Chapter 29: The New Generation

The woman who had so suddenly, so unexpectedly, appeared on their quiet family outing… the one who introduced herself with the poetic name of Yuki Kirishima.

Hearing the name, one would subconsciously, instinctively think of the color "white," of purity and untouched snow. It was a vague, almost sentimental feeling, but it was a name that only Kenji Tanaka, for his own private, deeply personal, and currently very confused reasons, would probably fixate on in such a strange, almost fateful way. He felt, with a jolt that had nothing to do with fishing, as if this were some kind of… destiny. A sign from the universe. Or perhaps just a really weird coincidence.

It was just like how his old friend Akiyama had, on the drive over here, brought up the idea of him finding someone new, of moving on. And then, as if summoned by his very words, this beautiful, enigmatic young woman had appeared before him, seemingly out of thin air.

Kenji Tanaka, what in the seven circles of hell are you thinking right now?! Get a damn grip on yourself!

This woman was young. Incredibly, almost unfairly young. She looked just like her, like his Kaoru had in her own vibrant, sun-kissed youth. But… but she wasn’t Kaoru. She wasn’t. And he, Kenji Tanaka, was already a forty-something-year-old man, a washed-up, unemployed salaryman with a rebellious teenage daughter. Even if he were to seriously start looking again, he should be looking for someone closer to his own age, someone who understood the soul-crushing realities of mortgages and bad backs… Was he, by any chance, supposed to emulate those ridiculously rich, morally bankrupt CEOs from the business magazines and start parading around with a gaggle of twenty-something-year-old girls hanging off his arm? The thought was deeply, profoundly inappropriate. And frankly, quite exhausting just to contemplate.

It’s all Akiyama-san’s fault! Damn him! If he hadn’t put all these ridiculous, hopeful, and frankly quite pathetic ideas in my head today, I wouldn’t even be having these kinds of embarrassing, mid-life-crisis thoughts!

After their "agreement" to be fishing buddies had been reached, Yuki Kirishima produced a sleek, high-tech folding lounge chair from seemingly nowhere and, with a graceful motion, settled down on it. Right there, in the shallow, sun-dappled part of the stream, she began to contentedly bask in the sun, looking for all the world like a pampered lady on vacation.

“Ahhh, this… this is the absolute, most supreme form of enjoyment,” she sighed blissfully, her eyes closed, a picture of pure, unadulterated comfort. “The sun is so warm, but not hot enough to make you feel uncomfortable. And the stream flowing beneath you is so pleasantly cool and wonderfully comfortable. This is just… perfect! Absolutely perfect!” Her face was a mask of pure, unadulterated, almost smug comfort. She was clearly a woman who knew, on a deep, spiritual level, how to properly enjoy the finer, more relaxing things in life.

Kenji Tanaka, with a grunt, forcefully calmed his racing, inappropriate heart and returned his focus to the much simpler, much less confusing task of fishing. A short while later, he felt a strong, sudden tug on his fishing rod. Kenji’s eyes sharpened. With a surge of adrenaline, he yanked the rod up with a sudden, powerful, and perhaps slightly-too-enthusiastic motion!

The line snapped with a pathetic ping.

“…” Kenji Tanaka stared blankly at the now-limp, useless fishing line. Have I been spending far too much time as the ridiculously overpowered Magical Girl Black lately? Have I completely lost my ability to accurately judge the tensile strength of ordinary, mundane objects? If he had been using a rod and line constructed from his own practically indestructible magical girl power, he could probably, with little to no effort, reel in a fully grown, and probably very angry, great white shark.

“Hey, Akiyama-san! This fishing line of yours is a bit… substandard, isn’t it!” Kenji grumbled, trying to cover up his own blunder. “Is the quality really this abysmally bad?”

Ren’s father chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. “Ah, well, you’ll have to ask my dear wife about that one, Kenji-san! That’s all the budget for ‘recreational fishing equipment’ would allow for, I’m afraid!”

Just then, Hana walked over and expertly assessed the situation with a single glance. “Here, let me help you guys out. I’ll just enchant your fishing lines with a simple, high-level strengthening and durability spell. It should last for quite a while, probably.”

It had to be said, Hana’s "Mage" Esper ability was incredibly, almost unfairly useful in daily, mundane life. If they were all, for some bizarre reason, stranded on a deserted island together, Hana would, without a single shadow of a doubt, be the one who could live the most comfortably, the most luxuriously, probably conjuring up a five-star hotel and a gourmet buffet out of thin air while the rest of them were still trying to figure out how to make fire. But that, of course, was a topic for another, possibly more apocalyptic time.

“Miss Hana, if I may ask, are you an Esper?” Yuki Kirishima, who had gracefully stood up from her state-of-the-art lounge chair, looked at Hana with eyes that were now filled with an almost undisguised, envious sparkle. “What kind of amazing ability do you have?”

“Oh, me? I’m a Mage,” Hana said, seeing no particular reason to hide it. She was, after all, quite proud of her unique powers. “Basically,” she added, with a touch of youthful, nonchalant bravado, “I can do pretty much… anything, really.”

“!” Yuki’s eyes widened dramatically. “Then… then can you… oh my gosh, can you actually summon creatures from other worlds?!”

Hana was a little surprised by the strange, almost overly specific question. “Miss Kirishima, that’s a rather… unusual… question to ask… Most ordinary people, when they find out what I can do, just immediately ask me if I can conjure up a big pile of untraceable cash for them.”

“Ahem!” Yuki coughed delicately, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. “Well, you see, I’m actually… I’m a webnovel writer, in my spare time. Coming here, traveling alone to a place like this, it’s actually for… ah… research! And inspiration! Yes! And I must say, I’ve never, ever seen, or even heard of, an ability quite like yours before! It’s fascinating!” She seemed genuinely, almost electrically excited now. “Can you really, truly do anything? Like, anything at all?”

Hana thought for a moment, a mischievous glint in her own eye. “Well, if you really want to get technical about it… I think… I think I probably can actually do that, yeah. I could give it a try, I guess. But, just to manage expectations, my current mana pool probably isn’t nearly large enough to summon anything too powerful, or too… interesting. It’ll probably just be some kind of interdimensional squirrel or something.”

Their strange, fantastical conversation immediately caught everyone’s attention. Even Ren, who was usually more interested in practical matters, looked over with a flicker of genuine curiosity. He asked Hana, his voice laced with a hint of concern, “Hana, are you absolutely certain you won’t accidentally summon something… you know… incredibly dangerous? Or universe-endingly evil?”

“Honestly? I have no idea!” Hana chirped cheerfully. “But my mana is still pretty weak, right? So it’s only natural that I wouldn’t be able to summon anything that strong, wouldn’t you agree? It’s just logic! And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to leave a little bit of my mana in reserve, just in case I need to put up an emergency barrier or something. I’m not a complete idiot, you know.”

Ren nodded slowly, though his expression was still a little tense. He then, very casually and silently went over to the car and retrieved a large, rather ominous-looking duffel bag. What was inside that bag, no one knew. And no one, at that moment, particularly wanted to ask. His parents also looked incredibly interested in this impromptu magical spectacle. After all, Hana usually just used her convenient magic for mundane, everyday, slice-of-life things, which had, over the years, somewhat desensitized her family and close friends to its truly wondrous, almost miraculous nature. They just thought of it as a convenient, if sometimes quirky, household appliance. But now, this… this felt like something truly, genuinely fantastical, something straight out of a high-fantasy novel, was about to happen.

Hana thought for a moment, then, with a flourish that was pure, unadulterated showmanship, she began to arrange some small, smooth, river-worn stones on the ground in a perfect, intricate circle.

Yuki Kirishima, watching her with rapt attention, asked, “Is there some kind of special, ancient, magical significance to that particular arrangement of stones?”

“Ah… nope, not at all,” Hana admitted with a sheepish grin. “I just think arranging them like this, you know, gives it more of a cool, ritualistic feel. Makes it seem more like a proper, serious, high-level summoning, right? It’s all about the presentation!”

“Oh, you really, truly know your stuff, Hana-chan! A true professional!” Yuki exclaimed, she and Hana now looking as if they had just, in that single moment, become instant, inseparable, soul-bonded best friends.

Kenji Tanaka, seeing this, decided to abandon his now-useless fishing rod altogether. He wanted to see for himself, up close and personal, what the real, fundamental difference was between his own daughter’s "Mage" magic and his own "Magical Girl" power. Everyone gathered around the stone circle, their eyes filled with a mixture of curiosity and eager, almost childlike anticipation.

Only Ren, standing slightly apart from the group, had already, with a grimly determined expression, unzipped the ominous duffel bag, his hand now firmly, reassuringly gripping the cold, hard steel of a military-grade assault rifle. If anything, anything at all, even remotely suspicious or not-as-advertised emerged from that glowing circle, he would, without a single moment’s hesitation, immediately open fire, unload the entire clip, and then, for good measure, follow up with a well-aimed, high-explosive grenade he had… acquired… for just such a contingency. One could never be too prepared.

In reality, Hana’s actual spell-casting process was incredibly, anti-climactically fast. She didn’t need to chant long, complicated, pseudo-Latin incantations or perform any elaborate, time-consuming gestures; as long as she willed it, as long as she could clearly visualize it in her mind, the corresponding spell would simply, almost instantly manifest from the depths of her heart, from the very core of her being.

“Otherworldly Summoning! Let’s see what we get!”

A sudden, brilliant flash of pure, blindingly white light, a light that was surprisingly, unnervingly gentle and not at all piercing to the eyes, erupted from the center of the stone circle. Something… something strange… something unnatural was materializing from within it! When the pure, white light finally, gently faded, a strange, bizarre, and somehow vaguely familiar little creature appeared in its place.

And this strange, deceptively cute creature actually, unbelievably, spoke in a high-pitched, almost telepathic human voice. “…Do you want to become a magical girl?”

Ren instantly, without a single, solitary thought, without a single moment of hesitation, pulled out the assault rifle and, with a guttural roar of pure, unadulterated, almost PTSD-induced rage, unloaded on the strange, white, cat-like (?) creature in a deafening, continuous barrage of high-velocity gunfire. Blood, fluff, and probably some kind of weird, otherworldly ectoplasm splattered everywhere in a gruesome, technicolor shower. Ren, his eyes wide with a strange, manic light, completely emptied his entire thirty-round clip into the twitching creature, but still, still, not feeling satisfied, not feeling safe, he expertly slapped in a fresh new clip and then, with a grim finality, emptied that one as well, reducing the poor, unsuspecting creature to little more than a pile of shredded, vaguely cute-looking remains. Only then, with the smell of gunpowder and ozone hanging heavy in the air, did he finally, with a ragged, shuddering gasp, let out a long, slow breath of profound, existential relief.

He then, with an almost unnerving calm, turned to a completely, utterly, shell-shocked Hana Tanaka. “Hana. Don’t. Ever. Use. That. Spell. Again. Do you understand me? Look what you just summoned. I, a mere Normie, know exactly what that goddamn thing is, so you, the magical girl expert, should understand it even better. Right?” His voice was dangerously quiet.

Hana, her soul still shaken, her face pale as a sheet, nodded frantically, her eyes wide with a dawning, soul-deep horror. “Y-you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m so sorry. I… I never want to become some kind of goddess of the freaking universe. Never.”

Although they didn’t know what the two terrified young people were actually talking about, since it was Ren’s decisive, and frankly quite terrifying judgment, it definitely wasn’t a good thing. Kenji didn’t say anything more, only adding to his still-trembling daughter, with a father’s gentle concern, “It seems… it seems you should probably use such dangerous-looking, potentially universe-ending spells a little less often in the future, sweetie. Just a thought.” He then looked apologetically, and with no small amount of embarrassment, at their new and probably now deeply traumatized, friend, Yuki Kirishima. “I’m so, so very sorry about all that. I truly hope you weren’t… uh… too frightened by that… unexpected development.”

Yuki Kirishima, however, just smiled, a strange, unreadable, and perhaps even slightly amused expression in her eyes. “What’s there to be sorry about? Seeing something so incredibly rare, so wonderfully unexpected, is very exciting, you know! Very, very enjoyable! And besides,” she added, her eyes sparkling with a mysterious light, “it’s also given me some truly wonderful, divine inspiration for my next novel. The possibilities are endless!” She then looked at Hana, her smile genuine and warm. “Thank you, Hana-chan. For the show.”

“I-it’s okay! It was nothing! Really! No problem at all!” Hana stammered, still looking a little pale. “But, uh, hey! The time! Look at the time! It’s about right, isn’t it? Ren, my dear Ren, let’s… let’s start making lunch now, shall we! I’m suddenly starving!”

Ren, with a final, wary glance at the smoldering remains of the otherworldly creature, put the still-smoking assault rifle back in his duffel bag. As an official, duly licensed (mostly) Supporter, it wasn’t actually that strange for him to have access to such things. Probably. Mr. and Mrs. Akiyama, however, both had rather strange, deeply concerned expressions on their usually cheerful faces. No matter how you looked at it, no matter how you tried to justify it, seeing their academically gifted, universally praised, and generally perfect son suddenly, without warning, whip out an assault rifle like some kind of hardened, battle-scarred mercenary and then proceed to unload an entire clip into a small, fluffy creature… well, as loving, supportive parents, it was, to say the least, just a little bit concerning.

Wait a minute… was there an actual, military-grade assault rifle in the car this whole time? Next to the cooler and the bath towels?

“Ren, my dear boy,” Mrs. Akiyama said, her voice a little shaky, her smile a little too wide, “why… why don’t you perhaps put your… ah… your special, high-powered… equipment… in Hana-chan’s convenient magical storage space? What if… what if it had accidentally gone off in the car? It’s so terribly, terribly dangerous, you know—”

Ren shook his head, his expression now serious and professional again. “Hana’s dimensional space can only be opened when she has a sufficient supply of mana, Mom. If she runs out of mana in an emergency, as she almost did today, she can’t open it. If I had put my contingency plans in there and she had run out of mana, then we wouldn’t have been able to get them out when we needed them most. It’s a matter of tactical resource management.”

He really does, terrifyingly, think of absolutely everything. His parents exchanged another worried glance.

Ren secretly, imperceptibly cast another, more probing glance at the still-smiling Yuki. She seemed remarkably, unnervingly calm about the whole shocking situation, not at all like there was anything wrong. She hadn’t even flinched. He still felt, with a gnawing certainty, that something was very, very strange about her. He made a mental note to run a full, deep-dive background check on this "Yuki Kirishima" as soon as he got back to a secure terminal.

Of course, the friendly, almost cozy atmosphere between her and his Tanaka-ojisan seemed quite good, surprisingly so. So Ren didn’t plan to say anything about his suspicions for now. If his poor, lonely uncle could really, truly find someone he liked, someone who made him happy, well, that would be a wonderful, miraculous thing. He deserved a little happiness.

As he thought this, his mind, against his will, couldn’t help but drift back to the rather… unforgettable… sight of Magical Girl Black’s youthful, surprisingly well-proportioned body from that fateful, incredibly awkward day in the hot spring. Such a young, delicate, yet powerful body… He couldn’t help but recall, with a fresh surge of embarrassment, a certain great and deeply problematic literary work: Lolita. What was that line again? "My life, my light, my fire, my sin, my soul, my Lolita?" Ugh, sometimes, reading too many great, psychologically complex works of literature wasn’t a particularly good thing for a healthy young man’s psyche. You couldn’t help but be influenced, however slightly, by some of their more… unconventional… ideas. But he, Ren Akiyama, was devoted, completely, utterly devoted to Hana Tanaka, and only Hana Tanaka! He was just… he was just a little bit, understandably, and perhaps permanently stimulated by that shocking, unforgettable sight. Yes, that was all it was. A temporary sensory overload. Probably.

He focused intently, almost violently on grilling the meat for their barbecue, trying to use the simple, manly act of cooking to calm his racing, inappropriate thoughts.

At this very moment, in the shadowy, high-tech, and probably very evil-looking headquarters of the nefarious Darkmoon Coven.

“My Queen! My glorious, magnificent Queen! I have successfully, and with no small amount of technical flair, I might add, infiltrated their vehicle’s dashboard camera and audio recording systems! As you commanded, the asset known as Dark Butterfly has already, and with remarkable success, integrated herself with the target group! Magical Girl Black will never, ever guess that this time, our primary target is not the insignificant people around her, not her precious, rebellious little daughter, not even her surprisingly competent future son-in-law, but her! Her very own heart! When one’s greatest, most cherished love, thought to be lost forever, suddenly, miraculously reappears before them, even the most heinous, most unforgivable betrayal can seem so… so wonderfully, so tragically noble, don’t you think? That daughter of his, she is the living, breathing fruit of his past love. Now, faced with his past love, his true love, on one side, and his beloved daughter on the other—what choice will he make, I wonder? The psychological pressure will be immense! Exquisite!”

Shadow Walker, the Coven’s resident tech-savvy supervillain, cackled with pure, unadulterated, almost nerdy glee. “Based on the extensive, highly detailed data we gathered from Strawberry Sweetheart’s past, and very entertaining Inversion experience, we are absolutely, positively certain that the probability of Magical Girl Black catastrophically, beautifully Inverting under these specific, carefully crafted circumstances is as high as ninety percent! My Queen, that pathetic, goody-two-shoes Strawberry Sweetheart, and her entire era of oppressive light, is well and truly finished!”

Darkmoon Queen’s cold, calculating gaze, however, was not fixed on the grainy, dashboard-cam images of Kenji Tanaka and her deep-cover agent, Dark Butterfly. Her eyes, her entire, undivided attention, was strangely, almost obsessively locked on the image of the young man, Ren Akiyama.

“My Queen?” Shadow Walker prompted, his gleeful cackling trailing off into a confused silence.

Darkmoon Queen snapped back to reality, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes. She saw the concerned, almost worried expression on her subordinate’s usually smug face.

“My Queen, you… you’ve been spacing out a lot lately. Is something troubling you?”

The Queen felt a rare, unfamiliar twinge of guilt. She sighed, a sound of profound and regal weariness. “I heard a rumor… that in A-City, a new magical girl has appeared? A… Magical Girl Red?”

“Yes, my Queen. That is correct.” Shadow Walker’s own expression immediately turned serious, almost solemn. He expertly manipulated the holographic panel floating in his hands, and a shimmering, three-dimensional projection of a young girl, clad in a striking, crimson-red battle suit and completely wreathed in roaring, incandescent flames, appeared in the center of the dark room. A constant stream of combat data and power level analyses scrolled beside the image. “The asset known as ‘Red’ appears to be the same fundamental type of magical girl as those from the past, classic series. She primarily uses the power of flames—the fire of passion, they say, the fire of unwavering hope. A rather tedious, one-dimensional skillset, if you ask me. However, in terms of raw, quantifiable stats… well, there’s a massive, almost laughable gap between her and the anomalous Magical Girl Black. From this data, we can conclusively surmise that Black is, as we suspected, a true anomaly, a statistical outlier, a bug in the system. Red is the one who should, by all rights, be benchmarked against the likes of Strawberry Sweetheart as the new standard-bearer of their generation.”

“The Gem Generation of magical girls,” Darkmoon Queen mused, her voice a low, melancholic whisper, “they were all so incredibly, so magnificently powerful, yet so tragically, so beautifully fragile. In the end, they were all, every last one of them, inevitably destroyed by their own overwhelming, uncontrollable strength. A classic tragedy. And the Dessert Generation, the one that followed, that pathetic, saccharine generation of magical girls… each one seemed weaker, more pathetic, more ridiculously themed than the last. And yet, somehow, against all odds and rational expectations, they produced a magical girl hailed as the ‘strongest in history,’ the infuriatingly resilient Strawberry Sweetheart. And now… and now, in this new, emerging Color Generation… what will become of us, my loyal Darkmoon Coven? What is our place in this new, uncertain era? Are we to be simply, unceremoniously buried in the forgotten, irrelevant dust of history?”

Darkmoon Queen’s voice was filled with a strange, almost wistful sorrow. “As a new generation of so-called heroes, of sparkly, idealistic magical girls, arrives on the scene, so too will a new, more powerful, more ambitious generation of fiends inevitably rise to challenge them. Our little plan to force Black’s Inversion… it cannot be delayed! It is more urgent now than ever! Let those arrogant, upstart newcomer fiends, those pathetic pretenders to our dark throne, see the true, uncompromising methods of us old-timers! Let them witness our glorious, beautiful despair!”

“YES, MY QUEEN! FOR THE GLORY OF THE DARKMOON!” her minions chorused, their voices filled with a renewed, fanatical zeal.