Chapter 4.7

Miyuki had followed Fang Fang long before she ascended. If Miyuki’s late nights were spent watching and reading about magical girls, then her mornings and afternoons were consumed watching the latest news about China’s prodigal daughter.

Fang Fang had been popular in Japan as a model and as a mage, training others in the ways of her unique glyphs and enchantments. The sword in her hand, The Silver Flash, was a masterwork that paved the way for her ascension.

She was also a cultural bridge. Her mother was from Yunnan. Her father hailed from the old capital. And yet, Arataki did not consider Fang Fang Japan’s first Egregore.

The reason was not difficult to guess.

“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Miyuki said. “If Miss Everest wrote my first life away, then you were the one who gave me my second. I’m only disappointed that you won’t let me through.”

“If you make your way past me,” Fang Fang replied, “then you’ll realize why you weren’t let through.”

A quiet encompassed the plains, the first real peace since the fighting began. Fang Fang and Miyuki regarded each other. In Fujiko’s eyes, she saw the past that should have been, teacher and student, their paths cleaved and disjointed by witchcraft.

Fang Fang struck first.

She gripped her sword and held it upright beside her cheek. True to her blade’s name, Fang Fang flashed out of sight. Miyuki twitched on impulse, twisting her neck as the blade pierced the air beside her. Fang Fang flattened her blade and slashed to the side.

Miyuki intercepted the edge with the back of her hand. It sliced through her glove and stopped just shy of the skin, shielded by a veneer of imaginarium. Miyuki parried and threw her weight behind her left arm at Fang Fang’s exposed flank.

But the witch swiveled on her heels and twirled in an arc. The blade dropped out of her right and landed into her thrusting left. There was no time. Miyuki bailed and snapped back on the defensive. The surging blade missed its mark, but a keen zephyr peeled skin from cheek.

The prodigal witch pressed her advantage. Miyuki skidded across the grass; her bare feet carved furrows in the earth. But where she fled, Fang Fang was already always there first, dancing just out of range, Miyuki’s visage reflected between amber eyes and the quick flashes of a blade.

Miyuki held a commendable defense, but Fujiko knew this could not go on.

The imaginarium that had burned unnaturally bright on Miyuki’s tunic and body dwindled. Every dodge, every sidestep consumed an inordinate amount just to keep pace with Fang Fang’s unrelenting assault.

And why, Fujiko wondered.

Why hadn’t she stepped in to help?

There were many reasons, to be sure, but perhaps the most pertinent remained their private conversation from earlier. Fujiko had chosen to say nothing, to not apologize, to not make amends, and, in that moment, she had relinquished whatever right she had to interfere with Miyuki’s choice.

“Incantation,” Fang Fang said. “One.”

An afterimage, tinted the color of fresh blood, tore itself from Fang Fang’s figure. Weightless, it dashed with Fang Fang’s own speed and thrust a clear scarlet blade at Miyuki’s throat.

“Two.”

A second apparition plunged from above as Miyuki caught the first sword a breath’s length from her neck.

“Three.”

The third flanked her from the right–

“Four.”

–while the fourth closed in from the left–

“Five.”

–and the fifth dove from the rear.

Caught on all sides, Miyuki tried to duck out of the way, but Fang Fang herself arrived behind the first afterimage and jammed a silver pommel into her gut. Miyuki was cast across the field, plowing a long trench in her wake before tumbling to a stop.

“Further fighting is pointless,” Fang Fang said. “Stand down, Miss Kobayashi.”

“No,” Miyuki struggled to rise. “It’s not over.”

“I’m afraid that it is. I’m sorry.”

Fang Fang cut the air with her sword and Miyuki cried out in pain. The wards, glyphs, and enchantments she had learned from Fang Fang herself to cast to hold her feet together shattered, and her ankles collapsed to the ground.

Fujiko looked away.

“Borrowed magic is all that it is, borrowed magic,” Fang Fang whispered.

Lisa Everest jumped down from the parapet where she had been launched into.

“What are you waiting for?” she snarled. “Kill her.”

“Why?” Lisa asked. “To satisfy your need for revenge? She’s an Egregore now, Lisa. Consider this outcome the consequences of your actions.”

“If you won’t do it, I’ll do it.”

Fang Fang’s sword cut to below Lisa’s chin.

“You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “When she recovers, we’ll do a proper induction ceremony and return to–”

Fang Fang paused. A whirling howl emanating from beneath the castle caught her attention. It grew louder, more amplified, until a dozen helicopters along with their gyrating rotors surged over the castle skyline.

Kanna Samukawa leaned out of the main cabin of the foremost craft, a megaphone in her hands. Her eyes surveyed the mess below: an unconscious Reiko and Arataki, several Egregore battered and wounded, Fujiko who stood still at the ascension site, and Miyuki doubled over on the grass, her nails clawing at the soil.

“Listen up,” Kanna bellowed. “Everyone stays where they are.”

Kanna’s helicopter touched down on the field while the rest of her escort circled the castle premises. Kanna exited the cabin, followed closely by Sachiko.

“Castle Gramarye is hosting all sorts of visitors today,” Fang Fang mused.

“We’ll be gone by the time we collect all your guests,” Kanna said, holding up a signed piece of paper. “I’ve been asked by the Japanese government to take Section Eight, Director Tanaka Arataki along with his co-conspirators into custody.”

“Am I considered a co-conspirator too?” Lisa laughed. “Am I being brought in?”

“No,” Kanna replied, curtly.

“They’re yours to take,” Fang Fang nodded at Miyuki, who lay flat on the ground heaving deep, rhythmic breaths, “except for her. The Egregore stays with us.”

Kanna shook her head.

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “This is a signed directive from the Prime Minister declaring a general State of Emergency over Sapporo. It gives the municipal government the authority to take military action if its citizens are at risk of harm. As for whether they are, I only have to look around me.”

“Miss Kobayashi stays,” Fang Fang repeated.

“Where is she?” Lisa asked.

Surprise crossed Fang Fang’s face for the first time. She had incapacitated Miyuki. She was sure of it. And yet, when her eyes darted to her spot across the field, Miyuki was not there.

A searing heat billowed out over the plains, and Fang Fang spotted Miyuki gasping at the bottom floor of the clock tower. She had run all the way there, with no wards or enchantment to bury the pain bursting out of her heels.

She was bleeding imaginarium. Everything that remained inside her tunic, whatever remained of the magic that had been forced into her body. It gushed out from her now like a broken dam, muting her pain and giving her the strength for one last sprint.

“Miyuki!” Fujiko cried. “No! Stop!”

Miyuki dropped herself on all fours. She roared a defiant yell and charged. The walls buckled, and an inferno, like the explosive release of rocket fuel, engulfed the base of the tower as Miyuki jettisoned upwards.

Fang Fang gave chase. The Silver Flash whistled through the air and scraped Miyuki’s shoulder. But Miyuki shrugged off the wound and kept going. She had a full sprint’s head start. She could make it.

“One. Three. Five.”

Fang Fang’s bloodstained apparitions circled Miyuki like wolves, sensing the wound on her shoulder, the pain staining her ankles, magic leaving her body.

All sense of self-preservation had left her. When the afterimages dived from above, Miyuki allowed herself a gash across the waist and a stab below the shoulder. She pressed onward, crashing through the apparitions, vaporizing them with the imaginarium fuming out of her chest.

The Eye of Castle Gramarye lay just ahead. Fujiko thought she saw the tower lean over ever so slightly, such that its face cast its gaze upon the girl barreling towards it one last time. Miyuki’s fist grazed the bottom hand of the clock.

“Incantation!”

Suddenly, her eyes widened. A pulse echoed from the Eye and knocked her off the castle wall. Her body ignited like brilliant magnesium. Miyuki arched back, and imaginarium fountained out of her body. Her arms and legs contorted against her will.

“Flash!”

Fang Fang streaked across the night. Her silver weapon wrung free of the tower wall and returned to her hand. Pale moonlight pierced the dawn, and Fang Fang drove her sword through Miyuki’s chest so cleanly that no blood stained the tip of her blade.

Silver siphoned the magic rupturing uncontrollably out of Miyuki’s body. Fang Fang cradled Miyuki in her arms even as she pressed the hilt of her blade firmly against the girl’s back. The two descended. By the time, Fang Fang’s feet touched the cobblestone beneath the clock tower, Miyuki’s arms and legs had fallen limp, and her breathing was racked with quiet, hoarse gasps.

No imaginarium remained.

Miyuki looked up at Fang Fang.

“I did it,” she whispered. “I ran.”

Fang Fang pulled the blade from Miyuki’s back. The wound sealed behind the stroke, and Miyuki’s eyes drew closed.

Magical Girls Never Die - END