Minerva flew through the night sky to calm her racing thoughts. Why did she constantly fold in the face of Miori’s earnest feelings? At this point it was only a matter of time before hers or Miori’s memories were eaten by Lethe.

The past nine years she had tried to come up with a way to face that memory-eating abomination when it showed its face again, but so far, she was drawing a blank on how to exactly counter Lethe’s control over her own pocket dimension.

Minerva herself only had the ability to slip in and out of these at will, as she utilized frequently against Shadows, but when Lethe appeared it was usually to trap two people at once. One victim and one who serves as nourishment for the fruit.

Her shifting out of Lethe’s domain on her own would do nothing for anyone else trapped inside. At best this would result in a stalemate and another attack at a later point, at worst it would cost the life of whoever remained trapped with her.

She ruffled her hair in frustration as her magic crystal spoke up.

“Shadow nearby. It’s… engaged in combat?”

The warning brought her head back into reality as she accelerated into the direction her crystal pointed at.

It was a welcome distraction – or rather, it pointed her back to where her mind should be at the moment. There was still a Shadow Queen out there and her attempt to find it by pursuing missing person posters didn’t work out as she had hoped.

She chased the trail along busy main streets, flying between office buildings that still had the lights on and through neon billboard illuminated alleys.

The chime from her chest grew stronger and became a continuous sound as she arrived at her target location. She could feel the otherworldly presence scratching at the thin barrier between worlds.

“Reality shift!”

Minerva spoke the incantation of her ability and the colors around her faded until they became muted. She had successfully entered a Shadow’s domain – all she had to do was track it down.

Just in that moment she had to dodge by bending her body backwards as a magical beam shot her way – it obliterated the façade of the nearest office building, making rubble fall down into the empty streets.

Good thing the damage in these pocket dimensions isn’t reflected in the real world.

She followed the faint glow of the fading beam and looked for its point of origin – and she found it in two girls in Magical Girl getup battling a Shadow. This Shadow had taken the form of a young, nimble girl, dancing around the two as they tried to land hits on her, with magically enhanced punches from one side and magical beams from the other.

“Keep still, you…!”

One of them cursed, as the Shadow let out a childish giggle. Its face had vaguely human features in grotesque exaggeration. Two large, oval shapes in white sat where a human would have their eyes while a zig-zagged white line formed a mouth. In this moment it was opened in a mocking smile.

The girls were dressed in yellow and blue frilled dresses that were typically ‘Magical Girl’. On their heads they wore an odd headset and futuristic visor combo that had decorative bear ears. The blue girl’s weapons of choice were gloves that looked like bear paws and evidently gave her increased punching strength, as every building that the Shadow stood in front of got obliterated by the blue girl’s swings whenever she dodged to the side at the last moment.

The yellow girl had a wand, if it could be called that. It was a long, metal rod with a magazine stuck to it that fed magic bullets into the hollow shaft which ended in a muzzle that was adorned by a bear head with an open maw from which all magical beams were shot.

Minerva recognized them as the advanced forms of the Kuma Group that Kuma came up with to justify their sudden power boost.

However, their leader in pink and Kuma were nowhere to be seen, which was slightly concerning. For now, Minerva decided to intervene.

As she approached the three fighting figures the Shadow suddenly withdrew, jumping far away from the girls.

In that moment they turned around and looked at Minerva – all three of them stopped as the girls of the Kuma Group scanned Minerva’s appearance.

“Glowing red hair like a demon…”

“A cane sword…”

The girls spoke their observations one after the other, then something seemed to click in their heads. Minerva spoke up anyway.

“Yes, yes. I am Kuma’s…”

“Enemy!” The girls shouted in unison.

Huh?!

“So the evil organization is finally showing its face, huh?” the blue girl pointed a bear paw at Minerva.

“Coming all alone, though… how arrogant!” The yellow one added.

“Even if we’re not at full strength, we won’t bow down to evil!”

Another synchronous declaration as the two assumed combat stances.

Kuma has a lot of explaining to do when I see him.

The Shadow remained in the distance with a mocking smile like it fully understood what was happening.

***

“Okay, if you would just listen to me, we can- “

Minerva was cut off immediately as the girl in blue came rushing for her, bear paw extended for a punch.

She expected something like this already so she dodged to the side and grabbed the blue Magical Girl by the leg – using the girl’s momentum she spun around her own axis and threw her back where she came from.

Unluckily for her, her yellow wearing friend had lined up a shot on the ‘Evil Magical Girl’ that she just now released, with the girl in blue being an unfortunate human shield. An explosion swallowed the girl in blue, quickly named ‘Sarina’ by the horrified shout of the girl in yellow.

“Watch out for yourself, rather than her.” Minerva said as she flew behind her at breakneck speed and prepared to whack her with the still sheathed cane sword.

The girl parried with her staff – actually with impressive precision for a Magical Girl of her age. Minerva kept the pressure up and had her slowly floating backwards in the air as strike met parry over and over again.

She even made a hop some distance away and struck with her staff in Minerva’s direction, making full use of her range advantage to force Minerva on the defensive.

“Impressive. Doing martial arts in your mundane life?”

Minerva dodged another strike that was aimed to hit her temple.

“Naginata, by any chance?”

There was no answer but a little prideful twinkle in the girl’s eyes as their fight continued. Minerva saw a hint of movement from the corner of her eye and dodged another punch that came in at almost the speed of sound.

Sarina had regained her composure after the point-blank hit from her friend’s magical blast and joined the melee.

It was time for Minerva to get serious, then.

***

Three lights, yellow, blue and red were flying at breakneck speed through the canyons formed by the buildings of the city. The crimson trail dodged a massive magical beam that cut multiple buildings in half and caused them to collapse. As they were in a dimensional pocket created by the Shadow that kept trailing them out of perverse amusement, none of them held back with their attacks.

The blue comet sometimes abruptly changed direction and crashed into a building on account of the crimson light dodging, penetrating deep enough to come out the other side. Minerva kept dodging for now, trying to tire out the two girls.

“I’ll keep her busy, Rei! You line up a shot!” The girl in blue yelled as she rushed for Minerva once again, acting fully oblivious to the fact that she could hear them. Minerva didn’t dodge this time- she used her cane to summon a shield spell, making Sarina crash right into it. She didn’t crack through it and got stuck like her predecessor but withdrew just enough power to bounce off it – then she unleashed a flurry of blows to slowly crack Minerva’s defenses.

While that was happening ‘Rei’ came up behind her. Minerva could hear the bolt mechanism in the girl’s magical staff as it loaded another cartridge.

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Kudos to you, Kuma. These aren’t the helpless lambs I left you with.

As Rei’s magical beam was unleashed, she had to divert magic power to deflect it into a nearby building. Distracted like that, she couldn’t reinforce her other barrier and heard the sound of shattering glass as Sarina broke through. Her punch connected to Minerva’s cheekbone and sent her flying into a nearby building – her impact made the outer wall collapse before she came to a halt in one of the rooms.

She coughed and gathered her senses as she got up and looked around. She was in a single bedroom apartment like her own and had just crushed a whole shelf full of Gunpla models.

I’m REALLY glad that this damage isn’t reflected in the real world.

Her heart bled for the poor otaku whose collection would have been destroyed otherwise.

The wall next to her exploded and she caught another punch from Sarina, this time blocked by her crossed arms. It still hurt like hell with all the force behind it.

“I’m going to hit back now.” Minerva announced.

“Huh?!” Sarina was taken aback by the declaration, giving Minerva just enough time to whack her cane across the girl’s face. Before she could even give an offended reaction to what the older Magical Girl had just done, she faced a magic circle spinning on top of the cane’s jewel – then she was being shot outside of the building, riding the tip of a magical beam.

Minerva followed her, intending to knock Sarina out with her next hit, but she caught a glimpse of a bright light in the corner of her eye and immediately dodged the magic beam that was shooting her way. Rei was standing on top of a nearby building and kept taking potshots at her, allowing Sarina to recover.

Minerva gritted her teeth and got into another melee with the blue-clad Magical Girl who relentlessly tried to punch her with those bear paw shaped gloves. She inched closer to the beam-shooting Rei – with her eyes being on Sarina she needed to watch her reactions. The wordless communication between these two Magical Girls was immaculate, but also very easy to read for someone who knew what to look for. When Sarina dodged to the right Minerva immediately knew to follow her to avoid the magic beam that was being shot at her from behind. Finally, they got too close for Rei to use her magic beams, causing her to try and use her staff as a melee weapon once again.

It was here that Minerva dodged another one of the brutish Magical Girl’s punches, grabbed her by the wrist and turned her straight into the path of the approaching polearm. Thunk! The metal made noisy contact with the brutish Magical Girl’s forehead, dazing her just long enough for Minerva to blast a magical beam of her own into her back, causing her to crash right into Rin, creating a small crater in the roof.

The poor girls groaned as they were stacked on top of each other, with Rei looking like she was out cold. Sarina got up, wobbly on her feet, and raised her fists. She was definitely the bulwark of the team, but the fight was over.

Minerva pointed her cane at her and a magical circle spun in the air, accelerating.

Sarina could only look on, too weak to lunge at the woman to stop her attack. She closed her eyes as if to accept her fate. Then Minerva shot.

A few quiet seconds passed, and Sarina opened her eyes again. She was completely unharmed – causing her to turn towards Rei in a panic, only to find her unharmed as well.

In front of Rei was the Shadow; with its maw enlarged it had tried to attack and swallow Rei while she was weakened. Sarina could see the city lights behind the monster through the hole that had been blasted into the back of its mouth – and could witness how vibrant color returned to the world as the creature collapsed and died. Buildings around them simply reappeared and damage to the roof and streets vanished as the pocket dimension collapsed and brought them back to reality. The sounds of busy streets filled the air on the rooftop.

She turned around to face Minerva; confusion clear on her face.

“Huh?”

image [https://i.imgur.com/CdWLhkc.png]

“Here’s some green tea for Rei, and Sarina, what do you want?”

Seika stood in front of a vending machine in a residential area. All three of them had returned to their normal forms after deciding to talk it out.

“A sports drink, please.”

“You got it!”

Seika punched the order into the machine, deciding on a can of ‘Energy Magic’ for herself. The green tea was passed to Rei, a serious looking girl with a high ponytail who wore a keikogi and hakama. Just as Seika had suspected when the girl used her laser beam shooting staff like a polearm, she was the heir to some dojo in the city. With it being the weekend, she wore her training uniform, rather than the uniform of whichever school she went to.

She handed the sports drink to Sarina, who wore her school uniform even on a weekend night. She was the biggest surprise here. As a Magical Girl she was a brute using large bear claw gloves, but as a mundane girl she looked like an absolute sweetheart. She wore her hair in a short bob that nicely accentuated her round glasses. Her eyes sparkled with gratitude as Seika handed her the drink. Now that hostilities had ceased it appeared like she was fangirling over the older Magical Girl.

Speaking of her hair, it was an unusual color: a bright cyan, matching her Magical Girl form. Both of these girls were born after the Kawaguchi Incident, which not only allowed creatures from beyond access to Earth’s dimension, but also caused harmless mutations in some children. Oddly colored hair or eyes were the usual symptoms. And in every single case, these indicated a latent talent for magic.

All three opened their drinks and took a few sips.

“Are you two alright, though? I did hit you quite hard at the end, there.”

The two girls were covered in light bruises. It appeared like Kuma had actually taken pointers from how Seika’s own transformation worked.

“I am alright.” replied Rei.

“You don’t have to worry about us, Miss! One night of sleep and we’ll be over it.”

“If you say so.”

Seika gulped down a large amount of the energizing liquid before she started her inquiries.

“So, where is Kuma? And why is there only two of you?”

The two exchanged a worried look before they replied to Seika.

“He is….”

“He was killed by a Shadow.”

“Huh, really? The grey guy?”

The two younger girls exchanged looks again, visibly confused.

“If you don’t know what I’m talking about then no, he’s not dead. He’s probably busy making another plushie like his old one.”

The two girls appeared relieved, Rei even wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“I always thought that was his actual body.”

“Yeah, he likes to make you think that. It’s nothing personal, he’s just a very self-conscious guy when it comes to his appearance.” Seika grinned into her can as she took another sip.

“Now, I don’t know why he told you I’m your enemy. I’m assuming it’s another one of his clumsy attempts to keep his girls away from me – or he might have had the funny idea to use me as an unwilling sparring partner to give you girls a real challenge. I’m going to rake him over the coals for that one, later.”

She let out an exasperated sigh and took yet another sip.

“What generation are you anyway? I’ve met the Kuma Group before, but I think those were the first girls who had that name.”

Rei spoke up.

“Fourth generation. We just started last year.”

Seika nodded. That lined up with what she had seen. The Kuma Group usually started with girls at the end of middle school who kept their powers until they graduated high school.

“And where’s your leader? I assume the pink one is still the one in charge.”

“Oh, Haruna… she…” Sarina hesitated before she steeled herself into telling what happened.

“She was swallowed whole by a Shadow. Then that thing’s form changed, and we had to withdraw.”

Seika’s eyes went wide. This was the info she had been looking for this entire time. She grabbed Sarina’s shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes.

“She’s alive! Just tell me everything and I can make it right.”

image [https://i.imgur.com/CdWLhkc.png]

Sarina told her story to Seika. It was Monday, and they had just finished school as Kuma contacted them about imminent danger.

Naturally they responded and assembled to transform and follow the scent that their mascot had picked up.

“The problem was, Haruna’s energy was very low that day.”, Rei continued.

“She had been doing bad with her tests, her parents had a big fight and she got rejected by the boy she confessed to.”

“So her magic energy wasn’t recharging at all.” Sarina continued.

Seika remembered. Kuma had assured her that only positive emotions were being converted into magic energy and an attempt to convert negative feelings would instead result in those energies being drained.

What seemed like a safeguard against abuse from the girls’ benefactor turned out to be a critical weakness when the girls had an extended period of unhappiness.

“We went south. Kuma led us to a park in Ota where he sensed a malicious presence.”

Rather proactive. I guess after a dozen years of faking the Magical Girl thing for food he might have developed an actual sense of responsibility.

“Or he found a way to eat defeated magical creatures.” Her crystal’s observations weren’t very charitable towards the big grey man.

She gestured for Sarina to continue.

“One of those things was mimicking a bench. We could immediately tell because it looked slightly out of place. But not enough that a clueless tired person wouldn’t fall for it, so Kuma told us all to touch it at the same time and we did.”

Rei continued from here.

“We got pulled into the Shadow’s domain, as planned. It was quick, just like the one you killed. It had the form of…”

She seemed to be considering her words for a while before shaking her head.

“…a wolf. Or bear. But one that could run along walls. Also, it grew human arms.”

“Yeah, I’ve fought them for sixteen years now, they never make any sense.”

Seika said with a bitter grin. “Please continue.”

“First things went well. We surrounded it and used our strengths to our advantage. It was weakened enough to attempt a killing blow, but that was the moment Haruna ran out of energy.”

Sarina picked up after Rei.

“She just lost her transformation in the middle of an attack. As if the Shadow had just waited for that moment, it dashed forward, opened its maw and… she was gone. Then it grew and grew… it was like it could just ignore our attacks. Kuma told us to run away and opened a hole to the real world. And just as we left the Shadow gored him… there was cotton everywhere.”

You saw that he was a stuffed doll and still thought he was really dead? Then again, I guess you too have seen weirder things than that happen, so fair enough.

“Where did you return to reality?”

Seika stepped a bit closer. She almost had the missing piece. Shadow Queens don’t move much from their locations after they first transform. They prefer to spawn more Shadows from where they have been born, relying on their drones to come back and share their meals.

Sarina blinked at the older woman’s sudden intensity, then she grabbed her phone and opened her map where she had dutifully recorded the last known location of their lost comrade.

All the way in Ukishimacho? They must have been fighting airborne for a while to go there from Ota.

Seika felt a wave of relief washing over her. She had almost given up as her search for the missing girls had not yielded any results regarding the Shadow Queen. And now she found the golden ticket to the creature itself.

“It’s impressive that you two were still fighting Shadows after all that.” Seika said.

“It’s because we have a duty to uphold.” Said Rei.

“The duty to protect people from these monsters, no matter what.”

Look at that. Kuma’s fake Magical Girls have become more real than most of the real ones.

After finishing her drink, Seika tossed the can into the garbage bin next to the vending machine and transformed. The two girls followed suit.

“We’ll help you!” they said in unison.

“If I think it’s too dangerous you two will withdraw. Is that clear?”

Minerva said it with the cadence of a strict teacher.

“Yes ma’am!” They replied with some hesitation.

“Good, then let’s go. All the way to Kawasaki.”

As she started to fly Sarina came up right next to her.

“Hey. Tell us how you became a Magical Girl!”

Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. Minerva could only react a little flustered from having a new fan right in her face.

“Alright. It’s a bit long though. And the start is not a happy one.”

“I don’t mind. We have a little bit of time.”

That we do.

Minerva let out a long sigh and closed her eyes. And then she told them the story of how she came to be.