I thought I'd need at least a couple of days before getting an interview, but since Inadequacy vouched for me, it only took a few hours for me to get an appointment to the city hall.
The city hall was...not that impressive, actually. It certainly looks better than the rest of the slums, but I'm sure someone with a middle class income could afford to buy something like this. It was a 3-story building that was maybe a little larger than the average house. The orphanage is much bigger by comparison, but I guess no one is expected to live there, so they don't need as much space.
I can actually see Inadequacy's runes painted all over the building, so maybe it also doubles as a bunker, I wonder how many buildings in the city are protected like this.
When I enter, I'm surprised to see how crowded it really is. Administrative workers carrying stacks of papers here and there, listening to complaints and generally being very busy. Maybe today is a bad day?
I take a paper out of my pocket, it contains direction to the office I'm supposed to go to. Inadequacy wrote them from me, but--and I mean this in the nicest way possible--her handwriting is absolutely awful, my auto-translator has always struggled a little with writing, so you can guess how much bad calligraphy messes with it.
Eventually I give up and ask someone else to guide me to the office in charge of magical girls, and I find it without too much trouble. Next time I'll just use my note menu instead of relying on Inadequacy, should I call her Amaris? I've always used Inadequacy when referring to her magical girl persona, although she doesn't act that different when she's wearing her costume so... ugh, nicknames are so much easier, I'll just keep calling her Inadequacy.
I open the door to the magical girl office, and I find two employees talking to each other. One is a woman wearing sunglasses who is sifting through papers in a folder, while the man is at a desk, reading some documents, his unkempt hair and eye bags give the impression he hasn't slept in at least a few years.
After I open the door, the man looks up from his document and asks, "Have you heard of knocking? You can't just- never mind. Why are you here?" His voice is tired and raspy, clearly more than a little annoyed at my presence. The woman doesn't really pay any attention to me, she's humming a tune as she shoves the papers she was holding into a filing cabinet.
"I'm here to register myself as a magical girl!" I proclaim.
"Are you the person Inadequacy brought in?" The woman asks, she doesn't turn to face me, still focused on her work. "Gonna eat big tonight if you're really a magical girl."
"Right, I'm not too aware of what I'm supposed to sign or anything, so I was thinking maybe you could help me with that?" I ask.
"Help?" The man scoffs. "We're basically going to take care of everything, 'helping you' would imply you're doing ANYTHING!"
"Don't mind him," the woman says, "he's just a little grumpy because we've had a lot of work recently. We're happy to have you." The woman grabs the handle of another cabinet and pulls on it to reveal hundreds of folders inside, she somehow picks the right one on her first try, and throws it at the man who catches it without even looking.
"Showoff." The man rolls his eyes.
"There's only so many ways you can make bureaucracy look cool, and nothing is stopping me from trying every single one of them," she brags
The man spreads the paper inside the folder on top of the table, clicking a pen in his hand impatiently. "Well? Aren't you going to sit down?" he asks, pointing to a chair at the opposite end of his desk.
I sit down without a fuss, they have enough on their plate without me making a scene. I look at the first document he pushes towards me, it's...a lot of words, but at least it's printed, so my translator has no issues with it. I'm not sure if I have the patience to read all of it though.
"Can I get the short version?" I ask.
"If the forces of chaos show up again, you promise to defend the country from them," he explains.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"This one is basically just fluff, chaos hasn't shown up in a century, so I wouldn't worry too much about it," she adds.
"Forces of chaos? That's a dumb sounding name," I say.
"I like it actually, it made it pretty clear they were humanity's enemies. I wish things were as black and white as they were back then." The woman nods to herself. Her sunglasses almost fall off, but she puts them back into place with one finger.
I sign the paper without much thought and move on to the next one, it has even more words than the last one.
"What about this one?" I tap the paper.
"Once per month, the magical girl division can call you to do a particular task, and you will have to answer no matter what. You'll be paid depending on your popularity and the difficulty of said task," the man explains, "we'll talk about popularity later. This page is just about the contract work. You can be asked to do more than one task a month, but it's optional."
"Once a month sounds like a lot..." I say.
"Ho, cry me a river. You have to work ONCE a month." The man massage his temples. "Spoiled brats..."
"C'mon, they still have to risk their lives, so it's normal they don't work as often as we do," the woman says.
"I've seen a magical girl shrug off an anti-material rifle, they will be fine. I'm pretty sure I risk my life more than any of them considering how much caffeine I need in my bloodstream to make it through the day," the man complains, clicking his pen even faster than before.
I ignore their squabble and sign the paper, I can probably get out before they ask me to do something, right? Wait, won't Inadequacy be blamed if I leave my post before I do my job? Mhh... maybe I'll stick around for a year and then disappear, sounds good.
"Alright, the big one." The man sighs, "This concerns your magical girl identity. Do you have an agent?"
"Nope." I answer bluntly. Inadequacy says she didn't want an agent at first, but there's so much to keep track off that it's really hard to live without one.
"Then you'll need to find one as soon as possible," the man says.
"We'll take care of that stuff for the first month or so, but it's not as efficient as having a dedicated agent," the woman adds.
The man buries his face in his hands, "Of course you had to tell her that. Yes, we'll take care of that stuff for the first month, but we're not paid extra for it, so it'd be better if you took an actual agent before we die from the workload."
"We also need your emotion and the powers related to it, if you haven't discovered the true extent of your powers that's fine, just give us a general description." The woman says before sitting down next to the man. He groans, but he doesn't push her away.
"It's...cowardice?" I answer uncertainly. Apparently there can only be one emotion girl at a time, but Inadequacy told me the previous cowardice deserted her post and no one ever saw her again. So as far as anyone knows, she's dead, and I'm the replacement.
"Cowardice, huh..." He turns to the woman and asks, "Hey, what was the previous Cowardice like?"
"From what I've heard she worked pretty hard for a while, but then two years later she just disappeared, no one knows what happened." The woman shrugs. "Her powers were pretty bad honestly, she only got stronger when she was running away, so she literally had to be dropped in the middle of a battlefield with no way out to be useful. Ironically, I heard she was pretty courageous, but it didn't really sync up with her power too well."
"Right, her powers were used to carve paths in enemy lines and slow down stuff, or so I've heard."
"We don't have a lot of records as to what she was truly capable of, but that's the gist of it." The woman says, "I'm guessing she's capable of something similar. Leave, is that right?"
"Yes, I don't have an ID because...err..." I really didn't think this through. I told Inadequacy I had everything under control, but the truth is I just wanted to get this over with as fast as possible. Seriously, when do I get to blow stuff up?
"Don't need one, most people in this city are orphans or migrants, so we don't really expect anyone to have all the documents," she states.
"Magical girls are pretty high up as far as jobs go, so you will need to get an ID eventually," he adds.
"Right, I can slow things down and...other stuff, say what's the rule on collateral damage?" I ask.
I hear a THUD as the man slams his head against the desk, the woman pats him on the shoulder sympathetically.
"What my friend is trying to say is...while collateral damage is expected, it is not encouraged. Perseverance is not a good role model, and every time a building is destroyed, another document is added to the pile," she says, pointing at a few filing cabinets behind her. "So please, have mercy on us and avoid destroying stuff if you can help it, or do it outside this city, because at least it won't be our problem."
"Right, got it, signed." I nod. I'm obviously lying, but since Hotel will be rebuilding everything after we destroy stuff, it's fine right? Then again, they probably still have to deal with the paperwork anyway, I do feel a little bit bad for them, but it is what it is.
The rest of the documents I have to sign are just terms of service I don't bother reading, and once I'm done the two of them tell me to leave. Apparently they will need to pull a few all-nighters, but everything should be ready in three days. I'm surprised they never asked me to prove I was a magical girl, but Inadequacy is a trusted enough member of the community that they are taking her word on it. I'm sure they will ask me to show what I'm capable of sooner or later.
And now that the boring part is over, it's magical girl time!