Episode 3: The Witch
A turret, an unmanned gun emplacement equipped with a machine gun, erupted in a storm of fire.
Its ammunition belt wound into motion. Its electronically locked trigger pulled.
Deafening gunfire thundered through the ruins in the night, and its sights settled on the girl.
At that very instant—
“Hyah! Strawberry ♥ Whip!”
The gun barrel was severed.
At the cut surface gleamed something like a mirror.
The cut was so impossibly sharp that, if the severed edges were brought together, the barrel might as well have never been cut at all. Such was the precision and keenness of the strike.
And then it carved.
Once.
Twice.
Three, four, five times.
The turret crumbled to pieces.
Along with the concrete building that supported it.
Everything was reduced to fragments by a single thread, wreathed in a pink phosphorescent glow.
“V for victory!”
The girl, [Strawberry Pink], flew over the collapsing building, retracting the deployed thread into her glove. All with a mere thought.
This was [magic].
A thread brought under the absolute control of M-particles.
A single, swift, razor-sharp line that severed everything it touched.
The [M-65 Monofilament Whip]. Without its pink phosphorescence, it would have been a thread so fine that the eye could scarcely catch it, even at the edge of one’s vision.
“[Pink]!”
“Ah! [Purple]! Oh, I was so worried about you!”
“If you were worried, then don’t destroy entire buildings! People’ll get buried alive and die!”
The voice calling out to the airborne girl with pink twin tails, [Strawberry Pink], belonged to a dust-covered girl.
“And ban that Monofilament Whip, too! It’ll cut you to pieces and kill you with just a touch! And this time, we have hostages!”
Black hair tied in a ponytail.
A girl wearing a suit that seemed ill-suited to her fifteen-year-old body.
A girl in whom an innocent air and a mature allure existed side by side.
Her codename was [Viola Purple]. Her real name was Shizuki Fuyumi.
She had a composed air about her, and looked a year or two older than Strawberry Pink.
“You went silent, so I thought you were dead! I mean, dead people can’t die no matter how many times you kill them, right?”
“…Well, all the hostages died in that explosion just now!”
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t sound so pleased! They’re precious Japanese citizens!”
Strawberry Pink scratched her cheek, looking a little embarrassed.
“But, but, as long as you’re safe, Purple, that’s all that matters, right? There are more citizens than you can shake a stick at…”
“Don’t let your guard down just because you’re using [magic]! HQ records every word we say!”
“Aye-aye, captain!”
Free thought was forbidden.
For a girl who could reduce an entire building to fragments with a mere thought, this was only to be expected.
And that was precisely why Strawberry Pink loved the time she was permitted to use [magic]… loved her work. It was time in which she was allowed to think.
Time in which she could fly through the sky freely, as she pleased, following the whims of her own mind.
How wonderful was that?
Why, she was allowed to gaze at the stars and think how beautiful they were.
She was allowed to look at the lights twinkling in the skyscrapers and remember the Christmas illuminations.
The lights streaming through the city in great sweeping rivers.
The headlights of cars flooding the streets.
Every last one of them was beautiful, radiant. Even the baleful phosphorescence of the M-particles looked just like the illuminations from that day…
“Pink.”
“Oops! What, what is it? Come to think of it, what caused the explosion…?”
“You’re forbidden from [reminiscing]. I’ll recommend increasing your medication when we get back.”
“Gweeeeh!”
Strawberry Pink let out a croak like a frog being strangled, and Purple smiled wryly.
Viola Purple was Strawberry Pink’s senior.
Recently, she had begun to be assigned not only to magical girl missions but also to duties as a negotiator, handling negotiations with terrorists to secure the release of hostages.
Her suit still looked a little awkward on her, but soon enough, it would suit her perfectly.
She would become an adult.
All the M-particles would be surgically removed from her body, and she would grow into an adult who could think freely and speak freely…
Strawberry Pink watched Viola Purple’s wry smile, thought how grown-up she looked, and felt envious, a little lonely, and excited all at once.
An explosion.
Leaving behind a beautiful memory, Viola Purple’s flesh scattered in all directions.
Fragments of the ruined building, sliced into tiny pieces, had hurtled towards her on the blast wave.
There was no way for a human being to defend against it.
Not for a human being who had not been authorised to use [magic].
The dress of magic cyberwear enveloping the girls’ bodies used circulating M-particles to deflect every conceivable impact, protecting their soft, immature flesh to the very last.
That was why the girls could walk through the heart of a blast.
Adults wearing ordinary suits had no magic.
“…”
Strawberry Pink stared at the source of the blast.
Her lips did not tremble.
Nor did her shoulders.
Fear had been the first thing surgically removed. The longing for home, the yearning for something greater, the feeling of loneliness: all had been excised in operations performed long ago. None remained within Strawberry Pink.
The emotionally charged conversations exchanged between the girls were nothing more than attempts to fill the gaps left by those lost feelings through imagination… a controlled, emotionless imagination… nothing more than something mechanical and devoid of feeling.
And so Strawberry Pink’s eyes did not waver.
Her lips correctly identified the threat they had captured and recorded it in the log.
“[Witch].”