Chapter 6: Maiden Bandage

“Quivering Tentacles! Silver Drill!! My brothers in arms!!!”

In some godforsaken, desolate wilderness, a figure entirely swathed in stained, grimy bandages crouched pathetically before two crude, hastily dug, side-by-side graves. From the face, also wrapped in layers of decaying linen, an astonishing, almost theatrical depth of sorrow could be discerned, even though only a pair of haunted, bloodshot eyes and a quivering mouth were visible. The raw, unadulterated grief emanating from him was a palpable, suffocating force.

He clutched a simple, chipped sake cup in one trembling hand, while an ostentatiously expensive bottle of premium white liquor—probably stolen—rested beside the makeshift graves. “When we were alive, carving our glorious path of chaos, we never once got the chance to properly sit down and drink together… and now, now you two have already up and left me! Abandoned me! Leaving me to live on, all alone, in this wretched, hero-infested world! The injustice of it all!”

Fat tears flowed, quickly absorbed by the filthy bandages on his face, creating dark, damp patches. Overcome with a fresh wave of heart-wrenching emotion, he actually began to slap his own bandaged face with his equally bandaged hands, the dull thuds echoing in the eerie silence. “I’m useless! Utterly, pathetically useless! I’ve failed you both! I’m a disgrace to fiend-kind! I don’t even have the guts, the sheer nerve, to go after that monster, that demon in a teenage girl mask, Magical Girl Black, to avenge your noble sacrifices! Even that idiot Fiend Mask, who wasn’t even that close to you, who barely knew your names, dared to stand up and fight her… But I… I’m just… a coward!” 

He raised his bandaged hands, loose strips of tattered linen trailing with the dramatic movement like ghostly streamers.

“These pathetic bandages of mine… Quivering Tentacles! My friend! Even your mighty, nigh-indestructible tentacles were effortlessly severed by her damned, cursed hand-blade! What chance do my flimsy, pathetic bandages possibly have against such brutality? I… I simply can’t win against her! It’s impossible! Hopeless!”

Sobbing uncontrollably now, a wretched, broken sound, he began to kowtow repeatedly, almost violently, before the two desolate graves, his bandaged forehead thudding against the cold, unforgiving earth. “I’ve let you down! I’m so, so sorry! If only, back then, when you invited me to join your glorious rampage… if only I had gone with you… surely, I too would have found the courage, the honor, to die a glorious death alongside my beloved comrades!”

A silken, feminine voice suddenly cut through his mournful cries. “Do you desire revenge?”

The heart-wrenching sobs ceased abruptly, cut off mid-wail. The Bandaged Man whipped his head around, his movements jerky and panicked, and saw a woman clad in a sleek, form-fitting black bodysuit, materializing out of the shadows like a phantom. She exuded an aura of cold, regal power.

“You’re…! It can’t be! Darkmoon Queen!!” he gasped, his visible eye widening in shock and a healthy dose of terror.

“Who I am is… unimportant, for now,” Darkmoon Queen stated calmly, her crimson gaze fixed on the pathetic, groveling Bandaged Man with an unnerving intensity. “I am asking you a simple question, Maiden Bandage: do you, or do you not, wish to exact bloody, satisfying revenge upon the one called Magical Girl Black?”

The man known throughout the underworld as Maiden Bandage, true to his fiendish, deeply unsettling moniker, had a particularly nasty penchant for binding young, innocent girls with his seemingly endless supply of bandages and then… brutally defiling them—a man whose depravity was sickeningly, horrifyingly similar to that of his fallen comrade, Quivering Tentacles. A true connoisseur of suffering.

“I… Of course, I want revenge! More than anything in this miserable world!” the man spat out, a renewed flicker of hatred in his eyes. “But I can’t do it! It’s impossible! Are you here merely to mock my weakness? My cowardice? I know you high-and-mighty people from the Darkmoon Coven look down on us independent fiends! I know you’ve always been laughing at us behind our backs, calling us amateurs! You say that people like us can’t even get being a proper, terrifying fiend right! So, what is it? Are you here to kill me? To put me out of my misery?”

“My, my, so emotional… so delightfully passionate…” A faint, almost imperceptible smile played on Darkmoon Queen’s perfectly sculpted lips. “You can certainly think that way if it pleases you, little fiend. However—you harbor a deep, festering hatred in your heart, Maiden Bandage. And hatred, as you may or may not know, can be a truly wondrous source of power. You are different now than you were before your… loss. You now possess… a certain, shall we say, qualification.”

Maiden Bandage stared blankly at Darkmoon Queen, his single visible eye wide with confusion. “A… qualification?”

Darkmoon Queen’s smile deepened, becoming more pronounced, more alluringly dangerous, like a rare, poisonous flower blooming in the deepest, darkest abyss—irresistibly tempting, and utterly, beautifully corrupting. “Yes. A qualification. The glorious qualification to embrace my power, my gift. I shall bestow upon you the strength, the means, to finally achieve your heart’s desire—your sweet, sweet revenge. If you wish it, if you truly desire it, you can join us. Become one of us. Join our noble cause. The Darkmoon Coven will provide you with all the assistance, all the resources, you require. You can avenge them. You will make Magical Girl Black suffer.”

“The power… for revenge…” Maiden Bandage breathed, his voice raspy with a dawning, desperate hope. He seemed not to have even heard the words "join us," his entire being fixated on that one, intoxicating promise. “You… you can truly give me such power?”

“Ah, so you wish to exact your revenge personally, with your own two hands… How delightfully primitive.” Darkmoon Queen’s smile was almost indulgent now. “Yes, of course, you can. Even among lowly fiends, there can exist emotions precious enough, powerful enough, to cherish and to fuel great deeds. The so-called ‘heroes,’ in their self-righteous blindness, always ignore this fundamental, inconvenient truth. In that regard, how truly different are they from us, I wonder?”

Suddenly, dark, ominous flames, shot through with streaks of violet, erupted from within Maiden Bandage’s form, engulfing him in a terrifying, empowering inferno. He screamed, a sound that was equal parts agony and ecstatic release.

“You feel it, don’t you, little fiend?” Darkmoon Queen’s voice was a silken purr, filled with triumph. “That is the pure, unadulterated flame of your anger, your pain, your despair! This will bring about a glorious, qualitative change in your power! It will elevate you! Go forth now, Maiden Bandage! Show this wretched, unsuspecting world the true fury that burns within your transformed soul! Make your voice, your suffering, heard across the land! Offer up a sublime, blood-soaked paean to your fallen, avenged friends! And that arrogant, infuriating Magical Girl Black… destroy her utterly!”

......

“Miss Black. As your newly appointed, and I assure you, highly competent Supporter, I believe it is imperative that we thoroughly exchange and communicate all relevant tactical and personal information to ensure optimal operational synergy.” Ren Akiyama, all business, his voice crisp and professional, began his official duties with a determined glint in his eye. Operation: Gain Trust of Terrifying Magical Girl is a go!

Black, who was currently moodily staring at a crack in the ceiling, merely nodded curtly, not even bothering to look at him. “Fine. Whatever. What do you want to know, kid? Make it quick.”

“Based on the extensive combat footage from your previous engagements, many professional analysts, myself included, believe you are a purely physical-type magical girl—what some recent, admittedly fictional, works refer to as a ‘Martial Arts Magical Girl’ or a ‘Brawler-Type.’ Specifically, what exactly does that entail in practical terms? For instance, are you capable of utilizing… well… magic, in the more conventional sense, like other, more traditional magical girls?”

Although his own dear Hana would vehemently, and at great length, deny that what those frilly, sparkly magical girls used was true magic (her own ‘Mage’ abilities being far superior, of course), Ren knew perfectly well that his childhood friend was actually a massive, closeted magical girl fan. She’d even, he recalled with a fond smile, gone to several conventions enthusiastically cosplaying as some of her favorite, ridiculously overpowered characters. The irony was delicious.

“Of course, I can use it, you idiot,” Black answered with surprising, almost brutal frankness, finally deigning to look at him with a bored expression. “How else do you think I manage to fly around like some kind of gothic Tinkerbell, huh?”

“Ah. Right. Flight. Of course.” Ren mentally facepalmed. Smooth, Akiyama, real smooth. “Um… aside from the obvious application of aeromancy for sustained levitation, then? Any other… offensive or defensive magical capabilities?”

Black pondered for a moment, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. Then, with a flick of her wrist, a small, dense sphere of roiling, jet-black energy materialized in her palm, crackling with barely suppressed power. “This kind of flashy, inefficient combat method is highly impractical, wouldn’t you agree?” she said, her tone dismissive. “Condensing raw power into an unstable energy ball like this, then laboriously launching it—the energy loss during flight and upon eventual detonation is substantial, almost laughably so. It consumes a massive amount of precious stamina for a very, very poor destructive result. I honestly don’t see the practical, tactical use for it in most combat scenarios. The efficiency rating is just too abysmal. Though, yes,” she conceded with a sigh, “it could barely be considered a rudimentary ranged attack… I wouldn’t waste my energy on it unless I was facing a very specific, very annoying type of enemy that I couldn’t immediately punch into oblivion.”

As she spoke, the dark energy sphere in her hand winked out of existence, dissipating into nothingness.

Ren’s eyes, however, lit up with a keen, almost obsessive interest. Although he had personally suspected, based on his meticulous analysis of her combat patterns, that Magical Girl Black possessed attack methods similar to other, more conventional magical girls, actually witnessing her conjure an energy blast, however dismissively, still came as a significant, data-confirming shock. Fascinating! More variables for the Black Dossier!

“Actually,” Black continued, seeming rather interested in this particular topic herself, a rare spark of animation in her voice, “Strawberry Sweetheart and the others, their baseline physical strength is also quite ridiculously high, isn’t it? It’s not just the sparkly outfits. With the inherent enhancement from their Dress, Strawberry Sweetheart took a direct, full-power energy blast from Fiend Mask a while back and was completely fine, just a bit drained of stamina, maybe a little singed around the edges. That level of kinetic and thermal damage wouldn’t even count as a serious injury for most Espers. She just looked weak and pathetic, probably for dramatic effect. Kids these days.”

This person… she’s completely, utterly different from the reckless, irritable, almost feral image she usually projects! There’s a keen analytical mind under all that angst and black leather!

In fact, most people’s public evaluation and perception of this enigmatic rookie magical girl was that she was dangerously reckless, prone to fits of rage, and utterly lacking in traditional magical girl elegance or charm, even if her raw combat performance was undeniably, terrifyingly powerful. There were even persistent, wild theories circulating on the darker corners of the internet that this particular magical girl had been stuck in some kind of permanent "inverted, dark-side state" from the very moment of her awakening.

But after interacting with her directly, even for this short period, Ren realized this popular perception wasn't the case at all. Or at least, it wasn't the whole story. This person, this Magical Girl Black, was someone who placed an extremely, almost obsessively, high value on cold, hard efficiency. She wasn't nearly as volatile and mindlessly reckless as her outward, carefully constructed demeanor suggested; even her seemingly chaotic fighting style was, upon closer inspection, a brutally efficient, almost beautiful dance of calculated destruction.

“Then… what about your mental resistance parameters? Your psychic fortitude?” Ren pressed on, eager for more data.

Thump, thump!

Black rapped her knuckles sharply, impatiently, on the cheap particleboard table, her expression instantly turning sour, a humorless, almost dangerous smirk playing on her lips. “What in the blazes do you think this is, kid, some kind of role-playing video game with stat sheets? ‘Mental resistance’? Are you for real? Don’t you know, with all your supposed genius, that a magical girl’s power is intrinsically, inextricably linked to her delicate mental and emotional state? If there were such a convenient, cheat-like thing as ‘mental resistance,’ then Strawberry Sweetheart wouldn’t have an ‘Inverted Form,’ now would she? Nor would she have that ridiculous, power-draining ‘Sparkling Mode.’ Use your brain, kid.”

“My sincerest apologies. You are, of course, quite right,” Ren immediately, and perhaps a little too eagerly, conceded, bowing his head slightly. “Indeed, as you so astutely point out, many leading theorists believe that a magical girl’s power stems directly from the volatile wellspring of her mental state, so there wouldn’t be anything directly analogous to a static ‘mental resistance’ stat found in a game. However, that being the case, what are your personal thoughts on the matter? I mean, do you feel that being stable and consistent in your current, default combat state is preferable, or do you perhaps aspire to achieve other, potentially more powerful or versatile states? Such as a ‘Sparkling Form,’ for example, or perhaps a ‘Berserker Mode’?”

This kid… he actually seems to know his stuff. Annoyingly so. Black felt a strange, unsettling sensation, almost as if she were conversing with a seasoned, highly specialized professional, making it seem like Ren was the experienced Esper and she was the clueless, fumbling junior being patiently mentored. It was… disconcerting. And a little insulting.

“This current state is just fine by me. Perfectly adequate,” Black grumbled. “Haven’t you seen it in plenty of those cheesy manga and anime? The hero goes through countless, increasingly ridiculous form changes, gets a new power-up every other week, but in the end, the most effective, most reliable one is always, always the original, no-frills default form. Less complicated that way.”

Hoh… You seem to know quite a bit about the magical girl genre tropes yourself, woman! Or, uh, young lady! Whoever you are under that mask! Ren thought, a flicker of amusement in his eyes, though he kept his outward expression carefully neutral and professional.

In an era where magical girls were a tangible, often televised, reality, many people—fans, critics, and academics alike—were quite knowledgeable about them and their associated lore. Furthermore, the official Hero Organization itself had released a considerable amount of officially sanctioned derivative media, tie-in merchandise, and even video games like the wildly popular "Magical Girl Brawl," all of which were produced with the explicit, contractual consent (and often, reluctant participation) of the magical girls themselves. So, knowing a thing or two about the ins and outs of being a magical girl, even the fictionalized versions, was actually quite normal, even expected, for someone in Ren’s line of work.

“Since that is your stated preference, Miss Black,” Ren continued smoothly, “then it becomes all the more necessary to prepare certain robust defenses and countermeasures against potential mental and psychic attacks. Do you have any… relatives, or other close personal connections, who might be targeted?”

“Are you actively trying to pick a fight with me, kid? Because if you are, I’m more than happy to oblige you right here, right now!” Black snarled, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, warning light. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

“My sincere apologies if my question was poorly phrased, Miss Black. My meaning is, your family, or any close personal attachments you may have, could potentially be exploited by your enemies to become your exploitable weakness.”

Black fell silent for a long, tense moment, her expression unreadable. Then she said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion, “I will not allow anyone to know my true identity. That includes you, kid. Understand?” Although, in reality, a few key people in the organization already knew her true identity, of course. After all, they wouldn’t just hire some random, unvetted stranger with a mysterious past and a penchant for violence to be a city-protecting magical girl. Probably.

“A sound, strategically prudent judgment, Miss Black,” Ren acknowledged with a nod. “Aside from that critical matter of identity protection, some fiends, as we know, possess insidious abilities that directly attack or manipulate the mind. I believe we should begin preparing comprehensive countermeasures for such eventualities as soon as possible, don’t you agree?”

“Your reasoning for this urgency?” Black asked, her tone still wary.

Ren spoke fluently, his arguments well-structured and logically sound, like a seasoned military strategist outlining a battle plan. “Because of your established, highly effective, but primarily close-quarters combat style, Miss Black. If I were a high-ranking member of a fiend organization tasked with neutralizing you, my very next move would be to dispatch specialized operatives with some degree of potent mental attack capabilities to engage you. Their primary objective would be to probe your abilities in that specific area, to find your psychological breaking point. If you were to show any signs of fatigue, mental distress, or emotional vulnerability during such a battle, even if you ultimately, heroically, won that particular engagement, I can assure you, your next encounter would likely be incredibly, perhaps insurmountably, difficult.”

Not bad at all, kid. Not bad at all.

Listening to Ren’s chillingly accurate analysis, Black—or rather, Kenji, the experienced salaryman—felt that it was an almost certain, unavoidable eventuality. This kid really was as outstanding, as sharp, as she—he—had initially, grudgingly thought. Although his supposed expertise in practical, real-world psychology clearly needed a massive, glaring question mark next to it (and possibly a restraining order), as a tactical Supporter, he was genuinely, impressively professional. Maybe there’s hope for him yet.

“Therefore,” Ren continued, his voice filled with professional zeal, “for tomorrow’s… ah… concert performance, you will need to be exceptionally prepared for any unforeseen contingencies. I will immediately apply to the organization for the necessary advanced support items and psychic dampeners. And then, regarding the actual content of your performance itself, I have taken the liberty of formulating some preliminary suggestions. I personally feel that your established public image and aggressive combat style might be better complemented by something along the lines of heavy metal or industrial rock music. This genre alignment could potentially be much more popular with your existing core fanbase and attract new admirers. Are you, by any chance, familiar with any music in that particular genre…?”

......

Ren wasn’t home! Again!

Hana couldn’t understand it. It was the perfect, golden opportunity, with her annoying, overbearing dad finally away on that mysterious business trip! Yesterday, he’d claimed he had to study late, which was… excusable, she supposed, even if it was incredibly boring. But today, he wasn’t home either! What was the meaning of this blatant, repeated abandonment?! Why was he so frequently, suspiciously, not at home all of a sudden? Was he avoiding her? Was he… gasp… sick of her already?!

Taking out her smartphone with trembling fingers, Hana, in a fit of teenage angst and desperation, typed her urgent query into the search bar.

“Why is my boyfriend suddenly never home anymore? Urgent!!!”

The first, unhelpful, and frankly terrifying search result popped up almost immediately:

“Answer: He’s totally got someone else on the side, duh! Classic cheater move! Dump him NOW, girl!”

SHOCK!!! HORROR!!! BETRAYAL!!!

It was as if a bolt of lightning, forged in the fires of romantic despair, had struck her directly from a clear blue sky, shattering her fragile teenage heart into a million tiny pieces. Hana absolutely, categorically, with every fiber of her being, refused to believe that her Ren, her sweet, kind, slightly nerdy Ren, could possibly, conceivably have someone else! It was unthinkable! Preposterous! After all, he’d still come to wake her up this morning with his usual gentle exasperation! He—

Wait a minute! That’s right! He must be working a secret part-time job! Of course!

Hadn’t he said something a bit vague and mysterious earlier about wanting to give her a special surprise for her upcoming birthday?

He must be secretly working his fingers to the bone to earn enough money for it! Oh, Ren, you sweet, selfless fool!

It just goes to show, people will grasp at any straw, concoct any outlandish reason, to justify what they desperately don’t want to believe. Hana instantly, conveniently, understood: Ren saying he was "studying" yesterday was also clearly a clever lie! A ruse! He was definitely, secretly, saving up every last yen!

Ren already got a pretty decent allowance from his parents—so for him to need to save up this much money, to be away from home this often… it must be for something really, really expensive! Something truly special!

Could it be… could it possibly, conceivably be… a wedding ring?!

Was he… was he actually planning to propose to her?! Soon?!

But they were still just high school students! That wouldn’t be right, would it?! It was too soon! Too fast! (But also, kind of exciting!)

Hana covered her suddenly beet-red, blushing face with her hands, her mind already soaring light-years away, lost in vibrant, sparkly, ridiculously romantic fantasies of their beautiful, inevitable future together. Oh, Ren! My darling, devoted Ren!