1
“Senpai? Senpai!”
Miori’s sweet voice yanked Seika out of her thoughts.
How long have I been staring into space? How embarrassing.
“…yes?”
“Still with us, I see. I found one of my regulars who might know something about the missing girl.”
Miori beamed with pride as she announced her findings to Seika. Her eyes almost begged for praise like a puppy. Cute.
“Right… I’ll go and talk to him then. Who is it?”
Seika was about to stand up, but Miori urged her to sit back down with a quick gesture.
“No need, Senpai. He’s a very shy man, you see. Not particularly confident when talking about such things with strangers. I already took him outside and talked to him while you were spacing out.”
“Did you now?”
Seika was surprised – and a little intrigued how Miori managed such a feat. She herself had already gone through a few scenarios of how she’d approach the topic with a stranger and none of them appeared satisfying to her. One of these days she needed to learn from Miori how to be a social butterfly.
“Well, in that case… what did he say?”
Miori put up a smug expression and showed her phone to Seika where she had written down the details.
“Give me your LINE and I can send it over to you.” she announced, puffing out her chest. “Ueh!?” was the sound she made next as Seika snatched the phone out of her hand and copied the details manually into her own.
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re so mean, Senpai…”
“I already promised you a date this weekend, didn’t I?” Seika winked at Miori as she handed the phone back. And just as planned that little gesture made Miori forget about her grievances as she blushed.
Too easy…
2
Seika walked through the streets of Kabukichō alone after she left Snack Starlight and headed for the train station. It was around midnight, now, when things truly came to life in this district. People moved around in little groups, wandering from place to place in good company – some were unaccompanied, like Seika, though they were mostly men, possibly looking to visit one of the seedier clubs.
Seika turned at the crossing as she could she the side of Godzilla’s head peeking over a building and continued to head for the train station; On the way she checked her phone for the info she had received from Miori.
‘The girl who went missing in Kabukichō vanished in a spot with a lot of activity from pick-up artists who are the usual suspects: Young guys trying to get lucky, scouts for idol agencies, either wholesome ones or AV oriented. University students who feel more confident in a group and all the others. Recently there’s been some new faces shortly before the disappearances began. They are easy enough to spot when you can see their tattoos. You can probably guess where this is going and why the authorities haven’t been getting too involved yet. Good luck with whatever you do with this information.’
Seika looked up from her phone, conflicted.
Organized crime, huh? I don’t think I’ll find my Shadow Queen there, but now that I know about what’s going on I can’t just turn my back on it.
“I would never let you hear the end of it if you did, so good on you.”
“Hey there, sexy office lady! Want to hang out with us tonight? We know a good place to drink and eat if you want!”
The annoying voice came from behind and Seika knew exactly what kind of people she’d see once she turned her head around. A moment later and her prediction was spot-on: One of them was a youth with bleached hair and a pierced ear wearing a casual shirt that was unbuttoned more than necessary to show off a gold chain; the guy standing next to him was not much different, either. As their eyes met the man’s face contorted and his eyes darted just a little bit lower. It became obvious that he was looking at the dark rings under her eyes.
“Ugh. Never mind.” He simply turned around and left.
Ugh?! You want to fight?
She couldn’t make up her mind whether she should be relieved to be left alone or offended at how it happened.
She watched them go and point to other women on the street, exchanging a few words of pre-planning before relentlessly approaching them.
I may have arrived at my destination.
Seika stowed her phone and moved to keep herself hidden as well as possible. Her hiding spot of choice was a corner at the entrance to a side alley.
The two men with bleached hair weren’t the only pick-up artists. University students were among the most common people approaching women to spend ‘fun times’ together. There was at least one middle aged man who kept approaching younger women and some guys in business casual outfits who either were scouting or pretended to be scouting.
Seika’s eyes kept darting left and right to keep an eye on all movement from her spot.
How am I even supposed to recognize which of these guys might be connected to the disappearances?
“Just use your raw intuition!”
Just in that moment she saw two bald men who stood out. Instead of casual wear like the others they wore business suits. Their business card cases were denting their breast pockets, and they hadn’t approached anyone so far despite casting many long looks towards various women.
Scouting for underground idol groups? Or AVs?
“Scouting for Magical Girls?”
You can’t be serious.
Her instincts told her to keep an eye on these men. And surely enough after a while she saw them approaching women and girls alike, offering them professional-sounding compliments as well as invitations to an audition to be held nearby, all while handing out business cards from the cases they had on them.
Seika was about to write them off as the usual talent scouts that would talk to women out here as she caught a glimpse of a tattoo sleeve under one of the men’s cuffs.
“I’m not usually one to judge from appearances but I think you may have found our culprits.”
The men’s success rate wasn’t very promising. Most of the women just kept walking, others promised to consider it and put the cards away with the very obvious intention to never look at them. The men weren’t fazed at all.
It took another hour or so before a young gal who just left one of the ramen places got approached by them and seemed to seriously consider their offer.
A few words more were exchanged, words like “You’ll be a star in no time!” or “You look like you have talent, I can see you doing very well in our business!” and such. They worked on the poor girl, much to Seika’s dismay.
Come on, have a little more pride than that.
One of the men gestured along the road, pointing out where their office was so they could enter ‘contract negotiations’ or such. As all three of them had their backs turned and were walking Seika followed, always making sure to look as casual as possible.
I’m just walking in the same direction as you all. There is nothing suspicious at all about the way I’m moving here.
The trio arrived at a small office building. They were entering the door and ascending the stairs quickly. Unable to follow them without being spotted, she decided to wait until they came back out and leaned against a wall to observe her surroundings. There was a windowless van parked in front of the office building. The building itself didn’t seem to have any other entrances. If anything happened the group would have to leave through the same door they entered.
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice?”
Seika didn’t like that voice or what it implied at all.
Before she could even turn to see who spoke to her, she felt her muscles painfully contract as the stranger pushed a stun gun against her body.
Being unable to do much of anything she couldn’t stop the fist that came crashing into her solar plexus and caused her to pass out, either.
3
Seika’s consciousness kept fading in and out after she had been caught. At some point her hands were tied behind her back with rigid cable ties. Her ankles underwent the same treatment.
She could hear men talking and a woman’s muffled sobbing.
“She’s been sniffing around, following you. She saw you enter with the prey. We’ll have to get rid of her.”
“Let’s get her to the boss, maybe we can use her to get some money out of this trouble, after all.”
Seika’s vision was blurry. Her glasses must have fallen off after she got punched. They were clipped to her chest pocket, probably so that they wouldn’t be left behind as evidence of her disappearance.
She couldn’t make out the faces of the people talking and she couldn’t speak up, either. Probably because her mouth was taped shut.
“What, think someone would pay money to do a worn-down office worker like that?”
Seika wanted to scream and claw his eyes out, but before she could muster the strength, she passed out again.
As she woke up, she was in complete darkness. Only the sound of an engine told her that she was now in the windowless van. As she wriggled in her bondage she bumped against another warm body, belonging to the actual kidnapping target.
She could feel her consciousness almost fading again but knew that this might be her last chance to get out of this mess.
“It appears they are giving us a free ride to their base of operations. Get yourself together!”
I’m on it! Transform!
She counted herself lucky that she was still wearing her earring. Even simply thinking about transforming was enough to trigger it and grant her the strength to get out of this situation. She briefly illuminated the inside of the van with a brilliant white light – then it dimmed slightly, with her crimson hair’s glow tinting the interior of the van’s cargo space in a deep red. Her consciousness stabilized as her magical endurance came into effect.
She could see the other woman’s face, her make-up runny from silently crying, her voice muffled by tape. But now she was simply staring, fear giving way to amazement as she saw the Magical Girl next to her.
Minerva Crimson used her magic and covered her wrists and ankles in razor-sharp chunks of rock, twisting her limbs until the plastic gave way. Finally, she tore the tape from her mouth before she was kneeling down next to the other woman.
Did she see my face before I transformed? Minerva considered the possibility for a moment but concluded that even if she did, it wouldn’t matter right now.
The Magical Girl put a finger on her mouth to shush the woman. With a twitch of her fingers her trusty cane sword appeared by her side, and she cut the cable ties with it.
“Not a sound. Wait until they reach their destination, then I’ll deal with them. Alright?” she said quietly. The woman nodded, too stunned to even think about removing the tape from her mouth in this moment.
It took ten more minutes before the van stopped. Minerva could hear two men leave the car.
She got herself ready – her cane sword was sheathed, forming a magic staff to focus her magical energies. The top was already crackling with lightning.
The door that Minerva was facing slid to the side and she got to see the dumbfounded expression of one of the kidnappers coming face to face with a Magical Girl inside his van. The surprise didn’t last long as soon after he was flung backwards with lightning arcing all over his body and slamming him into a nearby wall.
Minerva Crimson jumped out of the van and got a read on her situation. She didn’t immediately recognize the precise place, but the line of warehouses to one side told her that she must be somewhere near the Tokyo Bay.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
More than that, there was the other kidnapper next to the car while a third man stood by the door of a nearby warehouse. Both reached for something inside their suit jackets and Minerva wasn’t about to find out what they were going to pull on her; instead, she pointed her staff at them one after the other, zapping them with another full charge of lightning magic that sent them flying – one of them into a nearby fence and the guard into the warehouse wall. After they were disposed of, she poked her head back into the van.
“The coast is clear for now. Can you run and alert the police?”
The woman finally removed the tape on her mouth and nodded before she ran away. Minerva followed her with her eyes until she turned a corner and vanished out of sight, then she walked up to the door of the warehouse.
The door needed some convincing. She wasn’t in the mood to grab a key from one of the unconscious men, so instead she imbued her blade with magic and made it cut through the aluminum like a hot knife through butter.
A circular piece of metal fell to the ground and Minerva Crimson entered.
The warehouse had been turned into a kind of makeshift office. Plywood panels were set up with equally simple doors to separate the large storage area into a large corridor with multiple rooms.
She couldn’t see anyone in the improvised entry hall she stood in, so she advanced. Someone shoddily wrote ‘Recording Studio’ on the first door, and she opened it to investigate. She wished she hadn’t.
Inside was a camera setup with all the lighting expected of a professional studio, with the camera pointed at a stained mattress. Various boxes were stacked nearby, and she could guess their contents already.
Ever since it became clearer that no Shadows were involved with the disappearances, she had suspicions about what she’d find in this crime circle’s base of operations but kept her mind too occupied with other things to let the reality of the situation sink in. Now there was nothing that let her avert her eyes from the facts and only cold fury remained.
She closed the door and continued down the hallway, gripping her cane tighter - it didn’t appear like anyone had noticed her arrival yet, so she was about to make the most out of it.
She passed by various doors, most of them labeled ‘Visitor Room’ with an attached number.
Her hand started shaking. Part of her realized that she was out of her depth – she wasn’t an American superhero who was used to fighting organized crime. While most of her enemies were much deadlier than people, the majority were also extradimensional beasts that acted on instinct and could be easily outwitted – and she had no reservations about destroying them with magic, either. Killing a person, no matter how much evil they did, would weigh much heavier on her.
Another room caught her attention. The label on the door simply read ‘Insurance’, so she entered.
It was a sterile smelling room, white in all directions. Two chairs were placed in the middle with a stand holding up a suitcase. A look inside revealed that it was equipment for drawing blood.
As she looked further inside the room, she saw a glass-paned refrigerator. Inside were at least a hundred of vials of blood, some of them partially drained, all labelled with names that sounded like pseudonyms.
“What would they need all this for? Does one of them practice blood magic?”
It’s more likely that this is DNA evidence to assure mutual destruction if one of their clients grows a conscience and tells on them.
She didn’t know what to make of this room, so she went back to the corridor.
Minerva heard a voice and pushed herself to the wall. It seemed like a group of men was talking in the next room. She snuck close to the door and peeked inside.
“Daizen, Goro: You two will be operating in this street starting tomorrow. Bring whichever girl falls for it to branch office four, it’ll only be a fifteen-minute walk. Daigo, you’ll be grabbing the DVDs that were ordered by a client. He’ll be waiting for you here. Wears a yellow baseball cap and blue shoes.”
A man wearing an expensive suit stood bent over a large desk which was covered entirely in a map of Tokyo. Pins were indicating locations while drawn circles indicated “hunting grounds”.
“By the way, when are the guys from branch office six arriving? They said they caught prey and some nosy woman on top of it.”
The man to the bosses’ right spoke up.
“They are late, aren’t they?” the man in the expensive suit pondered.
“Maybe because of that nuisance behind the door!” He suddenly shouted and grabbed a gun off the table to fire three rounds through the plywood door.
They penetrated but were stopped by a magic circle that Minerva had summoned just in time. A shiver went down her spine as she saw the bullets float almost right in front of her face. She retaliated by shooting a bolt of lightning through the door that caught one of the henchmen as the rest grabbed their guns and opened fire while seeking cover.
“How the hell did she get here? Who spilled the info?!”
Minerva’s shield stopped the bullets without issue, but she realized that she was on borrowed time now. With the gunshots it was only a matter of time until the rest of the gang would be on her, and she had no idea how many there were.
She heard the crash of a door being kicked open to her left side and readied her staff to shoot another bolt of lightning in that direction while she took a step back to get herself out of the firing line of the men in the office.
She barely stopped herself from shooting off a bolt of lightning as she realized what the man who had entered the corridor was doing.
He was holding a gun to the head of a girl – the very girl who went missing in Kabukichō, the spitting image of one of the missing person posters.
“No funny moves!” The man holding the girl shouted.
The girl was crying and her make-up as well as her clothes were a mess from abuse that happened way before this moment. She looked at Minerva pleadingly, desperate for her life.
“Okay! I won’t be doing anything funny.”
Minerva lowered her staff to her side. She was lying, of course. He would definitely pull the trigger if he saw her moving, so she instead stood still and looked him in the eyes as she subtly worked magic. Earth magic sealed the cane sword’s sheath shut just before fire and water magic enveloped the blade in that sealed space even without air, creating ever-increasing pressure with hot steam.
If she aimed well, she could hit the man in the head with her sword’s hilt before he even realized what’s going on, but there wouldn’t be any guarantee that he would survive the impact.
More and more doors opened, and men brandishing knives and brass knuckles walked ever closer to her. They were definitely going to try and beat her to death while preventing her from defending herself with their hostage.
Minerva took a long breath and steeled herself for what might be the first time she’d kill a human. Just as she was about to release her little secret weapon, she saw a thin trail of silver in the air.
In the blink of an eye that trail made its way through the hostage taker. Everyone around Minerva froze in confusion, not least the man who had just witnessed a silver shine going right through his body. Suddenly his hand holding the gun simply fell off and landed on the ground with a soft thud. His eyes widened but he couldn’t let out a scream – instead he wordlessly collapsed on the ground, a pool of blood forming under him.
With his body out of the way Minerva could see what made the other men freeze. There was a woman, clad in a blue armor and greaves. She wore pauldrons fastening a red cape to her back and wielded a halberd, which had a large blade forming almost half a circle. Magical symbols were etched into the steel, surely giving it some passive magical properties. What Minerva assumed to be her transformation crystal was embedded in one of her silver gauntlets. The woman cast a single glance from her golden eyes towards Minerva as her glowing blue and purple hair swayed in a nonexistent breeze.
“Get the girls and get out. I’ll do the bloody work.”
Minerva barely heard her words; her mind was occupied with only one thing in this moment:
She is just like me.
“She is just like us.”
The voice of the crystal expressed its agreement, and a single moment passed before the woman in blue started to move.
Her work was indeed bloody.
She was moving incredibly fast. In one moment, she knocked one man to the side with the butt of her polearm, then swung it to bisect another before turning the weapon around to finish the job on the first with a thrust through his chest. Shots fired at her were deflected by magic circles similar to Minerva’s, summoned as the blue crystal on her pauldron glowed with magical energy.
More than that, whenever the men tried to get her with their numerical advantage, she jumped out from between them and bunched them all up on one side before she went to work with thrusts and slashes against the now constrained criminals.
If these men weren’t utter monsters, Minerva would even pity them for how unfair this whole situation was.
“I wasn’t informed of a second magic bitch! Get her! Get he- “
The cutoff marked the end of this operation’s ringleader. Minerva dashed to the terrified girl who had just been held hostage and lifted her on her arms – then she simply flew towards the entrance of the warehouse.
As she arrived outside, she was greeted by the three men she had knocked out having breathed their last, their bodies showing the same wounds as those of the men who were just battling the unknown Magical Girl.
“She judged them completely irredeemable and enacted justice.”
You seem to be impressed.
“I am. You show mercy to those who don’t deserve it. She doesn’t subscribe to such lofty ideals.”
I am not ready to be judge, jury and executioner for humans.
“Suit yourself.”
Minerva went back inside, following a bloody trail of dead criminals. Soon she noticed a plywood door marked with ‘cell’ and opened it. Girls were huddled in an improvised cage. Dirty, tired, in torn clothes. She recognized every one of them from the missing posters.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you all out of here.” Minerva got to work, destroying the cage’s lock with her magically infused blade. Before long, she was leading them out of the warehouse, having them walk with their eyes closed to not traumatize them further. Behind them she could still hear angry shouts and sometimes gunshots, but they grew sparse and soon the hall was entirely silent.
When she finally reached the outside she took the sobbing girls to a safe distance from the warehouse, waiting for the police to arrive. She hoped that the woman she saved from the van had actually followed through.
When she heard a siren approach, she knew it was time for her to leave.
I never want to experience anything like this ever again.
As she flew away and towards her home she caught a glimpse of a blue light in the distance. There, on a rooftop, was the unknown Magical Girl, looking up at her. Minerva lowered herself to the roof and landed in front of her.
“Are the girls all safe?” was the first question from the stranger.
“Naturally. Erm… may I ask who you are? Why are you like me? I thought I was the only Magical Girl who looked like this.”
“All in due time.” With that the other Magical Girl simply took off flying and left Minerva in the dust.
“Ooh, so mysterious.” Minerva’s voice was dripping with sarcasm as her eyes followed the stranger.
“Something about her seems familiar.”
“Do you recognize her?” Now alone, Minerva didn’t bother to keep her dialogue with her crystal to her thoughts.
“No. She must have been born after me. None of my parents’ memories show anyone who looks like her.”
“Your people’s biology continues to be an enigma. Not like you let me know much in the first place, like what their names are.”
“I only divulge information on a by need basis.”
Her thoughts were soon dragged back to reality as she checked the time – finding out that it was four in the morning, and she still had work on Friday.
“Tomorrow will be the worst…”