September 2024

  ***

  Miori sat still, staring in one direction as the shutter of a camera could be heard over and over. She was illuminated from all sides, wearing an elegant lolita dress – much more elegant than what she usually wore, in fact.

  She finally gave in after Ayame’s repeated invitations and let a photographer capture her features on film, dressed in the most regal gothic lolita outfit she had ever worn.

  “Wonderful, wonderful! Now turn this way. Now give a little smile! Now a scowl! Now look neutral, like you’re a porcein doll. Yes, yes, that’s it!”

  Miori followed the instructions to the letter. She was still a pro at faking these expressions, owing to her past when she hid her true self – and now she was gd to get some use out of them.

  “Alright, how about we take a little break?”

  This voice belonged to Ayame, who entered the studio and looked at the ptop next to the photographer, scrolling through all the photos before she let out a little whistle.

  “You’re really model material, Miori. Tell you what, after this gig I’ll give you a glowing review and you can watch the modeling requests sail in from other companies!”

  Miori got up from the chair that she sat in until now – the set behind her was modeled after a gothic castle interior to match her outfit – the chair looked like an antiquity, too, with eborately carved armrests, legs and a red satin cushion. She walked over to the ptop and had a look herself.

  “It doesn’t really look all that model-like yet.”

  “Oh, it will. After a few touch-ups.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?” Miori raised an eyebrow.

  “Miori, darling, everyone does that these days.”

  Miori rolled her eyes in response to her friend’s words, pulling out her phone as she scrolled absentmindedly through some of her feeds.

  “I’d like to be pretty without any touch-ups.”

  “Ah, you are very pretty. You’re the cutest girl I know!” Ayame excimed, a hand on her heart. “Be my girlfriend, Miori!”

  “No, thanks.” Miori replied in a decade-long rehearsed rebuke which she didn’t mean a hundred percent anymore.

  “Ow, my heart!” Ayame threw the back of her hand over her forehead and sniffled theatrically, eliciting a quiet chuckle from Miori.

  ***

  A little ter Miori was sipping from a provided drink through a straw while getting ready for the next set of photoshoots. She was going to be photographed with each and every one of the six dresses Ayame designed for this season, so the previous photo session was just the beginning.

  “You’ve been checking your phone an awful lot today, Miori. Something special happening?”

  Ayame peeked over the lolita’s shoulder, catching a glimpse of live footage of the big, televised trial that was being held today.

  “Ugh, that scumbag,” Ayame said immediately.

  “You know about him?” Miori looked over her shoulder at Ayame.

  “Of course. News say he repeatedly abused various young girls as a client of that human trafficking operation that got blown open recently.”

  Ayame shook her head, looking to the side.

  “They secured his blood and everything, but apparently the police ‘lost’ that evidence before the trial. No surprise, he’s the CEO of that bigshot company that developed the city’s early warning system against interdimensional attacks. He has money to spend.”

  Miori listened to Ayame’s bitter words while she looked at the man’s face on the miniature screen.

  “People still don’t know how that system does what it does. Rumors say that his company is closely affiliated with Triple-Eye.”

  Miori turned towards Ayame, tilting her head.

  “Triple-Eye?”

  “Really, you don’t know about it?”

  Miori shook her head and Ayame expined.

  “It’s the Interdimensional Incident Insurance. Name’s a pun. It’s a global insurance company that, unlike other insurance companies, pays out every cim filed if it’s truthful.”

  Miori furrowed her brow.

  “How can they afford that?”

  “The contract states that when they pay for damages, they get to pilfer any magic artifacts, corpses of magical beings or other magical things from the incident site. I guess they found a way to make massive money off it. Or they operate at a loss, but whatever they gain from their scavenging is worth the costs.”

  Ayame shrugged her shoulders after her expnation.

  “Sounds shady. Very shady,” Miori observed, before focusing her attention back on the CEO.

  “Too bad whichever Magical Girl messed up the den didn’t get him as well, huh?” Ayame kept the conversation going, not seeing Miori’s hidden smile.

  “Who knows. It might still happen.”

  “Woah! When did you start talking that ominously? You’re scaring me!” Ayame chuckled and patted Miori’s shoulder.

  “Anyway, let’s get these sets done. I have an appointment with my editor ter.”

  Miori stiffened as she heard that. “With Hitoishi…?”

  “Yeah, with her. Who knows, maybe she likes me now, but I’m not very hopeful.” Ayame shrugged.

  “Do you have any pns after this?”

  Miori pondered before she turned towards Ayame and smiled.

  “I’m going to take out the trash, I think.”

  Yasuo Takara was a 54-year-old man, heading one of the major technology companies in Japan as its CEO. His company currently held excellent retions with various politicians that promised him tax breaks and exemptions from safety inspections, and in turn he offered them highly paid positions in his company after their retirement from politics. There weren’t many probes or inquiries in the first pce, as he provided the city with the vital early warning system for interdimensional incursions – giving citizens time to evacuate an area before things get too bad. The technology behind it was a closely guarded secret, a cooperation between his company and Triple-Eye.

  He ran several pet projects, like an idol agency, though the market was currently harsh thanks to the existence of the Celestial Sisters. Hopefully, whatever incident took pce yesterday would take care of that.

  He liked to drink expensive alcohol, eat even more expensive food and liked to spend his time at high society gatherings at day, and having sex with young women at night. The tter of all these interests nded him in his current predicament, though he personally didn’t see it as a failing on his part.

  He was one day approached by men in business suits that poorly hid tattooed sleeves as he visited an exclusive hostess club. He was skeptical and hostile at first, after all, they interrupted his time with one of his favorite girls there, and he was certain that this would be the day she would agree to an after-hours date with him.

  What they offered, though, was too tempting to not agree to have a peek.

  And so he found himself in a warehouse, entering a strange exchange. For money and some of his blood, he could have his way with his pick of women – either the ones lured by the group’s schemes or he could send them a picture of a woman he would like for them to abduct.

  Within a short time he enjoyed their expressions of fear and pain and the power he held over them – a power he should wield over society’s rabble by virtue of his status in the first pce. Whatever pleasures society owed him he took by force in this private environment.

  They wouldn’t remember their time with him, he was assured, and certainly enough, after he had them abduct his favorite hostess and had his way with her, he visited the club again after she was released and it was like nothing changed between them, though she was reprimanded by management for missing for a week without notice and couldn’t remember why she did that.

  And then it happened: A Magical Girl caught wind of the entire operation and blew it wide open. He would have the guys who ratted him out killed, but it appeared like the Magical Girl got them before he could. His blood was secured as evidence, and a girl he visited at least three times named him as one of her abusers.

  ***

  So, he sat in the courtroom, although he wasn’t entirely worried about his fate. The police force could be made to ‘lose’ evidence with a little bit of political maneuvering and the witness intimidated, which his men immediately worked on.

  His wyers could drag this case out for years, if need be, turning it into a huge financial drain, while he had the means to hire unsavory men to harass her family for years, maybe even decades to come. Lawyers and less official representatives spent the past three months making sure that she knew that.

  He would also spend no little effort to sue every single newspaper and magazine that reported on him for defamation. With Japan’s ws regarding that only requiring evidence that defaming statements were made and harmful, no matter if they were true or not, he had a very good chance at winning and inflicting a heavy blow against those publications.

  As his victim walked into the courtroom, he could already see her broken spirit.

  That is that taken care of.

  The case took an annoyingly long time either way – even more so as the prosecution tried to make the girl speak up. But for mysterious reasons she cmmed up, never revealing who exactly the man she saw was. When Yasuo was pointed at, she wouldn’t confirm or deny whether he was the man who visited her multiple times.

  Things ground to a standstill and at the end of the proceedings the case was dropped due to ck of evidence, with the witness unwilling to speak up. Of course, people knew that the girl must have been intimidated by him to keep her mouth shut, but there was nothing they could do. His wealth and status made him untouchable.

  ***

  Sitting in the back of his car he watched as the mass of people which had gathered to witness the outcome of the case gred at his window – none would be able to see him through the tinted surface, at least.

  However, there was a peculiar woman among them. Blonde, in that gaudy dark lolita style that has been popur for quite a few years now, who seemed to stare through the tinted gss directly into his eyes.

  I don’t like the look of her.

  He took out his phone and snapped a quick picture through the window – he had another group with the same memory erasing deal at his beck and call, and though he knew the risks of getting involved in those kinds of deals right after a court case, he simply couldn't restrain himself.

  He kept staring at the road ahead as they drove to his luxury apartment. A sudden fog appeared, reducing visibility enough that the driver needed to slow down.

  “Hmph. There was nothing about fog in the weather report.” Yasuo compined to his driver.

  “Tanaka, are you listening? Respond to me when I’m talking to you, damn it! That’s part of your job!”

  He grumbled and pulled himself forwards, looking past the headrest where Tanaka was supposed to sit – and found the seat empty. The car was rolling along an empty street and came to a slow stop.

  “What in the…”

  He looked around before he opened the door and got out.

  “Hello?”

  The city looked entirely abandoned. In the distance he could see a mesh of blue lines in the sky, like the city was encased in a dome of gss.

  Speaking of blue, there was a blue glow in the corner of his eye. Approaching rapidly.

  The middle-aged bulbous man was wriggling on the ground in an utterly pathetic manner. Bellona summoned a trident to nail him to the asphalt, with two of the prongs barely going past his fat neck. It was clear to her that all he had to show for himself was an obscene amount of money – and he was never shy to compensate by using it.

  “You’re not killing him outright?”

  He might know something. I doubt Lethe put all her eggs in one basket.

  “As long as he doesn’t see the dawn, do as you please.”

  Bellona showed the man a mad grin – Miori’s fierce side merged with Bellona proper’s bloodlust into a woman with little scruples to dispose of genuine scum.

  “Now, little man. Are there any other locations where you go to have fun, than just the one I cleared out a while ago? Tell me and I’ll make it painless.”

  As if to demonstrate her point she twisted the trident a little, thus tightening it around the man’s neck.

  The man let out a panicked sound that resembled a squeak, kicking his legs and trying to get away from her.

  “You magic bitches can’t just put yourselves above us like that! Above the w! The case was dropped just no- AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

  Bellona’s patience had its limits. If he was just going to try and talk his way out of this, she would have no scruples to inflict a little pain on him.

  Right now a dagger was buried in his thigh, which she threw with pinpoint precision the moment he started his tirade.

  “The next one will turn you into a eunuch.” She warned him calmly.

  He kept screaming and gasped, fidgeting with a hand inside his suit jacket. Bellona furrowed her brow and guessed correctly that he possessed a firearm, but she let him have his little moment.

  A single bullet was fired from a 9mm pistol, barely grazing her cheek as she leaned her head to the side.

  “A tip: even if you’re not up against an opponent with heightened reflexes… aim for center mass.”

  The man screamed and still tried to hit Bellona’s head, not having learned his lesson. Multiple shots rang through the empty copy of the city until the weapon finally clicked uselessly. Bellona ended the charade by pinning his hand to the concrete with her boot; with some more added pressure she heard bones creaking and the man screaming in greater agony.

  “If you’re quite done with your outburst, you can start telling me all about your other contacts.”

  She saw his spirit break – and considered it a thousandth of the debt he owed his victims paid.

  ***

  Yasuo Takara was found dead at 54. His driver didn’t remember what exactly happened, but he suddenly found himself by the side of the road, with no trace of the car. Said car was found outside of the city, burned to a husk, with the remains of the CEO inside. The authorities ruled it an assassination by the criminal elements he associated with. With him dead, his victims were finally speaking up in an official capacity – adding the threat of lengthy legal battles and financial ruin for their families to the accusations. The case was reopened, and while he wouldn’t see the jail time he deserved, his estate was made to pay damages to his victims in full.

  Bellona approached a certain location on the outskirts of Tokyo in rapid flight – twilight already shrouded the city, making her stand out a little against the darkened skies. She came to a standstill in front of an abandoned building which used to be a love hotel. Signs still listed the hourly prices on the outside and showed faded photographs of the rooms – one was styled like the vish bedroom of an intergactic emperor; another was oddly enough themed after a wrestling ring. There was a bed shaped like a sci-fi vessel, and a room that was obviously supposed to be a BDSM dungeon, but its gaudy colors made it hard to take seriously. The most out there room was definitely the one themed after a carnival.

  She assessed the surrounding area – there were a few other buildings, likewise abandoned. The residents probably moved to the central Tokyo area some time ago – about two decades ago, one might even guess.

  This love hotel, however, had some light bleeding through the boarded-up windows. People were still here. The unsavory kind, and their victims, too.

  Bellona approached the door slowly, with her halberd at the ready, but for good measure she summoned two flintlocks to her side as well.

  She pushed her body against the door and listened. People were talking inside, and she could make the words out if she focused on them.

  “Hey, did you hear about Takara?”

  “Hm? His case got dropped this afternoon, right?”

  “Yeah, but then he was found dead two hours ter. Someone burned down his car with him inside!”

  “Damn! And I was wondering why he didn’t show up here to blow off steam.”

  Bellona kicked the door in. Heads turned her way and upon recognizing who entered, the criminals’ eyes went wide.

  “It’s the Magical Girl!”

  Multiple of them scurried to grab their guns, so Bellona fired her own first.

  Two of the criminals were hit and tossed on their backs as the armored avenger advanced into the ranks of suit-wearing low-lives and began her bloody work.

  The tip of her halberd pierced the first man’s chest and she used him as a human shield as the first criminals managed to get their guns and fired rounds at her.

  She kicked the body their way and knocked them to the ground before she jumped over them, finishing the job with a quick ssh at their throats.

  She walked down the hallway of the love hotel now. Sometimes men appeared out of a door with barely enough time to show a surprised reaction before she ended their lives.

  One of the gaudy bedrooms was occupied and a man stepped out to compin about the noise. He was a huge man with cruel eyes and an air of wealth around him – Bellona was sure that she saw his face on TV sometimes, but none of that would save him.

  A second ter he slid down the wall with his face distorted in fear, leaving a trail of blood.

  Bellona peeked inside the room and saw a girl trying to cover herself with the bedsheet. Her body was bruised and tears streamed down her face.

  “Do you have something to dress yourself with?” Bellona asked quietly.

  The girl froze for a moment before she processed the question and nodded.

  “Get dressed, then. I’ll gather the others and get you out of here.”

  Bellona pointed a finger at the girl.

  “Deyed spell: Realm of Duels.”

  With that she walked down the rest of the hallway.

  “She’s coming this way! Quick, release them!” She heard someone shout from the end of the hallway and a door next to her swung open. The gaudy room contained half a dozen of Madame Bille’s killer marionettes which often liked to invade and terrorize the streets.

  I heard there was a bck market for magic artifacts, but this is ridiculous!

  Bellona readied herself to face the marionettes, but they remained motionless. The creatures in fact looked like they were scanning her before their strings were simply cut and they fell down, motionless.

  Huh?

  As she was still bewildered by that dispy, bullets struck her pauldron, and she summoned a magic shield to protect herself. From what she could gather these were the st four men who were still alive in here.

  “What the hell! Those cost us a fortune and they didn’t even work?! Use the flower! Call her! I don’t care how angry she will get with us!”

  She rushed ahead, halberd at the ready and finished the job. Screams filled her ears, and she saw a single flower fall out of the hand of the st man.

  It was a rose, the same red shade as Lethe’s ‘hair’ and lipstick.

  Before she could pick it up it disintegrated and its ashes blew away on a breeze.

  “I think we should finish quickly and get out of here.”

  “Agreed.”

  ***

  “Release spell: Realm of Duels!”

  After all resistance died down, Bellona went from room to room to find the girls trapped in this pce. She found a dozen of them, a few huddled together in a room meant to be their cell, while the others were scattered throughout the building in the various other rooms.

  She didn’t want them to see all the blood and the dead men, so one by one she marked them for a deyed activation of her signature spell and finally executed it – the corpses and blood vanished, leaving only her and the girls in the empty love hotel, on the outskirts of Tokyo. She already called the emergency number some time before, so this was just a matter of guiding the girls outside.

  They were scared and traumatized, naturally – no one should ever experience what they experienced in here, and Bellona regretted deeply that she couldn’t have arrived before they were taken. Or the girls before them. Or the girls before those…

  It was a small comfort that they would be the st.

  She made her weapons vanish and guided the girls outside with gentle words and hands on their shoulders if they let her.

  The walk outside was solemn – and even though they didn’t exist in this pocket dimension, Bellona could still see the corpses littering the halls in front of her mind’s eye. There were times when she questioned her violent approach to these people, but every time she saw the effect their actions had on their victims, any and all questions of morality and proportional punishment vanished from her mind. She was one with a goddess of war, an incarnation of battle madness – she’d leave questions of due process and rule of w to her sister and Seika.

  “Our personalities have started to align…”

  As they did two years ago, Bellona. We just had Minerva Crimson by our side to… keep us in check.

  “Well, she is not here. Bring these girls to safety and get us out of here.”

  They arrived outdoors, with Bellona making sure that no one was left behind, then she undid her spell – the little group returned from a slightly foggy and bright environment into the pitch-bck night with only the love hotel’s lights and the stars around them.

  “You will be safe now,” Bellona announced to the scared girls and waited with them until she could see an approaching police car – then she took off.

  Miori turned the key in her apartment door’s lock. She felt empty inside – whenever she did something like this, she had to harden her heart, but she couldn’t help the pain she felt from watching girls in those situations. She was under no illusions that she could fully stop the world’s cruelty against women, that her interventions were anything but a drop in the ocean, but nonetheless she was gd that she could make sure that those things didn’t happen again for some time in a very small part of the world which she occupied.

  She didn’t pay much mind to her surroundings and pulled out her phone. Something was bugging her, ever since she cleared her mind of the criminal case: there was an excessive amount of reporting on the Celestial Sisters’ concert, and now she needed to know why.

  As she opened an article, her eyes widened. The Celestial Sisters colpsed during their concert, was the official story. Fans said they only saw the bloodied body of Sol being hurriedly carried out of the venue in an ambunce, with no trace of Luna.

  “What?” Miori’s hands shook as the meaning of those news dawned on her.

  I was so stupid! Of course, she wouldn’t leave us alone if I simply didn’t allow Senpai to say, ‘I love you’!

  She hurriedly opened LINE and was about to message Hitoishi as something smashed through her phone’s screen from above.

  After her reflexive flinching reaction Miori’s eyes stared in horror as she saw the device impaled by a spiked tendril – then she was seized from behind, with Lethe’s hand at her throat.

  “I swear, today everyone is committed to angering me… and I’ve been so… lenient, even! First that stupid thing Seika did at the café, now I find out you destroyed the st of my… farms.”

  Miori struggled, but Lethe wrapped an arm around her.

  “Shush now, Miori… unless you want me to eviscerate you. Slowly…”

  Lethe’s voice was dripping with anger and distilled sadism, causing Miori to go quiet in fear as the pnt woman demonstrably slithered a spiked tendril into sight.

  “Good girl. Now, here’s how you will atone for your missteps: I will rip Seika’s life apart, piece by piece, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once I’m almost done with her, I’ll come and get you… and I’ll make you watch the broken shell of the woman you love as I steal the st memories of you from her… before I kill her.”

  Lethe plucked at something in the air and two lilies grew from her hand.

  “Seika’s home address… and Seika’s work address. Got those by stalking her, didn’t you? What a naughty girl.”

  Her vile ugh filled Miori’s ears as she watched helplessly.

  “Don’t think you can just read your little notebook to regain those memories, either,” Lethe said as her tendril slid towards Miori’s bed. It wrapped around the notebook she read every morning and brought it to Lethe’s hand.

  “I’ll be taking that. And if you’re wondering why I’m here, Miori…”

  Lethe’s finger knocked against the talismans at the door.

  “I’m not a spirit. I’m a curse.”

  ***

  Miori sat on the edge of her bed, holding her head after Lethe left. Her stupidity cost her everything – no, it cost Hitoishi everything.

  She was now left with no way to contact her beloved senpai, no way to warn her. What could she do?

  “Go out there and make noise.”

  Miori blinked and looked at the ring on her finger.

  “What?”

  “If she is the woman I take her for, she will find you. Go out there as Bellona Azure. Announce your presence. Get involved in every instance of petty crime and supernatural incidents you can find. Do all that, and your beloved will notice. She will find you.”