Chapter 7: The Decision

Magical Girl Red trudged down the bustling, unfamiliar street, feeling small and insignificant. She wasn't a famous magical girl yet, not by a long shot. Compared to the heroes with outstanding, highly publicized battle records like Strawberry Sweetheart and Magical Girl Black, she lacked any particularly distinctive features, any marketable gimmick. Especially now, with her fiery powers carefully suppressed, she was just an ordinary, if admittedly quite cute, young girl, easily lost in the anonymous sea of the city.

She was desperately searching for Magical Girl Black.

There was, of course, a lot of public information about Black available online if you knew where to look. And as a magical girl herself, a member of the organization, she could also, theoretically, access some of the more restricted, internal data files. But any deeper, more sensitive information required a significantly higher security clearance to access, and attempting to do so would undoubtedly, almost instantly, flag her exact location to the higher-ups. Although, if she were being honest with herself, she suspected the all-knowing, all-seeing organization, with its vast surveillance network, had probably been able to find her anytime they wanted to anyway. They were just letting her run for now.

So, she had resorted to a more… primitive… method. She was trying to find the last known location of Magical Girl Black’s daughter, the girl named Hana Tanaka, whose face had appeared in some of the online footage from the recent attacks. This was not, as she was quickly discovering, an easy task. After the recent incidents, Hana Tanaka's identity protection level had clearly been elevated to a much, much higher priority—

“Magical Girl Red!”

In the midst of her desperate, fruitless search, she suddenly, catastrophically encountered an enemy she had never, ever imagined she would face in her wildest, most terrifying nightmares.

The legendary, mythical leader of the infamous Darkmoon Coven, the magnificent and utterly terrifying Darkmoon Queen herself! And standing beside her, another woman, wreathed in an aura of quiet menace! Two fiends! Two incredibly, overwhelmingly powerful fiends!

The pressure on Red instantly maxed out. A sudden, terrifying, fated encounter on the busy streets of S-City. She desperately, with every fiber of her being, wanted to turn tail and run for her life, to flee as fast as her magical legs could carry her. But showing your back to an enemy, especially one of this caliber, was a foolish, suicidal, and frankly quite embarrassing move. And these opponents weren't the noble, perhaps even merciful Strawberry Sweetheart; they would pursue her, hunt her down, and probably do very, very unpleasant things to her. Without a moment’s hesitation.

For a long, heart-stopping moment, it felt as if the entire, bustling street had fallen completely, deathly silent—of course, in reality, Red simply couldn’t hear any of the other sounds, the traffic, the chatter of the crowds. All of her energy, all of her senses, her very soul, were completely, desperately focused on the two terrifying, predatory fiends standing directly before her. Her terrified gaze fell on the Darkmoon Queen’s left arm. The online videos, the ones she had watched over and over again, clearly showed that this very arm had been blown clean off, utterly obliterated, by the fearsome Magical Girl Black.

But what was she seeing now? Where that arm should have been, there was… an arm completely, tightly wrapped in stained, grimy bandages.

What’s under those bandages? she wondered, her blood running cold with a fresh wave of terror. A newly, magically regenerated arm of flesh and blood? A high-tech, state-of-the-art mechanical prosthetic? Or some other, more grotesque, fiendish, and probably quite disgusting thing? But regardless of the specifics, Red knew, with a certainty that was like a shard of pure ice in her gut, that her current situation was incredibly, laughably bad. She hadn’t even been able to defeat the low-level, probably quite stupid fiends in her own city, and now, somehow, by some cruel twist of fate, she had run into a legendary, world-endingly powerful fiend of the Darkmoon Queen’s caliber!

What am I supposed to do now? How can I possibly survive this? I’m going to die! I’m going to die right here, on this stupid, sunny street!

Yuki Kirishima stared intently at Red. “Magical Girl Red, what are you doing here? You should be back in A-City, shouldn’t you? Playing hooky from your training?”

“I… I have nothing to say to a fiend!” Red retorted, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to sound brave, to sound like a real magical girl. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll back off now! I may not be your match, not yet anyway, but do you really dare to make a move here, in the middle of a crowded city? In broad daylight?”

The Darkmoon Queen let out a soft, musical, and deeply condescending chuckle. “Ah, yes. The new generation of magical girls… so full of pointless bravado.” She then, with a casual, languid, and deeply intimidating grace, walked directly up to the trembling Red, so close that she was practically pressed against her, their noses almost touching. She used her tall, imposing, and frankly quite magnificent figure to look down at Red, her beautiful face a mask of light, almost bored contempt and sarcastic amusement. “You’re quite the clever one, aren’t you? For a rookie. I don’t entirely dislike people like you. You’re rather… interesting. Are all the magical girls of this new, vibrant Color Generation so amusingly entertaining? You are, certainly. And that delightful Magical Girl Black is as well. You’re all so… dramatic.”

“What… what are you trying to say?” Red stammered, trying desperately not to shrink back, not to show the abject terror that was currently threatening to liquefy her insides.

The Darkmoon Queen just shook her head, a sigh of profound, aristocratic boredom escaping her lips. “Dark Butterfly, let’s go. This little one… she won’t make a move. She doesn’t have the nerve.”

Yuki Kirishima, the fiend known as Dark Butterfly, followed obediently after her Queen, though she cast a final, puzzled glance back at the frozen Magical Girl Red.

“Didn’t you notice, my dear, naive Butterfly?” the Queen murmured, her voice a low and deeply amused purr. “Our dear, brave Miss Red… her little legs are trembling, you see~ So very, very violently.”

Kiriyuki glanced back sharply and only then did she finally, truly notice Magical Girl Red’s legs, which were indeed trembling so violently, so uncontrollably, that it was a miracle she was still standing. Her raw, unadulterated fear was palpable, a physical, tangible presence in the air.

“Now do you see why I said she was… interesting?” the Darkmoon Queen said, walking away with a serene composure, seemingly completely unconcerned that Red might overhear her cutting words, completely unafraid that Red might, in a fit of desperate, suicidal rage, suddenly launch a sneak attack from behind. She raised her bandaged, mysterious hand and, without bothering to see if Red was watching, gave a casual, dismissive final wave. “I have a strange feeling we’ll be seeing each other again very soon, my dear Red. Perhaps… in a rather different, and much more entertaining, capacity.”

And with that final, cryptic pronouncement, she was gone, melting effortlessly into the bustling crowd as if she were nothing more than a ghost.

Red finally, with a shuddering, ragged gasp, felt as if all the strength, all the adrenaline, all the very air had been violently drained from her body. She almost couldn’t maintain her magical girl state—perhaps she should just change back. It would be safer. Less conspicuous. But, if she changed back… she would just be an ordinary, powerless girl, a plain, unremarkable girl, all alone in a strange, unfamiliar, and now suddenly very terrifying city… She felt a fresh, overwhelming wave of pure terror wash over her. She needed the power, the strength, the very idea of Magical Girl Red to support her, to allow her to keep moving forward in this terrifying city. To be a magical girl—she hadn’t yet, not by a long shot, managed to view this incredible, terrifying, and life-altering thing with any semblance of normalcy or calm acceptance.

Magical Girl Red, her strength almost completely, utterly gone, leaned her entire weight against a nearby, graffiti-covered telephone pole, her legs threatening to give out from under her…

“RED!!! HEY! ARE YOU OKAY?!”

“GUAH!!!” Magical Girl Red let out a sharp, pained, almost pathetic cry of pure shock. For a split, terrifying second, she thought the sadistic Darkmoon Queen, with her sick, twisted sense of humor, had come back for a parting shot, a final, cruel prank. But she never, ever expected—

It was the very person she had been so desperately, so hopelessly searching for!

Or rather, the daughter. Magical Girl Black’s daughter! Hana Tanaka!

“Whoa! Are you… are you actually Magical Girl Red?! In person?! But that’s not right, Red should be all the way over in A-City right now, getting trained by Strawberry-sama! So, wait… you must be a cosplayer, right! You have to be! Wow, I can’t believe it! Red’s only just debuted and she already has such dedicated, high-quality, die-hard fans cosplaying as her already? That’s so totally, unbelievably incredible!”

Hana was practically vibrating with pure, undiluted, otaku excitement. “Can I… oh my gosh, can I please, please, please get a picture with you? For my event stamp rally? Pleeeeease?”

Red, in her panicked, exhausted state, keenly and instinctively noticed the small drone-like probes hovering discreetly near Hana. Those must be the official organization units, assigned to protect Hana Tanaka’s movements, right? In an emergency, they can probably just ram into a fiend at high speed and explode. Or something equally dramatic. It seemed they really had, just as she suspected, raised Hana’s personal security level significantly since the last attack.

Red’s mind raced, a thousand desperate, conflicting thoughts firing at once. She managed a weak, hopefully convincing, and not-at-all-panicked smile. “Y-yes, that’s right! I’m… I’m just a humble cosplayer! You want a photo? With… with little old me? Of course, you can! I’d be honored!” Phew, close one. Way too close. I think I’m going to have a heart attack.

How should one put it? She felt a little… guilty. And a lot terrified. Although she had come all the way here specifically seeking Magical Girl Black’s help, now that she had actually, unexpectedly met her powerful, and probably equally terrifying daughter, she started to feel nervous all over again. What if—what if Black and Strawberry Sweetheart decided to team up and give her a "mixed doubles" style disciplinary beating for running away from her training? From the universally known, and probably heavily edited, video footage, Magical Girl Black didn’t exactly seem like a person with a particularly good or forgiving temper.

“Awesome! You’re the best!”

It had to be said, Hana Tanaka was a rather forward, incredibly friendly, and almost overwhelmingly easy-to-get-to-know person. She and the shell-shocked Red hit it off almost immediately, chatting animatedly about all things magical girl, so much so that Hana, in a fit of bubbly enthusiasm, even impulsively invited the "cosplayer" Red back to her place to see her merchandise collection.

However, the organization had, of course, already confirmed Red’s true identity. The advanced facial recognition technology of this era was far, far more sophisticated than the simple, clunky payment systems of the past. The moment Red had appeared on their high-definition surveillance drones, hovering near a high-value target like Hana Tanaka, the organization had discovered and positively identified her. If she had just been wandering aimlessly around on her own, the organization might not have bothered to deploy the considerable resources required to confirm her identity. But since she had, with an almost fateful sense of timing, appeared right in front of Hana Tanaka, the daughter of their most volatile and powerful new asset, the organization had been able to confirm her identity in a matter of nanoseconds.

Magical Girl Black was utterly stunned when she received the news via a terse, encrypted message from Ren.

Damn it all! No, seriously, pal, are you kidding me?! I came all the way to goddamn A-City to find you, and you went all the way to goddamn S-City to find me?! Then this whole stupid, pointless trip of mine… it was really just a goddamn vacation, wasn’t it?! A complete and utter waste of time! I haven’t even gotten any stronger—this just makes it look like I came here on a damn date with Ren!

What the hell was the point of me even coming here?! What am I going to tell Hana?!

A sudden, overwhelming wave of pure guilt washed over Black. She had a very, very bad feeling that she would have a very, very hard time explaining this whole ridiculous, cross-country mix-up to her own daughter. It really, truly did look like she had just been on a purely recreational, and probably quite fun, two-day-long date with her daughter’s handsome boyfriend, even if she did, as a token gesture, bring Hana back some sort of pathetic, overpriced local souvenir. The optics were… not good.

In the end, she and Ren, with a shared sense of profound defeat, bought some ridiculously expensive, famous local sweets from a tourist trap shop at the A-City airport, getting thoroughly, criminally ripped off in the process, and then, with heavy hearts, they boarded the next flight back to S-City.

And then, as if the universe itself had decided to personally mock their suffering, right there in the cramped, recycled air of the airplane cabin, they ran into Akari Natsume. Strawberry Sweetheart herself. In the flesh.

Clearly, Strawberry Sweetheart must have received the same, frantic message from the organization at the exact same time and was also, with a certain degree of professional urgency, rushing back to S-City. She hadn’t transformed, however, looking for all the world like a normal, if exceptionally beautiful high school girl on her way home from a school trip. And, because of course, in a final, cruel twist of fate, the seats for their two separate parties were, unbelievably, right next to each other. Of course, they were.

“Oh, Black! Fancy meeting you here!” Akari chirped cheerfully. “Are you… are you planning to maintain this form indefinitely, then?” Strawberry Sweetheart asked, looking at Black with a genuinely curious, and not at all judgmental expression. “It must be quite tiring for you, right? It kind of gives off the feeling that you’re constantly, permanently in work mode.” She didn’t seem to care, not in the slightest, about Black’s true, middle-aged-man identity. It was almost… refreshing.

“A corporate drone, my dear Miss Akari, is always in work mode, aren’t they?” Black sighed, the sound pure, unadulterated Kenji Tanaka. “If you’ve ever had the distinct displeasure of working at a real, soul-crushing company, you’d know that even after you’ve officially clocked out for the day, you have to remain, at all times, in a state of high-alert standby. That’s just the normal, tragic state of being for a modern wage slave. Um—besides,” he added, trying to sound more like a magical girl, “if a fiend appeared in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you immediately transform into a magical girl to fight it?”

“But fiends rarely, if ever, appear at night, right? They seem to prefer disrupting rush hour traffic,” Akari said with a thoughtful smile. “Normally, when I’m off-duty, I still prefer to just be… like this. It’s more comfortable.”

Black had absolutely no intention of continuing this particular, and frankly quite confusing philosophical debate with Strawberry Sweetheart. Red’s unexpected, cross-country escapade had completely disrupted her carefully laid plans, but running into Strawberry Sweetheart here, now, on this cramped, uncomfortable airplane… it was an unexpected, and perhaps even fateful boon. “Actually,” she said, her voice turning serious, “there’s something important I need to inform you about. Officially.”

“Inform me? About what?” Akari asked, her own expression turning serious as well.

“I’m planning to subjugate the Darkmoon Queen,” Black stated bluntly, her voice leaving no room for argument. “For good.”

“I know,” she continued, her gaze unwavering, “that she may have some kind of complicated connection to you, to your past. And that maybe you have things you feel you need to say to her, things you need to settle between the two of you, a final reckoning you need to have. But if she is not killed, if she is not permanently removed from the board, my heart, my family, can never be at ease. And even if I can’t definitively, permanently kill her, I will see to it that she is apprehended, that she is locked away for good.”

“Black…” Strawberry Sweetheart breathed, looking truly, genuinely shocked. She clearly hadn’t expected Black to say something like this to her, so directly, so bluntly. This was completely outside of her predictions. She had originally wanted to say something cool, something heroic, something like, “She is my enemy, Black, my responsibility. I know how to deal with her myself,” to brush it off, to maintain control of the situation. But when she saw the look in Black’s eyes, the sheer, unshakeable resolve, the cold, hard fury… the words wouldn’t come out. She couldn’t say them.

The other’s will, she realized with a jolt, was completely unshakeable. If she were to try and stop her, if she were to stand in her way, she would have to defeat her first. Fight Magical Girl Black? Here? Now? Strawberry Sweetheart had absolutely no confidence in that. Not even a little. And how could she possibly use her power, the power of hope and love, to fight against a comrade? A fellow magical girl? And besides… besides, Black’s thinking, her cold, hard logic… it was, without a single doubt, fundamentally correct. The one with the problem, the one who was being indecisive, sentimental, and foolish… it was herself.

Her Supporter, Camellia, who had been sitting quietly beside her, immediately, and with a calm professionalism that was almost terrifying, said, “Subjugating dangerous fiends is the sworn, non-negotiable duty of all heroes. If you are planning to undertake such a high-stakes operation, Miss Black, please be sure to notify us. Allow us to lend our considerable strength and resources to your cause as well. To successfully subjugate the Darkmoon Queen, you will inevitably have to face the full, unadulterated power of the entire Darkmoon Coven. That, I can assure you, will not be a simple or easy matter.”

Akari shot her ever-reliable Supporter a grateful, almost relieved look, then, taking a deep breath, she said, her own voice now filled with a newfound resolve, “Your choice… your decision is undoubtedly the correct one, Miss Black. You… you are a magical girl of the new generation. And perhaps… the magical girls of the old era, of my era, should finally, gracefully be buried in the dust of history. And along with them, fiend organizations, relics of a bygone age like the Darkmoon Coven, they too should be buried, once and for all. It is… finally time for me and her, for me and the Queen, to have our final, definitive reckoning.”

“You know,” Black grumbled, a hint of Kenji’s fatherly concern creeping into her voice, “that doesn’t sound very auspicious, you know. That sounds an awful lot like what you young people call a ‘death flag.’ Even I can tell that’s a so-called, classic death flag. And you’re still so young.”

Akari just smiled, a radiant, almost dazzling smile that seemed to light up the entire airplane cabin. She then, with a determined glint in her eye, held up her own small, delicate, but surprisingly powerful-looking fist and shook it playfully. “In that case, Miss Black, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. So-called ‘death flags,’ you see, they’re just convenient, self-pitying excuses that the weak make for their inevitable failures. And ‘luck,’ as they say, is merely a humble word used by the strong to describe their own overwhelming, undeniable strength… So, it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. Because—” a brilliant, blinding confidence, a power that was almost tangible, shone in her eyes, “—I am, after all, the strongest magical girl.”

In that single, breathtaking moment, Akari Natsume, the one and only Strawberry Sweetheart, exuded a sense of infinite, divine reassurance. Even the cynical, perpetually grumpy Magical Girl Black was momentarily awed by her sheer, unshakeable confidence, and could not find it in herself to utter any words of rebuttal.

“Although you are incredibly strong, Miss Black,” Akari continued, her voice now softer, almost… intimate, “the truth is… it has been a very, very long time since I have had to fight with my full, unrestrained, no-holds-barred strength. If the arrival of this new Color Generation truly does signal the end of my Dessert Generation, then let me, the last, and greatest, magical girl of the Dessert Generation, show you the full, spectacular extent of my power, Black. Let me show you what it truly means to be the strongest. This, too,” she added, a wise, almost ancient light in her young eyes, “is the sacred, and necessary legacy of a magical girl!”

Sixteen-year-old Akari Natsume, speaking to the forty-something-year-old Kenji Tanaka, a man trapped in a teenage girl’s body, about the sacred, timeless legacy of magical girls. But it was, in that moment, the absolute, undeniable truth. It was Strawberry Sweetheart’s legacy, her burden, her gift, being passed from one generation to the next. From her, to Black.

“Then, it’s a promise!” Black said, her own voice filled with a newfound respect.

Two small, deceptively delicate fists bumped together in the cramped airplane cabin, filled with a surprising, world-altering power.