Post-Graduation

Three girls were teleported to a park somewhere in Japan. Now, this would’ve been a very non-painful experience if it was done properly, but the creatures who teleported the girls didn’t have a concept of height. So, they found themselves 20 feet above the ground, ready to start their newest adventure. This wasn’t ideal, but they should’ve been glad that they weren’t 20 feet below the ground instead.

However, these ungrateful little brats screamed as they fell to the ground.

Kasumi was the first one to get out of the sandbox. She woke up with a start and immediately jumped into action. The girl jumped out of the sandbox and onto the firm ground, constantly scanning her surroundings for any kind of danger. Breathing lightly and quickly, she set her eyes on Risa, who also landed in the sandbox, but she was building a sand castle.

Well, calling it a sand castle wouldn’t do it justice. It was more like a sand fortress. It surrounded Risa, and its towers watched over the surroundings. It looked like an evil villain’s lair, and Risa was the dark queen of this evil kingdom, which resided in the dark universe, which was separate from our own universe.

“Oh, you are awake, Kasumi,” said Risa, smiling as she smoothed the inside of her fortress by patting it, “How’s life treating you?”

“I feel like sand replaced my brain,” said Kasumi, bumping the side of her head, “Where are we anyway?”

“Since the sign at the park’s entrance is in Japanese, I would assume that we are in a park in Japanese. Personally, I’m in a sandbox.”

“I’m aware.”

“Really? I thought that your name was Kasumi.”

Kasumi destroyed Queen Risa’s evil fortress with the power of friendship and her foot.

“Hey! I worked hard on that,” Risa said, slumping down to the rubble.

“Hay is for horses.”

Risa and Kasumi quietly looked at each other as if there was supposed to be a laugh track. Reader, why don’t you laugh?

“Anyway,” Kasumi said, putting her hand on her hips and looking away from Risa, “Where’s Yuri?”

“Tree,” said Yuri.

Yuri was hanging from a tree like a toy lion on a baby mobile, slowly rotating but unable to do anything about it.

“Are you okay, Yuri?” Kasumi asked after running to the tree.

“Yes.”

“Can you get down from there?”

“No.”

“I’m going to get you down from there. Risa, help me with this.”

“I got a ladder!” Risa said, holding up a ladder completely made of sand.

Kasumi was hit with a dilemma. Risa had this weird ability to do things that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t a magical ability. Kasumi knew magic. This was beyond magic. However, its weakness was that if anyone questioned it, it immediately collapsed. As such, Kasumi couldn’t question how a sand ladder will stay together or carry the weight of a human, but knowing that she couldn’t question it made it harder to not question. It was like telling someone to not think about the peepee poopoo man.

However, thinking about the peepee poopoo man helped Kasumi not think about the sand ladder.

Risa set the ladder near where Yuri was. Kasumi climbed the ladder. Unfortunately, Yuri was a little too far from her reach, and when Kasumi tried to grab Yuri, she knocked Yuri loose from the tree’s claws, and Yuri became an object in free-fall. Kasumi tried to catch Yuri, but in doing so, she lost balance, and they fell on Risa.

“Ow,” said Yuri.

“Ow, indeed,” said Kasumi, laying on the top of the pile, “What do we do now?”

“What do we do, indeed?” Risa said, “It feels bittersweet. After all of that, we are back into a normal world.”

“That’s the end of the hero’s journey, Return to Normalcy,” Kasumi said, getting off the pile.

“No, it’s Return with the Elixir.”

“What the hell is Elixir?”

“It’s like knowledge or some object or MacGuffin.”

“What did I learn? I didn’t get anything special!”

“We did get this.” Risa pulled out a WcDonald’s gift card.

“That doesn’t count as ‘Elixir’!”

Kasumi sighed and shook herself.

“Anyway, we need to figure out how to survive here,” Kasumi said, “Yuri, gather some wood for a fire.”

“Yuri isn’t here,” Risa said.

“Where did she go?”

“Crate,” Yuri said from far away. She was at the far end of the park.

Kasumi and Risa heard this and ran to Yuri.

The wooden crate has about half of the girls’ height. It had a lemon decal on it. A letter was also taped on it. Kasumi grabbed and opened the letter.

“To the Lemon Quartet, the girls that killed everything,” she read out loud.

“It must be our farewell gift from the Helpers,” Risa said, “I wonder what’s inside.”

“How do we even open this?” Kasumi said.

As the girls try to open this wooden crate without the use of proper tools, it might be a good time to explain what the hell is even going on here. How did the girls get here? Who are the Helpers? What is the deal with airplane food?

I’ll answer two of those questions.

Kasumi, Risa, and Yuri were magical girls. Emphasis on the “were”. They graduated about 20 minutes ago. What does “graduation” mean? Well, it’s a euphemism. It refers to the event where every magical girl loses her powers and abandons her magical life. It’s a nicer way of saying “retirement” or “death”. It usually means “retirement” though.

However, magical girl graduations are usually very flashy. It starts with a great festival where magical girls from around the world play games, eat snacks, and buy stuff. It looks like any other crowded festival except that it’s completely filled with middle school girls with colorful hair and poofy dresses, and the stands were tended by helpers, little creatures that hopped around with cute brown cloaks and helped the magical girls in their adventures as the name suggests.

Kasumi had dark blue hair, despite her true form having basic dark brown hair. The hair color was part of her magical girl form. She looked for her friends within the crowd. Yuri had light green hair, and Risa had pink hair. Both of those colors were too common to easily spot in a crowd like this. Unfortunately for Kasumi, she wouldn’t be able to find her friends because the real ceremony started.

That’s when all of the stands disappeared into thin air, and a massive array of chairs took the center of the hall. It was then like a game of musical chairs because the helpers started playing impatient music to signal everyone to get to their seats. Where are those seats? How do you pick the best seats? Magical girls don’t have time to figure that out. Kasumi found a seat quickly and waited for the ceremony to begin. She didn't have any of her friends nearby. So, she waited for the music to end and watched all of the laggards get dragged by the helpers to the nearest empty chair.

The headmaster (who was secretly a bunch of helpers in a bigger robe) walked to the pedestal as well as a bunch of creatures stacked on top of each other could and cleared its throat.

“Thank you all for coming and making time for this important event. Us Helpers loved to assist you for these 3 years…”

The headmaster continued its speech for a long time and sobbed along as it spoke. And when I mean sobbing, I mean that the water poured out the cloak. Nearing the end of the speech, the stage was nearly flooded.

“Again, thank you for your service, and we wish you a great future.”

The water disappeared, and the headmaster cleared its throat once again.

“Now, for the awards, the magical girl group with the most demon kills is… The Lemon Quartet!”

Kasumi suddenly found her friends as they were all teleported to the stage against their will.

“Thank you for your service! You have killed - six hundred and forty-two - demons during your tenure. Congratulations and each of you is receiving a 1,000,000 yen gift card to WcDonald’s.”

Once the helpers handed the gift cards to the three girls, the girls disappeared from the stage and reappeared at their seats.

The headmaster listed off a lot of other awards, as most buildings destroyed, most transformations, most epic kill, most mentions of the word “friendship”, and of course, most cliche backstory. The prizes ranged from a yo-yo that glows in the dark to a fake gun to a real gun to the reader’s manga collection to a small invisible car.

After making all of the magical girls in the room feel special, the headmaster said, “okay, that’s it,” and all of the magical girls suddenly disappeared with their stuff.

So, that’s where the three girls fell out of the sky and where our story began.

It had been 20 minutes since we last checked on our protagonists, and the crate never looked any better. The girls were used to blowing up crates with their magical wands. So, no one knew how to open it.

“I have an idea,” Risa said, holding a crowbar made of sand.

“How’s that going to work?” Kasumi said, causing the crowbar to immediately fall apart.

“Dammit,” Kasumi said, “Yuri, do you have any ideas?”

Yuri turned away from the frog she was looking at and approached the crate. She stared at it for a good 10 seconds.

“Open sesame,” she said, extending her arm at it.

The top of the crate opened like a chest in a video game. A little melody played as it opened.

Risa and Kasumi looked at Yuri. She looked back.

“Technology,” she said flatly.

They looked at the open box. It was filled with clothes, cooking supplies, toiletries, and other necessities. There was also a piece of paper with directions to their house and the school they’ll be attending the next day. The crate wasn’t lacking in necessities for a trio of teenage girls.

“Well, that’s boring,” Kasumi remarked after she realized that she wouldn’t be using her surviving skills that day.

Everything’s boring if you look at it that way.