1

“Have I ever told you that it’s annoying that they all have different shapes?”

“A sickening number of times.”

Minerva found herself facing a giant Shadow in the shape of a cat. The nimble creature had dodged her fireballs and icicles, even her lightning only served to shatter some windows of crane games, making plushies and other toys spill into the hall after it jumped out of the way.

“Huh? N-no…” the meek voice came from behind her. An arcade employee had been trapped this time. She was a college-aged woman who had been called to reset the prizes in one of the crane games, inadvertently touching a plushie that turned out to be a Shadow’s lure.

“Oh, sorry!” Minerva blinked and looked back at her. “I actually wasn’t talking to you, but to my magic crystal, you see!” She poked out her tongue and winked at the woman who looked at her skeptically.

“Eh?!”

“Anyway, I’m still on the clock, so DIE, you stupid beast!”

She rushed ahead and slashed at the creature after drawing her sword, swinging it from side to side.

The creature seemed content with dodging, elegantly jumping from wall to wall while its face contorted in a way that seemed to be laughing at her.

“Oh, you piece of- “

The cat suddenly lunged at her and turned in the air to hit her with its hind legs, hitting her in the chest and launching her, cracking the screen of a fighting game cabinet as she came to a stop.

Woah, that’s vintage! Good thing this is just a copy.

“Could you focus on the task at hand, you otaku?”

Yes, yes, I’m on it!

She finally raised her cane again. Starting with a lightning strike she made the cat jump and focused her next spell not on the cat but on the very ground itself. Earth Magic made the tiles give out under the giant cat’s weight and let it sink deep as they took on the consistency of quicksand. It flailed its legs to try and get out – only to face the enraged Magical Girl with a large boulder that she immediately used to pound and squish the monster deep into the death trap.

She was much less graceful with her exit this time around – she had a race against time with an enemy that loved dodging her, so her nerves and her time were both strained to the maximum. She gave the rescued arcade worker a little wave as the pocket dimension collapsed around them and people appeared, all of them stepping away from the two in shock as they appeared to be materializing out of thin air for the casual observer.

“Yes, yes, ‘Thank you Magical Girl, you’re amazing, Magical Girl’, but I sadly don’t have time for all that, so… ta-tah!”

She ran out of the arcade and launched into the air with her momentum.

She flew through the sky, rapidly approaching MagiColle Publishing’s office building. Reducing her speed, she came to a standstill just in front of the rooftop door, hovering in place before she turned back into plain old Seika, dropping the few centimeters to the ground in a soft la-

I always forget about my high heels!

She stumbled, just barely avoiding the door as she slammed her hand into the nearby wall to prevent a fall. Noisily hitting that metal door would have gotten the entire editorial’s attention for sure.

I’d never hear the end of how clumsy I am if I have to make up a story about how I tripped and fell on the roof.

After regaining her balance she looked at the little pole next to the door with an ashtray on top. The cigarette she left there was untouched, merely lit and left to burn down. She never smoked in her life and didn’t intend to start but still – she had to smell like cigarette smoke and have fewer of them in her pack when she returned to have a coherent story for her little breaks.

Surprisingly, it had about one minute’s worth of length left.

She leaned against the door and let out a long sigh as she brainstormed the current situation.

With all the recent Shadow activity in the area there is just one logical conclusion. There is a Queen nearby. Which means…

She stopped her train of thought as a wave of nausea came crashing down on her. She fell to her knees, holding a hand on her mouth as she did her best to stop herself from vomiting.

“Seika? What’s happening? Seika?!”

Her heart hammered in her chest like it was trying to burst free and the edge of her vision faded, her hand on the ground was involuntarily trying to dig into the hard material covering the roof. A voice from the past echoed in her skull, saying things she’d rather forget.

It's dark… it hurts… no one knows I’m in here… they are trying to kill me…

A suffocating darkness filled her lungs, and she gasped for air as an invisible hand constricted her throat. She wanted to scream, but there was no air for her to make a sound. She wanted to writhe and thrash about, but her limbs were kept in place by an iron grip.

“You’re reliving traumatic events from your past. Focus on my voice, Seika.”

Closing her eyes she forced herself to calm down, to drown out those traumatic memories, but to no avail yet.

“This is the past. You’re strong now. It can no longer happen to you. You can prevent it from happening to others.”

The voice of her crystal began reciting the words that Seika needed to hear to break out of her panic attack. The effect wasn’t immediate, but it helped her gradually, making her heartbeat slow down to a normal rate while she managed to get air into her lungs again.

She fought with her involuntary memories and the intense desire to throw up for what felt like an eternity, though only a minute had passed. As she managed to stand up her forehead was drenched in cold sweat.

Lovely. Back to work.

She caught her breath and wiped the sweat from her forehead. As she had calmed down enough, she added: “Thank you, Minerva…”

There was no vocal reply, but she could feel a gentle warmth filling her core.

Grabbing the almost burned-down cigarette stump she put it out and headed back inside the building.

“Ah, welcome back Hitoishi. Oh dear, you look pale. Don’t tell me the lack of sleep is getting to you after all?”

Watanabe naturally noticed something was wrong with her.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll just have to walk it off.”

Several hours later Yoshida had actually finished his manuscript, so he was allowed to go home. Seika wanted to get to editing it right away, but Watanabe interfered, insisting that he couldn’t take responsibility for her doing a second all-nighter in a row and that she should sleep for once.

She left the office as insisted but she didn’t exactly intend to go home just yet. With a Shadow Queen out there, she would have to look for a missing girl and she knew exactly where she would get information about that.

2

Minerva Crimson floated nonchalantly into the nearest police box with a smartphone in hand.

“Good evening!” her cheerful voice greeted the officer on duty who looked at her with tired apprehension. Even now, sixteen years after the incident that kicked off supernatural events in this world, the police were no friends to the ‘vigilantes’ that freely roamed the skies. Not least of all because they couldn’t exactly prevent them from doing magical battle in the city, which they’d prefer the girls didn’t – but deep down everyone knew that regular law enforcement was not equipped to deal with any of the supernatural threats.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’ll be out of your hair soon!”

The flash of her phone’s camera went off multiple times as she stopped in front of the missing person’s posters. Mostly high schoolers and some college students went missing this month.

The man tried his best to ignore her presence – acknowledging her being here would only bring problems, especially if his supervisor decided that he should try and catch an ‘unsanctioned’ Magical Girl.

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“Good luck.”

Minerva was about to leave the police box as she heard those words faintly from behind. She looked over her shoulder. The only other person was the officer who did his best to pretend that he didn’t say anything.

She replied with a large grin and a thumbs up before she flew away.

Minerva thought about the implications of the policeman’s words as she approached the last known location of one of the girls, Shibuya. She didn’t like that it seemed like he was happy for her to take on these missing posters, indicating that there was something behind those disappearances that the police were powerless against.

She picked a relatively quiet spot to transform back before she stepped out into the open. She approached the large crossing, looking around like she was just on an afternoon walk.

“No signs of magic foul play.” Her crystal let her know.

How am I even supposed to start looking for these girls?

She let out a long sigh. The few times she had to deal with Queens in the past she had simply followed the trail of Shadows, watching for where they came from and then following that lead. But the Shadows she had caught so far appeared in a way too wide area, which didn’t give her much to go by.

It was like they came from some point far, far away and had already spread out to cover more ground, making it impossible to garner which direction they had even appeared from.

She shook her head. There was no use dwelling on things outside of her power. She could only do the best she could to ensure that no one else fell victim to those monsters. For now, she entered the coffee shop that was conveniently right there at the crossing and left it with a tall latte macchiato in hand to deal with another case of drowsiness. As she sipped her drink, she could hear the speakers of the large displays surrounding the square activate for a special program.

““Good Eveniiiiing!”” Two voices rang across the square and the two Magical Girls Sol and Luna appeared on every available screen.

“It’s the sellouts!”

“It’s the sellouts!” Seika confirmed and made some heads turn her way. She looked around and cleared her throat. The girls on the screen continued completely unbothered, unable to hear her at all.

“The Celestial Sisters are proud to announce a collaboration with the biggest maid café in Akihabara, Maidlicious!” Sol announced.

“Only for a limited time the lovely maids will dress in our unique uniforms, perform stage plays where they fight our bitter enemies, the ‘Enraged’, and you can leave with acrylic stands of the both of us!” Luna continued.

““So hurry up and get over to Maidlicious!””

“What a load of – hey?! Seika where are you going?”

Seika was already moving, wiping the corner of her mouth where she had previously drooled.

“Oh, for the love of – really?! Just a minute ago you called them sellouts but the second you hear there’s Magical Girl merchandise you abandon all principles and go for it?!”

Seika didn’t even respond. She turned a corner and transformed into Minerva Crimson, taking off at breakneck speed.

3

She of course didn’t abandon her search for the girls. She meticulously checked each and every location where a girl had gone missing to confirm or deny the presence of a magical beast.

She would have been done with it with much later and less conspicuous if she had done her sweep in her regular form though, so in a sense being hurried along by her otaku desires was a net gain in productivity.

“I can’t believe this.”

““Moe, moe, kyun!”” Seika chanted together with two maids dressed as Luna and Sol who got closer to her than they would have done with the typical male customer. Being squished between two women dressed as Magical Girls had Seika almost drooling again as her brain went out in a blissful bye-bye to be replaced entirely by the nefarious powers of moe and otaku obsession.

She had her arms crossed in front of her, forming half hearts with her hands that were completed by the two maids to shoot a beam of deliciousness on a single portion of omurice with Seika’s name written on it in ketchup.

“Ehehehe, I died from sleep deprivation and I’m in heaven…”

She mumbled before she shoveled the omurice down her gullet.

Before long she was holding light sticks as the maids sang one of the original songs out of the Celestial Sisters’ idol portfolio while making flourishing movements and fighting the ‘Enraged’ on stage.

The ’Enraged’ used to be humans who were pricked by an unknown enemy’s poisonous needles, losing control over themselves and growing claws from their fingers which they’d use to attack civilians indiscriminately until the needles were removed from their bodies.

The Celestial Sisters were their sworn enemies, but about three years ago those kinds of attacks ceased entirely, leaving the pair of Magical Girls without an exclusive enemy of their own and a lot of time to engage in idol activities or merchandising deals.

And while Seika called them sellouts for it, she was utterly in their thrall as a Magical Girl otaku.

4

After about one and a half hours of indulging in her otaku fantasies, Seika continued with her investigation, going back to the corners where the girls had gone missing to ask passersby directly if they had seen anything regarding those disappearances.

She wasn’t exactly going into it with high hopes, but she owed the missing girls at least a try at it, so she stood in the street, next to girls in maid costumes handing out flyers while all she handed out were questions.

In the end no one could help her. With her magic detection not picking up on any supernatural foul play she had no choice but to halt her investigation for now – especially as her phone’s alarm went off to warn her that it was 2am.

She had already missed a day’s worth of sleep – to miss more would be dangerous, even for her. While she could keep going in her Magical Girl form, she knew from bitter experience that the moment she turned back she would feel the effects all too well.

Landing in a back alley near her own place she undid her transformation – bracing herself for the onset of drowsiness and the general addled state of her brain these past seven years.

It's like coming down with a bad hangover.

Seika let out a long, loud yawn as she slowly made her way to her own apartment. It was located in a typical two-story rental house with three units per floor. One room, one bath, a kitchen in the entry hallway. Enough space for a single person to live modestly.

Seika turned the key to her unit, nestled between the two others on the ground floor, and entered.

The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes that she never had the time to do, but at least she was able to get rid of the trash on the way to work, so she had that going for her over Yoshida. Her bed beckoned from the corner of her living room but for now she entered the bath. While she didn’t have the time for a proper soak before she seriously needed to sleep, she wanted to shower herself off at least.

After undressing and sitting down in the bathroom she started showering herself, closing her eyes as the almost therapeutic warmth of the hot shower soaked through her skin and permeated her whole being.

Her fingers unconsciously trailed a round little scar on her left upper arm – another souvenir from her younger days, just like her bad memories.

I hope I can find those girls soon… if only I didn’t have to be a ‘proper adult’ and could skip work… just like I sometimes skipped school back then.

“Or you could cut down on your otaku activities a little.”

You’re so cruel. I thought you loved me. Sniff. Sniff.

“Sometimes I feel less like your partner and more like your caretaker, Seika. It worries me.”

She absentmindedly brushed her teeth, vacantly staring into the mirror as she mentally exchanged jabs with Minerva. Finally, dressed in only a pair of panties and an oversized T-shirt she stumbled into her living room, drying her hair with a towel to satisfaction before she simply fell into her bed.

She looked up at an assortment of various Magical Girl figurines perched atop a little shelf on the foot end of her bed.

“Goodnight, girls.”

It was 2:30am, and for a mercy she fell asleep immediately, dreaming of past encounters.