Teething Teamwork

The Fool Arc

The Maniacal had been driven back by the light of those Magical Girls. They'd stopped it. They had not feared it in their numbers, and instead it had languished, starved, as they had worked together to keep each other powerful. Magical Girls worked in teams. And each member of that team supported the others. More Magical Girls meant less fear, the creature realised, in the dull form its mind had taken.

It needed fear from the weak. That would make it more powerful. The survival instincts and fury in its mind made it furious over the idea of being bested by those costumed fools.

It slowly paused. It remembered something. The perfect target. All those people who would be gathered in one place. And it was one place that would hurt them. Destroy hope.

Yes, the creature thought. It had found a worthy place to kill those beings.

♥ Magical Girl Rinrin ♥

“Tama! Nyamu!” I call out, looking around desperately, seeing the familiar red and white of Tama’s outfit as she runs through the large glass doors of the family restaurant at the bottom of the hill, maybe a few hundred yards out.

“Do we have permission to go all out!?”
“...I’ve got distraction magic in place, nyamu! No one’ll notice anything out of the ordinary!” I look ahead and nod. Nyamu’s flying above me and trying to move things out of the way.

“The customers?”
“...Moving them to the back of the store… about half done.” Anya replies. A car comes towards me, and I jump over it, gaining on the wildly out of control menace threatening to crush the glass window and customers of a local family restaurant flat.

“Ah, come oooon!” I yell out. Five minutes ago, a delivery truck uphill slipped out of park and the multi-ton vehicle began barreling down the main hill in the center of town, seeming to accelerate. Nyamu’s assessment: potential casualty count was high.

“Come on, come on, come oooon!” I whisper, willing my legs to move faster. A car approaches on my side of the road, the driver staring at the out of control truck slack-jawed. This time I flip onto its roof and jump car-to-car, each one getting closer. I land on the roof of the out of control truck and reach into the cabin through the open window.

Inside is a shadowy creature in the shape of a driver. It’s a Gremlin, a type of belowling that creates carnage by screwing with machinery and cars. The thing must have seen an opportunity for maximum chaos and gone for it. As I try to grab it, the Gremlin fights back by biting my hand, causing a yelp of pain.

“Oh, you wanna play it that way, huh?” I grunt out. I place both hands on the roof of the truck and swing into the window with my legs forward, kicking the Gremlin in the face. It lets out a hissing-yelp and disintegrates. I don’t have time to acknowledge the power orb as I sit down in the truck, the unfamiliar controls are, surprisingly, absolutely nothing like a game console.

“Uhh… which one’s the brake? Tama? Nyamu! How do I stop this thiiiing!?” I yell out, praying that at some point Anya or Nyamu had been moonlighting as a construction crew. Well, time for plan B.

“Okay, okaaay…” I clamber back onto the roof and flip down to the road in front, placing my hands on the large broad-nosed front bumper. It begins slowing, but my feet are grinding against the road. It’s slowing… but not fast enough.

The family restaurant is getting closer and closer.
“Projected casualties… 4.” Nyamu calls, flying nearby.
“Not… helping… here! SLOW DOWN!” I futilely yell at the driverless vehicle. It voices its refusal with the growl of the wheels on the road- there’s a beat, and a crunch. As if answering my prayer, the vehicle suddenly jerks as more pressure is pushed to the front, and it slows down significantly. I look over to the side, and see a familiar red and white dress bracing the thing, copying my motions.

“Almost…” As I’m forced downhill by the sheer bulk of the delivery truck, I feel my foot slide from road to the sidewalk at the end and right as it meets the front door, stop. I breathe out a sigh of relief and lie my chest on the stopped vehicle, before turning and giving Anya a small thumb’s up.
“Good job.” I smile and laugh, she responds with the same gesture.

Before long, the driver is going to catch up, and Nyamu’s distraction spell won’t work forever. Magical Girls may operate in daylight sometimes, but it’s a far trickier balance. I grab Anya’s arm and leap up with her onto a nearby rooftop.

*            *            *

“Good job! No Magical Girl alone could’ve done that!” Nyamu cheers as Anya and I sit atop a building nearby. I grin at Anya. We’d been working together now for about two days, ever since our first meeting on the TV Tower, solving minor problems like this as we attempt to track down the Maniacal without tipping off the Incident Department pair.

So far, the Maniacal seemed to be lying low, which left a sense of unease in me. Anya didn’t understand it, but she’d only seen the thing from a distance, not up close. She didn’t know the kind of devastation a monster like that could cause if it went wild in town.

“Do you think we are ready for it?” She asks, quietly. I pause, and then nod.
“We made it run away before, right?”
“...We did not stop it.”
“Chasing it away from major destruction is good enough.” I grin, then fall backwards, arms splayed out on the roof, looking at the sky as the sun sets.

“I… do not like it. It was mean. It did bad things.” Anya looks out at the city. Down below, the delivery truck driver is sheepishly apologizing, head bowing low, to the irate family restaurant owner. There are some people staring at the truck in surprise. Before too long, a news van shows up for the local station, and a well-kept young woman with a black mole beneath her eye steps out, followed by a couple of people with a camera and some sort of microphone.

“We should get going.” I say, sitting up. Anya tilts her head quizzically.
“Don’t wanna get seen on the evening news, even Nyamu would have a hard time clearing that up.” I grin, Anya nods and gets to her feet.

“So, one major incident closed. And patrol’s just starting.” I get up to my feet, too, and look around at the city from this vantage point. Which, granted, isn’t a great one.

“Downtown, maybe?” I suggest our next patrol to Anya.
“...Some of the girls in my class said that the bathroom is haunted by Hanako.”
“Let’s just go downtown.” I jump from the roof to the next one with a sound like rushing wind, and watch Anya following behind me like a good duckling.

“Alright, so. What next…” There’s got to be some sort of dramatic action we can stop, or at least something fun to do to pass the time. Not that it’s easy to have fun while in Magical-Girl mode. As we jump across the rooftops, I think about my family back home. Probably about now Mom’s knocking on my door, asking if I’m gonna come down for dinner. I wince with guilt. Sure, now I have the excuse of saving the city, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t just avoiding my family right now. I stop on a tall building near a street, and crouch down to overlook it. I feel like some sort of avian-themed superhero from an American comic.

“...Papa says that if you sit that way, you will show your underwear to people, and that is a bad thing. Underwear is private.” Anya supplies generously as she sits next to me. I awkwardly shuffle my legs back together for a more modest, if less dark and brooding, seated position.

“No-one would look up here.” I reply, looking down at the streets below. Despite the temporary setback, between the sarcastic assistant and the young protegé at my side, I do feel like the comparison is relevant. Though no brooding American hero would go around with quite so many pink ribbons. This style is a hundred percent Japanese and proud of it.

“...Hey, Nyamu.” I call out. Nyamu flies up to me, hovering in his usual place around my shoulder.
“What’s up?”
“Any word on those other girls? Rook and Bishop?”
“...Nothing major. Bishop requested some information be delivered and has not been on patrol. Rook has been recovering.”
“Recovering!?” I say, startled. There’s a solemn nod from Nyamu.
“Rook had a run in with the Maniacal in the city.”
“Figured she could take anything.”
“Rook is a Junior Inspector with the department, mu. She has already proven herself as a capable Operator.” Right… Operators were front-line Magical Girls, like myself and Anya, doing good every day in our assigned districts. Inspectors were dispatched by the world above, sent by whatever passes for a magical government, to particularly troublesome sites to reinforce the local Operators.

I explain all this to Anya, who stares at me blankly. I’m not sure how much she got, but at least I feel better voicing it out loud.

“Hold on, mu.” Nyamu pipes up.
“I’m receiving a message. It’s from Queen Side Bishop.”
“She’s messaging us? What does she say!?”
“It’s a request to meet. Something about assisting an investigation.”