It was that afternoon I was called upon to investigate the disappurrance of a mysterious feline lost within the trace of a furball. I believed myself to be done with the battlefield of mysteries and catty shenanigans, but here I stand on my last paw ready to wrap up this wild catastrophe furrever.

SMACK!

My woes go, a paper fan!

"Stop pointing that magnifying glass everywhere you're gonna get people to stare!" Pro had smacked the item out of her hand and the monologues out of her head. Only Maine could make her feel embarrassed this way in public.

Maine picked up her dropped goods and aimed it at Pro, showing her big ol' eye. "This is meowry serious Pro! Who's to say her father won't come after us once he finds out his daughter is missing?"

Maine was right in the sense that they had to hurry. Though her methods were a bit much, she did make a concrete effort looking for Cocoa, going as far as to ask the people walking around if they had seen a blue haired cat rushe. They tried Shibuya first then attempted to transfer to the forest but for some reason the app on Pro's phone wouldn't allow her to. The first malfunction she'd seen and not knowing a solution to solve this, they moved on to the next city, Shinjuku. A city more crowded during the afternoon than the early morning, in contrast with Shibuya. The shopping district in particular was an eyeful of colorful signs and advertisements that one would easily get lost in if they lost their way. The mass amount of buildings and pedestrians reminded Maine of her home but the architecture was too modern to fill that sense of nostalgia of roaming about the wide city.

Going back to their present problem, Pro was truly at a loss of what move to make next. The only clues they had about her disappearance were the flowers she complained about back at her home. But they couldn't just waltz into the house of the former prime minister's daughter.

"Is there something wrong, Pro?" said Remy, returning with a small tray of takoyaki and holding one out for her. She took the toothpick holding the ball shaped snack as Remy told her "They were giving out samples to tourists. I pretended to be one and said I was from Aomori prefecture ."

Maine's tail jumped up. "You're supposed to keep our home a secret!"

Remy offered one takoyaki to Maine, getting her to calm down. "Don't worry, they didn't ask any further."

"Hmm…" Pro thought while eating her takoyaki whole. She opened her phone one last time to check the app to see if it would tell her anything and--a new notification, tempest nearby. Though it may be unrelated to their situation there was no harm in investigating a little for their next expedition. To know what dangerous enemies were next, along with getting a head start on the few others she encountered like that girl with the poncho. Could it be a forest or something entirely different? Pro couldn't stop grinning and feeling a feathery tickle along her spine, couldn't wait to engage in their next adventure.

Going into an alley between two buildings and though the nearby people found it strange that a group of girls were going into the dark smelly path, none were curious enough to chase after them. Their world twisted unnaturally and the fabric of reality rippled, Maine could describe it as the most uneven feeling she had ever felt; and when they landed back on solid ground, Maine fell to her knees touching the ground to make sure she hadn't died all of a sudden.

"What was that? And where are we now?!" Maine frantically looked left to right at the new city they stood in. Not a forest but a rusty and dull drab post-industrial city; where buildings were made up of slapped together metal panels and cargo boxes, and the cracked roads covered in dirt and sand. A place of the poorest conditions that no one would ever choose to live in even if they were homeless. Now a place like this truly reminded Maine of where she came from and the smell matched too--a foul odor of oil mixed with metals. Unlike the cool and calm weather of Forest Shibuya, here, it was an uncomfortable warm humid that was distracting the longer they focused on it, making them feel quite sluggish, but Remy later said the warmness would subside after a little, her fox ears twitching getting a sense of the surrounding temperature and forecast.

As for Maine who was still baffled that Pro was telling the true of a world beneath their own, running around and touching the rusted texture of stacked cargo crates, and the chain link fences to shake around and so on, such a reality that only existed in a video game now tangentable--physical to the human experience. A world unrestricted and all the more dangerous for it, paradise, and so it was dubbed--

"Paradise Shinjuku..!" Maine said loudly to the forever dawn sky above and two moons ago.

However it was loud enough to attract a new visitor, or enemy in this case. A sharp snap rang in Maine's head and instinctively she pushed Pro out of the way to avoid a bullet shot where her legs were. Their heads turned to the culprit dressed like the red musketeer Pro had seen before, this time this girl's hair was a flowing dim black and again her face was very young but she was tall. The musket in her hand had a slight modern flair to its design able to hold clips rather than pellets, and the bullet she used left smoke stirring from the ground.

"How are you visitors?" It was clear she greeted everyone this way and before they had a chance to respond she took aim again. "Take off that illusion spell or I'll blow your brains out."

Pro touched her face not realizing Kyokai's spell still lingered, and not knowing how to remove the effect she touched her face a few more times unknowing that touching it once was enough to remove the filter. However that didn't matter to the musketeer at all, she giggled. "Now I get to see your faces when I kill you, blast your brains out and watch them paint the ground in blood red."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Noooo! Don't hurt us!" Cried Maine, the only one to do so as her friends just awaited their fate or what might happen next. Remy was always cold and seemingly uncaring and Pro had the gun pointed to her, what could she do? Though that stoic exterior made the musketeer lower her rifle "Huhhh? You aren't shaking at all. Aren't you gonna tremble in fear and pee your pants?"

Finally free from the gun's aim, Pro could speak calmly. "Are you with that light blue haired girl? You both wear the same uniform. How about we work together?"

The musketeer smiled hearing 'light blue haired girl' and holstered the rifle on her back. "You mean big sis? Ah, maybe I should call her Captain. How do you know her? Have you been spying on me? Heheeh!" She had a creepy laugh but not close to Cynthia's. "I'm Rissa Auguste but everyone back home calls me Noire de'Chevalier. Captain is reeeally injured and one of her squadmates has gone missing. They had no choice but to send me."

"Then we're in a similar situation. One of our-- well… an important person to us is missing." Pro scratched her head "Maybe they're somewhere here together."

Noire jumped from the crates and landed in front of Pro, casually walking towards her with her hands on her hips spouting, "Or maybe they're already dead!" a terrible joke if it even was one. Cutting into their conversation was a horrific howl, not of a hound but something less coherent. Something that could only come from a dragon, and Pro's assumptions were correct when Noire motioned for them to follow her.

"We better get going. The dragons here have a strong sense of smell and travel in packs like wolves. You all look too feeble to deal with them too, they'll gobble you right up like nom-nom-nom!"

She was lax describing how fearsome the dragons here were and despite defeating a few, Pro didn't want to face a hoard of them, one was enough to tire her out completely. They followed Noire through corridors and jumped over fences. She could parkour like a pro jumping from higher platforms to narrow walkways alongside the buildings, almost leaving the team behind as they struggled to pull themselves up hanging rails and narrowly missed long jumps. Pro caught a glimpse of the dragon far below them, a pink dragon that was fast but that's all she could process before moving on into a building then following Noire down a long ladder that led to an underground walkway.

"C-can we take…a short break." Maine said inbetween gasps, slowing down to a jog behind the group.

"Where did all that energy go?" Said Pro, surprised that the most energetic of the council was growing tired.

"I wasn't ready for all this platforming!"

Remy grabbed Maine's hand before she fell too far behind. "Do you want me to carry you?"

"There's no need! We're pretty close to my friend." Noire then ascended a ladder on the wall. Pro raised an eyebrow and kept following. "How can you tell?"

"I can sense magic disbursing from somewhere. So something is close by."

And finally after climbing the ladder they emerged on the other side of the city it seemed. Still, the conditions of buildings were all equally poor and run down. However, this area wasn't cramped with scatter about crates and platforms to ascend over, instead this looked more like a small residential town perhaps built by the shadows that resided here? It was eerie seeing empty tables and chairs outside general stores and houses complete with dirty furniture and all.

Maine threw herself in one of the chairs. "Let me rest for a bit, you can go on without me."

And Pro rolled her eyes, continuing to move on with Noire and Remy. Soon They arrived at the location--Out of the line of shops and back on the streets. "Right there!" Noire shouted and pointed to Cocoa and the blue haired musketeer. Both fainted but the blue haired musketeer was heavily wounded, missing most of her right half bitten off by presumably a dragon. It was hard to look at, Remy even covered her sight away from the bleeding musketeer.

Pro shook off the feelings of fear and turned to Noire asking, "Do you have a way to heal her?"

But Noire didn't respond, instead walking slowly over to her ally. Pro readied her hand just in case she tried to do something drastic to Cocoa.

The blue haired musketeer weakly opened her eyes to see Noire. "R-rissa…" she muttered and coughed out some blood and where many would expect Rissa to say her heartful final goodbyes--

--No one expected her to bash the musketee's head with her rifle's stock. Blood scattered and splattered everywhere as she continually slammed her rifle down on her former comrade, pummeling her face into a blob of blood. She laughed too, she was laughing so hard quickening her friend's death, or maybe they weren't friends and she was getting a twisted revenge. Pro and Remy wanted to stop her but this wasn't something worth losing their lives over. Rather, they prepared themselves when the ground shook and an axe headed dragon approached,

Pro stepped back. "Noire, do you have any extra swords or weapons I could use?"

"Only this..." Noire showed the fallen musketee's Estoc. "I'll be much closer to sis now that she's gone. Take it!" She tossed the sword which Pro caught.

She didn't understand her motivations for killing her ally nor did she want to. Beginning the battle, Pro knew the first move the dragon would make would be a ramming strike. She took out the barbed wire link sign and threw it at the dragon's feet where it vanished then small holes opened up beneath the beast and barbed wire shot up and wrapped around the dragon, pulling it to the ground trapping it.

She ran forward following the motions of the light haired musketeer and jumped up to stab the dragon on the head, through its rough scales and into its brain, her estoc dug deep. She pulled it out and flipped off in one swift motion now feeling more accustomed to battling; and blood gushed out of the dragon's head. Noire finished the battle entirely by rapidly shooting the dragon with bullets that pierced its skin easily, littering it full of holes then defeated.

"The battle is done." Pro turned away from the dragon as it faded into shadow then dust into nothingness.

"So this is what Pro's been doing…" Remy stood in awe of how swiftly she dispatched the dragon.

Pro walked past her coolly and smooth, "Remy, take Cocoa."

She nodded "Understood."

"We'll be leaving now that we have our friend. Thanks Noire."

Noire pouted at how quickly Pro was leaving. "Leaving just like that… Fine, more bloodshed for little ol' me."

They returned to Maine then back to the real world. The task of taking Cocoa back to her home was left to Remy and Maine and thankfully her father wasn't home, instead it was two maids that took her in.