo, right Prince-san? Mind if I tag along? I'd like to become acquainted with this magical girl."
"Oh, sure thing," Horace nodded, FMV's revitalizing finally gotten to a point that he could stand up and felt capable of making his way back to the city. He couldn't use his telekinesis on certain creatures such as magica (though humans were fair game), distributors, or monsters, but just about everything else was fair game. He could easily just levitate an item and stand on it, or sit as the case may be. The city's destructive had undone itself, but there was a fire escape which had been broken prior to the battle, so he took the debris from that and motioned for Fukushima to join him as he took off back in the direction of Tokyo, using another piece as a windshield to avoid getting bugs in their faces as they traveled at absurd speeds.
Traveling like this was an air traffic hazard which some magica didn't care about, flying wherever they pleased. Horace, meanwhile, had enough control over his magic to fly close to the roofs without worrying about crashing into them, and as long as he didn't go anywhere near an airport, he wouldn't cause any problems for any planes. Both he and Fukushima had glamours on anyway, so it wasn't a concern of his that humans might see them. Let them see, it wasn't like it mattered.
"So," Horace started, "This is going to take a few hours. You the type who's willing to open up about your past, or are we gonna take this in silence?"
"Somewhere in between," She answered, leaning against him, "I guess it doesn't matter, if you know who I am. I mostly just use glamours because everybody else does, because it's expected. There's nobody I'm trying to hide it from, not really. I was the head of a girl gang back in Korekara, called No Boys Allowed. There were requirements to join, but no real requirements to stay in. Be a girl who wasn't attracted to men, that was the extent of it. I wouldn't kick anybody out for fluid sexuality, or gender realizations. We were a family... Until we weren't anymore. Until we failed to protect those girls, and just... fell apart. I haven't seen any of them since the massacre."
"I understand," Horace nodded, looking up at the sky, "Sometimes, even the strongest bonds rely on something else, and if that something else gets lost along the way... You miss them, right? Even though you've moved on?"
Fukushima hesitated, but then nodded, crossing her legs where she sat, "Of course I do. They were my family. Our home was a place where the girls society would look down upon and forget about could be loved and even revered by others. But our world now has no use for such a thing. Our world spits upon the only people keeping it from being utterly destroyed, they have no love left in their hearts for anybody, especially not delinquents."
Horace stayed silent for a while along their flight, before he spoke up again, only as loud as he needed to be to be heard over the wind, "Do you know how many of your past members became magica? Do you think Ribbon Red was one of them?"
"Red? No, she never agreed to join," Fukushima shook her head with a bitter chuckle, "Red and I go even further back, if she's who I'm thinking of. I knew her when she was a little kid for real, and didn't just look like one. I don't doubt that others from No Boys went on to become magica, though. Delinquents are exactly the sort to end up using magic, after all."
"They are, aren't they?" Horace agreed, staring ahead into the night as city lights began to appear on the horizon.
Fukushima just nodded, closing her eyes. They certainly were, she thought. They were all like her.
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