INTERLUDE 1

MAGICAL GIRL DUSTIN JAEGER

Dustin Jaeger was a magical girl working under the starship San Magnolia. His Juggernaut’s primary color was honey yellow, and his callsign was BallistaDustin.

“You kind of look like you work at a café, Dustin!”

“I get that a lot, but it’s not barista, it’s a ballista, an ancient ranged weapon… And it’s because you’re the one with a bow weapon form that I got a ballista attached to my callsign, Mina.”

“Oh. Yeah, you’re right!”

So Dustin told his cheerful Eighty-Six, Mina, who answered his dejected remark with a carefree smile. She had walnut-colored braids and bright green eyes, and for some reason white rabbit ears that flopped alongside her braids.

This was Dustin’s day off, and he spent it with his two Eighty-Six, one of which was Mina, in a natural, open-air park built into a nature preserve ship. It was one of several ships that followed the San Magnolia’s fleet, which included factory ships, research ships, repair and production ships, agriculture ships, and graveyard preservation ships.

Since the place was meant for internal environment preservation, the nature preserve ship was normally off-limits to everyone, but it was opened as a leisure resort for a very limited number of fleet civilians.

The nature preserve ship was built as a temperate broadleaf forest, and since now was spring, it re-created pleasant sunlight and wind. The chirping of birds could be heard, and the colors and aroma of flowers and leaves in bloom filled the place up, making it quite different from the San Magnolia’s urban area.

The thought that the flora and fauna of an entire planet’s surface filled the thirty-kilometer interior of the ship always made Dustin feel very small by comparison. The vastness of it all was unfathomable.

His other Eighty-Six, Matthew, was usually very taciturn, but for once spoke with an amused smile. He was an Eighty-Six boy with dark golden hair and bluish-purple eyes.

“Your curse involves coffee, after all, so why not just go with the barista thing?”

“No. I mean, I’d never be able to get a job like that. Who’d want a barista who’s cursed to always put something other than coffee beans into the coffee mill?” Dustin said with a frown.

Correct, that was his curse. “To always put the wrong thing into the coffee mill.”

Matthew and Mina both teased him for it with amused smiles.

“Most of the time it’s rough pepper, right? But sometimes it’s Japanese prickly ash.”

“But you never put in anything inedible, and usually you notice before you actually grind it, too, so it’ll be all right! You did almost pour yourself some hot water and drink it the other day, though!”

“Well, that time I put in cornflakes, so it wasn’t that bad… But this morning I noticed a second before I put in dried chili peppers. Imagine how bad that would’ve been!”

“Yeah… This morning, I had to stop you before things got bad.”

“We were a second too late, though… Sorry.”

Matthew frowned, and Mina bobbed her head apologetically. Dustin smiled and shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it. I know I should just switch to tea, but I can’t help but be stubborn and insist. And it’s fun sometimes, not knowing what I’ll drink next.”

The two looked a bit relieved as Dustin held up a bottle with a smile to illustrate. He’d prepared it for this walk.

“And for instance… I ended up preparing this for the walk, but I ended up adding hot water to crushed dried mint.”

“It’s basically just herbal tea, then,” Matthew concluded.

“Oh, I like mint tea! Gimme some with honey and sugar!” Mina raised her hands cheerfully.

Dustin nodded and, having predicted this, took out a couple of sugar cubes as he went to sit at a roadside bench.

CHAPTER 2

Magical girls were forbidden from keeping pets like dogs, cats, hawks, owls, snakes, or alligators—in other words, predators. But animals that couldn’t escape their enclosures, like sharks, squids, and anemones, were permitted.

All of this was to say:

“Whoaaaaa?! S-somebody help meee!”

Lena did not own a cat or a dog, to say nothing of an owl or alligator, but a stray cat wandered through her open window. As she opened the door to her room, she witnessed a black kitten with white paws land on her room’s desk and boastfully pick up a thrashing Kujo by the nape of his neck.

Yes. The Eighty-Six were the valuable protectors of the Starship Fleet, but they were still tiny, at thirty centimeters tall. So when they ran into cats or dogs, they ended up getting chased around or caught like this.

As the kitten carried Kujo around like a caught rat, the little Eighty-Six wobbled his hands and feet around in an attempt to break free. The other four Eighty-Six, with Shin leading the pack, took cover atop the room’s tallest bookshelf. Huddling together, they watched Kujo fall prey to the young predator.

Incidentally, cats had superior climbing and jumping abilities, so scaling the bookshelf didn’t amount to much. It could use the shelf’s planks as footing, making it more a ladder than a wall to scale.

“Help! Help me!”

“Doing an impersonation when you’re all caught up like this. You’ve got nerves of steel, Kujo,” Kaie whispered.

“I’m not impersonating a self-propelled mine!”

To clarify, self-propelled mines were one offensive form the Legion took. They were missiles of sorts that pursued magical girls or starships, and for some reason screamed “Mommy!” and “Help me!” in the process. They were also humanoid in form, and often struck strange poses as they propelled through space.

“Seriously, stop watching and help me out! Please!”

“How are we supposed to help?” Raiden asked in a jab.

Kujo flashed a big smile and held his thumbs up. “One of you guys sacrifice yourselves for me.”

Kurena brought her hands together in earnest prayer.

“Thank you, Kujo. We’ll never forget you or your noble sacrifice.”

“Damn it!” Kujo squealed, still thrashing.

“…Are you guys actually serious?” Shin asked, his brow cocked.

“Doesn’t this look dead serious to you?!”

“I mean…,” he said dubiously. “You can just dematerialize.”

Kujo stopped thrashing and squealing at once. “Oh. Right.”

This was followed by Kujo popping out of sight in a little flash. The black kitten’s eyes widened in surprise at its prey suddenly just vanishing. After staring at where Kujo had been for one long moment, it then turned its eyes to Lena, like it was asking “Where did you hide it?”

One of the crystal pots sitting in the room’s corner to house the dormant Eighty-Six lit up in a white smoky color, and Kujo materialized there, sluggishly stepping out of it.

“Whoa, that was hell…”

Raiden and the others, as well as Lena, all gulped.

“Are you stupid?!”

“Don’t come out yet, Kujo!”

“I haven’t caught the cat yet!”

Lena was still by the door, and the cat was still on the loose. The cat’s eyes instantly glinted, and it pounced at Kujo.

“Meow!”

“Whoaaa?! S-somebody, help me…!”

Kujo once again undid his materialization, and this time Lena was able to pick up the cat. A moment later, the lady from the house next door came looking for her cat. Lena’s mother, Margareta, came over to collect the animal, and Annette, who was waiting outside, entered the room as she left. She was, of course, followed by her Eighty-Six.

“…Oh, Shin!”

Daiya, who had been resting on Annette’s shoulder, hopped over to Shin excitedly as the latter descended from the bookshelf.

“Whoa!”

“Oh, Shin! It’s been forever!”

Haruto followed suit, not so much embracing but more like grappling with Shin.

“I’ll join in, too.” Theo hopped over, impishly joining the bundle of spirits.

“Count me in, too!” said Kujo, joining in for no reason in particular.

With three of them clinging to him, Shin was already wobbling back to the edge of the table, but Kujo gave the final push, sending himself, Shin, Daiya, Haruto, and Theo tumbling off.

Anju, who was left alone atop Annette’s head, chuckled gracefully, while Annette and Lena, who saw this coming, watched the five of them frolic from the other side of the desk. Shin, in particular, was buried under the other four and basically crushed under their weight. They heard a strange yelp.

“Cut that out…!”

But they didn’t care. Under the small bundle of limbs, Lena could just barely see a black tail whip moodily, like a cat’s—a cat that had just spotted a dog they didn’t like.

Prattle, prattle. Wiggle, wiggle. Bang, bang. Wriggle, wriggle.

Cut it out, you idiots! What was that? I didn’t hear you…!

Eek, whoa, oof, urgh…

“…Um, do you mind?”

“Hey, stop it, you guys!”

This ended up dragging on, which made Lena and Annette feel bad for Shin, so they stepped in to his rescue and pinched away their respective Eighty-Six. Shin finally got up on the carpet, looking very sullen, and dusted off his head.

“Are you okay, Shin?” asked Anju, who’d watched over the proceedings with a strained smile.

“Help me out here, Anju.”

Goodness.

Like he himself told Kujo earlier, he could always dematerialize out of trouble. The fact that he didn’t meant he’d accepted their rough welcoming ritual on some level… Probably.

At this point, Lena didn’t even bother inquiring further about how he knew Daiya and the others.

Lena’s mother returned to the room after returning the cat to its owner, carrying a tea set and a quatre-quarts pound cake to eat with it. She cut pieces for Lena and Annette, as well as smaller pieces that could fit into the Eighty-Six’s tiny hands.

“As always, I’ll stock up on candy and chocolate while Lena’s not looking,” Margareta said as the Eighty-Six gathered around the cake.

“Yay!”

“Thank you, ma’am!”

“Mother,” Lena snapped despite herself. “It’s not like they’re not allowed to eat sweets. You don’t have to do it behind my back…”

Seeing her daughter’s bothered expression, Margareta scoffed. Margareta herself was a magical girl but had retired after she married Lena’s father.

“What are you saying, Lena? Snacks are tastier when they sneak around and eat them behind their Handler’s back.”

Lena sighed, displeased with the answer, as Margareta left the room… She was still no match for her mother, it seemed. Annette, on the other hand, stared at the masterfully prepared pound cake with a complicated expression.

“Mm… Your mother’s so good at baking cakes… Maybe I could manage making something this simple…”

“Don’t!” said Lena and all the Eighty-Six in the room, save for Shin.

Shin simply stared at them, stunned, and Annette grinned at him.

“Ah, since you didn’t say anything, do you want a taste of my sweets, then? I made some new custard pudding you can try.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Shin said, his expression dead serious.

“…Don’t be like that. Eating it just makes your voice squeaky for a little while.”

“Why would a confection made mostly of eggs make me sound like a wolf that ate chalk…?!” Shin asked, very pale in the face.

Annette ignored him, her smile just the same.

“By the way, Annette, who ended up eating it?” Lena asked, cocking her head.

She was asking who ended up the victim, and whether their voice cleared up later.

“Oh, it was Dad. He just happened to be home from work.”

Mr. Josef, Annette’s father, wasn’t a magical girl but a control officer for the San Magnolia’s stern-side space sector. Much like Lena’s father, Václav, he had to work away from his home and family in the bow-side first sector, where Lena and Annette lived.

As previously stated, being a magical girl wasn’t limited by age or sex. So, of course, there was absolutely no problem with Starship Fleet Colonel Václav Milizé being a magical girl.

Looking on as the nine Eighty-Six finished their snacks and started playing together, Annette suddenly said:

“Actually, Dad told me stories about the stern-side sector.”

“With a squeaky voice that sounds like he just swallowed chalk?”

“Can you let that rest?”

The Eighty-Six worked together to fold a sheet of paper into an airplane, and then each stood on a board on the shelf, passing the plane up. Raiden stood at the top shelf, which was taller than Lena, and launched the plane out into the air. As it sailed through the air, Shin hopped onto it from the shelf.

The plane glided down, swerving as it lost altitude, before landing softly in the room’s corner. Next Raiden followed, dangling under a second paper plane Kaie launched into the air.

Being magical beings, the Eighty-Six had no physical form. Not being made up of matter meant they had no weight, which allowed them to ride or dangle from paper planes without making them crash. This enabled them to enjoy these little sightseeing flights.

As she watched them play around, Annette spoke. The blue plane soared through the air, followed by a third yellow plane. Shin was running across the carpet back to the shelf, carrying his red paper plane.

((“It’s about, um…Shin. That’s your new Eighty-Six’s name, right?”))

“Actually, it’s about Colonel Milizé. Your dad.”

Suddenly, Annette’s voice boomed in Lena’s ears a second time over, prompting her to stare at Annette in surprise.

Annette rested a hand on her cheek, like she was hiding her lips, and a ring with a small gem glinted innocuously on her finger. This was a magic tool that allowed one to encrypt their words. It was highly advanced privacy magic that made the words once said sound different to anyone listening outside a certain range.

This was her gentle way of sharing this secret without Shin… Without the other Eighty-Six hearing this. She didn’t want them to hear this, lest they feel they were being treated like tools for war.

((“Apparently, he used to be in the stern-side sector before he came to you. On the third portside front.))

“Looks like he’s working with my dad to make some kind of strange magic.”

((“You mean the one where the Legion attacks were really active?”))

“Yes… Uncle was concerned about it, too. Something about transformation magic?”

((“The third front of that hotly contested sector, yeah. Shin was working with one of the Handlers in charge of protecting that spot. The two of them helped fight off the Legion attack, but since he eats up so much mana, deploying him was difficult. Apparently, there were talks about exchanging him with one of your father’s, Colonel Milizé’s, Eighty-Six, but it didn’t pan out.”))

“Right, the transformation magic. That’s what it’s called on paper, at least, but it’s magic used to change an Eighty-Six’s outfit. They think field uniforms are kind of boring, so they want to dress them up in other outfits. Like sailor uniforms or student blazers. Or national costumes.”

((“…”))

Lena imagined her father holding his Eighty-Six—Kino, Chise, Toma, Kuroto, and Tohzan—and insisting he “won’t hand over any of his little ones!” Of course, she never saw him actually do it, but Lena wouldn’t put it past him. She, being his daughter, did the same not long ago.

Also, she couldn’t deny being curious about the fake Eighty-Six costume change Annette was talking about in her falsified conversation. Like she said, the field uniforms were getting kind of boring, so seeing them in sailor suits or school uniforms or cute dresses sounded like fun.

Annette, however, cast down her eyes.

((“That Handler had Shin as their only Eighty-Six and blacked out from running out of mana in the middle of battle, after which they got attacked by the Legion. Thankfully, they survived, but…”))

“So Dad was experimenting on it, but they had an accident where the white gown’s strings all snapped. Thankfully, they had their normal clothes underneath so it wasn’t a fan service moment.”

((“…”))

The red, blue, and yellow paper planes leisurely gliding entered their second round. From the corner of her eye, Lena saw the black-eared Eighty-Six glide down on the red plane. She recalled the overwhelming might and destructive power of the massive scythe that destroyed all those Legion units.

((“And around the same time he appeared here, the attacks on our ninth bow-side front got worse. I know you’ve got your absurd mana capacity, so nothing’s gone wrong so far, but… I’m a bit worried.”))

Lena smiled softly. ((“Thanks. But this is nothing I can’t handle.”))

((“That’s good to hear, then. But still, please be careful…”))

“Aaah?!”

“Whoa, Kaie!”

Hearing a scream from overhead, Lena saw Kaie slip off the top of the shelf. The paper plane flew by the ceiling, with her failing to hop over it. Caught in midair, Kaie’s tiny body came plummeting down.

“Kaie…!”

Since Kaie lacked a material body, she couldn’t get hurt, but Lena couldn’t look the other way. She got to her feet, hurrying over to catch her in midair, but then—

“Ah.”

Lena’s curse to keep tripping for no reason decided to trigger at this opportune moment. Her legs tripped over the hem of her skirt, making her feet tangle. Halfway through getting up, in a very weird position, Lena tumbled to the floor with a thud, landing on one of a few thick, fluffy pillows that lay on the carpet.

“Whoa!”

And unfortunately, Lena squishing the pillow made it swell up and pop into the air, right as Shin was trying to fly over it. This sent him falling face-first into Lena’s back.

“Aaah?!”

“Mmmfh!”

As the two let out squeals, Kaie landed in front of them with a graceful somersault.

“Mhm, that was pretty thrilling… Are you two all right?”

“R-right!” Lena raised her head in alarm. “Shin, are you okay?!”

Lena got to her feet and picked Shin up with her hands. Shin’s dog ears were flat against his head, and he cradled his forehead with his tiny hands.

“Yes, well… Eighty-Six don’t feel pain, so don’t worry about me.”

Being incorporeal spirits, Eighty-Six didn’t have nerves with which to feel pain. Still, they were capable of feeling impacts, and Shin saying that while rubbing his bumped forehead didn’t make his words seem very reliable.

Lena gingerly rubbed his head. She felt his dog ears twitch under his palm, likely out of reflex at being touched.

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s fine.” Shin shook his head, casually brushing Lena’s hand away. He then looked up at her. “Was that your curse?”

“Yes…” Lena dropped her shoulders, dejected.

Tripping being her curse meant she was used to it happening by now, but she never made this much of a mess of things. But Shin neither blamed nor did he mock her. He simply looked up at her with his bloodred eyes.

“You carry a curse… Sacrificed your personal life, and you’re even risking a blackout or death in battle. Why are you going so far to fight?”

Lena blinked once. “Well, that’s because…”

He asked that question like he’d heard her conversation with Annette. But even so, Lena already had made up her mind that she’d fight as a magical girl. The question felt out of place.

And, yes, this was a question she’d already answered many times over, be it to her teachers, parents, Karlstahl, or Annette… She’d been asked this question many times since she became a magical girl and had always answered such.

As a citizen of the Starship Fleet, she had a duty to defend her mothership. She was simply doing what had to be done.

And so, once again, she tried to answer with a smile. With pride and poise, just like she always did.

And yet for some reason…

“…”

When faced with his bloodred eyes, she couldn’t produce a smile or utter a single word. Lena’s breath caught in her throat.

Like Annette said, the sector she and Lena were in charge of was recently under repeated, persistent attacks by the Legion. Lowering the crimson scythe, which she’d already swung so many times, it was starting to feel heavy in her hands, Lena sighed.

There were so many of them.

A boundless number of Sheep were closing in on them from every direction. This meant that she had to use Undertaker, with his power to kill many enemies at once, more often. But since his mana consumption was in direct proportion to his superior power, it brought even Lena near to her maximal output values.

Maximal output value was akin to having one’s limiters removed, athletically speaking. It was possible to output that much power, but it caused a significant strain, and as such, this act of pushing the limits was typically only used in emergencies.

Also, the mana recovery rate was typically lower than one’s maximal output value, meaning that repeated uses of it made one’s mana recovery unable to catch up to consumption, completely draining one’s mana reserves and leading to blackouts. A blackout was an exceedingly dangerous state, as it undid a magical girl’s Juggernaut outfit, which also handled life support. And Shin had driven magical girls to exhaust their mana reserves and reach blackout by consecutively using Undertaker. And just like Lena was now, it was when they were pushing against a sea of enemies in a deeply contested battlefield.

“Hey, ReinaLena! You all right, Princess?!” shouted Officer Sanders, who was in the same shift as she was.

He must have noticed Lena stopping in her tracks in the middle of the battlefield. As repeatedly stated, during operations, they were obligated to call each other by their callsigns, included.

Lena somehow caught her labored breath and answered.

“Yes, um… DrunkenSanders?”

She got the feeling her mind wasn’t working right because of the mana deprivation, which made her unsure if she remembered Officer Sanders’s callsign correctly.

“You don’t even remember?!” Officer Sanders lamented over the radio. “Ah… You know what, it’s fine, better that you don’t, Princess! Please! Just don’t call me drunken anymore!”

“Handler,” Shin spoke up, ignoring Officer Sanders’s nonsense.

And as always, Shin wouldn’t call her ReinaLena. She was starting to realize that however indifferent he looked, Shin was pretty stubborn.

Either way, Lena nodded.

“…Yes.”

Thanks to Lena cutting through them one by one to the point where even her vast mana reserves were approaching their limit, the enemy’s ranks were greatly damaged. She could probably retract Shin now and use the other Eighty-Six while focusing on recovering her mana.

“Undertaker, come back for now.”

The scythe vanished, and the bloodred gem returned to the star brooch. Just having the strain lifted of maintaining the weapon that had materialized was enough to undo some of Lena’s fatigue and make her field of vision brighter.

“Kaie, Kujo, please… Kirschblüte, acti—”

But then Kurena shouted from within the brooch, and Annette, who was a short distance away, did the same.

“ReinaLena!”

And only then did Lena notice. The wreckage of the Legion she defeated were gathering together on both her flanks, forming a spell circle. She failed to defeat them! It was a rapid-fire spell circle—a Löwe.

No good, it’s gonna trigger right away, I can’t dodge it…!

“Ah…”

But then two beams of light streaked out of her brooch. A pink, cherry blossom–colored one and a white smoke one.

“Kuh…!”

“Dammit, no way around it!”

Kaie and Kujo. Without the Handler to chant for them, they flew out of the brooch in jewel form, throwing themselves in the trajectory of the triggered rapid-fire spell, taking position to protect Lena, who was still frozen in shock. At the very last second, the two jewels took humanoid form.

Her ponytail flapped, still pink in color. His white smoke braids whipped.

“We won’t let you…!”

Kaie threw her small arms in front of Lena. Kujo threw a backward glance and a smile over his shoulder.

“You handle the rest, Shin, you guys!”

And… The rapid-fire spell fired its beam of light.

Hitting the two Eighty-Six protecting Lena head-on.

“Ah…”

The beams of light canceled each other out.

Fragments of cherry blossom pink and smoky white slipped through Lena’s extended fingers…with her unable to grasp any of them.

“Aah…!”

No… No…!

“Kaie… Kujo!”

Her scream echoed in vain through the dark vacuum of outer space.

“Aren’t you going to get some sleep, Lena?”

Having awoken from his sleep mode, Shin stepped out of his crystal pod, finding Lena, who was supposed to be resting in her bedroom, seated atop the carpet.

The room was dark. The lights were off. After the battle ended and Lena returned from debriefing, she was incredibly depressed. Kaie’s and Kujo’s sacrifice that day affected her greatly.

It all felt very distant to Shin. Over the last century of fighting, losing someone in battle was an everyday occurrence, after all.

Lena’s silver eyes, red and puffy with tears, feebly turned to look at him.

“…Shouldn’t you be sleeping, Shin?”

“I got enough rest. Since my mana capacity is so high, the amount I recover is higher than other Eighty-Six.”

Raiden and Kurena were still asleep. They were dormant in Personal Mark form, their spell circles of an iron-colored wolfman and a golden sniper rifle flickering within their crystal pot.

The crystal pot had five egg-shaped containers to contain Eighty-Six. The ones Kaie and Kujo occupied were now, and would continue to be, empty. At least until Lena picked her next Eighty-Six.

“I’m sorry,” Lena said in between sobs.

“…Why are you apologizing?”

“It’s because I just wasn’t responsible.”

The words slipped from Lena’s lips like a small child’s, while tears ran down her pearlescent cheeks. She childishly rubbed them away with the back of her hand but continued crying, her eyes puffy and red.

“I was careless and wasted all my mana. As a result, I was too exhausted to see what was happening around me. That allowed the Legion to get the jump on me, and now your friends… Kaie, Kujo, they’re…”

“…”

Shin lightly hopped over to the low table in front of Lena. Still, Lena’s line of sight was higher, so he looked up at the magical girl’s tearful eyes.

“Lena, Eighty-Six can’t die.”

Eighty-Six were magical beings. They weren’t truly alive, which meant that they couldn’t die. The attack might have made it look like they got killed, but in truth…

“They were defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re lost forever. Defeated Eighty-Six are automatically returned to their core in the Temple Ship, where they’re purified of the taint they absorbed when they were destroyed. And after that, they’re sent to a randomly selected Handler… You know that.”

The Eighty-Six had protected the Starship Fleet for over a century, fighting constantly on the battlefield for over a hundred years. They wouldn’t die or be lost forever that easily. Kaie and Kujo were probably already back in the Temple Ship. They would slumber for a time and be purified and eventually return to the battlefield. Just as they had many times before.

Lena’s face contorted in anguish. “Yes, I know that… I believed I knew that. But this is the first time an Eighty-Six died on my watch.”

Lena’s mana was vast, in terms of both her capacity and her maximal value. She’d never exhausted her mana to the point of blackout in the middle of an operation or overexerted it enough to completely overheat. She ran into some dangerous situations, yes, but with her vast mana and multiple Eighty-Six, she always came out on top, more or less.

So somewhere, deep down, she became complacent. Overconfident.

She’d heard that the magical girl who used Shin before now was injured in battle, which was how he found his way to her as her new Eighty-Six. Before now, Shin fought with another Handler on another battlefield. Just like in the past, when he fought with Raiden, Kurena, Kaie, Kujo, Daiya, Anju, Theo, and Haruto.

All of this meant that prior to manifesting before her, Shin had to have been destroyed. Last time and each of the countless times he’d manifested before a Handler in the past. He had been destroyed many times.

This made perfect sense. She could have come to that conclusion on her own by now… But the thought simply hadn’t occurred to her.

“So I never understood that you…that you can die.”

Shin cocked his head pensively. “But Eighty-Six can’t die.”

“I know, you’ll just say you were defeated or destroyed. But it must be so painful, so…scary.”

Be it for Kaie or Kujo… Or Shin. Only now did Lena understand why Daiya, Haruto, and Theo jumped for joy when they saw Shin come to Lena. They knew that he was destroyed once, and that now that he was with Lena, they’d only be together for a short time until they were destroyed again. That was why they clung to him so desperately. They did it to wash away and overwrite the pain and shock of being destroyed.

“…I told you. We Eighty-Six don’t feel pain.”

“…”

“Once we spot an unavoidable attack, a spell shuts down an Eighty-Six’s consciousness, and we have no recollection or perception of the moment we’re destroyed. For starters…”

Shin faltered for a moment and cast down his eyes.

“There’s no need for you to grieve them. Those two sacrificed themselves…to protect me, Raiden, and Kurena.”

Not Lena.

They sacrificed themselves to take the blow for us.

“Eighty-Six who lose their Handler can’t return to the mothership, and if they’re lucky, they completely fade away. The two of them threw themselves into the fire to make sure we’d be able to make it back… They didn’t do it for you, so you shouldn’t feel responsible for it, either.”

So don’t cry.

Lena sniffled loudly. Shin’s tone was cold and piercing, but she knew this was his attempt at comforting her. She reached out gently, pulling Shin closer. Like a child scared from a nightmare hugging her plush toy. Shin frowned a little but didn’t resist. She rubbed her cheek against his fluffy dog ears and said:

“But still… The two of them being gone is so…sad.”

Shin didn’t deny that.

“…That’s true.”

The two were gone, and that was sad. He then muttered, without turning to look at her.

“Earlier, I called you strange, Lena… Let me take that back. You’re not strange. You’re kind.”

Having them sleep outside of combat wouldn’t be fun. Having them destroyed was scary. Losing them was sad.

Eighty-Six were only tools for battle, but she opened up to them—foolishly so. Lena could see his doggy ears flatten.

“People like you aren’t cut out to be magical girls. You shouldn’t be out there on the battlefield… So why do you fight? Why is a person like you going this far?”

“…”

Lena wordlessly hugged the Eighty-Six in her arms. It was a gesture that stood to the outburst of emotions in her heart, feelings she couldn’t quite express in any other way. Back in the living room, too, Shin posed that question as a way of keeping Lena away from the battlefield. Trying to keep this magical girl, who was perhaps a bit scared of Undertaker’s might, away from the war.

“If anyone’s kind…”

It’s you. You’re considerate of me, kind toward me. You try to contain within you the sacrifice of your comrades. You act composed, but…

“It’s you that’s the saddest here… Your ears are flat against your head.”

“…”

Surprised, Shin covered his doggy ears, pulling them down over his eyes like an embarrassed small child hiding under a hood. It came across as surprisingly childish.

“Grr… See, this is why I didn’t want animal ears…!” He muttered under his breath.

Lena giggled through her tears. It was a bit forced, but she was able to make a smile.

And then she said—this time managing to properly say it—

“It’s because I can’t leave all the fighting to you.”

His crimson eyes turned to look at her. Lena stared right back into them and continued, whispering softly but firmly, like she was singing a lullaby to a small child in her arms.

“In your kindness, you grieve for your fallen friends. I can’t let you fight alone. I have the power to do that, and I feel like I have a duty to do it if I can.”

Not because this is my duty as a civilian or because it’s a mission to take pride in. I…

“If doing this will justly reward you for all you go through, then I’ll gladly do it. I can fight for that.”

To see you rewarded for your kindness, like you deserve.

INTERLUDE 2

MAGICAL GIRL FLORENT SÉNEVILLE

Despite being formerly part of the San Magnolia’s magical weapon development department, the young soldier called Florent Séneville somehow ended up being a magical girl. His Juggernaut’s color was leaf green, and his callsign was FreshSéneville. Personally, Séneville thought it made him sound like a salad, but he was amicable enough to keep that thought to himself.

And his curse was…

“Florent, you took a wrong turn, it’s the other way!”

“You’re supposed to take a right to get to the cafeteria!”

“Oh, true. Ngh, not again…”

His Eighty-Six, Kariya, who had ash-gray hair tied into a ponytail, and Hariz, who had her rose-gray hair tied in a half updo, urged him ahead shrilly as they sat atop his head. Séneville dropped his shoulders.

He stopped in his tracks, which naturally turned left, and walked right down the corridor. He had well-groomed silver hair, a dutifully ironed set of work uniforms, and serious-looking silver-rimmed glasses.

His curse was, as was very clearly illustrated, to always take a turn in the opposite direction from his destination at some point on the way there. A rather inconvenient curse.

This time, he was able to navigate the gray halls of the San Magnolia’s defensive ward and found his way to the cafeteria. During lunch, the cafeteria was full of the boisterous voices of his colleagues and their Eighty-Six. The appetizing smell of cultivated rabbit meat ragout hung in the air, making Séneville smile.

The Starship Fleet’s food was provided by accompanying food factory ships, which produced ample food. The factories produced most of the grains and vegetables, created via selective breeding and genetic improvement. The meat meant for day-to-day use had to be created from cultivated cells, but every now and then, the stock farming ships provided some natural meat as a luxury of sorts.

And despite that, Hariz keenly spotted something in the corner of the cafeteria and steered Séneville by his hair in that direction, an impish smile on her lips.

“Oh, Florent, can you see that? They’re serving their traditional ‘plastic explosives’ today, too.”

“Ugh, you want to eat it again today? Fine, I guess…”

Séneville loaded plates of the white claylike matter onto his tray. Even when cut into finger-size pieces and served on a platter, it didn’t look anything like food. He took three servings, for himself, Hariz, and Kariya.

Looking at the platter of mysterious white clay, which looked very out of place next to the plates of rich-looking ragout, a fragrant baguette, scrambled eggs served with cheese, and a fresh green salad with fruit, Kariya said with a smile:

“The cook said they tried to re-create the stereotypical factory-based food. You gotta indulge that kind of playful approach. Wonder what it tastes like today.”

Séneville rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. This was the kind of playfulness they were only allowed to indulge in because they had access to high-quality food, be it thanks to raising crops out of season or through cultivation synthesis. And while it looked very artificial, it did taste good enough, coming in flavors like lemon pie, salmon meunière, or bouillabaisse. But still…

“Every time, they change what it’s supposed to be based on, so the way the texture is so unexpected keeps you guessing until you taste it. And it looks like clay, but it has the texture of well-baked bread, so the way its appearance, flavor, and texture don’t match just confuses my brain…”

Saying this, Séneville settled into an empty seat and started by handing out the synthetic food. Each of them took a piece and popped it into their mouths at the count of three.

Séneville and his two Eighty-Six exchanged silent glances.

What the heck is this?

Hariz narrowed her orange eyes into a frown. “Um… This tastes like beans, and beans, and…beans, right?”

Kariya scrutinized the synthetic block with her dayflower-colored eyes and cocked her head. “Boiled beans, fried beans, and…um, what is this? Salted beans, I guess?”

Séneville didn’t have the first idea, either, so he used his portable terminal’s holo-screen to call up the cafeteria menu.

“…It’s tofu, fried tofu, and miso soup-flavored tofu.”

“What’s that?”

“The hell is tofu?”

It was all gibberish to them, except for the word soup.

CHAPTER 3

The first to witness it was a San Magnolia magical girl on patrol called White SoapPrimevére. Her Juggernaut’s color was, as her name implied, pure white, and her curse was that her curry udon always left stains on her clothes. She had a very powerful but entirely disobedient Eighty-Six called Yatrai.

When she witnessed it, she went very pale and caught Yatrai, who reverted to his humanoid form, which had a dragon’s tail and horns, between her palms.

“Yatrai! Stay!”

“Hiya-ha-ha! Azhi Dahāka, activat—! Um, wait?! Why are you stopping me, Bleacher?!”

As she stopped Yatrai halfway through transforming into weapon form, he wiggled in his hands, his eyes wide.

“It’s an enemy commander! For the first time in fifteen years! Shooting it down only makes sense! Fighting him alone will get me, and I guess more importantly you, killed! But who cares?!”

“That’s why I’m telling you to stop, you draconic combat junkie! Ugh, wait, don’t drag me along, pleeease!”

Primevére shouted desperately as he argued back, dragging her along like a large dog pulling his owner with its leash. It was still a good distance away, and despite that, her silver eyes could see it blocking off the starlight like a black nebula.

“Like you said, we’ve run into a Shepherd for the first time in fifteen years! So our first order of business is to report back to the mothership, to the San Magnolia!”

For the first time in a decade and a half, a Shepherd’s presence was confirmed in the San Magnolia’s designated space sector.

Hearing the San Magnolia’s captain, Jérôme Karlstahl, explain this, the magical girls gathered in the briefing room all tensed up at once. They were all dressed in their colorful Juggernaut outfits and had their fluffy-eared and tailed Eighty-Six resting on their heads, shoulders, or laps, which gave the place a very heartwarming impression, but that probably was better off going unmentioned in this situation.

The briefing room had chairs with collapsible desks fixed to the floor lined up uniformly. Sitting in the back row, Lena whispered softly, so as to not interrupt or mishear Karlstahl’s explanation.

“Shepherd…”

The holo-screen deployed over her desk displayed footage of a Legion group tearing through the Fido drones that made up the second defensive line. It was a fairly small group, perhaps an advance force, but nevertheless, it tore through the Fidos like they were papier-mâché.

The Shepherd led them slowly and leisurely. Thanks to its perception jamming spell, the footage could only perceive it as a black mass. It almost looked like it was toying with one of the Fidos for some reason, but Lena was probably imagining it.

Annette, who sat beside her, answered in a hushed voice.

“A Legion commander. The textbooks do mention them, but it’s our first time fighting one.”

At the start of the Legion War, seventeen of them were spotted. Over the last century of fighting, four Shepherds remained. The Legion, which already had the numerical advantage, were united under these commander units and continued attacking the fleet in large numbers. These Shepherds were the most terrible, most threatening of all Legion units.

The last recorded battle against them took place before Lena and Annette could remember anything, so they had no frame of reference for how fierce that battle was.

“Usually, they lead numbers so great, they make ordinary Legion look like child’s play, right?”

“Yeah, and one Shepherd alone is threatening enough to sink a battleship.”

Nodding, Lena glanced down at Shin, who was resting on her lap. His black doggy ears were standing upright… It seemed that for once, what was being discussed was of great interest to him. His crimson eyes were fixed squarely on the Shepherd in the holo-screen.

The explanation of the counteroffensive operation came to an end, followed by a Q&A session, after which Karlstahl adjourned the meeting. He then looked over at the low-ranking magical girls seated in the back rows of the briefing room, which Annette and Lena were a part of.

“For the junior magical girls, this will be your first battle with a Shepherd. Go about your duties with a greater level of caution and resolve. Don’t forget to use your callsigns and keep your Juggernauts on. And—”

His green eyes glinted sharply.

“The Legion are enemies of mankind. Never forget that.”

Of course, since the junior magical girls had no experience fighting Shepherds, they weren’t expected to be deployed near the Shepherd itself. The veterans that had been fighting for over fifteen years made up the core force, while Lena and Annette were stationed in the back, where they would offer supporting fire.

Lena felt the back of her neck prickle as she stood with her back to the ship’s radar barrier, which was laid with greater caution that day. As she restlessly toyed with her magical communication earring, she heard Shin call out to her.

“Handler.”

Shin, who was resting in jewel form in the uppermost corner of her brooch, manifested of his own accord into human form. He landed in the space in front of Lena and turned his eyes toward her.

“We’ll be making contact with the Shepherd soon. Stay on your feet.”

“Y-yes, of course.”

Given the Shepherd’s cruising speed and trajectory, they had a projected time for when hostilities would open, which was imminent, as Shin pointed out. Neither the main force deployed ahead of them, nor the ship behind them, gave any alerts, but—

Lena froze.

Suddenly, without warning, a black mass stood beside her. In the midst of an endless row of coffins, like a never-ending funeral procession, its darkness was like a hole in the ground used to store a thousand years’ worth of dead bodies. It was like an aggregate of countless deaths, despair, and nothingness. A massive being housing an overwhelming mass of mana and malice was right beside her.

Lena was frozen, unable to move. Even her eyeballs were rejecting the very idea of looking straight at it.

Three voices called out to her at once.

“ReinaLena!”

“Hey! Get your act together!”

“Get away, Handler!”

Kurena, Raiden, and then Shin all shouted in alarm.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Lena was able to break free of her petrified state. Using propulsion magic, she pushed herself away from the presence and cast multiple layers of barriers around her Juggernaut. She fixed her eyes on it, trying to keep the strain on her mind to a minimum. Shin floated ahead of her, like he was protecting her; his small form, even distorted by the barriers and trembling in fear, looked incredibly reliable.

But then her eyes opened in shock.

“Huh?”

“…You don’t have to be that afraid of me.”

Right in front of her was the visage of a young man. He had a pair of eyes as black as night hidden behind a pair of glasses, their corners angled into a wry smile under the forelocks of his red hair. He wore an unfamiliar stand-up collar and a mercury-colored uniform. He overall gave off a very intellectual impression.

“I just teleported to my brother’s presence, is all. That’s a spell Magical Officers use…well, not all the time, but it does get used. Or what, are you new to the battlefield?”

The young man spoke with a carefree tone…yes, a young man.

“Y-you’re…human?”

Lena was deployed to fight the Legion—a Shepherd. Why was a human who wasn’t a magical girl out here in the battlefield of space…?

“Get a grip, Handler!” Shin shouted, his eyes fixed on the young man. “That’s the Shepherd!”

His voice was scathing, like the snapping of thin ice. Lena breathed in hard, snapping the thread of confusion and doubt. She finally tore her eyes away from the young man’s face, a face so human, so indistinguishable from the other residents of the fleet, and noticed the things that didn’t make sense about his appearance.

He had several sets of wings, clinging to his uniform like a tattered cloak… But no, those weren’t wings. They overlapped like a bird’s feathers, but each one vibrated like it had a life of its own, and they weren’t made of plumes but of some other organs she couldn’t recognize. Their numbers and positions were also highly asymmetrical, some coming out of his back, shoulders, collarbone, hipbone, shoulder, or knee, each pointing in random directions.

Those silver appendages flowed and then spread out a second later, making every hair on Lena’s body stand on end.

Those were hands. Long, slender human hands extending outward, coiling together to form a winglike shape.

Without regarding Lena’s shivering form, he raised his normal right arm, the many creeping hands all quivering. All the hands reached out for Shin, who guarded Lena, and the Shepherd smiled.

“I’m here for you, Shin. Come to me!”

Shin’s bloodred eyes gazed right at the swarm of hands and into the Shepherd’s black eyes.

“Like I’d ever go to you. Who wants to become a creepy tentacle creature with all those gross hands?”

He cut him off coldly. And he did it so concisely and cleanly, without mercy or discretion or sympathy, in a way that completely disregarded any terror or awe the Shepherd had built up until now.

The Shepherd pitched forward in shock despite nothing being there (note: he was in the vacuum of outer space). He somehow managed to recover in midfall and exclaim:

“They’re not tentacles!”

Shin’s doggy ears flattened moodily against his head, and he glared at him, eyes half-narrowed.

“Tentacle freak. Weird-hand freak. Squid. Octopus. Jellyfish. Sea anemone. Sea slug. Weird-hand freak.”

“Hey, don’t toss out animal names like they’re slurs! They’re all trying their best to live their lives, you know?! And I don’t have tentacles. None of those things even look like me!”

“Basket star.”

“Basket…? What even is that?!”

“A sea angel’s predator form.”

“How was I supposed to know that?!”

The Shepherd stomped in frustration. Incidentally, Lena knew that sea angels were deep-sea creatures that looked quite adorable, like angels, hence their names, but when predating on something, their head (or the part of their body that looked like a human head) opened up and changed to a more aggressive form. She saw it on TV once when she was little.

As for basket stars, Annette sent Lena a picture of one using magic, but Lena erased it the moment she saw it.

Lena did agree with the Shepherd’s assessment that just because something looked creepy, you shouldn’t call it that, but she did feel like their wiggly, squiggly tentacles were gross. And indeed, the Shepherd’s silver tentacles—despite his insistence to the contrary, that was the only way she could describe them—did look the most like the tendrils of a sea anemone.

“Fine, if you’re gonna be like that, I’ll run my mouth, too! What’s with that tiny form and the dog ears and tail?! It takes me back to when we were little! You always did like wearing that dog ear hoodie!”

“Shut up, tentacle freak. It’s all your fault I’m like this. And I don’t recall wearing clothes with dog ears.”

“They’re not tentacle—

“Shutuptentaclefreak, Shutuptentaclefreak, Shutuptentaclefreak!”

“…”

The Shepherd finally turned around and crouched despondently. Apparently, that made him lose heart. As she watched him draw circles with his fingers, depressed, Lena glanced at Shin and asked:

“You two know each other?”

“I don’t know any tentacle freaks,” Shin said with a most unpleasant frown.

“I’m Shin’s big brother, Shourei Nouzen! Nice to meet you! Thank you for looking after my kid brother!” The Shepherd—Rei—turned around and said this with a booming voice, drowning out Shin’s answer.

He, for some reason, had the big, amicable smile of an older brother greeting his little brother’s friends. Lena found herself returning a vague smile.

Oh, I think I know this.

Whenever her father came home, he’d often grumble that she was still too young to put on makeup or that her skirt was too short. She felt very bad that she had to feel that way about her beloved father, but he was honestly annoying at times like these. And likewise, Shin was incredibly annoyed by this young man’s—his apparent older brother’s—behavior.

Shin’s tail stood up on end, like he was about to growl at him menacingly. The black eyes behind his glasses gazed at the magical girl and her Eighty-Six, and then his smile deepened. Lena pondered how they didn’t look very much alike for brothers, but this smile, like the glint of a sword’s edge, and the icy gaze of their eyes did look a lot alike.

As cold and bloodcurdling as a blade of ice.

“Yes… Nice to meet you, magical girl… Always dressed like fairies, calling each other by those weird callsigns. I’m not sure if to call it touching or what.”

“…?”

Lena frowned, becoming wary of him. What was he saying?

“All these bells and whistles, just to give you peace of mind.” Rei’s smile deepened. “After all, we Legion were—”

Shin gulped. “Don’t listen to him, Handler!”

At the same time, Kurena and Raiden returned to humanoid form, racing up her shoulders to plug her ears, but Rei’s thin lips parted before they could. And…

…just as he was about to speak, a cannon shell impacted Rei.

“Nwhaa?!”

A 2,000 mm caliber railgun. One of the San Magnolia’s artillery guns.

The magical girls weren’t so badly trained that they wouldn’t notice someone crossing the defensive line with teleportation magic, nor were the starship’s radar spells so blind as to fail to detect the Shepherd’s huge mana signature. During their long conversation, the massive cannon was able to complete its fire preparations and aim accurately using the surrounding magical girls’ help.

A heavy metal 2,000 mm spear—which looked more like a pillar than anything else—was propelled to high velocity by the starship’s massive barrel, its great mass and speed granting it vast amounts of kinetic energy that was converted to impact magic, that went on to strike the Shepherd with great force.

Much like the Eighty-Six, Legion were magical beings that were mostly unaffected by physical attacks, which was why the energy had to be converted into impact magic. Flicked away by a shell that was larger in diameter than he was tall, Rei was flung into the distance.

“Aaah, come on, read the room, would you…?!”

Getting hit by such a shell would reduce anyone without mana to a bloody mist, but despite being hit by a 2,000 mm projectile, Rei retained his human form and was merely sent flying. The defensive barrier protecting his body was still every bit as sturdy.

Furthermore, though the Shepherd didn’t know it, the air of the San Magnolia’s captain’s quarters was thick with an atmosphere of personal grudge, to the beat of “you speak to my teenage daughter and complain about not reading the room, you savage red-haired wolf?”

“—Hit on target. Enemy Shepherd has been momentarily dispatched.”

“Roger. Radar team, continuing to track the target—”

Listening to this exchange between the magical girl deployed to observe the impact and the control officer, she saw Annette, who was the one who guided the shell, fly over to her. Lena asked, her lips pale with fear:

“What was that, just now…Undertaker…?”

Her voice was trembling. The moment the shell impacted him, Lena heard what Rei said. The verbal slash he directed at her, full of the malice and ill intent of one wielding magic, cut into Lena like a curse.

His words—

“After all, we Legion were once the swords of the Galactic Fleet. Just like you magical girls.”

Shin said nothing, simply glaring in the direction Rei had disappeared into.

Hearing a pair of light footsteps running through the defense sector’s corridor, Karlstahl turned around. He frowned; Lena was still hugging her Eighty-Six and still in her Juggernaut outfit, her long ribbon and chiffon skirt swaying as she hurried over.

“If you’ve completed your mission, undo your Juggernaut, Lena.”

“Did you know all along, Uncle?!” Lena cut into Karlstahl’s words, not in any state to listen. Her silvery eyes wavered like the injured gaze of a betrayed child.

“Is that why you said what you did before we fought the Shepherd…?!”

He said something that should have gone without saying; that the Legion are enemies of mankind.

Karlstahl sighed. “I simply outlined a common but necessary remark. Yes, it’s kept secret, but only a precious few on a need-to-know basis know of it, and we never intended for you to know. That information is not only unnecessary for you Handlers but even potentially harmful.”

“What do you mean…?”

Karlstahl remained silent for a moment, looking at the Eighty-Six in Lena’s arms. At Shin, who didn’t object to Lena but simply pursed his lips in silence. Karlstahl exhaled. If he doesn’t mind her knowing…

“If you want to know… If you’re ready to know… Go see the Temple Ship, Lena. I’ll issue your permit.”

The Temple Ship was a small city-size vessel that cruised at the back of the Starship Fleet, charged with the magic rituals involving the Eighty-Six. As a general rule, no one but the Priest Engineers were allowed to enter this ship, but Karlstahl made arrangements for Lena to board a transport and board the vessel.

An aging Priest Engineer by the name of Aldrecht awaited her at the arrivals deck, leading her down a faintly lit, anachronistically designed corridor deeper into the ship. While it was a small vessel, it was still large enough to house a city, and despite that, they didn’t cross paths with a single person. Only the minimal staff required to maintain the ship’s rituals were present.

Aldrecht walked ahead of her, the sound of their footsteps echoing heavily in the air, before stopping in his tracks.

“Now… Your captain asked me to explain it to you, but where do I even start?”

Aldrecht threw a glance in Lena’s direction, the eyes behind his visor fixing on Shin, whom she was carrying. Karlstahl told her to only take Eighty-Six who wanted to go, and Raiden and Kurena said they’d sit it out, so she’d only brought Shin along.

Rei’s last words said still echoed in her ears. It felt like there was a hole in her mind, and she clung to Shin like a plush toy, who didn’t resist, realizing she wouldn’t let go of him.

“Are you okay with this, kid? She’s gonna see you.”

“There’s no getting around that. I’m the one who got her involved, after all,” Shin answered.

Lena didn’t understand what they were talking about. Aldrecht sighed.

“All right, then first let me give you some background, missy… A hundred years ago, before the Legion War, the Starship Fleet was at war with another sentient species. You know that, right?”

The Swarm of Screams—Ratrator. The first hostile intelligent life the Starship Fleet met in its journey through the sea of stars.

Early in the war, the Fleet was at a clear disadvantage. The Screams were magical beings, meaning conventional, physical attacks did not work on them. Meanwhile, the fleet had no way of blocking their attacks.

To begin with, at the time the fleet was made up of immigration ships that contained entire nations and only had minimal defensive armaments.

“But then, among the civilians of the fleet, they started to appear ever so rarely. The 1,010,110 defenders of the Starship Fleet—the Magical Officers, the Eighty-Six.”

Just like how the framework of the human body never developed to forgo hunger, even as human society’s abundance made famine a distant memory, the magic and mystery that once resided in ancient mankind was not completely gone from the souls of man, even as science advanced to a level where they could mass-produce starships.

Sensing the crisis of their race’s survival, the power of mana and the ability to control it reemerged after eons in the fleet’s people, namely its youngest members.

The war lasted for generations. During that time, the fleet drew resources from the asteroids in its path, developing its migration ships into migration battleships. Research into magic advanced rapidly, and they were able to turn the state of the war around from imminent defeat. Eventually, using powerful magic and faster-than-light bombardment, they were finally able to shoot down the Screams alongside the Ratrator home planet—a planet-size building made of refined steel.

They were an enemy mankind was never able to understand, with the war only ending with their complete annihilation.

“But… That’s not how things really turned out.”

The rules of magic dictate that beings who are close to one another have a connection that makes them resonate. This similarity—congruity—could be a similarity in form, or a trait, or a bond of blood. Through such similarities, mana and magic exhibit their effects.

When the Ratrator were destroyed in the blink of an eye, they let out a final scream. They could not analyze the nature of this thought wave—it was not one of despair or hatred or grief but of some other unknown emotion. But its intensity alone was enough to transmit to and pollute the Eighty-Six, who shared a congruity with the Ratrator—they both used magic.

Not one of them remained unaffected.

The thought waves, the dying screams of an incomprehensible, unexplained alien presence that did not even have a body. This powerful, unknown influence affected the Eighty-Six’s minds and bodies, overwriting both and warping the Magical Officers. Most of them couldn’t withstand the change, and their bodies burst on the spot. Very few of them were able to defend themselves in time and prevent the effect from extending to their minds, and yet the effect on their bodies proved fatal. The only way they could survive was by separating their minds from their corrupted bodies.

“And that’s these guys. The truth behind what we now call the Eighty-Six.”

Aldrecht opened a door that had the words Purification Shrine #15 written on it. It led to a vast, cavernous space, reminiscent of a grand cathedral. The smell of clean water hung heavily in the air, and a purifying magic circle hung from the ceiling, flooding the place with light. Some of the floor had a long canal dug through it, fashioned in the shape of words of prayer, and within it flowed water that consecrated the place.

The walls were lined with painstakingly written purifying inscriptions, which were being traced over by hundreds of drones who fluttered about the room, singing the same chant with clear voices like mechanical birds.

This vast, austere space was occupied by lines of glass coffins. The spell circles drawn over the transparent surfaces were ones meant to preserve and stagnate what they contained—life extension capsules that placed those within them into a magical state of cold sleep. The water from the canals was constantly pouring through the coffins, cleansing it of any taint before flowing back into the canal’s circulation. Sealed within every coffin was one person, dressed in a collared, mercury-colored uniform—likely the color of the fleet’s uniform at the time.

Lena stumbled back.

Purification Shrine #15. There were probably more shrines like this filling up the Temple Ship’s residential blocks. How many people were stored just in this shrine? How many, then, did this entire ship house?

Looking around in dread, her eyes settled on a familiar face. It was that of a stranger, a person she’d never met… Which only made sense, as the people in these coffins had been here for a hundred years. And yet she recognized this face. Because it was one she’d seen often over the last couple of months, the face of the tiny existence in her hands.

“Shin…?”

His slender form was dressed in the mercury-colored uniform, the eyes of his marble-like face closed gently. Sitting inside the coffin was none other than Shin. He looked to be the same age as Annette and Lena. The word pollute gave a very dirty impression, but he was spotless as he slumbered peacefully on the other side of this thin layer of pure water and glass.

Lena looked around, lost, and spotted more familiar faces. The one lying three coffins away was Raiden. Diagonally from him was Kaie. Haruto. Theo and Kurena were a short distance away. Anju and Daiya. Kujo and Officer Sanders’s Eighty-Six, Lecca, Mina, and Mikuri.

When the Eighty-Six were destroyed, they were said to return to their containers in the Temple Ship, where they were cleansed of impurities until they appeared once again before a new magical girl. And the ones occupying these coffins…were in those containers. The original bodies of the tainted and then purified Eighty-Six.

She looked up at Aldrecht, who held his tongue beside her.

“Wait. You said they were put in here to have their lives saved, but it’s been over a hundred years. They have all this purifying magic applied to them, so no matter how fatal the pollution was, it should have cleansed it by now. There’s no need to keep their minds separated anymore. No reason to call them fairies and to keep them away from their rightful human forms. And—”

To keep them in this cycle of combat and destruction, of purification and manifestation, for over a century. To treat them as weapons… To have them fight the Legion…

“And where did the Legion come from…?!”

But as she asked, the realization set in. If Magical Officers who only had their bodies polluted became Eighty-Six… Then the Magical Officers who had both body and mind polluted and burst to pieces…

Lena assumed they died, but what if they didn’t? Rei did say that the Legion were like the magical girls. He, too, wore the mercury uniform of the past defenders of the Starship Fleet.

“…The Magical Officers.”

Aldrecht cast down his eyes behind his visor.

“Yes. That’s exactly right, missy.”

Shin remained silent in her arms, looking at his own body sealed within the coffin with melancholic eyes. His fluffy ears, not a part of his real body, were flat on his head, and he looked down on himself like this had nothing to do with him.

Shin said this once: Eighty-Six who lose their Handler and can’t return to the mothership are at best destroyed. Then what was the worst outcome? Now Lena understood. It was to fade into the void of space and to melt into their onetime comrades. Or perhaps it was to melt into the void and to become part of the muddled chaos left by their ancient enemy’s residual thoughts.

“The Magical Officers were polluted, crushed to bits, and became mixed with their enemies’ tainted remains to the point where they lost all sense of self, becoming our adversaries. That’s the Legion.”

The Temple Ship was the resting place of the Eighty-Six, but the attending Priest Engineers lived there as well. Lena was in the only functional residential block of the ship, sitting in a bench looking up at a fountain as she awaited the shuttle back home.

The ceiling hung high, and by contrast, the buildings were built of conservative height. The streets looked spacious and free between the wide roads and the blue sky simulated by the lighting. The roads and buildings built of colored bricks looked fairy-tale-esque in a way that contrasted the austere grandeur of the purifying coffins, a reminder that this vessel wasn’t originally a Temple Ship.

It was an academy city ship, meant for children or young teens. Its design felt like whoever made this place wished that after generations of war against an alien race, the children who would become Magical Officers and join the war effort at least got to live in a city pulled out of a fairy tale.

Sitting on the bench next to Lena, Shin looked up at the statue of the woman set in the fountain plaza with distant reminiscence in his eyes. The Starship Fleet’s first Magical Girl, SaintMagnolia.

“…She had this really anachronistic speaking pattern.”

Lena cocked her head in curiosity. The comment came out of nowhere, like a curveball.

“She was haughty and selfish and domineering and hated studying. She’d get angry and burst into tears at the drop of a hat. Her mana reserves were vast, but her control of it was terrible, so she kept sending Haruto, Daiya, and Kurena flying. She was only ten years old, so maybe it wasn’t her fault. Me and Raiden and Anju and Kaie, we all saw her as this fussy kid sister.”

Back when Shin, Raiden, Theo, Haruto, Kurena, Kaie, Kujo, Daiya, and Anju were military cadets, she was in the junior school and shared some of the facilities with them. She was haughty and selfish and fussy and a crybaby, and she caused trouble every day. She was a hard-to-manage, troublesome…cute little sister of a girl.

“The kind of kid who was the last person you’d think to rely on to defend the fleet. That’s the Magnolia we knew.”

Even though the pollution never reached their minds, it took a few years to separate Shin and the other Eighty-Six from their bodies and to manifest them in these fae-like forms. When Shin awakened, he found Magnolia was a few years older. Her speaking pattern had become more ordinary, and she learned how to properly control her mana. She became prudent, merciful, sagacious, devoted, brave…and cold-blooded. The very picture of an indomitable holy woman.

While Shin and his friends were dormant, the Magical Officers all fell, most of them becoming Legion that turned against the Starship Fleet, leading to a severe shortage in fighters. Apart from cadets who were safe because they didn’t go out to the battlefield, the fleet had no more viable fighters. And since Magnolia had the greatest mana capacity out of all the cadets, she had to become the hope of the people, a hero… A holy woman.

Or perhaps this was her way of avenging Shin and his comrades, who effectively lay down their lives to wipe out the enemy.

“I don’t resent the fact I was separated from my body to become an Eighty-Six. If we hadn’t done that, we’d have died, and us becoming fairies was necessary to fight off the Legion… Just like Magnolia and her successors had to go from Magical Officers to magical girls.”

He then jokingly appended that the fluffy ears might have been a bit much.

At this point, Lena understood why they had to wear colorful, frilly Juggernaut outfits despite fighting for the defense of their ship. Why they were ordered to stick to absurd callsigns and stressed the use of the symbol. Why they weren’t called soldiers or Magical Officers or magic warriors but magical girls.

“Those close to each other resonate…”

“Yes. Even if they’re corrupted by the Screams’ residual thoughts, the Legion were originally fleet soldiers, Magical Officers, and humans. They shared too many common traits with us and you, making us more susceptible to being corrupted by them. To the point where they needed to set up multiple countermeasures.”

The Eighty-Six had to cast aside some of their human form, and the magical girls had to remove as much of their identity as soldiers and combatants as possible, making their points of congruity with the Legion as few as possible.

The attacks launched at the Legion were always fired using the Eighty-Six as intermediaries, making the fairies take up the majority of the corruption. The Eighty-Six transferred that corruption to their real flesh bodies on the Temple Ship, which were constantly being purified. Some of the taint did affect the magical girls, but it was canceled out by the magical girls sacrificing a singular function of their life in exchange. Like making sweets. Like one’s sense of balance, making them easily trip. These were the curses levied on the magical girls, the price they paid for their powers.

Lena leaned in despite herself. “But you did it for this…?! For a hundred years, you put yourself through this, to protect us magical girls…?”

Separating their spirit and body was supposedly done to save their lives. But their bodies were used as a tool for purification for over a hundred years.

“No.” Shin shook his head softly. “We, the Magical Officers, we failed at our task. And because of our failure, you magical girls had to spend a hundred years fighting. Magnolia did back then, and now so do you…and so did all the magical girls we fought with for the last century.”

Because the Magical Officers became the Legion at the close of the War of the Screams.

“The War of the Screams should have ended with our generation. It was a difficult war, but it was believed we could do it, and it should have ended. Raiden always said that he didn’t want Magnolia and the cadets younger than her to have to go to war anymore… And yet…”

Magnolia went on to become the first magical girl. She had to go to war with the Legion, spend her life in combat, and die fighting. And the cadets younger than she was also became magical girls… And so a century passed, leading to Lena and Annette becoming magical girls, too.

The successors they fought to keep out of war had to step upon the battlefield despite everything. For a hundred years.

“So I resent nothing. But seeing people who should have been younger than me die… Being left behind by the magical girls I’ve fought with. It hurts, honestly. I want to see it end. I’ve had to see it for far too long.”

“Shin…”

Seeing Shin cast down his eyes with profound, unspeakable emotion, Lena was at a loss for words. But as she remained speechless, her silver eyes looking down at him… His crimson eyes suddenly took on a cold, harsh light.

Like a sword. Like a blade. Like a silent flame.

“And I don’t want to see my old comrades get killed by those who were once our colleagues. I don’t want to see them reduced to broken ghosts without their own personhood or will, forced to further debase themselves through meaningless slaughter. And more than anything… Even if they’re no longer alive, I don’t want to leave those who were once my comrades all alone in outer space.”

And the same was true for his brother. It was Rei who first said they needed to end this conflict within their generation. Just like Magnolia was to Shin, Raiden and Shin were in junior school when Rei was a cadet. Rei and Shin were blood brothers, but Rei saw Raiden and the rest as younger siblings, too. He fussed over them so much that if they were cats, they’d go bald from the stress of having to deal with him. Most of them were quite annoyed with his nosiness, but he didn’t mind.

He’d often say with a smile, “I don’t want you to have to go to the battlefield. We’ll end this war in our generation.”

They opposed his words, as children do. “What are you on about?” they said. “Don’t treat us like kids,” they said.

But his brother and his contemporaries failed to end the war in their generation, so Shin hoped they’d be able to finish it in theirs instead. But in the end, they failed to end it, too.

In which case, if nothing else, at least… At least…

“I want to free him. So…”

“Lena. Won’t you lend me your strength?”

Shin faced his magical girl, looking up into her eyes. Even sitting down, Lena couldn’t look at his tiny fairy form at eye level, but still, she tried to gaze back at him as earnestly as she could. There was nothing else she could do to answer his feelings.

“Those with points of congruity resonate and are drawn to each other. I often manifest in battlefields where my brother is. Similarly, he’s often drawn to battlefields where I am… That’s why the sectors I’m assigned to always seem more active.”

He called a commander unit, a Shepherd, which naturally drew the Legion under his command.

“In the next counteroffensive, Rei and I are bound to come to blows. Shepherds are incredibly powerful, but with covering fire from Raiden, Kurena, Theo, Haruto, Anju, and Daiya, along with your mana, defeating him shouldn’t be that hard. If we can take down one of the five remaining Shepherds, the end of the war will be that much closer.”

With no one but him and her under the plaza’s blue sky, Lena listened to Shin’s words. In saying this, Shin expressed another unstated meaning.

You can cut him down.

If you don’t want to die. And because you might really die. Don’t think twice or hold back on him.

But Lena took his hands. Like an oath of matrimony, she took his tiny hands and earnestly whispered her vow.

“Of course, Shin. I’ll fight with you, as your Handler. As the one who heard your wish. So let’s end this war together.”

The Starship Fleet’s Fido drones were the mechanical guard dogs charged with protecting the starship’s second defensive line. This, of course, meant they recognized the Legion as their enemies, but for some reason, one unit among them was frolicking and playing with him as it barked.

“Hey, no biting. And are you sure you’re allowed to do this? I’m a Legion, you know?”

As it nibbled on his wings—which, make no mistake, were wings and not strange hands or tentacles—Rei could only smile as he nudged it away. Recognizing the way it pounced on him lightly, as if it were playing, Rei realized something as he found himself petting the drone.

“Oh, I see… You’re a surviving Fido from back when I was still human.”

Not that he remembered how many years ago it had been. Either way, Rei grinned, patting the drone’s round orange armor as if it was a real dog.

“I’m glad you remembered me and sniffed me out. A lot got mixed into me, so telling me apart must have been difficult.”

The Magical Officers that got warped into the Legion were a mass of wreckage, and at this point had none of their original memories and personalities, but the Shepherds were an exception—Legion that retained their own likenesses even after their bodies and minds were corrupted. Their bodies had likely burst like the others had, but their minds remained whole. The Fido must have remembered Rei’s soul and fawned on him accordingly.

Smiling wearily, he pushed Fido over to his mothership. This small movement of a hand produced a powerful flow of mana that sent Fido drifting to the San Magnolia in the distance. Rei was glad he remembered him and adored him enough to want to properly break him, but his top priority was his little brother, who would no doubt sulk if he did this. And he couldn’t have his little brother do that. He wanted to carry himself properly as a big brother when he was around him.

Yes.

Like the Ratrator, who’d perished before mankind, once had.

“I’ll turn everything to nothing, with him by my side.”

It was like he was hearing another voice in his head, a voice that felt like his own but wasn’t, screaming shrilly in his head.

INTERLUDE 3

MAGICAL GIRL ECHO EIN

Echo Ein, a new female officer on the San Magnolia, was of course a magical girl. She had shoulder-length silver hair, its bangs hanging over her eyes. She wore a sprightly suit, complete with pants, but the way she followed her senior magical girls with her arms full of documents like a puppy created an adorable contrast. She was a soldier who still maintained the innocence of a girl.

Once that day’s briefing ended, she hurried over excitedly to the magical girl on standby, too.

“Ma’am, Vladilena Milizé ma’am…! Huh? Where’s Miss Milizé?”

Ein looked around with her large silver eyes, but the Magical Girl ReinaLena was nowhere to be seen. As Echo blinked and cocked her head to the side, Officer John—who was munching on a hamburger he got from the vending machine—answered. All the while, his curse of having hamburgers always fall apart halfway through eating them was showing off its full effects.

“Oh, apparently the princess had business with the captain.”

“Oh, I see! Thank you. But, uh… The captain’s quarters, huh…?”

For a new officer like Echo, the captain’s quarters weren’t a place she could loiter around in without good reason. As Echo fidgeted on the spot, conflicted over what to do, her Eighty-Six, the bespectacled, red-eyed Io, said:

“Echo, start by demanifesting your Juggernaut.”

“You must have forgotten, but you still have your Juggernaut and RAID Device out.”

“Newbies forgetting to demanifest their Juggernaut happens, but you’ll end up fainting if you keep wasting mana like this.”

Ochi, who was largely built and had prickly blond hair, and Shuri, who had bluish hair and upturned eyes, chimed in as well. Echo looked down at herself and saw she was still clad in her frilly, ribbony shell-pink Juggernaut. It had a butterfly-shaped ribbon and a glittering parure.

“Aaah, you’re right!”

She hurriedly hid behind the door and demanifested her Juggernaut and RAID Device. The TP Particles broke off with meowing sounds and flew off toward the TP Apartment that served as their storage. Echo, now in her usual suit, moved to a table in haste. Some of the lingering TP Particles meowed as they toyed with her.

TP Particles were tiny, particle-size Philosopher Stones, but their raw materials were for some reason produced in a certain ritual by using the dropped fur of a certain kind of cat (fur that didn’t come off was unusable). As such, when observed closely, the particles looked like the cat they were originally taken from.

The job of grooming fawning cats and collecting their fur was a real occupation in the Starship Fleet, to the point where there was a ship devoted to it, which was basically paradise for cat lovers.

Io, Ochi, and Shuri, who disappeared while Echo demanifested her Juggernaut, returned to their human form and went and got some ether crystals to snack on. The ether crystals were similarly made from daikon radishes, turnips, carrots, beets, yams, sweet potatoes, and other root vegetables, were fashioned like bipedal and quadrupedal animals, and had their own dedicated farm ship (full of rocks and pebbles) devoted to cultivating them. Children often went to help in the harvest.

There was an entire course behind processing them so they didn’t taste like radishes. But as she chewed on the ether crystals, with their faint herbal smell, Echo dropped her shoulders.

“Aww. I was hoping I could ask her to go shopping with me in the fleet’s GCFS…”

As its name implied, the San Magnolia housed an entire state within it, and in addition to its residential blocks, it had commercial and entertainment blocks that offered the services and businesses the residents needed on a daily basis, but it was also tended to by several small, city-size ships. The officer’s academy Lena and Echo attended was in one of them, while others served as commercial center ships and leisure and amusement facility ships.

Other major ships had smaller ships like this servicing them, and the largest of them all was the General Commercial Facility Ship, or GCFS for short. It always had the most cutting-edge fashion and amusement facilities.

As was often the case, girls were often drawn to the newest dresses, shoes, bags, and accessories, and Echo always admired Miss Milizé, who was a year older than she was and always kind and strong and dignified and dashing. She always helped Echo out whenever she needed something, who much wished to be more like her, to the point of deciding to become a magical girl just like Lena was. She wanted to get along with her better, to hang out with her.

“Oh, blooming youth,” said Io.

“Indeed,” Ochi agreed.

Shuri gave a lukewarm nod.

“I am young, though!” Echo protested and puffed up.

…Did you really have to say this while on the clock, though?

So Officer Sanders (who was currently afflicted by his curse of his shoelaces always coming undone) and Officer Tom (whose curse was that he couldn’t find his corkscrew) murmured under their breath as they met up with Officer John.

CHAPTER 4

Annette and her Eighty-Six, along with Raiden and Kurena, awaited Lena in the San Magnolia’s departures/arrivals dock for shuttles.

“Welcome back, Lena.”

Lena blinked at this unexpected reception. She left for the Temple Ship right after Karlstahl instructed her and didn’t tell Annette she was going.

“Annette… How did you know?”

“The captain told me you went all the way to the Temple Ship.” Annette shrugged. “He filled me in about everything here, too. Only orally, though. I saw that Shepherd directly, too, but he can’t send too many magical girls to the Temple Ship, because it messes with the purification ritual or something. Plus, these guys said they don’t want to see their bodies sleeping.”

Theo, Haruto, Anju, and Daiya, who were resting in her arms or on her shoulders and head, were all melancholically silent. They had the same expression Shin had when he looked at his own coffin in the Purification Chamber.

“And between the two of us, you’re the stubborn pigheaded one who doesn’t budge once she gets an idea into her head, so it was for the best if you went to see it yourself.”

Lena curled her lips and brows down into a strange frown. “Pigheaded…? Is that what Uncle said about me?”

“Don’t tell me you’re not aware of it. Like, you might know him personally, but you forced your way into the captain’s quarters and basically demanded answers from him.”

“…”

She…was not aware of it. But once she had the rudeness of her behavior pointed out, Lena did feel some pangs of regret.

“Anyway, during the Shepherd counteroffensive, you and Shin were going to be the main force, and I had to cover for you… But now that we know the Shepherd’s so fixated on Shin that he’d teleport right in front of you, we can use that information to lure him into a trap. So they had to divulge this information to us, even if it is confidential.”

Saying this, Annette eyed Lena earnestly.

“Don’t fight that weird tentacle freak alone, Lena.”

Lena pursed her lips in a grumble.

When the Shepherd, Rei, teleported over, Annette was exposed to his terrifying mana pressure, too. So it was reassuring to hear her say this to her, undaunted and like nothing was out of the ordinary.

Incidentally, she saw Shin cast his eyes down in displeasure at the remark, apparently not liking hearing someone else call Rei a tentacle freak despite calling him that himself, but she pretended not to notice it… After all, tentacle freak or not, this was still his big brother.

Those tentacles were very freaky, though.

The first skirmish with a Shepherd in fifteen years. An operation to take down one of the four remaining Legion commanders. The starship San Magnolia was entering its full battle phase, preparing to bring all of its ordnance and troops to bear on this threat.

The ship’s body—which was in a clamshell shape, with its silver elliptical form surrounded by radial pillars—opened the “mouth” of the defensive sectors that made up its outer room, undoing the covers sealing all of its armaments.

The overgrown megalopolis was as intricate and complex as living tissue, and its organic-looking structure was lined with 2,000 mm railguns that lit up like the countless eyespots on a clam. The gun platforms stirred like feelers, their power supply cables and charged particle cannons swerving. The offensive barrier cast an aurora-colored haze over the ship, accompanied by the Fidos’ orange-colored mist surging out. With it mingled the mana glow coming from the radiation pillars of the ship’s four main guns, rarely put into use for the amount of mana they consumed.

All energy in the residential block, save for the bare minimum required to maintain life support, was relegated to powering the armaments. Standing in the San Magnolia’s command center, Karlstahl glared coldly into the holo-screen before him. He, too, was a retired magical girl, and as all other former Handlers, relegated his spare mana, which wasn’t spent on manifesting an Eighty-Six, into supplying power for the main armament’s capacitor.

Before coming here, he was met with another former magical girl stationed there to supply mana—Lena’s mother, Margareta.

I do hope that using mana for the first time in so long shrivels you up like a raisin. Because if anything happens to my sweet daughter or her friend, or my husband, for that matter… You do know what’ll happen, Jérôme, yes?

She said this while having the Eighty-Six she once used during her active duty—Alice, Isuka, Eiju, and Saiki—manifested into their weapon forms of a katana, dual pistols, and a rocket launcher, along with dynamite strapped to her stomach. She was truly a gallant figure.

Magical Girl MeteorMargareta. This ace magical girl, once feared as the Raiding Lady and the Aqua Blue Calamity, hadn’t lost any of her vigor during her retirement, it seemed.

If you don’t want that to happen, you better do a damn good job commanding them.

Karlstahl nodded, his gaze distant as he recalled this cold encouragement (at least he thought it was encouragement?). The command center’s main screen before his eyes was filled with red blips standing for the rushing Legion forces. Each blip was small, but there were so many of them, it flooded the screen in red. Karlstahl, however, eyed the screen full of enemies calmly.

You don’t have to come out and say it, Margareta. Lena is your daughter, and the daughter of my bitter love rival and best friend, Václav. I wouldn’t lose her. Not her, and not Václav…or the ship they’ll return to.

Karlstahl then said the words—directed at the many magical girls and their Eighty-Six now in the sea of stars—facing the countless enemies he saw on this screen:

“Commence operation.”

“Top priority elimination target, identifier Dullahan, confirmed. Magical Girl ReinaLena and Magical Girl OwletteAnnette, prepare to deploy.”

“Roger. System start-up. Deploying magical girl Juggernaut suit. RAID Device formed, commencing resonance. FCS (Fairy Control System), set up.”

The appearance of the first Shepherd in fifteen years was also accompanied with the largest Legion offensive in a decade and a half. The Familiar of the control officer came across as extremely nervous and stiff in Lena’s ears.

She rode on the two rails made from the spell’s catapult’s light meant for launching magical girls out into battle. Outside the ship, she could see the flashes of light from other magical girls already deployed and locked in combat with the Legion.

Lena set out, clad in her magical girl’s Juggernaut dress, into the star-speckled darkness of space. The TP Particles laced with her mana took on a sky-blue color. A fae-like bridal dress, protecting the magical girl from the curses of her onetime allies turned enemies.

“Wehrwolf, Gunslinger… Undertaker, stand by!”

At her chant, the three Eighty-Six turned into glowing crystals and gathered in three corners of her star-shaped brooch, taking the form of jewels. Firm steel color, crisp gold—and transparent, bloodlike crimson.

As the bloodred jewel flickered in what felt like a mix of anticipation and fear, Lena gently ran a fingertip over it soothingly. Lena’s role in this counteroffensive operation was to intercept and take out the Shepherd. She would only be brought into the battle once the Shepherd was confirmed, and just now, its invasion was confirmed.

The control officer spoke, their voice loud and high-pitched, like they were trying to restrain a tremble in their throat, unable to mask the tension, wishing her good luck.

“Course clear. Magical Girl ReinaLena, you’re good to go!”

“Roger that. Vladilena Milizé, ReinaLena—”

Suddenly, the silent voice she heard under the blue sky of the Temple Ship came to mind.

—Lena. Won’t you lend me your strength?

Yes. Of course. Let’s work… Let’s fight together. In this battle and the ones after, to see your wish granted.

“Setting out!”

The Legion charged in, their sheer numbers large enough to blot out the distant starlight, casting a darkness like night over the battlefield—only to be met with countless bursts of fire. The area surrounding the starship was profuse with assorted waves of color.

Converting all of its kinetic energy into magic thrust, it rained 2,000 mm canister shells on the enemy. The bombardment also unleashed waves of charged particles and heat rays that swept through the enemy like swords. The moment they impacted the enemy, the enemy’s offensive barrier appeared, shaped like flames.

The magical girls flew about the battlefields, unleashing flashes of light colored like their Juggernauts and the waves of their magic thrust, the attacks of their Eighty-Six lighting up the battlefield. In addition, the San Magnolia’s main armaments, fully charged with mana, unleashed roaring flashes of light that evaporated an entire section of the battlefield. Their twenty-two-meter caliber tactical magic cannon fired like thunder.

“Walpurgis, come back! Artemis, activate!”

Using Matthew’s illusory fog that masked one’s presence both optically and magically, a magical girl by the name of BallistaDustin sneaked into enemy territory. He emerged from the fog, nocking Mina’s longbow. In a perfect surprise attack from the flank, the flurry of arrows struck the Skorpions, a Legion long-distance bombardment spell, and shattered their attack. “Next up… We’ve got a mixed unit of Grauwolf and Löwe! In that case!”

Using Hariz’s (Cato Nine’s) wire trap to wrap around and sever the Legion slashing spells, the Grauwolf, FreshSéneville then manifested Kariya—La Bête—firing a massive missile that, despite consuming a great deal of mana, was able to destroy the Legion’s sturdy quick-fire spell, then Löwe, with one blow.

“You won’t get in my senior’s way, Ameise! BrilliantEcho won’t let you through!”

Facing a large force of Ameise, the Legion infantry that canceled out and destroyed the offensive barrier and the Fidos, BrilliantEcho’s trio of Eighty-Six flashed fire one after another. Ochi’s Gladiator fired a flurry of short-range lasers in a net formation; Io’s Argos fired a high firepower laser beam that swept through the enemy’s ranks in a straight line; and Shuri’s Dendroaspis fired laser swords that deployed and spun radially around the user. A weak attack, but highly effective against large numbers of enemy infantry.

“Yatrai, wait, those are Dinosauria! A swarm of Dinosauria! I’m begging you, stop running into them alone!”

“Shut yer trap and stop getting in my waaaaaay!”

White SoapPrimevére was clearly being tugged along as Azhi Dahāka careened into the Legion’s bombardment spells, the Dinosauria, with his pile driver, which fired an anchor-like stake using explosives… In a sense, it looked like the anchor pile driver was fighting with a will of its own.

Countless other magical girls and Eighty-Six were fighting or otherwise restraining the Legion, each in their assigned sector. They were doing this to support the crux of this operation, Lena and Annette. They did this to eliminate or keep the other Legion away from their bitter battle against the Shepherd, so the two of them could handle their enemy without disturbance.

But at the same time, the Legion’s sheer numbers meant that none of the other magical girls could be spared to directly assist or cover them against the enemy Shepherd’s attacks. And to make things worse, Lena and Annette were busy with keeping Rei within their combat area.

“Wehrwolf, activate! Enchant, Gunslinger—fire!”

“Snow Witch, activate! Load all rounds, fire!”

By applying Gunslinger’s sure-hit spell onto Wehrwolf’s Gatling cannon rounds, Lena was able to fire a barrage of accurate magic bullets. Annette fired Snow Witch’s guided rounds. Both attacks hounded and tracked Rei, who raced rapidly through the void of space, his mercury-colored uniform and undulating silver tendrils flapping behind him.

Swiveling in ways that would put an unmanned jet to shame, Rei made the guided shells strike each other and implode. Narrowing his eyes behind his glasses, Rei gazed at the flames with a scrutinizing glare.

“…It’s always the same, every single time.”

He spread out his many hands, coming to a sudden stop. He held up both of his original hands, as if to catch the many magic shots closing on him from every direction, like pebbles being thrown at them.

The attacks burst. The thick mana shield he deployed blocked each and every attack. With a single shock wave, the firm defensive maneuver kept every attack and fragment away from Rei. However—

Hidden behind the intense flurry of flames produced by Snow Witch’s attacks, Lena drew on Rei and shouted, her RAID Device held aloft:

“Undertaker, activ—!”

“Whoa, there… Growl!”

Several hundred spell circles, each the size of a fingernail, manifested in front of Lena and began revolving rapidly. Faced with this small-scale magic barrage, Lena’s eyes widened.

“Kuh…!”

Canceling Undertaker, she used propulsion magic to rapidly evacuate the line of fire. The next second, a horizontal shower swept through the spot she’d just occupied. If she’d been any later to dodge, this storm of attacks would have torn her to bits. Rei turned to Annette, who drew on one of his tentacles with Falke’s falcon feather–shaped blades in both hands. He deployed a spell circle.

“Howl.”

Light flashed—rapid-fire beams shot out. The malevolent silver-blue beams of light pierced through the area Annette was in at light speed. Annette, who managed to get out of the way using propulsion magic as well, followed his movements, her eyes unable to mask their shock.

“How is he this fast…?! His shot attack is one thing, but how is he switching spells this quickly?!”

“Big Bro Rei’s spells are always so tricky,” Daiya grumbled. “His Growl spell fires shots at close range, and his Howl spell fires rapidly in a wide area.”

“And he didn’t even use his long-range blast spell, Roar.” Haruto, by contrast, gave that remark with a wry chuckle. “Really, I can remember how much trouble he gave us during training.”

“Did you notice, though, ReinaLena?”

“Yes.” Lena nodded ever so slightly, so as to not be seen by Rei.

Rei intercepted Wehrwolf’s and Gunslinger’s tracking Gatling rounds and Snow Witch’s (Anju’s) guided missiles. And before that, he knocked away Black Dog’s (Daiya’s) Howitzer shells, Haruto’s (Falke’s) flurry of blades, and Laughing Fox’s (Theo’s) direct anchor shot.

However.

“He never once tried to block Undertaker.”

He always tried to either dodge or prevent it from going off.

Kurena carried on. “Big Bro Rei’s mana intensity and defense are both high, but like you can see from his personal spells, he was a Magical Officer who specialized in ranged combat and doesn’t have the endurance to block Shin’s close-range combat Undertaker. So if you hit him with it when he’s not prepared…”

“…You and Shin really are our trump card here, ReinaLena,” Annette said through communication magic, nodding. “I’ll keep covering for you. You get in close, I’ll give you the opening you need. So—”

“Annette…?”

“Black Dog, activate!”

Annette swung her RAID Device, manifesting Daiya’s Howitzer. She then took a deep breath and rotated her RAID Device.

“Snow Witch, activate!”

Anju once again manifested as a missile pod. She used two Eighty-Six, but rather than applying one onto the other as an enchantment, she activated both at once, casting two powerful spells in tandem. This was a feat Annette, with her high maximal mana values, was just barely capable of. With her face rapidly losing color from mana consumption, she shouted the command.

“Fire!”

The Howitzer and missile pod spewed fire.

“Tsk.”

Rei instantly used Growl’s barrage to intercept the missiles and used a magic shield to defend against the Howitzer’s explosion. But Annette continued firing, pinning him in place, and Rei’s expression twisted in annoyance as he realized this.

“So stubborn… Howl! Roar!”

He deployed Howl’s spell circle of beams of light, and Roar, a much larger seven-layered lightning spell circle. Howl fired its beams rapidly, while Roar fired seven shots of massive condensed lightning, each on the level of a city-class ship’s main armament. Both attacks were aimed squarely at Annette—and the Howitzer and missile pod deployed at her side.

“Get back, you two! Laughing Fox—!”

But Annette wasn’t able to switch out her Eighty-Six in time.

“Oh, crap…”

“Daiya!”

A single prong of the seven-branched Roar spell, which was unleashed at the same time with its six other prongs, was that much harder to dodge compared to the Howl’s single beam. As the Roar drew on him, Daiya must have realized there was no evading it. The second before the impact, Daiya chose to turn into his human form instead of returning to his jewel.

A destroyed Eighty-Six returns to the Temple Ship, and their consciousness, prior to destruction, is shut down, meaning they experience no injury, pain, or fear of death. And so he used the moment before the spell took away his consciousness to speak. Not to Annette, nor to any of his other comrades…but to smile to only one girl.

“I’m sorry, Anju… Let’s meet again someday.”

And then the attack connected.

Anju cried out his name like a scream, her voice echoing hollowly in the sea of stars and warfare. Only the flames of the Howitzer still covered the battlefield, like they were fueled by Daiya’s tenacity and pride.

With the black smoke as her backdrop, a magical girl drew on the Shepherd who had just finished his counterattack—

“Is that it? The same trick as before?”

“Not at all.”

The flames cleared. The one approaching him was not Lena but Annette, using Laughing Fox’s wire anchor to move rapidly and close the distance with him in the blink of an eye. Her right hand clenched into a fist, and within it, she spun a falcon feathered blade—Haruto’s Falke—already activated. Her face lit up by its faint glow, Annette flashed a gruesome smirk.

“Can you take this, Shepherd?”

A second later, Lena drew on Rei from his blind spot at his back, Undertaker’s massive scythe in her hand. Rei’s expression contorted ever so slightly.

“Impudent, cheeky… Dammit… Sing!”

The spell was like a flapping of wings. One especially large mass of tendrils extended from the Shepherd’s left shoulder, blocking off the starlight for a moment before changing direction and slamming into Annette. The silvery tentacles clashed with Falke’s blade head-on. They struck each other, sending fragments of sparks and mana flying as the silver liquid rapidly chipped through the falcon’s wing.

“What…?!”

As Lena gulped in alarm, the black eyes behind his glasses turned to look at her.

“Growl!”

“…!”

Shin reacted faster than Lena did; the massive scythe, already swinging in an upward trajectory, deflected the barrage of Growl attacks.

“Haruto, OwletteAnnette!” Raiden shouted. “Pull back! He’ll break through if you keep this up!”

“…Easier said than done.” Haruto gave a weary smile. “I can’t do that. If I demanifest my weapon here, Big Bro Rei’s tentacles are gonna get Annette.”

“Haruto! Are you…?!”

“And if that happens, we can’t take down Rei, and the war won’t end. So…”

He’d wear the mass of tentacles down, too, taking them down with him.

“—Ah, drat, I’m blacking out. Dammit…!”

The last of the falcon’s plumes shattered. Haruto’s orange jewel vanished from Annette’s brooch.

“Haruto…!”

Annette was in a state of shock at having lost two Eighty-Six in quick succession, and so Theo pulled her back to safety by reeling in the wire anchor. There was once again distance between the combatants—Rei lorded over the two magical girls, flapping his remaining tentacles like wings.

“Those tentacles are in the way,” Shin said bitterly with a clicking of the tongue.

Hearing him say this, Rei bellowed.

“I told you! They’re not! Tentacles! They’re not weird hands, either!”

“I didn’t call them hands yet. I guess you’re aware of it, though.”

“As if! Don’t make fun of my hands, you hear?!”

At that moment, the Legion commander that threatened mankind for a century suddenly made the face of a desperate, powerless young man. Like a sole survivor, defending the graves of his comrades. A lone warrior, carrying with him the regrets of his comrades.

“They clung to me. The ones that vanished. The guys that fought with me. The ones who fought me. They wanted to return, to survive, but they lost, got blown up, never to return. And they still wanted to go back, they didn’t want to fade away, wanting to become the same as me.”

He was talking about his comrades, the ones who fought with him against the screams, and also of the Ratrator who faced them. The war dead who fought side by side, only to never return, fated to fade into the bottomless darkness of space.

Perhaps it was this fate, not their usage of mana, that tied the dying Magical Officers to the Ratrator and made them mingle into one. The helpless wishes they harbored toward that fate was the biggest point of congruity they had.

Be the same as us—the wish harbored by the dying, the ones in the midst of scattering into the void, toward the living. At least return to the same primal void as us—together with us. That pained, meaningless, and hopeless wish.

“These are all their hands. Nothing remains of their consciousness anymore, but they still reach their hands out to their friends. I won’t let you call them weird. I won’t let you…insult them.”

For a moment, Lena could hear it…Shin gritting his teeth.

“…In that case.”

He breathed the words out indignantly, but his expression was that of a child on the verge of tears.

“If that’s the reason, why didn’t they go back…? If you tried so hard to reach out, why didn’t you grasp what’s there? Back then, I hung on to you, Brother!”

Rei gulped. “You…? You held on to my body…?”

“I held on to you, but your spirit alone slipped away. You wouldn’t grasp back. Why didn’t you…?! Why did you become a Magical Officer?!”

Shin and Rei’s parents were Magical Officers who perished in the war with the Screams, leaving the two brothers orphaned. And…

“When Mom and Dad died, I told you not to leave. The two of them were gone, so I wanted at least my big brother to stay with me. So why?!”

Why?

“Why did you leave me behind?!”

I told you not to go.

Rei’s waxen face filled with regret, loneliness…and blank amazement. It was the eyes of an older brother seeing his younger sibling break into tears for a reason he never expected. Of a big brother realizing he’d unintentionally, unknowingly hurt his baby brother.

Dumbfounded, his lips breathed a whisper.

“Shin…”

And—

This time, the truly inappropriate voice of a third party’s voice and spell cut into their exchange.

“Gunmetalstorm, activate! Enchant, Manticore!”

“Wait, you’re moving in now?! Seriously?!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding, old man, that’s awful!”

“I’m not kidding at all! And call me ‘Grandpa,’ will you?! Now fire!”

Over a hundred guns manifested in the darkness of space, like a mountain of porcupine quills clustered together. They boomed as one, their many shells becoming a wall of lead that ruptured in front of Rei with a timed fuse, unleashing a storm of cluster bombs at point-blank range.

“!”

Rei blocked them with a swiftly deployed defensive wall, stopping them from hitting him directly. However—

“Next, Fafnir, Griffin, activate! Also, Helianthus, activate!”

“No, seriously, read the room!”

“Whoaaaa, we’re sorry for ruining everything!”

“Is the universe going to get back at us for this?!”

“Meteoric acceleration! Meteor Kiiiiiiiick!”

“““““And the attack’s name is really lame, too?!””””” Five Eighty-Six exclaimed at once.

A magical girl with shoes that had wing ornaments on them with revolving electric saws spinning at their soles sped through outer space like a rocket, accelerated by two pairs of dragon and eagle wings, and landed a dropkick on Rei’s tentacles. It was a male magical girl, with his Juggernaut flapping like a long mantle, and his Eighty-Six, Touzan, Kuroto, Kino, Chise, and Touma, shouted in shock.

Lena, followed by Annette, called his name.

“F-Father?!”

“Uncle?!”

“No, ReinaLena and OwletteAnnette! During operations, you must call me SilverbreadVáclav!”

Indeed, it was Lena’s father and one of the San Magnolia’s magical girls, SilverbreadVáclav, also known as Václav Milizé.

By the way, his callsign really is Silverbread and not Silverblade or Silverbeard—there is no typo. His curse was appropriately “to always bump into someone of the opposite sex whenever he runs with a slice of bread in his mouth.” His callsign was christened to him by the Magical Girl MeteorMargareta.

Mr. Václav would often brag that it was the name his darling wife gave him when they met, which was his way of gushing. Very annoying.

The high-speed dropkick and the petal-shaped blades that scattered upon contact were powerful enough to send even a Shepherd flying. He spread out his strange hands to fix his posture and glared at Václav.

“You get in my way…?!”

Václav struck a cool pose. “Of course, for you are a Legion, and I am a magical girl! I’d get in your way…and keep you from hurting my comrades! My fellow defenders of the fleet! Other magical girls! And my brothers- and sisters-in-arms, the Eighty-Six! You won’t claim another life!”

He then glanced at Lena and Annette.

“I kept you waiting, ReinaLena and OwletteAnnette! While you fought hard, we were able to clear out the small fry, and now I’m here to help you!”

Three streaks of color tore through the battlefield.

“Let’s go, Lecca! Burnt Tayl, activate!”

“I’m counting on you, Mikuri! Leukosia!”

“Do it, Mina! March Hare, activate!”

“You got it, DrunkenSanders!”

“Here I go, GluttonousJohn!”

“Okay, SuperCoolTom!”

“““Stop calling us that!””” the three men shouted.

“““Who cares?! Anyway, here we go!””” the three Eighty-Six retorted.

Anyway.

“Burnt Tayl, Leukosia, March Hare, combined converged Delta attaaaaaaaaaack!”

A blue will-o’-the-wisp, a beam of light like the sparkle of a scale and a streak of spring lightning spread out. The three magical girls (middle-aged men) swung down their RAID Devices in a triangular formation, unleashing a mass of converged energy at Rei.

“You little…!” Rei howled, both figuratively and literally, unleashing his Howl spell.

“Whoaaaaaa?!” Sanders, John, and Tom fled from the attack.

“Mmgh. Once more, Touzan! Gunmetalstorm, activ—!”

“Like I’d let you.”

Rei then unleashed his Roar attack, the seven-pronged slash pushing away Touzan’s Gunmetalstorm, but by the time he did that, Snow Witch’s missiles were already upon him.

Dustin flew in, offering further support with Artemis’s arrows, as did Séneville with La Bête and Echo with Argos’s high-output laser. Those followed Snow Witch’s barrage while Annette swung her RAID Device. She aimed the device straight ahead, at Rei’s flank, took a deep breath, and chanted.

“Theo, please! Laughing Fox, activate!”

“You think you can keep pulling the same trick…?!” Rei spat out bitterly, swinging his right hand against the fusillade of arrows and large missiles.

He intended to stop it with a mana shield, but at the same time, he turned his left hand to Annette, using Growl to unleash a barrage at her.

“—Fire!”

Karlstahl’s order boomed through the airwaves.

Aiming perfectly between the magical girls fighting wildly across the battlefield, one of the San Magnolia’s 2,000 mm railguns roared. But this time, Rei was prepared for it and deflected the 2,000 mm shell with a barrier. Unfortunately, it was flung in John’s direction, who evacuated the blast zone in a flustered hurry.

“Dammit!” Cursing under his breath, he intercepted another flurry of rockets with a Growl barrage.

As the flames of the explosions blurred the air, he flung one of the Sing tentacles at Annette’s presumed course. But the tendril only lashed through the empty void.

“Phew, if the San Magnolia hadn’t fired, I might have been in big trouble.”

The flames cleared. Annette was sneering at the tentacles that had cleanly missed her. She was supposed to have used Laughing Fox to rapidly move away, but apparently, she hadn’t changed position at all.

“You let me fool you. This time, I’m the one pulling you along.”

“What…?!”

Just as he turned around—Lena had swooped in on him from the side, propelled by magic and tugged in by Laughing Fox.

“Wehrwolf, activate, enchant Gunslinger!”

A flurry of shots enchanted to always land on their target blew off Rei’s tendrils, nullifying the Shepherd’s means of attack in the blink of an eye. Not even bothering to return the two Eighty-Six to her brooch, Lena chanted her follow-up attack.

“Undertaker!”

The ruby jewel vanished, and mana swirled powerfully in her hands gripping the RAID Device.

“Activate!”

The crimson scythe manifested, and Lena swung it down. It clashed with the deployed mana shield, and the two spells pushed against each other, competing.

Like Kurena said, blocking Undertaker was challenging even for a Shepherd like Rei. Flowing silver blew sparks as the bloodred blade dug gradually into the mana shield, inching in bit by bit. For the first time, Rei’s expression filled with clear alarm.

“Tsk…!”

“Kuh…!”

But clashing Undertaker against the Shepherd’s powerful shield was rapidly depleting Lena’s mana reserves, and she was on the verge of running out. Her field of vision went black, her thoughts tumbled in her head, and she knew the moment she’d let her focus slip, her spell would be lifted. Biting her lips, she clung to her consciousness with all she had.

But then another pair of hands rested over her own, helping her prop up the RAID Device. Overlaid on Lena’s dainty hands were the sinewy, hard fingers of a man, attached to supple, muscular arms. A virile body pressed against her back, supporting or perhaps embracing her as they manipulated the scythe together.

Turning around, she looked up. Half-transparent against the starry sky was a black-haired boy about her age but half a head taller, clad in a mercury uniform. Those piercing, serene, crimson eyes.

Shin.

“I entrust you with all my power, Handler. Wield it well.”

And as he said it, she felt a massive surge of mana flow through her. A fissure ran through Rei’s mana shield with a crisp sound. Once cracked, the shield lost its sturdiness, becoming like ice doused with hot water. More cracks began to form. She was breaking through. In just a moment, they’d easily shatter it.

But then Rei smiled like he was relieved. Reassured. Like a big brother seeing that the younger brother he always thought was smaller than he was had at some point outgrown him, standing taller than he ever was.

“I may be the big brother here, but… I guess sometimes I’m allowed to lose a quarrel with you.”

With the earsplitting sound of a thousand glass panes shattering at once, the mana shield broke into countless fragments… And the crimson scythe swung diagonally through the Shepherd.

The full brunt of Undertaker’s strength, capable of felling an entire army with one swipe, struck directly into him with all its might. Cut through, Rei then shattered like a glass statue and vanished without a trace.

It ended all too easily. The Shepherd met its end.

Perhaps the boy Lena saw at that moment was but an illusion. Lena could only watch in silence as Shin, in his usual tiny form, stared wordlessly at the space his brother once occupied. This was these brothers’ final farewell after a century. She knew better than to disturb it.

Giving one final sigh, Shin turned around.

“Handler…”

But then his small hands started crumbling away, like a statue made of sand.

“Shin?!”

“Ah…” For one moment, Shin looked down at his small hands in blank amazement.

The same hands she clasped when they first met. The hands with whom she swore to fight together. His eyes were fixed on his hands, crumbling and returning to the emptiness of space. And then he looked at her with a pained smile.

“My apologies, Handler… I’m out of mana. I’m blacking out.”

Since Eighty-Six were beings made of mana, they required that mana to retain their forms. It was only natural, then, that depleting their mana meant they could no longer keep their bodies manifested.

“Let’s go back, right away!” Lena reached out to him in a hurry. “We need to recharge you…! No, forget that, I’ll just give you all the mana I have left right here!”

“No. We won’t make it in time anymore. And I don’t want you to hurt yourself over this.”

Lena realized what had happened. During Undertaker’s final blow, the attack that took Rei down, Shin used up his mana, pushing beyond his limits to ensure she didn’t bottom out her own mana reserves. He pushed himself to the point where he lacked mana to keep himself manifested, and his body was falling apart.

Her anger flared up, reaching the boiling point.

“You…! Why are you Eighty-Six always so…?! So eager to sacrifice yourselves?! Why do you keep making that face, like it’s a given that you have to get hurt?!”

Shin looked back at Lena with confused eyes, like a hound concerned at the sight of its owner being hurt. His unraveling didn’t stop; his arms crumbled, his legs fell apart, and the edges of his fluffy tail and triangular ears broke into particles of light.

“Do you really think we can see that and just accept it?! That we don’t care so long as we’re fine?! Don’t insult us, we are not that cold-hearted! This does…hurt us!”

She spat out the words, the tears she was holding back spilling from her eyes. The tears floated through the vacuum of space like beads as Lena implored her fading Eighty-Six.

“You said we’d fight together! That you wanted to end the war, to be set free! Then you need to be allowed to live in peace, too, right?! You wanted to find happiness, too, didn’t you…?!”

Shin remained speechless, like he was shocked into silence. Like she’d said something he never expected. And then he regarded her with a soft smile.

“Yes, maybe I did. But that’s not to say that being an Eighty-Six was all bad.”

“HUH…?”

“It was fun. Being able to spend time with my comrades without sleeping. Living with you. It really was.”

And then Shin called her name at the very end. The name he’d avoided using until now. The name he refused to call her with, because had the war ended a hundred years ago, she wouldn’t need to use this callsign.

“Good-bye, ReinaLena.”

She heard the crimson jewel shatter with a clear sound.

Yet another tiny Eighty-Six faded into the boundless expanse of outer space.

CHAPTER 1

Somewhere deep down, he believed that an Eighty-Six that exhausts its mana supply is unable to retain its body and will never awaken. After accomplishing the task for which he pursued his brother for a century, he had no more reason to be—and so he would cease to exist.

He thought it was all over for him.

But him believing that didn’t make it so.

When Shin awakened, surrounded by the unique fragrance of fruit that came from the cardboard box in which Eighty-Six manifest before a new magical girl, he was filled with a hint of relief and an odd sense of emptiness. After one hundred years, he had grown used to his small body, fluffy tail, and triangular ears.

The spell that maintained the Eighty-Six as the protecting force of the fleet cared nothing for an individual’s goals or feelings of accomplishment. This was a bitter reminder that when all was said and done, they were but part of a defensive system, cogs in a bigger machine.

The smell of fruit that filled the cardboard box—the aroma of cherry, not that he cared—felt rather offensive and angering in his current desolate emotional state.

Both this cardboard box and the rain showering it were but a display set up by magic, so of course the box did not contain any fruit. Heaving a little sigh, Shin looked up.

On the other side of the half-open lid of the carboard box, he saw a pair of large red eyes peering inside from a distance so close, it was lacking in reservation and concern. They were like the eyes of a kitten that spotted a little mouse, specifically a kitten with its irises widened after having spotted prey.

…Uh, yeah.

Shin already got the distinct impression that he was almost certainly in trouble.

“Allow me to introduce myself! I am the mightiest of the starship Giad One’s magical girls, EmpressFrederica, also known as Frederica Rosenfort! You’ve done well to present yourself before me. I welcome you with open arms, new Eighty-Six!”

“And I am the Giad One’s captain, Ernst Zimmerman! It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eighty-Six Shinei Nouzen! Let’s work together to take down the Legion!”

God, these two really are trouble. Shin froze atop the lounge suite’s low table as the magical girl and captain respectively struck a cute-cool pose and gave a pointless thumbs-up.

The magical girl, Frederica, was only ten years old, so he could excuse her behavior, but the captain gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up that discarded all notions of respect that would stem from his age and title. He was crazy. Shin wanted to go back already.

The Giadian Federacy was the strongest national faction of the Starship Fleet, with thirteen starships under its name.

Shin was currently in the captain’s quarters of its first vessel, the Giad One. The room was firm and dignified, befitting the solid pride the Giadian Federacy boasted, which clashed with Frederica, who was prancing around in her frilly Juggernaut outfit for no good reason, and Ernst, who took a red cloak out of nowhere and put it on.

Ernst then followed up by hurriedly taking off his cape and took on a more dignified tone.

“Well, jokes aside.”

“That was a joke? Everything leading up to this was a joke, and you usually conduct yourself like a proper captain?” Shin asked, earnestly double-checking.

Ernst ignored him. “Jokes aside. Welcome, Shinei. The Giad One welcomes you… I got you strawberries. They’re in season. I thought you’d be sick and tired of cherries.”

Ernst gestured toward a faceted glass of strawberries that he’d placed along with a face towel and cushion for him when they entered the quarters.

This time, Shin was placed in a box of “specially selected cherries,” and the smell had clung to him somewhat. Also, through whatever weird twist of fate, Frederica’s Juggernaut outfit had cherry pink as its key color. So yes, like Ernst said, Shin couldn’t stand the sight of cherries at the moment.

Ernst stared at him with expectant eyes, so he lifted one strawberry from the glass (it was large enough to require both hands) and bit on its triangular tip. Refreshing sweetness and moderate sourness filled his mouth. Shin could see why Ernst recommended this.

Frederica sat on the lounge suite’s sofa, still in her Juggernaut, digging into her cup of strawberries while sucking on a pack of condensed milk out of a straw.

“Do you wish for condensed milk as well? I recommend the chocolate syrup flavor.”

“No.”

He was still all right with fruit, but he didn’t like anything that was too sweet.

“Eating them with squeezed milk and sugar is great!” Ernst said excitedly. “It takes me back to my childhood…”

“Uh, yeah…” Shin nodded vaguely.

“Squeezed milk and sugar…? One can eat strawberries like that…?” Frederica pondered aloud, puzzled.

The fact that Frederica didn’t know that strawberries were eaten this way in the past—because before they were made through selective breeding, their sourness trumped their sweetness—dealt some psychic damage to Ernst and also to Shin.

“But either way, sit down and listen while you eat. It’ll be a bit of a long story.”

“…?”

A once-destroyed Eighty-Six being sent from their main body aboard the Temple Ship to a new magical girl on the fleet was nothing new. Especially not to Shin, who’d seen this cycle go on for a hundred years now. It didn’t feel like anything the captain could tell him would be new to him.

“First, ever since you destroyed the Shepherd with the San Magnolia… Ever since the Legion commander called Dullahan was slain, the Starship Fleet’s standing in the war has changed significantly. To be specific, following the destruction of Dullahan’s forces, we were also successful in wiping out the forces under the Legion commander Mistress. In the six months you were out, the Legion forces as you knew them have been reduced by half.”

“What…?” Even Shin, taciturn as he usually was, widened his eyes in surprise.

After defeating Rei—Dullahan—only three Legion commanders remained. Mistress, Pale Rider, and No Face. Of those three, Mistress used powerful lasers and controlled countless remote-control units. She was feared as the merciless Queen of Moonlight, but Ernst just said that she and the Legion under her command were wiped out.

When the Legion War began a century ago, there were seventeen Shepherds, and during the hundred years that followed, thirteen were taken down. It took over a hundred years to defeat thirteen—that was how powerful the Shepherds were. And in the last six months, they defeated another one on top of Rei?

That easily? Really?

“What…do you mean? Did something happen in the six months I was asleep…?”

He once told Lena that defeating Rei could open the path to the end of the war. He did want to end the war, during the time when he fought with Lena—before he had to leave her. But the possibility the war could end far sooner than he expected left Shin stunned.

Ernst nodded in understanding, properly grasping the confusion of this Eighty-Six who had defended the fleet and fought to free his comrades for a century.

“The starship Roa Gracia’s royal technical institute. They work directly under the king, who ordered them to devote all their efforts into a decisive weapon, which they finally completed.”

The Roa Gracia was the sole immigration battleship in the fleet that retained an autocratic monarchy. All the power and capital were consolidated in the hands of the king and his clan, meaning that any organization and research sponsored by the royal house were guaranteed a steady flow of funds and manpower. While other ships and organizations had to wait a long time to complete research, the royal technical institute and its researchers were given preferential treatment and were accordingly expected to conclude work in a timely manner.

“The weapon was put into use in the battle for the Roa Gracia in April, led by the youngest prince, who was also the head researcher. The Roa Gracia’s unique technology and Handlers were deployed only to guard the ship and the extermination weapon. Mistress and the forces under her command were all wiped out solely by that weapon’s attack.”

“…”

“With this achievement under their belt, the Roa Gracia agreed to share the technology and undertake the construction of a second, third, and spare fourth cannon. Once the three cannons are complete and ready to deploy, we intend to go on an operation to wipe out the remaining two Shepherds and the forces under their command. This will put an end to your war, Eighty-Six. And in that operation, we want you to handle guarding the second cannon that will be used on the Giad One.”

Ernst waved a hand, and the lighting in the captain’s quarters dimmed. A holo-screen triggered, displaying a three-dimensional schematic of the weapon over the lounge suite’s heavy desk.

It was some kind of artillery piece that dwarfed even the twenty-two-meter caliber tactical magic cannon that served as the starship’s main gun. Combined, its barrel and firing mechanism were longer than a city-class ship. The muzzle, which was the equivalent of a ship’s bow, was overlaid with countless crystalline spell orbs like the compound eyes of an insect, making it clear this was a spell cannon. Shin couldn’t begin to imagine the amount of mana required to fire this massive gun.

As Shin looked up at it wordlessly, Ernst continued. Yes.

“This is our Anti-Legion Annihilation Weapon. Its name is…”

Frederica leaned in and finished his sentence, taking the pleasure of saying the name all to herself. For some reason, she looked very pleased with herself.

“The Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon!”

“…What?” Shin asked despite himself.

“The Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon!” Frederica repeated, undeterred.

“…”

Hm, how to put it…? Was it just him, or was this not a very questionable, if not suspicious sort of name? It was weird the way each word had meaning on its own, but put together into a name, it made less sense than the sum of its parts. Why was that?

“…Yeah. It’s definitely the .”

“Did you say something?”

“I said the name’s weird because of the you put there. Just like a Handler’s callsign.”

“You didn’t have to add that last remark, and even if you chose to, you could have picked your words a bit better, could you not…?!” Frederica grumbled.

Shin ignored her.

“Yes, the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon—” Ernst, who’d held his tongue so far, carried on.

“Is that actually its official name…?!” This time it was Shin who grumbled.

He thought the ten-year-old came up with a silly name on the spot, but the captain just called it the WhateverBoom Cannon with a straight face!

Ernst (who, note, once was the captain and supreme commander of the Giad One) darted his eyes behind his glasses with the grief of a middle manager caught between the cogs of the workplace.

“The stupid developer… I mean, the stupid youngest prince was…”

“So stupid either way…”

“I mean, he’s kind of famous for being absurd. Anyway, the stupid prince takes joy in seeing captains and generals from other ships repeat these stupid names. He told us to do it.”

Cruel and unusual.

“And, well, he forced… Ahem, entrusted the greatest honor of actually commanding the cannons, which the developer would usually handle, to his older brother, the crown prince Zafar, and insisted that he join the battle with Mistress personally.”

Yes, that did sound like famous levels of stupid. Cradling his forehead with his tiny hands, Shin spoke while suppressing a headache. “…Uhm, so, that stupid-name cannon.”

Ernst smiled wryly. “Yes, at this point, even abbreviating the thing feels like a pain.”

“I understand both the name and its origins are stupid now. Can you give me some more relevant information?”

“Truly…? I find the name quite swanky…,” Frederica muttered in disappointment. Shin and Ernst ignored her.

“Hmm… Where was I?”

The answer was that he didn’t really tell Shin much of anything except for its name, and appropriately enough, Ernst soon picked up on his thread of thought.

“This weird-name cannon…” The name was both silly and long, so he just shortened it to weird-name cannon. “It doesn’t just shoot a massive shot of mana. The mana flow it fires is attuned and accurately calculated to invert the magical traits of the spell that forms the Legion, canceling it out. And since they’re magical beings, it effectively destroys them. It’s an extermination cannon built specifically to wipe out Legion. And since it completely cancels out their spell, it doesn’t produce any taint. This cannon sidesteps the pitfall of the Ratrator’s destruction creating the Legion.”

Shin cocked his head quizzically. Based on all this, the cannon was extremely powerful.

“But where are you going to get all that mana? And if it accurately inverts their magical traits, the mana has to match the spell constructing the Legion, too… I mean, it’s not like you can capture a Shepherd to take out another Shepherd.”

Then how?

“No, it’s possible. There’s plenty of specimens with the same kind of mana constructing the Legion. All of the taint the Eighty-Six take on when they fight the Legion and then purify away in the Temple Ship.”

“…!”

The taint. The Legion and Eighty-Six were both originally Magical Officers defending the fleet from mankind’s enemies, and through that common trait, the Legion infected the Eighty-Six with their warped mana.

“To keep you from turning into Legion, the Temple Ship prioritizes cleansing your true bodies and leaves disposal of the actual taint for later. Some of it gradually becomes harmless when left on its own, but most of it is stored and compressed within sealed coffins stored on an unmanned ship. After all, if we just dump harmful taint somewhere, it could end up turning some early life on a planet out there somewhere into a monster, and we wouldn’t want that. And to begin with, since we can’t purify them fast enough, the sealed coffins are starting to stack up, so we were trying to find a use for them. That’s how the work on the cannon started.”

Ernst smiled. Yes, indeed.

“It’s thanks to you fighting for a hundred years, taking on all this taint for the Starship Fleet. It’s thanks to you that we made this trump card that can put a stop to the remaining Legion. This is your achievement, your victory.”

It wasn’t because they failed to protect the Magical Officers a hundred years ago.

“…”

Shin hung his head softly. He wasn’t sure how to respond, what expression to make. His fluffy, triangular ears drooped in doubt. Frederica, who looked over him from the side, pulled Shin’s tiny body into a hug, like she was consoling a sad puppy.

“…Stop that. No twitching your ears. It tickles.”

“They’re moving on reflex because your chin is touching them. If you don’t like it, let g—mmmgh?!”

“Are these the cheeky ears talking right now?! Or these?!”

“Mhaaaaa?!”

Frederica pinched and pulled the soft, fluffy twitching ears before her eyes. Having his sensitive auditory organs pinched made Shin screech like a kitten. After fidgeting and struggling for a moment, he was finally able to free himself.

“Really, you two get along so well when you only just met.”

“No, we’re not, stop her…” Shin got away from Frederica, stopping at the end of the table and out of her reach, and turned to face Ernst while keeping her in the corner of his eye. “And honestly, I don’t mind guarding the weapon, but I’m anxious about having her join the operation.”

Her impish prank just now was yet another cause for concern, but moreover, Frederica was a ten-year-old girl. Shin’s Undertaker consumed a lot of mana as it was, and Frederica was still only halfway through growing. He didn’t want to overheat or give her a blackout, because with a girl this young, she really could die in battle.

“…You are more prone to worrying than you seem.”

“Oh, well, there’s actually something else I have to explain,” Ernst said, picking up the receiver for an antiquated phone sitting on the desk. He pushed a button, opening an internal line that likely called his secretary from the waiting room.

“He’s here? Good. Let him in.”

The door to the captain’s quarters, which was likely a heavy metallic door inlaid with wooden panels, opened with a surprisingly faint grazing sound. An earnest-looking but pleasant boy with silver hair and glasses entered the room. For whatever reason, he walked with a light gait reminiscent of dance steps, letting out shining TP Particle sparks that typically appeared around deploying Juggernaut outfits.

“Magical Girl LunettesEugene…”

The rainbow-colored sparkles were issued by his cream-yellow Juggernaut, which had a frilly skirt that was appropriate for a female magical girl and not a male one. Sitting on his obviously flat chest was a star brooch that had no Eighty-Six jewels shining on it. He also had a glittering hair ornament and a ribbon on the back of his waist.

He struck a pose, walking in delicate high heels that Shin could never wear—and Lena would surely trip over herself in—with his long ribbon and chiffon skirt aflutter.

“Here to heed your summons!”

Ernst replied by striking a pose, too.

“Well met, Handler LunettesEugene! I called you to give you a special mission!”

Can I get off this ship already? Shin thought earnestly. Save me, Lena. Hell, I’d even take my brother at this point.

Eugene snapped out of his pose and fixed his stature.

“M-my apologies, Captain! My sister, well, she’s still little, but I always strike this transformation pose when I go through the front door because she likes it. It just came over me!”

It came over you? Like what, demonic possession?

For some reason, the brother he turned into a star in the sky (literally and physically) came to mind with that annoyingly refreshing smile of his. This made Shin snap out of this moment of escapism and jab at that remark.

Ernst shook his head with a smile. “My, if you aren’t just a good big brother. You put this outfit on to make your little sister happy?”

“Ah, yes, she really looks up to Juggernauts for females,” Eugene said bashfully.

Incidentally, once he removed his Juggernaut, he was dressed in the usual Giadian magical girl uniform, a steel-colored blazer. Frederica, by contrast, was still in her cherry-pink Juggernaut, and Shin had to question why no one remarked on it.

“Allow me to introduce you, Shinei. This is one of our ship’s Handlers, Eugene Rantz.”

“Eugene Rantz, callsign is LunettesEugene. Nice to meet you, uh… Shin?”

Shin blinked once. “Call me however you’d like, Handler. So you’re asking me to pair up with him, Captain?”

After all, another magical girl was called here on top of Frederica, who was chosen in his manifestation ritual.

“I’m glad you catch on quick. Exactly, I want you to go out and defend the weird-name cannon with LunettesEugene instead of with EmpressFrederica… Your bond with Frederica, with whom you did the ritual, will remain intact, and this will be a lending ritual for the duration of this operation, so this shouldn’t cause any problem as far as the spell is concerned.”

Once an Eighty-Six manifested before a magical girl, they could not return to the Temple Ship until they were destroyed or the magical girl died. In other words, neither the Eighty-Six nor their Handler—nor anyone in the fleet, for that matter—had a way of severing the contract.

However, the magical girls partnered with an Eighty-Six were picked entirely at random. Some people, like Lena and her father, were more easily picked for it, while others had a very low chance of receiving an Eighty-Six. There were also cases where Handlers had to leave the battlefield for a time due to injury or illness, while still possessing Eighty-Six. And when that happened, the Eighty-Six who were limited in number but crucial for fleet defense became reserves that did not go to battle despite being necessary.

To counteract that, the fleet used lending rituals. As the name implied, they allowed a magical girl to temporarily lend their Eighty-Six to another Handler. Since Eighty-Six don’t get destroyed if their Handler dies, there were even instances of a nearby surviving Handler making such a pact with dead magical girls to shelter and use their Eighty-Six.

“Eugene doesn’t have an Eighty-Six of his own, so he’ll only be using you, Undertaker. He has roughly twice the average amount of mana, so even if you make him black out, he should be fine.”

Shin turned to look at Eugene, who shrugged with a smile.

“My mana capacity overshadows his, however,” Frederica said with a pout. “I, too, can use Shinei without risk of blacking out.”

“True,” Ernst said with a sardonic smirk. “Frederica is right; she has the highest mana capacity in the Giad One. She could fight alongside you without issue. Assuming you were the only Eighty-Six she had, that is.”

Shin picked up on the implication.

“She has another Eighty-Six, then?”

“Yes. Four others, believe it or not.”

“It was deemed that using you, with your great mana consumption, on top of them would be too taxing for me. But the role of offering extra security was levied squarely on you. I and my Eighty-Six will also be participating in the defense of the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon. They’re all fellows you know, I believe. I’m sure they quite missed you.”

Shin turned to look at Frederica in surprise. Frederica grinned at him impishly, like a girl who’d just pulled off a successful prank.

“’Tis time to come out, you lot! Begin your touching reunion!” Frederica hopped to her feet and waved a hand. Four tips of her star-shaped brooch shone with four different-colored gemstones. One cherry blossom-colored, one the color of white smoke, another emerald, and the fourth orange-colored.

“Shin! It’s been six months!”

“We meet again, man! Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

“Us working together again is a huge coincidence.”

“It’s been too long! Let’s hang out again!”

Kaie, Kujo, Daiya, and Haruto. The four others that materialized before Frederica before he did hopped out and wrapped their arms around Shin.

Shin was only lent to Eugene, and he was still linked only to Frederica. It was she who provided him with mana at most times, and the foundation of the crystal pod where he slumbered, along with its maintenance and repairs, were all done in her home. It was no different from when he lived with Lena.

But today, Eugene asked to introduce him to his little sister, and so Shin went to visit Eugene’s home.

“Kaie tells me that with your last Handler, you remained nondormant even outside of battle. Then I ask that you spend your time under me similarly. It shall be fun! My mana will be more than sufficient for it.”

So Frederica told him when they parted ways, and indeed, he could sense her mana capacity was a match for Lena’s. But since he was now away from Frederica, the amount he was receiving was smaller. On top of that, the Temple Ship prioritized purifying him, so the amount of mana he depleted fighting his brother did not recover much.

This made Shin sleepy, and he had to stifle a yawn. Eugene, who carried him on his shoulders, furrowed his brows and smiled.

“Sorry for forcing you into this. I imagine you’d want to sleep until you fully recover.”

“Your sister’s heading back to her elementary school dorms, right? I understand wanting to do this before she leaves. Don’t worry about it, Handler.”

Eugene’s strained smile deepened.

“You can call me Eugene. And my little sister is Nina.”

This reminded him of how Lena would pout when he called her “Handler.” Having that memory that at the time felt so trivial pop into his mind like that made Shin choke up a little.

The girl who resolved to fight at his side even after she learned the whole truth. Was she crying for him? That thought pained his heart. She was probably still crying, and this time it was because of him.

Eugene, who pursed his lips and frowned, whispered:

“Also, I’d appreciate it if you could stop being so formal with me. We’re partners of the Eighty-Six, not your masters… You don’t need to talk to us with respect or anything. If anything, you’ve been fighting this war way longer than any of us.”

Shin realized he must have been told the truth about the Eighty-Six. And he did remember the way Ernst spoke openly of the relationship between the Eighty-Six and the Legion while Frederica and Eugene were in the room.

Eugene spoke to him, without any reservations, while knowing everything.

Shin hung his head. This kindness that bordered on the foolish… It reminded him of Lena and made him feel forlorn. In the face of those moon-colored eyes, leaving his words, his heart unexpressed… It felt wrong.

“Back in the captain’s quarters, you said your sister…that Nina admires the magical girls’ Juggernauts.”

“Yeah.”

“She admires them, but she won’t become a Handler… This operation should end the war, and you want it to end, which is why you’re part of it even though you have no Eighty-Six.”

To keep his sister from becoming a Handler. So at least she wouldn’t need to fight. That’s what drove him.

“…Yeah.”

“So I understand how you feel. Even though her admiration will never amount to anything, you want her to experience Handlers and Juggernauts and Eighty-Six before it’s all over… So if you ask me to meet her, I don’t feel inclined to say no.”

It really shouldn’t bother you.

He left that last bit unsaid, but Eugene’s eyes widened in disbelief before melting into a soft smile.

“Thank you… Yeah, you’re right. I don’t want Nina to be a Handler. She shouldn’t have to fight like I do. So…”

Let’s win this. Let’s end the war. In place of those words, Eugene used a finger to pat the Eighty-Six resting on his shoulder.

“I’ll be counting on you, Eighty-Six.”

“Yeah,” Shin answered with a thin smile.

They had just returned to his home, and Eugene stopped in his tracks. It was a typical stone house built in the Giad One’s typical black metal and cast-iron colors. The hour was set to dusk, and under the false sky, he reached for the front door lit up by an orange lamp.

Eugene took a deep breath. This gave Shin a bad, foreboding premonition.

Eugene slammed the door open and stormed inside the house while chanting like he did in the captain’s quarters.

“System start, Juggernaut deployed! Magical Girl LunettesEugene, here to heed your summons! Nina, I’m hooooome!”

“Welcome home, big brother! I mean, Magical Girl Lunettes Eugene!”

“…”

Yeah, he’s a bit too soft when it comes to his sister, Shin thought as he looked on with distant eyes at Eugene, who picked up the young girl who was apparently his little sister and spun her around in a hug.

Shin patiently sat still for a long time, letting Nina, who was overjoyed at interacting with an Eighty-Six for the first time, hug and pat him on the head. During that time, his mana reserves finally ran dry. Nodding off, he rubbed his eyes with his tiny hands and finally fell asleep. Eugene picked him up and walked back toward Frederica’s estate.

This Eighty-Six was a kind person at heart. Probably far more so than he thought himself to be.

The time was set to just barely late night, a bit too late of an hour to be walking about outside. With the spaced streetlamps and the lights from the houses, it wasn’t pitch-black, but few people were outdoors at this time of night. By the time he’d make it back home, Nina would already be in bed, and Frederica would be sleeping already, too.

Eugene walked with swift steps, not so fast so as to wake Shin up but swift steps nonetheless, when he heard a pair of footsteps approach him from straight ahead.

As the figure drew on him, their features visible under the light of the streetlamp, Eugene blinked dubiously. It was someone he knew, another magical girl living in the area.

“What are you doing out at this time of day, Kitty EyeMarcel?”

“—Why are you calling me by my callsign out of operations?! And how can you call me by that name with a poker face?!”

Kitty EyeMarcel—Erwin Marcel—exclaimed in outrage. He was another magical girl of the Giad One, like Eugene. He was also his schoolmate in elementary and middle school, as well as at the officer’s academy. And, like his callsign implied, he had feline eyes.

“I mean, I would have a poker face on; it’s what I call you during operations.”

“Yeah, but still! Besides, I don’t know why it’s ‘Kitty Eye’ when it should be ‘Cat Eye,’ and couldn’t they be a bit more creative and go with, like, chatoyancy or something?! Why Kitty Eye?!”

“They already told ya why. Cat Eye and chatoyancy are both already taken,” said the Eighty-Six resting cross-legged on his head.

Her name was Shiden, and she had red hair and two odd-colored eyes.

After all, the magical girls were a defensive force that protected the Starship Fleet, which was large enough to migrate multiple nations. Its overall population was extremely vast, and every single magical girl needed a unique callsign, so there were some strange cases like Marcel’s at times.

Incidentally, Shiden’s ears and tail were kitty-like, not doggy-like. There was no particular reason for her cat features, for Theo’s fox features, or for Mina’s rabbit features.

“Still, Kitty Eye, seriously? They were just winging it with that one…,” Marcel complained, the same way Super CoolJohn did.

Eugene cracked a vague smile. His own callsign, Lunettes, was “glasses” in French, alluding to him wearing glasses. This also counted as winging it, but he made peace with that.

“So, uh, what are you up to at this time of night, Marcel?” Eugene asked.

“Oh, yeah, right,” Marcel said, recovering from his anguish.

Ignoring the way Shiden, who rested cross-legged on his head, cackled at him, he narrowed his sanpakugan.

“Just here to give you a fair warning… I heard you agreed to have that one Eighty-Six lent to you.”

“The Handler killer, Undertaker. The legendary Headless Reaper that consumes so much mana, he ends up killing his Handlers on top of the Legion.”

Eugene pursed his lips ever so slightly. The war had gone on for one hundred years, and each ship had data on every Eighty-Six. The names of especially powerful Eighty-Six were known and rumored among the magical girls. Legends, horror stories, exaggerations of their accomplishments and losses.

And one of them was Undertaker. The Headless Reaper that even consumed his comrades.

“Are you sure you want to do this? If anything happens to you, Nina and your grandma would be heartbroken. And yet… You’re taking over for another Handler to do this lending contract with this damn Reaper.”

“…I’m not worried.”

“Well, I am. They say a Handler in the San Magnolia died because of him. Using that huge scythe of his drained their mana, made them black out, and rumor has it they got killed and torn to ribbons because of that. Because he devoured everything they had and left them to die, that…this damn Reaper!”

Marcel pointed at Shin, who was still sleeping soundly, oblivious to their conversation as he was forced into dormancy by the lack of mana. The tiny Eighty-Six, with his small doggy ears, curled up like a small child and slept peacefully.

“…”

“…”

“…”

An odd silence descended on the two of them and Shiden.

“I’m not worried,” Eugene repeated.

“…Yeah. I think I feel the same way now.”

If he was in his armament form, that of the ominous Red Scythe, he’d be more intimidating. But this tiny, dog-eared plush-like boy sleeping calmly there didn’t look unnerving or dangerous.

“Anyway,” Marcel said, scratching his head to pull himself back together. “Don’t let the fact you borrowed a powerful Eighty-Six go to your head and do something reckless, you hear? Be very careful. The operation is still on until we’re back home!”

He stuck out his finger again, this time at Eugene. Eugene regarded his worrywart of a friend with a strained smile.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

At the same time, on the San Magnolia’s magical girl takeoff catapult…

“System start. Juggernaut deployed.”

As he chanted, prismatic TP Particles formed his defensive garment. The spell weaved a long cloak and several decorations that offered magic protection. His vest, decorated with beautiful embroidery, was a uniform red. It wasn’t pure red, but closer to a darker scarlet.

His RAID Device then deployed, but for some reason lacked an Eighty-Six that would be the constant companion of a Handler.

“Course clear. Handler MercuriusRei, you’re good to go!” said the control officer.

Letting out a short breath, the magical girl spoke.

“Roger that. Shourei Nouzen, MercuriusRei. Setting out!”

Chapter 2

“Course clear. Handler MercuriusRei, you’re good to go!”

“Roger that. Shourei Nouzen, MercuriusRei. Setting out!”

Sent into outer space by propulsion magic, he flew past the Fleet’s final defensive line and joined the other two magical girls escorting him. Unlike Rei, an adult man, the other two really were girls. The one in the sky-blue Juggernaut was ReinaLena, while another in a mint-green one was OwletteAnnette.

“We’ll be counting on you today, too, MercuriusRei.”

“I’m sure you’re getting used to things by now, but don’t let your guard down, MercuriusRei.”

Rei nodded in response and then let out a despondent sigh.

“…I understand this is necessary, but still, this callsign… It’s very deflating.”

Especially the .

One hundred years ago, when Rei was a Magical Officer, callsigns were often the product of insults or pranks, but at least there was no . On top of this, Rei had a hard time getting used to the magical girls’ frilly dresses, or seeing his younger brother’s friends and his juniors turned into cute plush toylike physiques complete with ears and tails. He also had to live with the knowledge said younger brother was likely on some other ship on the Starship Fleet and likewise looked like a plush toy with doggy ears and a tail.

He’d ask himself how things came to this, but since he knew the answer already, Rei shelved the issue, his eyes distant.

Annette frowned, her gaze finding fault with him.

“You’re asking this like you’re not at fault… Why do you think it happened, former Shepherd, MercuriusRei?”

Six months ago, Rei, a Legion commander and Shepherd, was defeated by ReinaLena and her Eighty-Six, Shin.

Normally, this would mean his destruction, but through a series of consequences and good fortune, Rei reverted to his former human form and became a magical girl.

A hundred years ago, when Rei and the other Magical Officers were polluted and became Legion, Shin was able to recover his body, which remained an empty shell after his soul was expelled from it.

One factor in his revival was the fact that his body was not disposed of and instead was stored safely in the Temple Ship, where it was continuously purified like the Eighty-Six’s bodies were.

And—the fact that one old model Fido that once adored Rei a hundred years ago survived to this day.

No one, not even me, would have ever imagined that Fido would be able to sniff out specifically my soul from the fragments of the mana that made up the Shepherd, recover it before I was destroyed, and bring it back to the Temple Ship.

Rei thought back to that faithful mechanical hound. When he was defeated, the taint that mingled with him to form the Shepherd was torn away. What little taint remained in him was small enough to be washed away by the Temple Ship’s purification ritual. With both his mind and body purified, Rei was able to awaken to his original human personality and mind.

Regaining his senses made him painfully aware of how insane he’d been for the last century, much to his great shame and horror.

If that was how he’d been acting, it only made sense Shin would be creeped out by him and call him a weird hand freak. Rei could only woefully agree with his attitude back then.

“Yeah… I can say nothing in my defense…”

It wasn’t Rei’s fault he became a Legion, but the reason behind his callsign did allude to his time as a Shepherd.

As Rei dropped his shoulders, this time it was Lena who regarded him with a pained smile.

“And your Juggernaut, too…”

“Yeah, my Juggernaut… I know there’s nothing I can say about it, but still…!”

Unlike the two girls before him, Rei was clad in a Juggernaut designed for males. This meant a long cloak that extended down to ankle length and a well-embroidered doublet. Thick, well-fitting tights and boots adorned with feathers. Distinctively puffy sleeves and a large round culotte. Only the brooch that held his cloak in place was the same star shape as Lena’s and Annette’s.

If the female Juggernauts had a design reminiscent of fairy-tale fae or princesses, male Juggernauts like Rei’s looked like something a prince or knight in shining armor would wear.

In other words, his outfit was that of a prince in pumpkin pants.

Incidentally, Rei’s Juggernaut was colored tomato-red, owing to the color of his mana, and that extended to his cloak, doublet, and tights. And of course, his culotte and boots, too. He was tomato-red all over.

Annette once defended the design as tasty-looking, since it reminded her of pasta sauce. This made Rei think—but not dare say aloud—that this meant Annette’s mint-green dress was like mint chocolate, and Lena’s sky-blue dress was like blue curaçao. He was an adult and mature enough to know when things were better off left unsaid.

After all, they were the same age as his younger brother, who was ten years younger than he, meaning he’d be getting mad at girls ten years his junior (not counting his time spent as a Legion).

Raiden breathed out with what sounded like exasperation. “Listen, MercuriusRei. You, too, ReinaLena and OwletteAnnette…the enemy’s about to come out. Get ready to fight.”

“Oh. Right, right.”

“Whoops.”

Lena and Annette hastily turned to face the approaching group of Legion. Raiden’s Wehrwolf, a Gatling gun, and Anju’s Snow Witch, a missile launcher, manifested in the vacuum of space. Annette turned her eyes to Rei, who had no Eighty-Six and nothing to summon, and said:

“This time we’ll be firing with maximal firepower… We’re counting on you to supply us with mana.”

Rei’s lips turned up in a smile. Who did this girl think she was talking to? With her meager mana that ran out after just a bit of fighting?

“—Yes.”

After finishing their interception, Rei returned to the San Magnolia and demanifested his Juggernaut. He stepped into the defensive block, which looked much the same as it did a century ago.

He still had no Eighty-Six with him. He passed by a slender, bespectacled officer who was apparently setting out on patrol in Rei’s stead and saw he had a rabbit-eared Eighty-Six resting on his head. She waved at him. If he recalled, those were Officer SuperCoolTom and Mina.

She still had many of her girlish features, while looking younger and smaller, and she had a fluffy tail and ears.

Waving back, he saw her off before shaking his head.

“…Still, I take on taint more easily than others. It would make the fact they took on those forms meaningless.”

Having reverted to human form and returning to the battlefield as a magical girl instead of as a Magical Officer came at a price. He’d lost some of his memories from his time as a Shepherd. His exceptional high mana capacity was the same as Shin’s, as that was just his original capability, but at present, the perfect control he had over it in his prime had slipped a notch. As such, he was still capable of activating his three unique spells if he tried, but his lack of control of them made them too dangerous to use until he either got used to his current state or regained his control.

But above all else, Rei had once become a Legion. And those close to each other, with congruity to each other, resonate and call out to each other. Rei was a former Shepherd, and this made him closer to the Legion than to any magical girl or Eighty-Six. And he was more susceptible to the Legion’s taint than anyone else was.

This meant Rei was forbidden from directly fighting the Legion, even when using the Eighty-Six as an intermediary. So instead, Captain Karlstahl entrusted him with another task.

The door to the standby room opened, and he was greeted by Lena and Annette.

“Good work today, Rei. You must be tired.”

“No, he doesn’t look tired at all… We used so much mana, how are you this unaffected?” Annette said, lying tiredly on the table with only her upper body.

She was apparently chewing on some mana crystals to replenish her mana, but it wasn’t keeping up with her fatigue.

Rei scratched his head awkwardly. “I mean, I don’t know what to say… Back when we were Magical Officers, Shin and I were top of our class in terms of mana supply and recovery. That’s why I was put in charge of supplying mana to you and Lena.”

During the battle with Rei, Annette and Lena lost Haruto and Shin respectively to mana deprivation. As a means of repenting for that, Rei was charged with supplying mana for the both of them specifically. A perfect role for Rei, given both his monstrously high mana supply and recovery speed and the need to keep him away from direct combat for fear of corruption.

The reason he was assigned to them as opposed to supplying mana to the San Magnolia’s cannons was out of Karlstahl’s concern that the two of them could be reckless enough to deplete their mana and black out from mana depletion.

Lena cast down her eyes. Noticing this, Rei held his tongue. He made to pull out a chair for Annette, but she held up a hand to stop him and settled into a chair on her own.

“Don’t worry, Lena… I’m sure Shin’s doing fine on another ship,” she told Lena, using the same line she’d given her countless times already.

The reason Lena hung her head was because Rei mentioned Shin’s name. She lost him to mana depletion—saw him shatter before her eyes. That memory had haunted and tormented Lena for the last six months.

“…But—”

“I’m Shin’s brother. If anything happened to him, I’d know. He’s fine and fighting on another ship. Believing that you’re still fighting the good fight here.”

“…”

“And you know what…? I have to ask you to stop underestimating my brother. Shin chose to give everything he had to win, and he’s not so weak that a girl should need to take the blame for that. In fact, you should probably throw some complaints at him next time you see him. After all, he left a woman behind on the battlefield and disappeared on you.”

This finally got a small smile out of Lena. “…Yes.”

With faces that made it very clear they were up to something, Kurena and Theo tugged over a basket of cookies Annette made, and Rei took one and bit on it… Of course, her curse had kicked in, but Rei was too polite to deny the offer and always ate one.

“…Hmm. Pickled plum flavor. An unusual choice, but the bitterness isn’t too bad after a long battle.”

“No way, I put in chocolate chips. What’s pickled plums anyway?”

“…”

Given the bitterness, he assumed it was probably lemon, but apparently there weren’t even any fruits involved. And why did the one who made it say “no way”?

Attracted by the mention of a foodstuff she’d never heard before, Lena gingerly reached for the cookies, bit on one, and then staggered back.

“It’s bitter…?!”

“People from the San Magnolia don’t really eat pickled plums,” Anju said, watching over them lazily. “Back in our time, only Kaie would occasionally buy them.”

Rei did recall that Anju and Raiden, whom Kaie told the pickled plums were dried fruit she sugared, reacted just like Lena did. Shin, on the other hand, reacted with surprise like a cat who thought he’d caught a mouse, only for the mouse to stand on two feet and start dancing and singing. He made quite the face.

On their next sortie, Rei had his reunion with Shin and made a startled face.

“Oh, it’s Shin! Heeey! It’s me, your big brother…!”

Rei waved enthusiastically at Shin, who was with a little girl and a bespectacled boy from the Giad One, one of whom was probably his Handler. They weren’t close enough to be visible with the naked eye, but being siblings, Rei and Shin could sense each other’s presence, and so long as they knew where the other was, using farsight magic made communication simple enough.

The two magical girls were confused by him, but Shin showed no reaction whatsoever. Rei resolved to keep waving and calling out to him.

Eugene was baffled by the young man magical girl who went to the trouble of sending them audio and video footage from all the way in the San Magnolia’s defensive line. He looked over to Shin, who was next to him in humanoid form. He had his triangular ears as flat against his head as they could be, and had both his brows and lips curled down into a frown, his eyes narrowed in very clear, very extreme discomfort.

Or rather, right… It was the kind of face one made when they really, really didn’t want to admit that this young man, ten years older than they were, with the long, flapping magical girl cloak, who was waving at them with a dazzling smile, was actually his older brother. That exact sort of face.

“…Uhm, Shin?” Eugene asked.

“Dunno him,” Shin said squarely.

“But—”

“Don’t know that guy. No brother of mine would look like he’s covered in tomato sauce and flash such a weird toothy grin.”

You just said he’s your brother.

Anyway.

“LunettesEugene, let’s blast him out of existence.” Shin said something utterly stupendous.

“Enough. No going to extremes.” Frederica cut into his words and yanked on his ears with both hands.

“Mhaaa?!” Shin squealed.

As Shin toppled over his shoulder, his eyes still spinning, Eugene held him down, sighing. Frederica was right, that was clearly going too far. As someone with a little sister of his own, he didn’t want to understand how he felt, but… He kind of did.

As Rei stood there insistently, despite Shin’s silence, Lena called out softly.

“…Hm, MercuriusRei. Shin looks rather creeped out…”

“From the look on his face, I’d say he wants to blast you out of existence. You must be annoying him, so maybe you should stop…”

But Rei replied with a surprisingly earnest voice. “Yes, I imagine, but… From his perspective, he defeated…killed me. But I don’t mind, and as you can see, I’m fine. So this is my way of showing him he doesn’t need to worry and can trash-talk me all he wants, like he used to.”

He said it while waving and grinning like an enthusiastic child. Earnestly.

“…”

Lena, Annette, and the Eighty-Six were all rendered speechless for a moment. It really sank in that this guy really was a big brother at heart. The little magical girl did something with her hands, followed by the boy magical girl picking Shin up, which seemed to settle the grim mood hanging over their side.

“…Ah. She just pinched his ear. Maybe I should be a bit worried about that girl… But it looks like he’s doing well. I hope he gets along with them until the war’s over,” Rei said, cutting off the transmission and farsight spell and then turning his eyes to Lena.

The San Magnolia was, of course, aware of the Legion annihilation weapon being developed between the Roa Gracia and the Giadian Federacy. This annihilation weapon was poised to destroy the two remaining Shepherd commanders, and if successful, the war could end. Not just the two ships, but the whole Starship Fleet was rapidly preparing for the upcoming annihilation operation.

Yes. Until the war’s over. All that was left was for the date for the operation that would put an end to this war to be announced.

The operation to take down the two remaining Shepherds, known by the callsigns No Face and Pale Rider. Knowing this, Lena brought up the question that had been bothering her the whole time.

“MercuriusRei, uh… Is there any way we can save the other Shepherds and Legion? You were able to go back to being human, so maybe they can go back, too?”

They were Magical Officers devoted to defending the fleet and fought against the alien intelligent life-forms called the Ratrator to the very end, only to turn into Legion, the new enemies of mankind. Was there any way of saving them?

With his back turned to her, Rei did not turn around. “I realize this might sound weird coming from me, since I was lucky enough to revert to human form, but… It’d be extremely difficult. The Legion on their own can’t go back. They…”

When they burst one hundred years ago, they already lost all their memories and personalities. Their minds and bodies were blown to a thousand pieces, mingling with the taint, destruction, and curses of their enemies to forever lose their forms…

“They’re called Legion for good reason… They are the dead remnants of countless many. Not the Magical Officers they once were. Nothing can be done…to resurrect them.”

“…”

“And for Shepherds, who retain the personality they had in life, like I said, they can be returned like I was if the right conditions are met. Just like how you can’t just graft someone else’s organ onto a body, a person’s mind… Maybe not the surface parts, but definitely the soul that makes up the core of what they are can’t be attached to another person. It’s like a glass bead. You can tarnish it with a crack and mingle into it if you break it, but if it’s still whole and still has its shape, all you can tarnish is its surface. And if you can properly cleanse it, that taint can be washed away.”

Just like the Eighty-Six washed away the taint that accumulated in their bodies through the purification ritual.

“Except…”

Rei didn’t turn around, gazing into the boundless blackness between the stars, where he lurked during his time as a Shepherd.

“You can’t meet those right conditions. Shin recovered my body, and it remained untouched. And then you and Shin were able to separate me from the taint that gripped me. Fido was still there to remember me and knew how to sniff out my soul.”

His body was neither lost nor damaged, and he had a loyal mechanical hound ready and willing to sniff out the glass bead that was his soul from among a river of pebbles. Were it not for those coincidences coming together, Rei would have met his end and scattered into the boundless expanse of outer space as a Shepherd.

“But the other Shepherds don’t have that. Even if their bodies did survive and remain human when they fell, then maybe you could purify them given time. But they’d either need to have a Fido who knew them in life like I did, capable of finding and picking out their soul before they’re destroyed, or some other way of salvaging it.”

Someone close to them. Someone with a connection. Like Rei and Shin did, when they called out to each other even after being separated into Shepherd and Eighty-Six. Like parents bound by blood, or siblings, a bond that could save their souls from the fragments of mana that would scatter.

But it had been a hundred years since they turned to Shepherds. There was no chance their family survived. The Fidos were being destroyed and replenished every day in battle, making the fact that the one Fido knew as Rei had survived for so long a miracle.

Rei heaved a sigh and finally turned around. Behind his glasses, his eyes—so similar to Shin’s, despite their different color—smiled sadly.

“So you don’t need to go out of your way to save us. Us Magical Officers, we already failed a hundred years ago, and now it’s just the time to pay the piper for it. So please, don’t worry about us and defeat us if you must. If you Handlers got yourselves hurt trying to save us, I think…”

The Magical Officers, back when they were still alive… His old comrades would be grief-stricken.

“Jérôme, let’s blast that redheaded wolf. With the San Magnolia’s main gun. Blow him to bits.”

“Václav, Lena’s getting to the age where girls start hating overprotective fathers.”

Karlstahl sighed deeply at the sight of his best friend plastered against the optical screen displaying the space near the final defensive barrier and making absurd demands out of love for his little girl.

It seemed that Karlstahl himself forgot the way he was annoyed when Lena got a new boy Eighty-Six instead of a girl six months ago. Václav, meanwhile, kept clinging to the screen like he was some new species of an overgrown bug.

“Kuh… Look at how he smirks at Lena, at my little girl… Unacceptable…!”

At least accept that much, Karlstahl thought.

“Whoaaa, talk about being a bigoted old man.”

“Getting mad at him for talking to her with a smile is all kinds of unreasonable.”

Kino and Chise, Václav’s Eighty-Six, aired their grievances out loud. By contrast, Annette’s father, Josef von Penrose, approached Rei with a box of cakes and an apology for the trouble his daughter would no doubt cause him.

“If you’re gonna be like this on brief interception missions, you’ll give yourself an ulcer when they’re out on the extermination mission. And honestly, if that’s how you’re gonna be, we can’t risk sending you out.”

Polluted though they were, the Shepherds maintained their personalities, memories, and intellect. Mistress was wiped out because the Legion weren’t familiar with the new weapon, but the other two Shepherds were aware of the cannon whose name shall remain unmentioned. They most likely took measures to defend against it. The annihilation operation would not be a walk in the park.

Václav wasn’t listening, though.

“Yes, that’s right, this is an interception mission. Just what are the Legion thinking? Hurry up and blast that redheaded wolf.”

That would put Lena at risk, too, you stubborn oaf, Karlstahl thought but was too exasperated to say aloud.

But that said…

“It’s true that the Legion are encroaching on us unusually slowly. It shouldn’t take them this long to break through the offensive barrier and the Fidos…”

But then, as he said it, Karlstahl’s eyes widened in realization. No. This is…

The alarm blared.

Frederica looked up in alarm. This feeling… This presence!

“’Tis you. Kiriya…!”

News of the fast-approaching Legion quickly reached Lena and the other magical girls out on interception duty. It came from a direction they did not expect, implying the initial point of contact with the offensive barrier was a diversion by the Legion leading up to a surprise attack.

And this Legion moved extremely fast. It went from being detected outside the offensive barrier and the Fidos’ second defensive line to breaking through the Fidos in a second. With lethal combat capability, it swept through the swarm of unmanned combat fighters.

A Shepherd.

“Oh no…!” Rei gulped.

Those with congruity call out and are drawn to each other. In which case, a former Sheperd like Rei would be easily detected by the other two Shepherds, and in turn would beckon them—just as the Shepherds were wary because their numbers were greatly reduced by mankind’s new weapon.

“Kuh…! You there, Handler! Before you’re spotted, back up, then, before they discover anything! You two are supposed to guard the trump card, right?!”

Before this insolent Shepherd, who came out to scout things on his own despite being a commander, found them.

The little girl in the cherry-pink Juggernaut froze, but the boy in the glasses grabbed her by the arm and cast propulsion magic, basically pulling her along as they rapidly returned to the mothership. Two other magical girl men who were with them—a one-eyed middle-aged man in a chocolate-brown Juggernaut and a young man dressed in a Juggernaut so white that one needed to ask if he was going to a wedding—moved in to cover for the gap they’d left.

Lena and Annette stepped forward with their Gatling gun and missile launcher deployed, defending Rei, who lacked any offensive capability. They also applied defensive magic to their Juggernaut to block off any mental influence.

And then—

“—I find a presence I believed to have been cut down in the most unusual of places.”

Without even using teleportation magic like Rei did, relying only on unmatched speed and agility, it appeared in the blink of an eye within the radar’s range, standing before Lena and the others.

Lena and Annette already knew Shepherds looked like human beings. And despite that, they couldn’t help but gasp. The overpowering pressure. The menace he emanated. It was like witnessing a boundless battlefield littered with countless rusted spears thrust into the ground like grave markers. A chill overcame them, like ice-cold blades pressed against their skin.

It was the presence of cold-heartedness. Of death. Of conflict.

He stood there in the mercury-colored uniform of a Magical Officer, his hair black and his eyes obsidian, his face alabaster and well-featured to the point of gracefulness, speaking the words:

“Look at you now, Shourei Nouzen. What’s with this strange outfit? Have you become a jester?”

His words staggered Rei like a blow. The overtly direct criticism must have dealt some psychic damage. But he soon recovered and looked up resolutely.

“Shut it! I have no choice but to put this on! And it’s not like you’d be able to last in this outfit if you were sane, Kiriya!”

He pointed at him and retorted, making the Shepherd narrow his eyes in annoyance. It was the emotionless eyes of one looking down at an insect clinging to life despite having fallen to the ground.

He looked to be around Lena’s and Annette’s age. The line of his cheeks was thin and roundish, and his eyes still gave off an air of youth, and that only made the artificial coldness of his glare all the more unnatural. His slender physique looked much more human compared to Rei’s more winged form, but everything under his knees was formed like an animal. His heels stuck out, and he had long claws extending from them that scratched against the ground. Like the nimble, ferocious legs of a wolf or a hound chasing down its prey.

Extending from the back of his neck was a protrusion, like a thorn or a fin, stretching behind him at several times his height like the long neck of a dragon.

His entire body glowed blue. The tips of the many spikes protruding from his tail glinted silver. Even without needing to check, Lena knew his callsign. Beautiful blue, and a silver flash.

Pale Rider. The Shepherd that boasted the highest speed of all seventeen of them, and the Legion’s most dangerous blade, specializing in high-mobility combat.

But even faced with Pale Rider, Rei glared right into his eyes. And perhaps this came as no surprise, for he himself was Dullahan, a former Shepherd.

“How are you still alive after being defeated, Shourei Nouzen? It’s infuriating. Die.”

“What, hit your rebellious phase? Oh, sorry, I forget that you’ve been in your rebellious phase all this time, Kiriya. You’re at that age, after all. But I guess that sulky attitude of yours is charming in its own way.”

Pale Rider’s—Kiriya’s—brow twitched dangerously.

“…Silence, jester.”

“Only one here who needs to stay silent is you, tail freak. My little brother can get away with it, but who are you to tell me to shut up, you zombie? Talon monster. Pincushion. Tail freak.”

In the end, Rei resorted to the same kind of name-calling as Shin. Inappropriate as it was given the situation, Lena was oddly moved by this display of sibling similarity.

“…Someone you know again?” Annette whispered.

“No, never met this guy,” Theo replied in jewel form.

“I guess it must be one of Big Bro Rei’s colleagues…? Or maybe Shepherds talk to each other on their off time.”

“Unfortunately for me, yes,” Rei said, still glaring at Kiriya. “This guy was the latest to become a Shepherd, and because of that, his emotions are erratic… See? Like that.”

In clear annoyance, Kiriya kicked against the vacuum he was floating in. The moment he swung down his raised claws, a spell circle appeared right below it, clashing with the talon with a hard, stiff dissonant screeching.

Lena realized that this was the trick behind Pale Rider’s high-speed mobility. By deploying barrier spells at his feet, he used them as footholds to kick against and race through outer space. Of course, propulsion magic was no doubt involved in some of it, but this method allowed him to move in swift, erratic directions while ignoring inertia. This made him unstoppable in melee combat.

Rei’s repeated taunts were to inform them of this. Rei smiled thinly, realizing she noticed. This was one reason he stalled for time, exchanging barbs with a massive, terrifying Legion despite being in a body endlessly more fragile than his Shepherd form.

And there was another reason.

“—Fire!”

“Ah!”

Once again, a 2,000 mm railgun heavy artillery shell took Kiriya completely by surprise, which made him let out a surprisingly cute yelp. And, just like last time, it sent him hurtling to the other side of the battlefield.

“Impact confirmed. Shepherd momentarily repelled.”

“Roger that. Radar team, continue tracking the target—”

“All right! Bull’s-eye!”

As the magical girl observing the impact reported in and the control officer replied, Lena looked on in exasperated disbelief as Rei pumped his fists in childish excitement.

“…That was a grudge, wasn’t it?”

This was the same way he himself got hit just six months ago.

“Impact confirmed. Shepherd momentarily repelled.”

“…Good. It looks like the San Magnolia was able to fend it off.”

Eugene dropped his shoulders in relief as he received this report via communication magic in the Giad One’s defense block. He finally let go of Frederica’s hand, which he’d been grasping the whole time since they’d returned to the ship. Turning around, he saw her tear-filled eyes still clinging to him reproachfully.

“Why did you get in my way, Eugene?! It was my duty to remain in that place…!”

“Your duty is to guard the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon, EmpressFrederica.”

Eugene spoke sternly, stressing the importance of the mission by using her callsign. This made Frederica jolt. He continued with a low voice, gazing back at the crimson eyes looking up at him.

“And to do that, leaving the battlefield back there was the right thing to do. To heed the warning. You chose to become a Handler, and on top of that, to take this mission. You’re not allowed to shrug this mission off on your own.”

“That is…true, yes, but…,” Frederica said, hanging her head weakly.

Eugene looked down at her with a gentle smile. “Besides… I won’t ask what you were planning to do, but whatever it was, you wouldn’t be able to do it by just running blindly into battle, right? If you’re going to do it, you’ll need to plan for it.”

“…Aye.” Frederica was somehow able to respond through her tightly pursed lips. Eugene gently patted her on the head. He then picked up Shin, who was watching them, perched on his shoulder, and placed him in Frederica’s hands.

“The scary big brother is going home now… So, Shin, be nice to her, would you?”

“Forgive me… Eugene.”

Eugene, who was about to leave, turned to look at her questioningly. Frederica looked up into his eyes.

“You are not scary at all. You are a fine older brother… And you have my gratitude.”

Eugene smiled and waved as he left.

“Frederica, can I ask you a question?”

After Eugene left, Shin spoke up as the two of them walked down the defensive block’s corridor.

In one hundred years of battle, Shin had never met, not even heard in rumors of a ten-year-old magical girl, not even early in the war, when the situation was much harsher.

But moreover, she detected a Shepherd’s approach much sooner than the radar barrier did and even knew his name. Kiriya.

“You… You know that Shepherd, don’t you? But how?”

“Those are two questions, fool,” Frederica blurted out, wiping away the tears in her eyes.

She then rested her chin on his head, between his perky doggy ears.

“Before I answer, allow me to say this. What was that attitude you harbored toward your brother in the battle just now? He called for you, but you did not heed him, and even pretended not to know him. Is that how you treat the brother you finally reunited with after a hundred years?”

“I…”

“Were that your final meeting, you would have regretted treating him as such.”

Shin looked up at Frederica in surprise. Her voice trembled from the tears and sobs she was holding back. Frederica herself was hiding pain.

“Because I do. Even now, I regret what happened a hundred years ago. Why did I have to argue with my big brother on that day, that time, that morning? Why did I tell him something I did not believe, that he did not have to return from that battle?”

“Are you saying—?”

“Indeed.”

Frederica nodded, her lips tightly pursed. Shin looked up at her young features with surprise.

It wasn’t impossible. Shin knew it from personal experience. Shin and the Eighty-Six’s own bodies, their real bodies, were preserved in suspension in caskets aboard the Temple Ship. In life extension and support capsules that placed them in magical hibernation.

But did this girl accept this long slumber—of her own will?

“I was forced into a century’s slumber, all that I might strike down Pale Rider—nay, my brother, Kiriya Rosenfort—with my own two hands. I am Kiriya’s younger sister.”

INTERLUDE 4

MAGICAL GIRL MAJOR GENERAL RICHARD AND BRIGADIER GENERAL WILLEM

Pale Rider was blown away by 2,000 mm artillery, but the Legion under his command were still in the second defensive line, hunting down the Fidos. Standing at the second defensive line, the magical girl dispatched to sweep them away, MasherRichard, aka Major General Richard, looked over to his partner magical girl. His partner pushed through the whimpering Fidos, cutting down the encroaching Legion. His godlike combat capabilities, so reminiscent to the cutting brutality of a food processor, earned him his dangerous callsign.

“—I really have to say… No matter how I look at it, you do look like a groom on his wedding day, MincerWillem.”

“Shut it…!” Brigadier General Willem spat out as he cut through a Grauwolf with one of his Eighty-Six, Rito, in saber form.

His silk-white Juggernaut remained spotless, as the Legion had no blood to shed. Along with the fair features granted to him by his formerly noble background, the only thing he was missing to truly look like a groom on his wedding day was a bouquet.

In the blink of an eye, he closed the distance on another Grauwolf, using his Eighty-Six to instantly tear through it. His Eighty-Six, Yuuto’s form, was that of a Jamdhar, a small hiltless dagger that slashed up, cutting through a Grauwolf that swept into his flank.

His remaining Eighty-Six, Michihi’s Hualien, was a long-bladed scimitar, allowing him to switch between the Jamdhar for point-blank combat, to the saber for melee combat, to the scimitar for medium-range combat. MincerWillem was indeed a Handler optimized for melee combat.

He pointed the Jamdhar’s, Verethragna’s tip, at Richard.

“I don’t want to hear that from you, what with your funny curse of getting a handlebar mustache every time you drink a beer. Wanna go drinking sometime soon?!”

“I don’t mind. The wife and kids love it. Say it looks cute.”

Their acquaintance, a noncommissioned officer called Bernholdt, had a rather tragic curse that made it so he always had stubble left whenever he rubbed his cheeks against his kids, which made a handlebar mustache of beer broth seem like nothing in comparison. It made his adorable children laugh, so he was outright grateful for it. Richard also liked his Juggernaut, since its chocolate-brown colors were popular with his kids.

“—Uh, MasherRichard, you know MincerWillem had his heart broken. Can you stop teasing him about weddings…?”

“Don’t say anything uncalled-for, Michihi. I’m not hurt,” Willem said as he drove the scimitar into a Löwe.

But apparently he was more indignant than his words let on, because he delivered the blow quite forcefully. Yuuto, with his unusual tiger ears, was wise enough to pick up on the mood and held his tongue. Rito, who didn’t pick up on the mood in the slightest, spoke up.

“Plus, how can Willem be a groom if he’s single? Especially since that technology priest turned him down.”

Willem wordlessly grabbed Rito’s little head and flung him away. Rito was used to this and demanifested the moment he was thrown, and then remanifested in human form at the side of Shana—one of Richard’s Eighty-Six—(who proceeded to elbow him).

Willem sighed in annoyance. “If you’ve got time to chat, focus on whittling the enemy numbers, would you, Richard? Long-range combat is my weak point but your forte, which is why the two of us still get paired up.”

Even after becoming major general and brigadier commander.

Richard gave a thin smile. “Right you are. Shana, activate Melusine.”

He swerved his staff—the Giadian Federacy’s main weapon, the Vanargandr—which became enveloped in prismatic light that rushed into the enemy Legion like a cloud of soap bubbles. Upon contact with the bubbles, they popped ethereally, producing a massive explosion of flame. Shana’s armament form, Melusine, fired bubble bombs that flew and tracked the enemy.

Richard kept rotating the Vanargandr over his head, producing and scattering bubble bumps. The bubbles came out one after another with a burbling sound and went flying all over the battlefield like soap bubbles blown in the wind.

“—Meanwhile, we look like we’re playing with bubbles,” Shana said in armament form.

“A pretty calming combat scene if there ever was one,” Yuuto appended.

Willem scoffed. Richard didn’t seem to mind, though. After all, this, too, was…

“Popular with the kids.”

And as far as he was concerned, nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER 3

A magic transmission arrived from the Starship Roa Gracia. A transmission from far beyond the stars, but it arrived to them clearly. This was crucial good news about the final operation to wipe out the Legion that reached each ship as they were engaged in combat.

“—Roa Gracia to all Starship Fleet.”

“Target Shepherd designated No Face successfully destroyed. We did it, comrades.”

“San Magnolia, roger and out. Congratulations, Roa Gracia. We’re almost there.”

But to the Giad One, which was still locked in battle with the last remaining Shepherd Pale Rider, the transmission was both good news and an ill omen. Which was to say…

“What…?!”

Fragments of No Face’s armor were propelled far into space, reaching even the Giad One’s distant combat sector, hitting the bespectacled boy guarding the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon in the face. They were only the size of a pebble, but they were still lumps of hard armor traveling at extremely high speeds. They shot through the Juggernaut’s magic barrier with a satisfying sound, hitting him square on the nose. Eugene was cleanly knocked out. Since he was in space, he didn’t fall over but simply drifted in the vacuum, while Frederica, who was likewise guarding the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon, the Eighty-Six deployed around them, and Marcel, who was nearby in his carrot-orange Juggernaut, all squealed in alarm.

“LunettesEugene! How dare they…?!”

“Look at all that blood…! Stay with us, LunettesEugene!”

“Didn’t I tell you, LunettesEugene…?!”

“Can you stop it with the tragic good-byes? I’m not dead…,” Eugene grumbled, recovering from his spell of fainting as he floated through space, but no one really reacted to his recovery.

Said blood was just a nosebleed from getting hit in the face.

Frederica glared angrily at Pale Rider, who stood across from them. The final Shepherd who charged in single-handedly to take out the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon. The beloved brother she wished to set free even after a hundred years of cold slumber.

Also, it’s getting really annoying to type it out in full, so from here on out, the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon will be referred to as Weird-Name Cannon.

“Kiriya, how dare you…?! Have you fallen this far, Brother?!”

“You’re blaming this on me?!” Even Kiriya had to sober up and make this stunned remark at his little sister’s misdirected anger.

But no one sided with him. He was a Shepherd, which was to say, the enemy.

“Uh, by the way,” Shiden whispered. “Is bleeding in a gravity-less vacuum, like, something we should be worried about?”

It was indeed something to be very concerned about, but the Juggernaut’s life-support functions meant Eugene would be fine in the immediate sense. He was being towed toward the mothership while his barrier was being maintained. Shin, who was inside Eugene’s brooch due to the lending ritual, undid the ritual and returned to Frederica.

Frederica instantly invoked Shin’s Personal Name, manifesting him as a weapon. Crimson TP Particles meowed excitedly as they enveloped Shin, forming a massive scythe that was much too large for Frederica’s short height.

She thrust the malevolent curved blade at Kiriya and shouted.

“I shall avenge LunettesEugene, Brother… No, Pale Rider!”

“But that wasn’t my fault!” Kiriya objected, but Frederica still wasn’t listening.

There was also a meek exclamation of “Really, I’m not dead, I’m alive!” coming from the general direction of the Giad One, but Frederica wasn’t listening to that, either.

“…Well, I guess it’s LunettesEugene’s fault for getting off guard in the middle of battle,” Haruto, in jewel form, said bluntly.

“Sirius, activate! Feel the pain you inflicted on LunettesEugene!”

Meeeeow!

Kujo turned into a flurry of white flames that blew over Pale Rider in a howl, the opening shot of this showdown between a magical girl and a Shepherd.

…Oh. She only manifested me to strike a pose and demanifested me right away, Shin realized.

But anyway.

“Seriously, that wasn’t my fault… L-listen to me, Frederica!”

“Enough excuses! Kirschblüte, Falke, activate!”

Using the flames for cover, Frederica stormed in with her fists flung, flower petals and falcon feather blades coating her hands. Her mana raged with emotion, which her Juggernaut’s spell overwrote into this form. The TP Particles meowed in confusion as her puffy sleeves and fluffy collar vanished, transforming into a half-transparent bolero and a dashing sailor’s collar. Her skirt, by contrast, puffed up, giving her more freedom to move her arms and legs, taking on a form more suited for melee combat.

She unconsciously rewrote the spell formula of her Juggernaut, momentarily tapping into the vast supply of mana she gained in exchange for sleeping for a century.

“Tsk.”

He clicked his tongue bitterly, be it because her amount of mana was high enough for even a Shepherd like him to perceive as a threat, or for some other reason. A second later, Kiriya vanished from sight.

“What…?!”

Shin, with his inborn dynamic vision and high mana, was able to just barely follow him. Above!

“Strafe to the side, EmpressFrederica!”

“…!”

Frederica just barely dived away, and the next hard mass slammed against another hard mass with a clang, producing a shock wave. Silver lightning shot through the spot she lingered in just seconds ago. The source of the lightning was Kiriya’s legs, which accelerated using the barrier magic underneath them.

The moment they intersected, he glared at the girl who was supposed to be his younger sister with a terribly gruesome glare, the sharp glint of that light being the only thing lingering as he leaped away and accelerated. Forming countless barriers to function as footholds in the vacuum of space, he moved at supersonic speeds through the darkness of the stars in diagonal trajectories like lightning.

He didn’t just stomp on the barrier spells with his legs, he also used his long dragon’s tail and the many spikes extending from it, slamming into them to use the recoil to further accelerate and change direction as needed. With the sound of shattering crystal, he moved at speeds the human eye quite literally could not track.

“Kuh… Black Dog, activate! Fire!”

“Too slow.”

As Daiya’s Black Dog fired a barrage of high explosives, Kiriya sped past and away from them. He changed directions in ways that seemed to ignore all concepts of inertia and acceleration, diving toward Frederica. Not granting her even a second to react, he closed in on her so quickly, it looked like he popped out of nowhere, his fist flung as if to get back at her for earlier. Gripped in the supersonic monster’s hand was a thin stiletto dagger, so small it almost seemed like a joke. Frederica’s eyes just barely perceived it, but she wasn’t able to react beyond that.

The dagger swung down—Frederica couldn’t respond.

“Crap.”

““Tsk…””

Two voices clicked their tongue at once. Daiya voluntarily undid his armament form and returned to jewel form, and in his place, Shin manifested his scythe. As soon as Frederica’s hands gripped him, he moved on his own, blocking the dagger with the surface of the scythe’s blade.

“Shinei, thank you!”

“Focus on dodging. Even if you can’t beat him yourself—so long as you keep him occupied, you win.”

Frederica didn’t necessarily have to take Kiriya down herself. The crux of this operation was the Weird-Name Cannon. A direct hit would take out even a Shepherd like Kiriya. Frederica only needed to keep him occupied in this sector until the Weird-Name Cannon finished locking its sights on him…

That said, repeating Weird-Name Cannon is starting to become excessive.

Frederica pursed her lips and nodded. “Mhm… Giad One.”

The mana charge was completed before the operation began, and right now the mothership was adjusting its sights. Frederica discreetly sent a magic transmission to the ship, so as to avoid detection from the enemy before her.

“I shall stall for the time you require, so continue—”

“Come to think of it, you’ve got some kind of plan, right?” Kiriya suddenly cut her off.

At that moment, with a sharp sound like moonlight freezing over, the stiletto dagger suddenly stretched out and grew in size like a lance.

“…?!”

Even Undertaker’s scythe, sturdy as it was from the vast amount of mana it contained, was creaking under the pressure. The Shepherd’s black eyes burned coldly. Power gathered in Kiriya’s hands, and before he could pierce or destroy the scythe, Shin preemptively deflected the lance. Without resisting the flow of his force, the lance spun overhead and deflected in the opposite direction before slamming down again.

They blocked the attack with the grip of the RAID Device—Frederica and Eugene in particular were given state-of-the-art Reginleifs for this mission—which sent Shin and Frederica tumbling from the knockback. Frederica’s face twisted in pain, her hands numb from the impact.

“What was that…?!”

“A dagger, a lance—he uses a weapon that can change to match the range he needs. He’s tricky…!” Shin rumbled, reverting to human form to repair the crack that formed on his blade.

They looked at Kiriya, who swung his lance like he was wiping blood off it. It was even taller than he, a boy of average height relative to his age, was. It was a long weapon, like Undertaker’s scythe, but the significant height difference between Kiriya and Frederica made all the difference.

Worse yet, if Frederica were to charge into close range, where the long-shafted weapon would be less effective, he could just shift his weapon back to the stiletto, which made him a difficult opponent for a melee specialist like Shin.

Thankfully, Kiriya knocking Frederica back did create some distance between them. While staying at a distance outside the instant range of his lance, Frederica manifested Daiya’s Howitzer so as to force him to move and further increase the distance between them. Seeing her do this with his cold black eyes, Kiriya’s lips twisted into a gelid smile.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you coming at me? Or, what, do you intend to stall for time by just standing there?”

“…”

Frederica narrowed her eyes at his taunt but didn’t say anything. Kiriya carried on, a thin, lopsided smirk on his lips.

“You’re stalling for time, right? To aim that weird cannon that destroyed Mistress and No Face at me.”

Frederica furrowed her handsome brows.

“’Tis not a strange cannon. Its name is the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon.”

“…”

Kiriya fell silent for a moment, which Shin thought was only natural, given how weird the cannon’s name was.

“…What?” Kiriya asked, needless though it probably was.

Frederica stomped angrily. “Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon! Aaah, why are you and Shinei treating it like some strange, unusual name?! ’Tis cool! Swanky!”

“…”

Kiriya was speechless again. He then cleared his throat, apparently deciding to drop the subject. Or maybe he just didn’t want to touch on his little sister’s abysmal taste anymore.

“To aim that strange cannon at me… And I don’t want that. Anything but dying to a weapon with such a stupid name…!”

He ended up addressing it after all. Daiya, in his Howitzer form, remarked that it really wasn’t the kind of name one would want to go down as having lost to.

“Anyway! You’re stalling time for that weird cannon, Frederica! Is that why—no, even if there was another reason, would you think you can get away with just standing there like a fool?!”

“And yet you ask me that knowing all of this. Does that not make you the fool, Kiriya?!” Frederica shouted back in obstinate grumpiness. “Is your head full of stuffing?! Yes, that is right, you guessed it, our objective is to buy time! There is no other reason! Once I run around long enough, the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon with its strange name will strike you down, so prepare your—wait, what?”

Frederica suddenly dropped her voice.

Shin, who was only filtering out most of their argument reduced to a sibling quarrel, sensed something was off. The fact that they were trying to stall for time, to lure Kiriya and to keep him within the range of the Weird-Name Cannon while it prepared to fire, was self-evident. Frederica was right, he didn’t need to confirm that.

In which case…

—Even if there was another reason…

If stalling for time was so obvious, if that was so clearly their goal, why did he say “even if there was another reason”? It was like… Frederica and the Starship Fleet needed to do something else that wasn’t stalling for time.

“…!”

Frederica looked up in alarm. Kiriya sneered at her coldly, cruelly.

“That’s why I asked. Aren’t you coming at me? Because stalling for time is the last thing you should be doing.”

“…!”

The glow of countless stars clouded over. Or flickered out. The light of planets far beyond the reach of the Weird-Name Cannon looked like it went out because there was something on this battlefield to blot it out. Something capable of blanketing all starlight away from the vast expanse of a cosmic battlefield.

With them as their background, Kiriya sneered. With No Face taken out by the Weird-Name Cannon, Kiriya was by now the one remaining Shepherd. And there were still many of the Legion’s shock troops remaining, including, of course, the ones that were once under No Face’s command.

“I needed No Face’s troops to get here and link up with mine. It was I who benefited from stalling for time.”

The Legion gathered, drowning out the starlight. In droves. In swarms. Having lost all their commanders, save for Kiriya, this massive flock of Sheep followed this singular Shepherd. Every last single remaining Legion. One after another.

—My name is Legion.

For we are many.

The sheer sight of the vast army rendered everyone aboard the Giad One speechless. Magical Girls and Fidos moved in to intercept, either on command or of their own judgment. The Giad One’s every single gun and port opened fire, while nearby starships flew in to offer covering fire.

The Giad Four, originally in charge of wiping out the forces under No Face’s command, was equipped with Weird-Name Cannon #3. When the enemy vanished from their sector, they tuned their radar barrier and began changing their sights to the Giad One’s sector upon hearing the Legion appearing there.

Likewise, the Roa Gracia received words that the Giad Eight, which was loaded with the spare Weird-Name Cannon #4, had begun hanging its target as well. A group of magical girls from the San Magnolia was preparing for a long-distance teleport to assist.

As defensive lines were being built and reinforced rapidly, the Legion fearlessly rushed them. Lines of light weaved together, taking the form of a blue butterfly. These were the lightning spell circles, Edelfalter.

Flapping their glass-like lapis lazuli wings against the darkness of space, they drew on the magical girls in a way that seemed playful and yet horrifyingly fast. Dozens, hundreds of wings whirled in a bewitching spiral, from the center of which lightning shot out, sweeping through everything before it. This quickly broke down the defensive lines, forcing the fleet to resort to a melee.

The Eighty-Six’s shells, missiles, lasers, lightning, and heat rays went flying. Heavy artillery fired through the sector. The butterflies frolicked gleefully with the Fidos.

“Whoaaaaaaaaa, dammmiiiiiiiiiiit!” Marcel screamed in a frenzy as he fired Cyclops’s pump-action shotgun blindly at the butterflies swarming him.

Eighty-Six in armament form usually handled loading and ejecting ammunition on their own, but for some reason, Marcel kept pumping his shotgun back and forth.

“Kitty EyeMarcel, we’re running out of ammo—,” Shiden said calmly in shotgun form, but Marcel kept stomping on the ground and pumping the shotgun.

His dislike of his callsign, coupled with the knowledge that he was running short of ammunition with the enemy swarming before him, made his nerve skyrocket.

“Aaah, dammit! Cyclops, come back! Now, Cyclops, activate!”

She disappeared with a hiss and then remanifested with a roar.

“I know this is nothing new, but why?! And this, too!”

Typically, Eighty-Six were capable of creating their own ammo so long as they had mana to spare, but with Shiden, not only did she not handle reload and ejecting ammo on her own like others did, she actually ran out of ammo once the clip emptied and needed to remanifest to replenish it. The reason the TP Particles hissed at him was Marcel’s curse, which made cats always hiss at him whenever he ran into them.

The shotgun round he fired tore through the butterflies’ brittle bodies. But the Edelfalter kept charging in, ripping through the fragments of their allies to reconstitute their magic circle. They were forcing the Fidos, the magical girls, and Marcel into a retreat.

Like a wildfire tearing through a field, like a tidal wave washing over a shore. Using their vast, superior numbers, the Legion gradually, bit by bit, little by little—cornered the magical girls.

While watching her allies’ predicament, Frederica couldn’t offer them any help. She had her hands full resisting Kiriya, who led this army of blue butterflies as their vanguard, and she couldn’t offer anyone any assistance.

Magical heat rays flashed in the edge of her field of vision, only to be intercepted by the Edelfalter’s lightning. Young Frederica was terrified of the thought that someone might have just died to this flash of light.

Holding back tears, she desperately called out to the Legion’s commander—knowing she could perhaps fend him off but not beat him. She called out to him, to her precious brother who was still within this Shepherd.

“Kiriya, just stop this! Kiriya! What would destroying mankind achieve?! Why do you strive so much to destroy the dominion of man?!”

But he gave no answer. His black eyes were frozen over with such baleful cruelty and brutality, it was hard to believe it was the same person she was bickering with just moments ago. The eyes of her brother, eyes she knew to be so kind, were mingled with the hatred, despair, and death throes of others.

His blade, shifting and changing to suit the range required of it, kept coming down on her in place of his words. As if to say that this was the worthy answer to Frederica’s insult from a hundred years ago, telling him she’d be fine if he never returned.

…No. Even despite all of that, Kiriya…the brother Frederica knew would never answer her with cold silence, even if she did say words so hurtful. He was kind enough to forgive her… He was her sweet, kindhearted brother.

And so.

Frederica’s expression crunched up with tears.

And so, why did sweet, kind Kiriya become a Legion bent on destroying mankind? Why had the man who’d resolved to protect his comrades, to save mankind, become like this…?

“Just desist, Kiriya. You never would have wished for this…!”

At the sound of her shout—

“…”

Kiriya halted for thought.

What I wished for…

What was it I wished for? What did I long for?

I already know.

Ever since I became a Legion, it’s been clawing at my every thought, all the time. Like a scorching thirst in my gullet, like heat burning in my breast. It’s hanging in my mind at all times, never fading, at all times. Even now, when I fight the magical girls.

I want to go back home.

That’s what I always felt.

A burning, scorching desire to go back home.

So when did I…?

Why did I…?

In one brief moment as their blades crossed, as he was supremely focused on their melee combat, Kiriya questioned himself despite the situation.

When did he start feeling this way? Probably before he became who he was now. On the day he left on what was to be the final battle of the Magical Officers, he wanted to go back home. Back to his homeland, to his mothership, to the home he lived in, to his sister—to Frederica, who now opposed him.

I have to go back…

…but

…why?

But Kiriya, with the destroyed Ratrator and his own dead comrades mingled into his being, could not find the answer to that question no matter how many times he questioned himself. Dig though he did within himself, where should have been the memories that held that answer there was only that void.

All he found there was this longing, this craving. I want to go back home. I have to go back home. To my…

…my sister…

I have to bring my sister back, too…

Yes.

To this emptiness that occupied his mind, filled with the desire to return and the wailings of the many dead—he must bring everyone and everything back into that void.

Frederica held him at bay with Black Dog’s bombardment, Sirius’s white smoke, Kirschblüte’s swirls of petal blades, and Falke’s feather knives. But he strode forward, lunging with his lance, forcing her to block with Undertaker.

While she remained solely on the defensive, Shin and the Eighty-Six gritted their teeth. It was impressive she was at all able to withstand his rapid assault all alone, but conversely, weathering his charge was all she could do. Since Frederica had to face Kiriya alone, she had to continually switch between multiple Eighty-Six to account for the situation. Switching between them required a brief time lag, and with no one to cover for her, that time lag gave Kiriya the opening to keep attacking and to keep her constantly on the defensive.

This was especially critical when it came to Undertaker, which consumed too much mana to allow any other Eighty-Six to be used in tandem with him. Every time the scythe appeared, the lance thrust in, stopping him from launching any attacks. And this was despite Undertaker’s great offensive power, which, while no match for the Weird-Name Cannon, was capable of mortally wounding Shepherds.

…It wasn’t Eugene’s fault that he got caught in the line of fire, but his absence hurt. The original plan was for him to handle Shin in tandem with Frederica, who would provide covering and suppressing fire.

We wouldn’t be having such a hard time if everything went according to plan, so why did you have to drop out so early, four-eyes? Shin couldn’t help but think bitterly.

It was at that moment that a transmission came from the Giad One’s infirmary, with Eugene whispering an apology, his nose still bleeding profusely.

The lance lunged down at her at lightning speed. It swept, thrust, and lunged up in a swift reversal. Frederica just barely blocked the lance with Undertaker. But as she applied a spell to reinforce her weapon, the force pushing the enemy weapon suddenly faded. Frederica lost her balance and stumbled as the spear once again turned to a stiletto dagger, its tip drawing on her.

“Shin, switch with me, I’ll block it!” Kaie shouted.

But a loud cry silenced her suggestion.

“Not yet!”

Frederica.

Gripping her RAID Device with Undertaker still manifested, she was still tipping forward, but she seemed to lean into it rather than correcting her posture, like she was crouching. She used the scythe, with most of its weight on its tip, to spin her body. Hanging low and crouched, she hung behind Kiriya, using this unexpected move to aim at the source of Kiriya’s high mobility, his feet.

“Tsk…!”

Realizing her intentions, Kiriya instantly formed barriers around his legs. He stomped down, kicking into the air to avoid the arched slash. But before he could finish that maneuver, Frederica shouted:

“Enchant—Sirius!”

The crimson scythe’s long grip spewed out white smoking flames. The billowing flames accelerated the scythe’s slash, launching it from a horizontal arc to an acute angle. It pursued the silver attacker trying to avoid it, clinging to it—and connected. The bloodred blade dug into part of his long, twining silver tail.

“Guh…?!”

The silver knifelike scales were shattered by the destructive force pushed against them. Being magical beings, the Legion did not bleed even if they had their human bodies left. Cracks ran through the Shepherd’s body like a pane of thick glass breaking, and Undertaker’s blade traveled along the fissures.

But just as the blade ran halfway through him, the scythe fizzled out. Shin, forced to return to human form, looked up at Frederica in shock.

“EmpressFrederica?!”

Looking up, he saw Frederica stumble and fall. Her Juggernaut flickered feebly, returning to wand form, as her cherubic face drained of color.

Her mana meridians shut down from exceeding her maximal mana capacity—an overheat.

And that led to a complete mana depletion—a blackout.

After fighting a Shepherd all on her own, she depleted so much mana, she could no longer use other Eighty-Six in tandem. But she wielded Undertaker, who could cause a shutdown from just a single usage, and applied Sirius’s flames to it, too. And this was the cost.

An overheat was something she could recover from. Given a cooldown period, lasting anywhere from a few dozen seconds to several minutes, her meridians would restore their function after being overworked. Several seconds of powerlessness could be fatal on the battlefield, but it was still a recoverable situation.

But a blackout was different. Once one depleted all their mana to the point where they had nothing left to produce more, they would have to rest for an extended period of time to replenish their mana on their own.

The Juggernaut’s spell was equipped with a mana battery for emergencies, but it only lasted for a short time. Frederica was no longer capable of fighting in outer space.

Through pale lips and bloodred eyes that looked to be on the verge of tears, the exhausted girl whispered, “I have failed.”

“Forgive me. You must flee to safety, you lot.”

“You know we won’t!” Kujo shouted, reverting to human form. “If anything, it’s you who needs to run, EmpressFrederica!”

“That’s right, run!”

“We’ll stall him here!”

“So get moving! Hurry!”

Daiya, Kaie, and Haruto all returned to human form and stood beside Kujo and Shin, trying to block Frederica’s body from the Shepherd’s reach. Even with no mana supply from their Handler, these small, brave souls tried to protect their magical girl from harm.

Frederica’s eyes clouded over with tears.

“But you will fail…! ’Tis I who tried to strike him down recklessly, and ’tis I who failed to deliver that blow! Then it stands to reason it should be I who pays the price for it! So flee! I shan’t allow anyone else to die…!”

“…Yeah. And we feel the same way, EmpressFrederica,” Shin said, his eyes fixed on Kiriya.

She’d made a mistake. Believed it was she who should pay for it. Didn’t want others to die.

Just like us.

And because you’re like us, we can’t afford to run here.

The Shepherd stood before them, not pressing the attack but looking annoyed at the Eighty-Six protecting Frederica. Like he was looking at an old photograph, but something was obscuring the spot he should have occupied. Like the fact that someone else was taking his place, doing what he wasn’t was being rubbed against his face.

His was the face of a man who’d had the fact that there was somewhere else he should have been, something else he should be doing, thrust before his eyes.

Looking at him, Shin pondered—without a Handler’s help, the five of them couldn’t stop this Shepherd. They couldn’t stop this brother from killing his sister. He clenched his teeth. Wasn’t there someone? Another magical girl? Anyone? Someone who would help, who would fight with him? Like on the battle on the Starship San Magnolia. When that girl fought with him to defeat Rei and end the war.

“…ReinaLena.”

Her name spilled from his lips in a whisper, calling out to her.

Shining her way to his side.

“Yes, Shin. Undertaker.”

Chiffon sleeves adorned with long ribbons. A sky-blue Juggernaut, the color of the skies of their distant mother planet, which neither he nor she knew.

Those with congruity call out and are drawn to each other. She learned that the Eighty-Six—that Shin—was a soldier like her, a citizen of the same fleet as her. He shared the same objective and fought at her side for the same wish.

And that closeness served as a congruity.

Long argent hair flowed like satin, glittering like the whispering of the stars. Using teleportation magic, Lena flew across the sea of stars and turned to face him with a smile.

“The Magical Girl ReinaLena has come to your side. So let us fight together.”

CHAPTER 4

Lena looked to Shin, who’d called her here and then had turned to his current partner to form a lending contract. It was a magical girl clad in a cherry-pink Juggernaut, curled over motionlessly. A young girl, exhausted and with her mana depleted from fending off the Shepherd all on her own.

Incidentally, Kitty EyeMarcel was also drifting nearby, having exhausted all his strength shortly before Lena arrived.

“I’ll handle the rest, Handler…” Lena paused.

“EmpressFrederica.” Frederica gave her name. “Forgive me… I am grateful for your aid.”

The contract was established. Shin’s materialized form flickered out for a second, then turned into a red jewel that lit up in Lena’s brooch. She traced the jewel’s surface with her right hand’s finger for one brief moment. She then turned to look to the other two who teleported with her. Annette, and also…

“MercuriusRei. Look after her.”

“Of course,” Rei said, picking up Frederica and retreating. “I have more than enough power to set up a defensive barrier, so don’t mind us and beat him up.”

Rei had great inborn mana reserves but was forbidden from directly fighting the Legion, so his role was only to provide mana to Lena and Annette. His mana was vast enough that he could fulfill that role while setting up a firm defensive barrier to protect Frederica.

Having noticed they came to assist, the Giad One added Lena and her group to the communication magic. She heard their intelligence directly in her ears—the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon’s firing preparations were all complete.

“We’re ready to fire anytime. Just keep Pale Rider pinned down for a moment so we can shoot.”

“Roger that.” Lena nodded and faced the Shepherd.

The last remaining commander who had led the Legion for a century. The final enemy in the hundred-year war against the Legion.

“Pale Rider… From here on out, we will take you on.”

The Shepherd, Kiriya, narrowed his black baleful eyes at her dignified declaration.

Watching their exchange silently, Frederica parted her lips, her voice raspy and weak from exhaustion.

“MercuriusRei, was it? Shinei’s brother?”

“Mm?”

Rei turned his eyes to her but kept his attention fixed on Kiriya. The way he conducted himself carefully made Frederica all too aware of her weakness. She grabbed his red cloak.

I was not good enough. I was too weak and exhausted all my strength. In the end, I was but a child. I tried to play the part of a magical girl, of a warrior, but I was a child, incapable of bringing any of my wishes to fruition.

And yet… And still…

…still…!

“If you have enough strength left over to set up a barrier… Give that little bit of power to me.”

“I’ll take one, too, if you don’t mind.”

Annette approached Frederica and formed another lending pact. In addition to Theo and Anju, Annette’s current Eighty-Six, the blue gem on one tip of her star brooch regained its light.

“Activate, Snow Witch—Black Dog!”

The two gems lit up and then went out, manifesting Anju and Daiya, whom Annette lost during the battle with Rei. Before the two Eighty-Six took on armament form, they assumed human form for a moment. After six months of sudden parting, Anju threw a glance at Daiya and smiled.

“Welcome back, Daiya.”

Daiya returned a bashful smile. He felt guilty. This must have been what a kid brother who returned to his kind older sister dripping wet from the rain looked like.

“I’m back, Anju… Sorry for worrying you.”

“You really did… I won’t let go of you anymore.”

“Yeah. So, once again…”

“Yes. Let’s fight together.”

They exchanged a smile. And holding on to that expression, Anju turned into a missile pod, and Daiya turned into a Howitzer.

“Fire!”

At Annette’s order, they began raining fire and brimstone.

The San Magnolia followed up by dispatching Dustin, Václav, Séneville, Echo, Sanders, John, and Tom. Artemis’s arrows, Gunmetalstorm’s barrage, La Bête’s large missiles, Argos’s lasers, and Burnt Tayl’s, Leukosia’s, and March Hare’s combined Delta attack all rained down on Kiriya.

In the midst of it all, Annette stood out using Laughing Fox’s wire anchors to catch up to Kiriya and bombard him with missiles. Even as Kiriya maneuvered around using his barriers as footing, she accurately tracked him down and shelled him.

But even caught between this thick, complicated web of lines of fire, Pale Rider, with his high-mobility specialization, was able to slip away. His dark eyes lacked any shade of a smile at this point. They were frozen brutally, like the cold glint of a bloodied sword. And with that brutality in his heart, he spat out:

“You thought a barrage would work?”

“No.” Lena whispered her answer.

Deployed at her side was Raiden’s Wehrwolf, a Gatling gun capable of spewing out a rain of shells. And he had Kurena’s Gunslingers applied to him, bewitching his shells into demonic bullets that always landed on their target.

“Fire.”

Using her allies to mask herself, she further limited where he could move. She aimed at the direction of Pale Rider’s flight and, predicting where he would move, shot through the spell circles of the barriers he tried to form with sure-hit bullets.

“…?!”

The barrier spell broke, leaving his beast-like leg with nothing to step on but a void.

“Tsk…”

His dragon-like tail thrust into what few barriers remained to stabilize his posture—only for that tail to be severed. Frederica had lunged at him, risking life and limb, and cut it down with a blade.

For the first time in this battle, Pale Rider was forced to halt in alarm. Even still, Kiriya’s magic was building the footholds. Even as surprise overtook him, the Legion’s artificial, blindly murderous impulse to wipe out all that lived emotionlessly restructured the barriers.

But even so, that moment of stalling was an opening his enemies weren’t going to leave unexploited.

“Activate, Sirius!”

Flames ran. Using the mana Rei shared with her, Frederica deployed Kujo’s black smoke. And then unleashed a flurry of blades shaped like cherry blossom petals and falcon feathers.

“Kirschblüte, Falke, activate! You shan’t escape me, Kiriya!”

A white inferno burned, storms of petal blades swirled, and feathered razors glinted through the air. The Shepherd damaged by Undertaker was trapped in a multilayered spherical cage of attacks, which finally forced Pale Rider to stay in one spot in space.

The situation was displayed on the holo-screen in the Giad One’s command post.

“Confinement of top target Pale Rider confirmed!”

“Captain!”

The fire control officers all turned around to look at the captain’s seat. Ernst nodded firmly.

“Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon… Aaah, I can’t use that name in a serious situation like this! It’s too long!”

The same thing was happening on the Roa Gracia’s command post, where the stupid prince that christened the Weird-Name Cannon with its weird name shouted the same complaint, intentionally blind to the fact it was his fault.

But anyway…

“Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon, fire!”

And the strongest magic artillery piece of the Starship Fleet, stretching longer than a city-class ship, flashed.

Its roar filled the dark vacuum of space, like the singing of birds, like the music played for a shrine maiden’s divine dance.

Like the warbling of countless birds in the colors of flowers and gemstones, their silver beaks chirping.

Like the ringing of bells playing all timbres, accentuating the dance of a princess priestess.

This symphony of glittering, clear sounds, like the flickering of the stars, scattered through space.

A massive ray of splashing myriad colors spilled forth, consuming the last Shepherd.

The deluge of heatless, purifying fire consumed Kiriya in all its intensity, but he did not scream in pain, even as broken silver scales scattered to pieces and fragments of burnt taint melted away like snow and ash into the darkness of space.

Her eyes fixed squarely on him, Lena chanted.

“Undertaker, activate!”

The bloodred gem vanished. A bloodstained crimson scythe manifested in her willowy fingers. Lena held it up horizontally, preparing to cut the Shepherd down, and soared toward him, leaving behind a trail of glowing sky-blue particles.

The Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon’s blast came to an end. The multicolored beam vanished. The Shepherd appeared on the other side, having lost his dragon’s tail and beastly legs, his form burned to a crisp but still definitely human. The tainted mana that constituted him was mostly burned away, leaving him unable to move. He’d lost all traces of his prided godspeed mobility, but he still stood, surviving.

And so they finished him off. Lena drew on him with her scythe aloft—but Kiriya wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was fixed past her, at Frederica, who was still immobile from exhaustion.

The thought crossed his mind, burning, yearning. I want to go back home.

To before I became a Shepherd. To the day I left for what should have been the Magical Officers’ final battle. To before the campaign I never returned from. That’s what I’ve always wanted.

All this time, always. Even now.

I want to go back.

I have to go back.

I have to come back…to Frederica.

Because of the war, a Magical Officer like me was always late to return. With both of our parents gone, she always had to stay alone at home. I made her lonely. And in the end, she got mad at me. She cried.

Yes.

I have to go back home. Or else…

“—I’ll make Frederica cry again.”

Lena swung Undertaker in a vertical sweep, cutting through the massive mana constituting most of the Shepherd that had been torn off by the blast—cutting his entire being to pieces.

Its soul lost, Kiriya’s body crumbled away. Frederica held back tears as she watched the fragments of mana that made up what was once her brother scatter like a snow statue.

In truth, there was more she wanted to say.

More she should have said.

She wished she could have met him when he was sane so she could tell him.

But now she couldn’t do that anymore.

She’d depleted her mana to defeat him, and even that wasn’t enough to truly bring him down. So she no longer had any mana left to go after him.

She wanted to, at least, tell him this.

“Farewell… Kiriya.”

“Those aren’t the words, are they, Frederica?”

When did he appear at her side? Shin, having returned to his human form, looked at her tiredly. At the same time, Kujo, Kaie, Haruto, and Daiya; Rei, who was nearby; Lena and Annette; their Eighty-Six, Raiden, Theo, Anju, and Kurena; the San Magnolia magical girls who teleported there; and all their Eighty-Six. Frederica felt all of them pool their mana together to send it to her.

“What are you…?”

With a swaying of his triangular fluffy ears, Shin looked at her with a peeved look of unsuppressed danger.

“You wanted to clear away your regrets, right? Then don’t let this end with new regrets instead… If you want something, don’t compromise on it.”

Don’t give up on what you really want to say, on what you truly wished to gain.

“Shinei…”

And from afar, aboard the Giad One, Eugene, exhausted as he was from the battle, sent more mana than anyone present.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t useful. At least have this.”

“LunettesEugene…” Frederica uttered his name, moved.

Kujo and Kaie, on the other hand, laid on the hurt.

“You really were useless, LunettesEugene.”

“Heck, if you survived, EmpressFrederica wouldn’t have run out of mana and could go after her brother right now.”

“I said I’m sorry! And I’m not dead!”

Marcel, meanwhile, was in a complete state of blackout and had no mana to send.

“Why am I the only one…?” he muttered.

“Uh, ya did yer best…?” Shiden, manifested on his head, patted his spiky orange hair in a show of apathetic comforting.

It was he who protected Frederica from the enemy until Lena and Annette showed up, so he couldn’t be faulted for this. Exhausted as he was, Marcel raised his right hand and gave Frederica a thumbs-up.

Everyone then told her at the same time—either smiling, or tired, or even a bit peeved with her.

“““Go on!”””

“…!”

Their collective voice was like a tap on the back, launching Frederica into the sea of stars.

Frederica soared, leaving behind a trail of cherry-pink light particles.

The remnants of the Weird-Name Cannon’s purifying ray’s mana hung in space like a mist, dyeing the darkness of space with prismatic colors. Frederica tore through the mist, particles of mana swirling around her like ribbons.

The sea of stars was aglow with the purifying rays and the scattered remains of the Shepherd’s constitute mana.

And yet those with congruity call out and are drawn to each other. Just as Rei and Shin were drawn to each other through their bond as brothers, even though they’d become Shepherd and Eighty-Six, Kiriya and Frederica, being siblings, could find each other even if one of them had been reduced to but a soul.

Even if that soul was as lost in the midst of the Shepherd’s mana remains as a speck of sand was in the desert. Frederica unfailingly and unflinchingly soared to his side and reached out her hands.

And those hands accurately grasped and saved her brother’s soul.

“I swear—what manner of older brother requires his lost, frail sister to come to his rescue? I grew tired of waiting for you,” Frederica whispered, bringing her cheek to the two hands wrapped around him.

And though she smiled and whispered sweet complaints at him, though there was indeed a smile on her lips, for some reason, the tears still ran unbidden.

“Forgive me. Forgive me for saying you needn’t return. I did not mean it… I always wanted you to return. Always, the whole time.”

And yet you never did. You never did return. And so, my dear, lost brother…

“I’ve come to rescue you. Finally, I am here for you, Kiriya… My brother.”

“Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon—fire!”

“Total (omitted) Cannon—fire!”

“Likewise, fire!”

“Fire!”

“Giad One, wait! What do you mean, omitted?! You can’t omit the name! Third cannon and spare fourth cannon, you too!”

The Roa Gracia stuck by the full name, while the Giad One appended it, and the Giad Four and Giad Eight didn’t even use it.

All four ships fired the Weird-Name Cannon’s final shot. Having lost all their commanders, the surviving Legion groups were all burned and completely destroyed by the purifying flames.

With the last of the Legion purified, the Weird-Name Cannon’s multicolored beams faded away. Shin, Raiden, and the other Eighty-Six watched it happen with a flood of emotions. It was over. The Legion War was finally over. Their mission was finally complete.

Lena and Annette watched over the Eighty-Six in silence.

“It’s funny how quickly it ended,” Raiden said.

“Yeah.” Shin nodded, gazing into the lightless sea of stars, now free of the Legion. “All too quick—but it’s finally over now.”

He took a deep breath, and then Shin and the other Eighty-Six turned to face Lena and Annette.

“Good work, ReinaLena, OwletteAnnette.”

“Yes…” Lena smiled and nodded, but Shin soon continued his words with a teasing smile.

“I didn’t think you’d jump all the way here from another ship’s sector.”

His words made Lena blush.

“I mean, Shin, I heard you call for me. I thought you were fighting, and I just…”

She spoke in a flustered manner, but then realized he was just teasing her and smiled. And then…

“…You don’t have to call me ReinaLena anymore.”

The war was over. The Legion were gone. There was no reason to fear the magical girls would take on taint, and thus, no need to call them with their magical girl callsign, meant to prevent it.

The war was over now.

“Won’t you call me, Shin? Everyone? Like always. Lena.”

The Eighty-Six all cracked strained smiles.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“True.”

“Sure.”

They all smiled, and then, brightly, without a care in the world…

“Thank you for everything, Lena.”

The next moment, they all broke into particles of golden light, like dream bubbles popping, and vanished. Every last one. And it wasn’t just here; it happened in every sector and within every starship in the fleet. The Eighty-Six vanished at once.

Lena pursed her lips. Rei, who watched in silence a short distance away, breathed out the answer.

“The war is over now, so…”

“Yes.”

There was no more need for the spell, and so it was lifted. The spell in the Temple Ship at the back of the fleet that separated the Magical Officers from their bodies, rebuilt them into Eighty-Six, and kept them in the world.

How long would it take to revert the Eighty-Six into human form? And if they did, how long would it be until they met them again?

Would they ever meet them again?

…No.

“We will meet again. For sure.”

Lena spoke keenly, casually, like she was thinking of a tomorrow that would surely come. She didn’t want to think it might not come to pass, and truly, she had faith that it would.

After all…

I, and they…we exchanged words, lent each other our strength… Fought together for the same future.

And those with congruity call out to each other and are drawn to one another.

And so, because we exchanged words, lent each other our strength, and fought together—we’re bound together by a bond.

And so Lena said, with a smile, like a prayer for a future she knew would come:

“I’ll wait for you… Eighty-Six. Shin.”

I’ll be here and waiting for when you return once more.

The medical block was flooded with those injured by the Legion annihilation operation for a while, but once they were all treated and left, there were very few lights left on in the block’s rooms.

Sitting in one of the few rooms where a glass tube was lit up was Eugene.

“…Yeah, sorry, it’s not me who’s in the capsule.”

He was sitting in a chair by the glass tube, reading an e-book on his terminal. He had nothing to do now that he was relieved of his magical girl duties, and to begin with, he hardly got to fight as it was. But he did think himself involved in this, after all.

In addition to life support features, the capsule had several purifying spells applied to it. And in between the hum of the praying, songlike chanting…

…he heard a voice.

“There’s no one else but you here, though.”

It came from the one lying within this glass capsule for intensive care, subjected to life support and several layers of purifying magic—the Magical Officer who was, just a short while ago, a Shepherd.

“Who are you apologizing to? And for what?”

“Oh, you’re awake.”

Eugene peered into the capsule and, upon seeing the black pair of eyes open ever so slightly, like they were enduring a headache, smiled.

“It’s nice to meet you… I think this counts as our first meeting? Kiriya Rosenfort. Looks like you’re back to your senses. Good.”

The Weird-Name Cannon canceled out all the taint that consumed Kiriya and warped him into a Legion. What little taint was left was purified by magic, and with his body and mind pure, the Shepherd reverted to his original human body and personality.

But now that he was back to his normal self, the memories of his maddened actions during his time as a Shepherd were difficult to endure. Kiriya covered his face with a hand and remained wordless for a few good moments.

In truth, he was still terribly injured, to the point of requiring the life support spell, and even stirring put him in extreme agony. But it still felt like he was mostly silent out of shame. Yes.

“With how hurt you are, you’ll need to spend some time in the recovery capsule. But once you’re all better, you should go back home to your sister.”

His black eyes blinked, in suspicion, doubt…and fear. This oddly childish gesture reminded Eugene that he was, indeed, the same age as they were. Were it not for the war, he’d still be a child. A carefree, kind, weak child.

“…What about Frederica?”

“You met her. On the battlefield, I mean. She wasn’t an illusion. She waited a hundred years for you. Said she wanted to apologize. To do it properly, when you’re back to your senses.”

For telling him he didn’t have to come back. Kiriya sighed softly. Really, for those words…? Anyone could tell she didn’t mean it.

“…Even though it never bothered me.”

“…By the way, I thought you died, but you came back? Learn to stay down, won’t you?”

“Like I said! I! Didn’t! Die!”

The first thing he felt was a sense of weight and heaviness that defied description. A weight he never felt with his magical body as an Eighty-Six, the heaviness of bearing his own flesh and blood. The weight of the sixteen-year-old body he lost a century ago.

And then he felt the warmth of the blood coursing under his skin and the smell of disinfectant penetrating his nostrils with every breath. Realizing it was only dark because his eyes were closed, he raised his leaden eyelids. His sticky eyelids finally parted, and tears ran. What little fluid on his lashes popped, and his eyes, which hadn’t been opened in so long, were blinded by even a little bit of light. Shin grimaced.

Blinking a few times to clear his eyes, he grew accustomed to the light and looked around. A white, bright space. The lights were off, but fake, bright sunlight was shining in through the window, casting its glow on the white hospital room where he was lying on the bed.

A woman with very short blond hair, dressed in a technological priest’s uniform, who’d likely come in to check on them, looked back at him with her violet eyes smiling.

“You came to.”

“…Where am I?”

The woman smiled.

“The Temple Ship’s medical block. You probably didn’t know, but we prepared it for when the Magical Officers would wake up. The rest of your friends are here, too. Some of them are still asleep, and some are already awake… They’ll need some time to get used to their bodies after waking up. So will you.”

The rest of the beds in the medical block’s room were empty. He could hear voices from outside the window. Like the distant voices he used to hear at school during breaks.

“You’ve fought well and hard, Magical Officer Second Lieutenant Shinei Nouzen. My name is Grethe Wenzel, a technological priest. We’re currently working on lifting the freeze on your civilian IDs and preparing to have the ships take you in. In the meantime, you can relax and recuperate here.”

“…I thought we’d be disposed of once you were done with us.”

Grethe answered with a strained smile. “We wouldn’t do that. Why would anyone make such a decision?”

“…”

Us Eighty-Six… We’re weapons to defend the fleet. Not officers or human, but just tools that failed to die when they should have.

That’s what Shin thought for the long one hundred years he’d spent fighting.

“If the war is over, it only stands to reason we’d return you to your human bodies. You have a century’s worth of wages saved up and a pension prepared for you. The ships’ accounting departments will be at a loss if you’re not here to receive them.”

So if they did go back, were they really allowed to once again wish for the joy and dreams they’d discarded when they lost their human bodies and status as officers…?

“The Temple Ship is the only thing that’ll be disposed of now that its job is complete… It’ll be remodeled back to what it used to be, an academy ship. And all of you will be allowed to study whatever you wish here.”

“All of us…?”

“That’s right. All of the Eighty-Six and any underage Handlers who decide to study there.”

He heard hurried footsteps outside the room. Part of the wall was a glass window, and he could see the bright corridor through the open curtain. And on the other side of the window…

“They were all waiting for you to wake up… You were the last to wake up. Probably because your mana capacity is highest.”

The first to appear, his footsteps silent and muffled, was a young man with bloodred hair, his pitch-black eyes behind a pair of glasses.

“Good morning, Shin.”

“…Brother.”

Following him was a familiar figure, one he knew so well and at the same time hadn’t seen in what felt like forever. A tall boy with steel-colored eyes.

“Yo.”

“Raiden.”

“We’re here, too!”

“Yep!”

Theo and Haruto. They were joined by Anju, Daiya, Kurena, Kaie, and Kujo, who all rushed to the glass window.

“I’m here, too, of course.”

“Ah, I’m fine, too. Sorry, really.”

Annette and Eugene.

“Really, though, Li’l Eugene, the way you went out wasn’t funny.”

“Seriously, you gotta be more careful.”

Two more figures joined.

“…Who?” Shin frowned.

“Hey, c’mon!”

“We were right there with you!”

Shiden and Marcel. Both of them groaned and raised their voices in protest at once.

“I am here, too! And… Behold! Kiriya is fine, too!”

“Don’t pull on me, Frederica, I’m not going anywhere… Uh, thank you for putting up with my sister’s trouble, younger Nouzen.”

“’Tis you who caused trouble, Kiriya! And who do you think was most bothered by it?! You, troublesome brother!”

“I’m sorry. So please don’t cry anymore. Besides, you caused him trouble, too, so don’t get in the way when I express my gratitude.”

“I was not crying!”

Frederica hopped ahead, tugging hard on her brother’s hand but with tears in her eyes, with Kiriya, who had reverted to human form just like Rei did, following behind her.

And then—

“Ngh, you black-haired, red-eyed wolf, I’m not giving my sweet daughter to y—mmmgh?!”

“Put a sock in it, darling.”

Václav stormed in, quite inappropriately, followed by Margareta kicking him away with her high heels. With her toes stabbing right into his flank, Václav went tumbling into the wall.

And once things settled back down…

Sleek strands of silver hair. Large argent eyes. The graceful, beautiful face of a girl peered in. Lena smiled, her hands and forehead pressed against the glass. Her cherry lips worded his name with a smile.

“Shin.”

Looking back at her, Shin smiled. At the magical girl to whom he turned to grant his wish to put an end to the war. To his final Handler, who promised—and stood by that promise—to fight by his side to end the war.

“I have returned, Handler.”

“Yes. Welcome back, Undertaker.”

“High priority target, Mistress, cornered!”

“Lock on complete! Prince Viktor!”

Seeing the old artillery spell officer he knew since childhood turn to face him, Viktor Idinarohk, the fifth prince of the United Kingdom of Roa Gracia, nodded. He then spoke boldly, his voice echoing through the command post in the Starship Roa Gracia’s defense block.

As the only vessel in the Starship Fleet to maintain a monarchy, the Roa Gracia’s command post had a throne for its royal general. The throne was seized—ahem, gifted from their home planet. It was a beautiful throne, adorned by an opal-colored skeleton of a plesiosaur.

“Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon—fire!”

“Huh?! Hold on, are you saying I’m really going to be destroyed by a weapon with a name that dumb?!”

…Unfortunate as it may be, yes.

And so this was the pitiful final cry uttered by one of the three remaining Shepherds, Mistress—aka Zelene Birkenbaum. And the Weird-Name Cannon developed and christened by Viktor Idinarohk, renowned throughout the fleet as the stupid prince, successfully completed its first battle and firing trial by spectacularly wiping out a Legion group and its Shepherd.

However, this didn’t mean the war was over quite yet for the Roa Gracia or its magical girls.

The catapult lit up.

The Roa Gracia’s magical girl used the most heavyweight Juggernauts and RAID Devices in the fleet. This required not one but four launching spells, deployed not just at their feet but on both of their flanks and overhead. They drew red lines as the virtual shuttle block linked to the RAID Device from four directions.

Clad in the heavyweight-class artillery type Juggernaut was Barushka Matushka, a gold brocade cloak flapping longer than its body was tall and wielding an Alkonost RAID Device twice as long as it was tall and looking like a strange mix between a pholcid spider’s ice statue and a steel knight statue. The Juggernaut’s parure of ornaments formed a gemstone inlaid double-crown tiara, the symbol of status for a royal general.

The control officer called out his magical girl callsign, one thing that was unavoidable regardless of his royal status.

“Course is clear. LarkerVika, you’re good to go!”

In other words, an absurd name and a mandatory . Accustomed to it though he was, Vika replied with a sigh and narrowed eyes.

“Roger that… LarkerVika, Viktor Idinarohk, setting out.”

So, yes, Vika was a magical girl.

Since the United Kingdom of Roa Gracia prided itself on martial prowess and believed royalty should strive to fight on the battlefield, it was only natural a general and prince like Vika would become a magical girl.

“…Still, calling a lark user a Larker feels forced. Falconer would have honestly been preferable.” Vika scoffed as he came to a halt in the combat area, his Juggernaut scattering the Champagne-gold particles common to all Barushka Matushka.

Perched on his shoulder was his Eighty-Six, Lerche, who had gone from jewel form to human form the whole time.

“But you never did like falconry, Your Highness, so calling you ‘Falconer’ would be inappropriate. Much like how you hate chess, this is another pastime of the nobility. Perhaps you should take this chance to change your mind and devote yourself to—Whoa?!”

Lerche was silenced by a flick to the forehead. Eighty-Six lacked physical bodies, and Vika held back his strength as well, so she wasn’t in any pain, but it did make his reflexes kick in.

Incidentally, when the current king was still a prince, he, too, served as a magical girl, and his callsign was Falconer. Likewise, the crown prince Zafar had the Falconer callsign during his magical girl days, and both engaged in falconry.

Also, since the Roa Gracian prided themselves on martial prowess and believed (omitted), both the king and crown prince naturally served as magical girls, and as previously mentioned, magical girls weren’t restricted by age or sex.

“Silence, seven-year-old. Mind your own business.”

“No, Your Highness, I am not seven years old. I am, in fact, much older than you are…,” Lerche said, rubbing her forehead.

She had fluffy dog ears, a tail the color of her golden hair, and bright emerald eyes. This lovely girl was the guardian fairy, Sirin, of the royal family. The Roa Gracia was an exception, passing several Eighty-Six down the Idinarohk family line to serve its generals, who had exceptionally high mana. This was a respect given to them as the only royal family in the fleet, and because they were the ones most geared to get the most out of using those powerful Eighty-Six.

Lerche was one of the royal family’s unique Eighty-Six, the Sirin, and was always granted to the strongest magical girl in the royal family so she could serve as the linchpin of the Roa Gracia’s defense.

And this generation’s strongest magical girl, the Amethystus, was Vika. And he was the same as ever, even though he developed the Weird-Name Cannon that had just effortlessly dispatched a Shepherd.

“—The Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon’s effects and firepower are beyond question, but it is difficult to manage. Since we have a century’s worth of its power source stored up, we can afford to fire extra shots, but using it to shoot down small groups of stragglers would still be a waste.”

“Indeed. And we needn’t fire it needlessly if it ends up giving the two remaining Shepherds information that will allow them to guard themselves from it.”

This was why, despite Mistress and her Legion forces being destroyed, a royal general like Vika and the royal family Sirin Lerche were sent out to mop up the remnants of the Legion forces. If the Weird-Name Cannon were to fire anymore, it would just end up missing some of the Legion. Instead, letting a single magical girl deal with them was more efficient. At least, that was the estimate right before the operation, but the other day, it turned out a considerable number of enemy units remained.

And worse yet, at its core was the strongest Legion unit working under Mistress, one that far outmatched any of the average Sheep. Over the last century of fighting, the data gathered about it earned it an infamous name.

“The phoenix knight, Phönix… The sole, unique Legion to possess a physical form.”

“Yes. Much like you, oddly enough.” Vika glanced at Lerche. “Do you have some history with this Phönix?”

“No, I never met the original Eighty-Six. And in this one’s case, it seems he’s been mixed with a great many other things. I doubt it retains any of its original personality.”

Normally, the truth about the Eighty-Six and the Legion was withheld from the Handlers, but being a royal general and a member of a ship’s commanding staff made him privy to such information. He knew the truth about the war… And the terrible sin of using the surviving Eighty-Six as weapons for over a century.

But Lerche regarded him with a carefree smile that expressed none of the pain she must have felt over this century of war.

She’d fought for the last three years with Vika, and before that had served the Amethystus of generations past. And her smile expressed none of the pain of all that fighting, or of having been left behind by all those past partners.

If this war were to keep going, she would be passed down to the next heir, and would have to leave Vika for the new Amethystus…and her expression hid the pain and fear of that possibility.

“But oddly enough, it is a knight just as I am. We are troops of the same type, so even with no history between us… The prospect of fighting it excites me.”

And at the same time, she wore the face of a carnivore licking her chops in the face of a worthy opponent.

“And at my side is LarkerVika, the mightiest Handler in Idinarohk history. Together we shall fight a battle most sublime, beyond anything I would be capable of on my own. My excitement knows no bounds. And through this sublime battle, I shall offer you the finest reward, the fruit of victory. Nothing could please me more. Aaah…”

Her eyes were wide open like an animal’s, and she let out a feverish breath. With a strained smile, Vika patted his eager Sirin soothingly.

“Yes, indeed.”

The other royal generals who commanded Sirin soon sortied as well. Their voices reached him through communication magic.

“Svetlana Idinarohk—Bone CollectorSvetlana, ready to set out.”

“Boris Idinarohk, GardenerBoris, setting out!”

“Feodora Idinarohk, DollphiliaFeodora, riding out to battle!”

“Ruslan Idinarohk, StargazeRuslan, ready to sortie!”

His father the king’s older sister, Svetlana, led the charge, followed by three of Vika’s siblings from another mother. They all flew with heavy Barushka Matushka, each in their own colors, and had double-crowned tiaras as they soared out into the darkness of space.

They gathered and came to a stop around Vika, two on each side like a pair of wings. Their shades differed individually, but they all had the Idinarohk royal family’s reddish hair and violet eyes. As growing out one’s hair was customary among the nobility, the two princes had their hair done up with satin and jeweled hairpins, and the princesses let their hair flow down their cloaks.

As an aside, the Roa Gracia’s Barushka Matushka was fashioned after ancient imperial dalmatics, and their cloaks were fashioned after Paludamentums, adorned with gold brocade and gemstones. Their Alkonost wands were fashioned after a king’s baton or a bishop’s staff and appropriately elongated and heavy, which only further accentuated the inherent royal beauty these five had.

Vika’s aunt, Princess Svetlana, who had a girl’s physique that ill matched her age and contrasted her beautiful features, stood at Vika’s left. She reached out her long mace-like Alkonost and poked the back of her nephew’s head, who stood on the opposite side of the formation, at the far right.

“Ow… Wh-what is it, Aunt dearest?!”

“My Barushka Matushka is lotus purple. GardenerBoris’s is rose purple. DollphiliaFeodora’s is peony purple… Why, then, is yours moonlight blue, StargazeRuslan? Match us, you fool.”

“She’s right, brother StargazeRuslan!” said Third Prince Boris, who stood at the left end. “I know we haven’t gotten much screentime so far, but that don’t mean you should take this as a chance to stand out!”

“I must admit I find your selfish tendencies quite unpleasant, StargazeRuslan!” said First Princess Feodora, who stood beside Ruslan.

“A Barushka Matushka’s colors stem from its magical wavelength, so it’s not that mine is blue because I chose that color!” Ruslan protested. “Besides, LarkerVika stands out even more with his golden one!”

Ruslan was in his midtwenties, with fair features and a perfect physique. He was the same age as his brother, Crown Prince Zafar, and Feodora. He pointed at Vika, who felt no obligation to help him out, and remained quiet, with his perfectly manicured index finger. Svetlana, Feodora, and Boris, however, replied with exasperation, as if wondering what he was on about.

“LarkerVika is cute, so he gets away with it. He is in the middle.”

“Come now, Brother, it’s LarkerVika. And he’s in the middle.”

“Gold suits LarkerVika. He’s in the middle, after all.”

Met with his aunt’s and siblings’ unreasonable answer, Ruslan stomped childishly in outrage. His Sirin, Saki, who had black hair and cat ears, spoke.

“Who are ya, anyway?”

“Ruslan Idinarohk, second prince of the United Kingdom of Roa Gracia! And your Handler, Saki! How did you forget?!”

The second prince. No one remembers him, because his only appearance was a clicking of the tongue in the prologue of Volume 5. Imagine having his name revealed here.

Also, his rival for the throne and First Princess Feodora first appeared in the short story “A Pet Snake” and even had a speaking role, but the side story was never published in print. Sorry.

“So why ‘Stargaze’?” Saki asked.

“Because my hobby is astronomical observation!”

As an aside, GardenerBoris’s name came from his hobby of gardening. He selectively bred roses and recently had gotten into tomato cultivation.

Saki guessed DollphiliaFeodora’s callsign came from her hobby of making plush toys and dollhouses, but was too scared to ask what Bone CollectorSvetlana’s hobby was.

“Hm? That goes without saying. Bone collecting.” Svetlana said indifferently. “The bones of cherished friends.”

“Whoa?! Sir!” Saki said, terrified.

“…You really commit to the bit, Saki,” Ruslan said, impressed.

“Dear Aunt… Pardon, Bone CollectorSvetlana,” Vika chided her, taken aback by her words, despite his own faults. “Please keep your thoughts from reaching your lips. Even for a former Amethystus, this is unacceptable.”

He knew his aunt was especially prone to keep arguing, and the conversation would never end unless someone stepped in to stop her.

“Letting distractions like this concern you mean you still have much to learn, LarkerVika.”

“Bone CollectorSvetlana, please—”

“Besides, my hobby is admiring dolls, and all I make is ribbons and flowers to decorate them with.”

“Not you, too, DollphiliaFeodora! Please, stop it!”

In more ways than one.

Her Sirin, Touka, who had a handmade ribbon adorning her doggy ears, cracked a guilty smile as she took out a jewel-inlaid fan from nowhere and handed it to Feodora, who elegantly used it to hide her lips. Vika sighed tiredly as Boris, who was quite plain relative to the Idinarohk family’s rainbow of colorful characters, took a big step forward.

“A-and so is my hobby! Not that I have much to correct you on…”

“You’re dull even at a time like this, aren’t you, Boris?” said Ruslan, who was the leader of Boris’s faction, making him drop his shoulders despondently.

Boris’s Sirin, Guren, rested on his head and patted on his forehead apathetically at what was probably his idea of comforting him.

“Ah, thank you, Guren… When we get home, I’ll give you a spoonful of my wife’s handmade tomato canapé.”

“Ooh… But if you’re offering tomatoes, I’d prefer a vodka or a Bloody Mary.”

“That’s blasphemous! Apologize to any and all vodka manufacturers fleetwide!”

“You’re at fault this time, Guren. Although I concur about a Bloody Mary being good.”

“Oh, that’s lovely, Touka. I fancy a Bloody Mary as well and know how to mix one.”

“I do find the name a bit tasteless. Personally, I like sprinkling on some Tabasco and black pepper.”

“A salty dog without the salt for me. What about you, LarkerVika?”

“Stop trying to stand out with what limited screentime you have, StargazeRuslan. But I agree, yes, a salty dog.”

“If fruit juice cocktails count, I like orange!”

“Oh, I like screwdrivers. And cosmopolitans mixed with cranberry juice.”

“Aunt, Sister, Brother! And Lerche, LarkerVika, not you two as well?! Aaah, just apologize, the lot of you!”

Boris started stomping this time. This nearly knocked Guren from his perch atop his head, forcing him to hang on to Boris’s hair. With them busy between their duties and military work, the generals hardly had a chance to talk outside of battle and typically withheld their desire to joke together. Svetlana’s Sirin, Ludmila, watched over them patiently and spoke.

“Bone CollectorSvetlana, everyone, we’re about to enter the surviving enemy forces’ combat zones.”

“Oh! Yes, indeed.” Lerche said. “Your Highness, we Sirin are the Roa Gracian royal generals’ swords. We will hereby put our might on display.”

She spoke like she’d just recalled her position as the crux of the Sirins and spoke with dignity and resolve. She hopped over to Vika’s right hand, which gripped the Alkonost, and saluted like a knight despite her doll’s physique making her head large and her arms stubby.

“LarkerVika, give the order to strike!”

“Yes,” Vika said briefly, and somehow getting his mind back on track, he held his free left hand out to his Sirin. Lerche stepped onto his palm, and he held her up like a golden bird in his left while waving the Alkonost with his right.

“Sing, my skylark—Chaika, activate.”

With a meow, TP Particles sprayed out of the Alkonost, but at a rate and howl unrivaled by any magical girl or Eighty-Six in the fleet. Lerche’s small body disappeared in a golden flash, dyeing the thick deluge of TP Particles the color of dawn. It swirled, momentarily swallowing up its Magical Girl Vika, and turned into a bird of golden light that soared up through space. Flapping two pairs of wings, it sprang through the air and spread its wings wide as it came to a sudden stop, gracefully floating. With both wings spread out and displaying its full size, it glared over the approaching enemy forces.

She stood eighteen meters tall, her head covered with a helmet fashioned after the graceful head of a bird. Her mouth was just visible under it, the pursed lips of a young girl. Her supple neck was exposed, but her chest was covered with armor fashioned after the plumes of a girl. Her shoulder pauldrons were the shape of wings. Her armor was feminine in form but firm, covering her humanoid arms, torso, and legs.

And all of it, even the two pairs of wings on her back, were a metallic, bright, blinding gold.

The royal family’s Sirin—Chaika. A one-and-only unmatched Eighty-Six that took a gigantic form that was a match for a space fighter jet in armament form. With a size that would match several tons if translated to physical weight, using it in combat would be impossible for any but the most talented and skilled of Handlers.

Indeed, few could wield it. The Idinarohk family had been the warrior class since ages past and charged with ritual and governance. As such, their descendants were blessed with great mana—and only the most powerful select few of them could wield Chaika.

Despite not matching Vika’s capacity, the other four led by Svetlana were still royal generals with the mana reserves to match. They chanted their own spells, holding their Alkonosts aloft. They turned to look forward, lowered the Alkonosts horizontally, and held them like lancers preparing to charge.

“Soar for me, Ludmila—Marinovka, enchant!”

“Blaze on, Guren—Lotophagos, enchant!”

“Dance forth, Touka—Pale Fire, enchant!”

“Rush onward, Saki—Grimalkin, enchant!”

With loud meowing, Ludmila flashed in a crimson light from the tip of Svetlana’s Alkonost, becoming a long red mantle that covered Chaika’s body. Following that, Guren flashed from Boris’s Alkonost, becoming a blazing longsword gripped in Chaika’s right hand. Touka flashed from Feodora’s Alkonost, becoming a transparent great shield gripped in Chaika’s left. Saki manifested from Ruslan’s Alkonost, becoming a massive pitch-black steed with cat ears and a bat’s tail, spewing out black smoke.

Together, the image they formed was that of a gigantic, awe-inspiring knight clad in golden armor with a red flapping mantle, holding up a flaming sword and a glass-like shield and riding on the back of a pitch-black steed.

This metallic female knight parted her lips and declared sonorously with Lerche’s voice:

“Sirin fusion—Chaika Zhar Ptitsa! Complete!”

The Legion they were facing were only Sheep devoid of emotion and will, but even they faltered at the sight of her.

By the way, “Zhar Ptitsa” means firebird.

“Haa!”

And true to its name, with a flap of four burning golden wings, the massive humanoid weapon Chaika proudly kicked the sides of the horse with its golden spurs and began its charge into the Legion. Using Grimalkin’s enchantment to boost its speed, Chaika galloped forward, its black hooves covered in fire like will-o’-the-wisps.

Crossing paths with the Legion’s vanguard, Chaika swung its longsword down.

“Hah, yah!”

“Yeah, hah.” Guren replied with a lack of enthusiasm, but the sword of Lotophagos burned bright.

Its color, symbolizing its heat, went from red to yellow, and then to white. The heat and energy it contained crossed a certain threshold, letting out a shrill screech as it converted into a blazing shaft of light.

A beam saber.

Or rather, a significantly powered-up version of one produced by Lerche and Guren’s great mana reserves, drawing on two royal generals’ vast supply.

For a second, the beam stretched out, becoming much taller than Lerche was, and swept through the enemy army. It evaporated the enemy force at once with as much firepower as a certain Undertaker.

The head of Grimalkin’s horse was in the beam’s trajectory, momentarily vanishing and then reappearing when the beam passed.

“Phew, it always scares the hell out of me… Counterattack coming in on your ten!”

“Leave it to me, Saki. Ludmila will gladly intercept!”

The Sheep broke formation, forming a group of cylindrical spell circles for artillery—Löwe, which targeted their beams at Chaika. In response, Chaika’s mantle, Ludmila, flapped like a third set of wings. Chaika rapidly maneuvered and closed in on the Löwe. And then a blast. Ludmila’s armament form, Marinovka, detonated itself to use the shock waves of the blast to cancel out the destructive momentum of the enemy’s shell—reactive armor.

Chika’s mantle was Marinovka’s armament form, which meant it couldn’t obscure Chaika’s field of vision, but the same wasn’t true of the smoke caused by the Löwe’s secondary explosions. Using the area wide radar barriers’ reactions instead, Vika briefly instructed Lerche.

“Lerche, Grauwolf coming in from behind the explosions.”

“Yes, preparing to counter!”

While Chaika was activated, Vika’s role was to serve as a reactor that provided it with mana, and also as an operator that controlled its actions. Chaika responded at once, wielding Lotophagos to fire a second beam that wiped out the approaching Grauwolf, as well as the Dinosauria lurking behind them.

Explosions of dying screams reached from both close and afar. Nearly knocked back by the shock waves and only holding on thanks to a barrier he had set up and further reinforced ahead of time, Vika grumbled:

“A humanoid giant robot is fine and all, but why does the pilot seat have to be exposed?”

To be specific, the seat was placed atop Chaika’s head. Not inside, above. Like someone only remembered to add it at the very end, with it protected by neither armor nor the frame.

Also, it was called a pilot seat for convenience’s sake, but it didn’t have any optical screens or consoles for control, or even a proper seat, for that matter. He had to sit with his back against the slope of the helmet. And since his outfit was a dalmatica with a cylindrical structure, the fabric around his legs was too tight for him to sit cross-legged, forcing him to sit in a Far Eastern traditional oriental seiza style.

That said, the usage of terms like Far East dated back to the homeworld, when countries were divided into different cultures. Currently, the Starship Fleet’s countries were not divided into east, south, west, or north, but changed based on their position relative to the Temple Ship.

Two long plumes extended from the top of Chaika’s transparent golden helmet fashioned after Lerche’s hair, serving as control sticks. But given they were about as large as Vika was, it looked less like he was gripping them and more like he was grabbing on to them. The left tuft controlled her movements forward and back, while the right one served as the trigger, or a toggle between armament selections and sensor modes, but more precise commands, like jumping, marching, or locking on, were done verbally.

“We’ve got more Ameise coming in from the back, five, and seven o’clock directions!”

With an eighteen-meter-tall humanoid body, Chaika had many blind spots. Hearing more warnings from Touka, Lerche clicked her tongue impatiently.

“Mph, cowards, trying to strike a knight from behind!”

“Given we’re the ones who charged in to their ranks, what you said likely counts as an unreasonable accusation, seven-year-old.”

“Y-Your Highness…!” Lerche whined at his tasteless remark.

All the while, Saki wordlessly kicked Grimalkin’s rear legs up, mercilessly kicking away the approaching enemies like a trained war steed. But the Legion, who had lost all emotion or reasoning, continued their charge undaunted. Using their numbers, they deployed in a hemisphere formation, closing in on Chaika from every direction.

Svetlana, who held up her Alkonost from behind Chaika to continue supplying mana, cackled as she began to chant:

“Thrones, enchant! Go farther, my cherubic chariots!”

“Dear Aunt, wait! What is this unknown Sirin?!”

Really, who was that? Without offering an answer to Vika’s question, the Throne, a self-destructive weapon consisting of a tube loaded with explosives placed between two wheels equipped with propulsion rockets, careened ahead, leaving behind a trail of flames.

The rocket propulsion was one thing, but the fact that they were used in space, where there was no ground to roll on, rendered their structure as wheels pointless. In fact, Vika suspected that designing them as wheels meant that even with the rockets, the Thrones would just spin in place.

But either way, the Thrones spun in erratic trajectories, chasing down the fleeing Sheep and blowing up. These weapons, developed to take down heavy fortification, were loaded with large amounts of conceptual explosives that blew up an entire strip of the Legion’s forces.

Vika and Chaika sauntered through the explosion on Grimalkin’s back. With a swing of Lotophagos’s beam saber, they cut more of the Legion down, blocking enemy fire with Marinovka’s reactive armor as the loyal and crafty Thrones cleared the path for them.

“Ah-ha-ha! How gratifying! Exhilarating! Thrilling! This is how a knight charges! Don’t you agree, Your Highness?!”

“…I’ve always had my suspicions about you, but you really are a combat nut, aren’t you?” Vika whispered, a bit taken aback.

“I am a knight and a blade! A tool that thirsts for blood!” Lerche laughed him off jovially.

True enough, Vika narrowed his eyes and looked ahead as he cut through the largest surviving enemy group with his beam saber. Indeed, he couldn’t deny that he was enjoying this as much as she was. Like Lerche said, such a one-sided battle, akin to cutting through the enemy like weeds, was enjoyable and exhilarating.

As a group of Dinosauria blew up in a puff of smoke by the beam saber, he heard the sound of metallic galloping coming from the other side of the flames.

“—The small fry aren’t enough, I see. Fall back, everyone… No, if you’re going to shame yourselves by fleeing from battle, better that you become my sustenance.”

Giving conflicting orders, it swung one of its twin longswords. This malformed longsword, made up of countless blade fragments held together by steel wires—this chain blade swept through the battlefield with a bluish arc, cutting down the Legion under its command.

The Sheep wailed in agony, absorbed into the chain blade. Swinging the sword back, it retracted the chain blade into longsword form and stepped onto the vacuum of space, where it now remained as the last remaining enemy.

“Defeat is no longer an option for me. I cannot accept another loss. I must always emerge victorious. Even if it means abandoning my master, betraying my comrades, and sacrificing every last ally, I will win.”

Its helmet, its armor, its blades, its four plumes, flapping behind it like sashes—they all shone a pale blue. Even the armor-clad steed it rode. Facing the golden firebird humanoid weapon was another humanoid weapon, likewise donning an armor of fire. But its flames were not golden, but the liver blue of a corpse. A living dead phoenix, raised from the grave but haunted by death still.

The special Legion-type. Identifier, Phönix.

“For I am, I am, I AM, I AM, I am, I am.”

It repeated the words deliriously and then paused. The pallid, androgynous lips under its beak-like visor erupted into a bloodcurdling scream.

“I must find the one who defeated me!”

As Lerche and Vika stood silently on guard since the moment he (?) entered the scene, the Phönix ignored them and swung his sword in a random direction as he shouted.

Reflecting Lerche’s mental state, Chaika stumbled where it stood. Vika was still seated in seiza style, his expression unstirring, but deep down he desperately told himself—

Can we pretend we didn’t see that and go home?

Infuriatingly enough, he could hear someone—probably Svetlana—cracking up, laughing behind him.

If it’s that funny, why don’t you take my place, Dear Aunt?

The Phönix kept aiming its blade somewhere—not in the direction of the Roa Gracia, nor indeed at any ship in the fleet, but somewhere at the endless abyss of space, looking like he was getting enraged at his own words.

“With my blade I shall cut you down, sever thy head, and through my flames my comrades shall be reborn! That is my mission! My raison d’être! Defeat is not an option to me! I am the strongest! I am supreme! Hence, I shall conquer that mighty one! With my blade! With my flames! Aah, how sweet it is…!”

He ended up twisting and turning in place. His head was so full of thoughts of whomever he was thinking that he didn’t even acknowledge Chaika’s presence. He wasn’t listening to anyone, started speaking deliriously unprompted, and got lost in his own little world. There was no getting through to him.

Speaking with a tone that would have come across as frightened had she been in humanoid form, Lerche said that he was, in other words…

“…A stalker?”

“A stalker, yes. And one that’s far gone.”

From the looks of it, even if Mistress hadn’t been blasted by the Weird-Name Cannon and was here to command him, he’d have probably ignored her and gone to do his own thing. Vika had to feel a bit bad for Zelene.

“I recall that back during the Ratrator War, there was one idiot in the Giad One or the San Magnolia that lost to a fellow Magical Officer and became obsessed. Once he became Legion, that obsession alone must have lingered…”

“How tragic. But who was the one he lost to and became obsessive about…?”

Vika didn’t know, but the moment he tried to say that, the Phönix—who seemed to have no intention of holding a conversation—shouted with perfect timing.

“The humiliation of the defeat you inflicted on me! The brilliance of your strength! I could never forget, Báleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeygr!”

“We didn’t really want to know. Well, it went and said it.”

“I do not know who this Báleygr is, but I do feel for him. I hope he did not hear that.”

Thankfully, Báleygr—Shin—was asleep in the Temple Ship and didn’t hear a thing, nor did he feel any chills down his spine. No strange nightmares, either. Instead, his overprotective, recently reawakened brother let out a series of eight sneezes.

Either way, Vika grumbled to himself. Their opponent cornered itself before the battle even began.

“Go on, Lerche, it’s the phoenix knight you were so eager to slay. That’s it. I’ll give you as much mana as I can, so use it to fight to your heart’s content. I’ll be busy channeling mana, so assume I won’t be in any state to see anything.”

“Huh?! No, Your Highness, don’t twist this foolish bird’s words against her! I do not wish to fight this tricky pervert! And expecting me to just assume you’re going to look away from reality unfolding before your eyes is reckless…!”

“You there!” The Phönix snapped at them. “You call a supreme champion such as myself a tricky pervert?! You dare insult me?!”

Now, of all times, was when he decided to listen to them.

Four of its plumes, which were also chain blades, stood on end as the Phönix became enraged. In his rage, the azure knight turned his blade—this time aiming directly at Chaika—and charged furiously.

The two different-colored knights spurred their horses on, drawing closer, and clashed. As they crossed paths, they turned their horses and smoothly turned around. They then charged again, crossed paths, and clashed their weapons together.

Once again, this was like medieval jousting, except the two engaged in it were eighteen-meter-tall gigantic knights clad in armor. The tip of the deflected chain blade, flakes of broken armor, torn pieces of their mantles, which were all larger than any human being, flew rapidly through space, littering the battlefield. No ordinary magical girl could approach.

After several clashes, the two pulled away from each other, and Vika took a deep breath.

“I swear! For how much of a crazy freak he is, his mana reserves are monstrous…!”

His armor proved solid, and his attacks heavy, but his long whip-shaped chain blade had a wide range, allowing it to rain attacks on Chaika from outside its reach.

And what’s more, he was a Legion, a magical being, while Vika was—despite being the talented Amethystus—only a magical girl. A human being. The more the battle stretched on, the more it strained his body, and exposure to the heat and impact of the attacks only further depleted his stamina.

Soon enough, Vika received transmissions from Ruslan, who kept Grimalkin manifested in gigantic form, and from Boris, who kept extending the beam saber’s blade the match the Phönix’s. They were starting to feel the strain, too. Even Svetlana was silent from the stress and demanifested the Thrones, relegating that mana to Ruslan, who was in charge of their mobility.

“Your Highness! Just knowing you’re not averting your eyes from reality and fighting by my side grants me the strength of an entire army!” Lerche said, by way of encouragement both uncalled-for and ill-fitting in this situation.

Vika ignored her. “GardenerBoris.”

“I know what you’re about to say, LarkerVika.” Boris said, stifling a labored breath and cracking a pained smile. “The next clash… That’s when we finish it.”

“I’m counting on you.”

Chaika and the Phönix both kicked their horses’ flanks. The two humanoid weapons stood opposite each other, with several kilometers between them, but they rapidly covered that distance, chain blade clashing with extended beam saber.

“Guren!”

“Got it!”

Lotophagos’s heat blade extended, reaching its greatest length yet as it invested all its mana into one final blow. The lips just barely visible under the Phönix’s visor parted into a cruel sneer.

“Hah!”

Several force fields manifested under the blue steed’s hooves. The blue knight kicked against them, jumping high. This was the kind of high-speed, random movement using force fields as footing that was the hallmark of Pale Rider, one of the surviving Shepherds.

This unexpected motion made the saber sweep through space, having lost its target. Having wasted its mana in vain, Lotophagos’s flames puffed out.

As much as he was a self-absorbed fool who was too lost in his delusions to properly communicate, the Phönix was still a veteran warrior with a century of experience. He could tell that Chaika was beginning to exhaust her mana.

“You’re mine!”

The blue knight came down on the golden warrior that had lost her sword. Chaika threw up her left hand out of reflex, blocking the blade with her remaining armament, the great shield Pale Fire. Its glass-like surface blocked the enemy’s blades with a clash like thunder, but the Phönix sneered still.

“Too easy! This is too, too, too easy! Shields are the very symbol of cowardice, and they cannot block my blade! I will cut you down!”

He pushed down, and Pale Fire noisily creaked. Sitting atop Chaika, Vika narrowed his eyes coldly as the sword of Damocles hung literally overhead.

—He fell for it.

“DollphiliaFeodora! Touka!”

His older sister Feodora, who had conserved all her mana in this battle thus far, save for what was required to manifest her Eighty-Six’s armament form, smirked.

“No need to call out to me so adorably, LarkerVika. Raising mana supply to maximal output!”

“Yes, this is what we’ve been waiting for. Pale Fire, maximal output!”

Pale Fire’s glass-like shield shone bright, activating.

The Sirin Touka Keisha. Her spell’s Personal Name was Pale Fire. Though her form was that of a great shield when she was applied to Chaika, her armament form was that of a beam Gatling gun.

A beam Gatling gun.

Capable of firing high-temperature charged particles that effortlessly shot through and melted reinforced steel beams at a rate of six thousand shots per minute. And the Phönix now had its sword thrust against the shield, meaning it was at point-blank range.

This meant there was no avoiding it. Touka launched her full load of beams at the Phönix like a storm, shooting through, tearing into and burning it away in seconds in a prolonged barrage.

“Aaah, it’s hot, it hurts, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?! Stop it, that’s cheating!”

“It is not cheating! It’s your fault for thinking I’m just a defensive armament because I’m shaped like a shield!” Touka retorted.

“This is a magic armament, after all! A shield can bash or fire beams or do whatever it requires!” Lerche replied.

And to begin with, a shield could be a dangerous bashing weapon to an exposed enemy. One had to be wary of it.

The whole time, the barrage continued eating away at the Phönix. Its steed, which was but an accessory, was the first to vanish, followed by its four plume-like chain blades and twin swords falling apart and becoming riddled with holes.

With the barrage keeping the enemy pinned down, disarmed and with its mobility greatly hampered, Ruslan and Svetlana deemed that Grimalkin’s and Marinovka’s mobility and active defense were unnecessary and demanifested them, directing all their mana from Chaika to Phönix. Lerche similarly undid the spells applied to the unit, and her Handler, Vika, added extra mana.

“Lotophagos, reactivate! Let’s go, Gureeeen!”

Lotophagos, Chaika’s longsword beam saber, blazed back into life. It instantly thrust forward, filled to the brim with the mana of four magical girls and two other Eighty-Six. Its previous “strongest attack” was but a decoy to draw the Phönix in. But this attack exceeded even that in its force and sheer amount of heat.

It probably went without saying, but Boris and Guren did not run out of mana but temporarily demanifested Lotophagos. The reactivation was swift, and since they were lying in wait for this chance, the thrust was instant. The golden knight buried her ivory flaming sword within the dead blue phoenix’s chest.

“Ah—”

With that faint wail, the Phönix burned from within. Burned from Chaika’s golden flames, which traveled into its body through the beam saber’s blade.

“And again?! You think you can burn a phoenix to death?!”

And with that final scream, the pallid phoenix knight, the Legion special type, the Phönix, fell before the might of the Roa Gracian royal family’s Sirins’ might.

All that remained after that was truly just sweeping up the few remaining groups of the defeated enemy.

“MotherMariana, setting off! I’m off to fight, beloved Zafar, my sweet Vika!”

“Be careful out there, Mariana! Zashya, look after my queen!”

“By your will, Your Majesty! But my name isn’t Zashya!”

Propelled by the catapult’s acceleration spell, Queen Mariana turned around gracefully and blew a kiss at the Roa Gracia (dressed in a pink gourd Barushka Matushka), seen off by the king’s usual encouragement and her Sirin, Zashya’s screams.

Having confirmed her departure, Zafar looked away from her and spoke. He was seated at the Idinarohk dinner table, covered with a silver embroidered tablecloth set with beautiful silver dinnerware and adorned with dahlias.

“I prefer eggnog, personally.”

“But, Brother Zafar, that’s on a brandy basis, not vodka.”

“Dipping chocolate liqueur in expensive vanilla ice cream is also wonderful.”

“Brother Zafar!”

Zafar ignored his retorts with a graceful smile, making Vika groan. He preferred it if his brother didn’t outright ignore that their discussion was about vodka-based cocktails.

Incidentally, many of the United Kingdom’s people, not just Zafar, had sweet tooths. Vika himself didn’t dislike sweets and was considered weak-spirited enough to partake in sweet cocktails on occasion, but still, vodka was their national product.

“Vanilla ice cream is what you typically put on coffee liqueur,” the king appended, adamantly ignoring the topic of vodka.

A butler came in, his expression modest but hiding a hint of discomfort as he placed down four servings of apple compote custard, a most inappropriate dessert, given their conversation, and quickly walked off. When Vika was younger, this long table was occupied by him, his father, Zafar, his mother, the other concubines, and his siblings, as well as their Eighty-Six. But now it was just him, Zafar, the king, and Lerche.

Much like his mother, who was had just set out to battle on her shift, the royal family’s people were often busy with both military and formal duties. In addition, Mariana spent every day when she had no shift having breakfast and afternoon tea with Vika, during which she constantly and persistently asked him about his friendships, to the point where he was rather sick and tired of it. She asked him questions to the beat of “Did you find a girl you fancy?” or “I’m always on your side, you do know that, Vika?”

Vika always insisted there was no one, but she wouldn’t listen, making him quite bothered by his mother’s insistence.

“This reminds me, Vika, isn’t it time you found a girl you fancy?” Zafar asked.

“Yes, Viktor, indeed. If there’s a girl you wish for us to call for you, don’t be shy and say it. We’ll support you wholeheartedly.”

Correction. He was quite bothered by his brother and father, too.

“There’s no one. We’re too busy with ending the Legion War right now, after all. An Idinarohk doesn’t have the time to spend on such frivolous matters. Surely you know that.”

Zafar flashed a very classy smile.

“Yes, which is why Father and I are asking why you’re in such a hurry to end the war… I realize this comes across as boorish, but it’s the first time we’ve seen you so earnest to do anything. As your family, we can’t help but wonder.”

Vika frowned dubiously. “Isn’t ending the Legion War our country’s and the Starship Fleet’s greatest wish? Why should I question myself when it comes to promoting that?”

“…Vika, do you really think we haven’t noticed yet?”

“Viktor, my child. Even you, gifted as you are, are a fool when it comes to this.”

“When it comes to what? How am I foolish? Aaah, confound it all.”

Having confirmed that Lerche—who was eating her favorite apple custard placed on a chair rather than on the table—had finished her meal, Vika plucked her up with his fingers, put her on his shoulder, and got to his feet.

“If I may be excused. The Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon requires tuning.”

“…Oh, and, Vika? I’m sure at this point you’re doing this on principle, but what about my suggestion to do away with that ridiculous name?”

“The answer is no. At this point, I will have the other ships shout its name, too.”

After all, he had to shout the absurd name out loud himself the other day because of his older brother’s tactics.

“—Your Highness, about what Prince Zafar said earlier… For what reason do you devote yourself so fully to the ending of this war?”

As he walked toward the corridor leading to his room, which doubled as his laboratory, Lerche suddenly asked this. Vika kept walking, turning only his eyes to regard her. A holo-screen set on the wall like a window projected fake moonlight into the hall, which spread over the fancy, handwoven carpet set on the floor of the Roa Gracian palace.

Lerche’s intense emerald eyes looked up at Vika’s like the gaze of a sagacious wolf. “Between the development of that Total Whatever Cannon and you wielding Eighty-Six to personally dispatch the enemy army… Yes, I understand that this is the noble duty of a child of the king. But you let it cut into the time you would spend with your schoolmates and friends, even forgoing your lessons to the bare minimum, spending days and nights on developing that cannon… Why go so far?”

“…Shortening the Total WipeoutDeath Knell Annihilation Ritual Cannon’s name like that is strange, don’t you think?” Vika cut her off with an unrelated remark, a bit taken aback by having to hear it coming from the person in question.

Why was he doing this…? Was it not obvious? He was doing it for someone.

“Your Highness…”

“Once the war is over, and should I feel inclined to do so, I shall tell you… Though I doubt I’ll ever feel so inclined.”

Once the war is over and the Eighty-Six—the Magical Officers—are freed from their fate. When Lerche, who spent a century sealed in the Temple Ship, can return to her human form.

And if the war wouldn’t end, her Sirin self will be passed down to the next Amethystus. As the Roa Gracian royal family’s strongest Sirin, she was always paired with the strongest magical girl in the royal family, the Amethystus.

It wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Vika, this generation’s Amethystus, was still young. But his eldest brother already had a wife and children, and his other siblings could also marry and have children, producing the next Amethystus. And once the next one matured, Lerche was bound to leave Vika and transfer to him.

Vika couldn’t stand that. He didn’t want to lose her. He wasn’t willing to let her go, and even more unwilling to be left behind by her. And so—

“When the war ends…you say?”

“Yes… When it ends, and you and your kind return. That’s when…,” Vika said eagerly but nonchalantly.

“Aah!” Lerche’s doggy ears stood on end.

She had spent much too long as an Eighty-Six. She could no longer imagine life as a human.

So I’m doing this for you. For all of you. To free you. To let you go back.

Lerche smiled. A ticklish smile, but one of genuine joy.

“I understand now… So when I can return, when the war ends… Tell this foolish bird yourself, without hiding your feelings.”

Vika regarded her with a faint smile.

“…Hm. Whatever shall I do?”