June 2

The following day, Hikaru was waiting for Masae and Anju outside of his classroom during a break in studies. He checked the time on a clock and remarked to himself, “I hope those two are here soon.”

“You hope who is here soon?”

“Aah!” Hikaru was startled to hear Masae behind him and turned around to find her and Anju. “You scared the Hell out of me!”

“Sorry about that,” Masae replied. “Anyway, we were running a bit late. Wanna join us for lunch? We can explain what a magical huntress is during it.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Hikaru nodded. “So, where do you wanna go?”

“I know it sounds stereotypical, but the roof.” Masae knew that suggesting the roof would quickly get a humorous comparison to anime.

“This sounds like the setup to some kind of anime,” Hikaru replied, confirming Masae’s thoughts. “But screw it, why not?”

Anju chuckled and joked, “You know, Masae-chan, it really does sound like the average setup to some mystery in an anime.”

“Shut up, Anju-chan. I had no other good ideas.”

…

Once on the roof, the three of them sat down on a bench near the fencing surrounding the roof and began to talk about what had happened. “Okay,” Masae said after wiping her face with a napkin and setting down a pair of chopsticks. “I suppose I owe you a proper explanation as to what happened to you, or should I say what almost happened to you, yesterday after school.”

Hikaru thought back to the attack by the monster and how close he got to being potentially killed by it. “Yeah, let’s, uh… Let’s start with that. I have several questions, the first being, of course, ‘what the Hell was that thing?’ and the second being ‘why did it try to kill me?’”

“Both of those are valid questions. That thing was what we call a magical beast. They’re called that because they appear in our world through portals from other worlds. These portals seem to be at least somewhat controlled by the magical beasts, and some even seem to have powers and strength beyond what should be possible in our world. When they cross over, they often begin attacking animals and humans, and they can do some real damage to us.” Masae then pulled a ring off of her one finger and showed it to Hikaru. “That is where we come in. These rings have a small red stone inside that allows us to transform into magical huntresses, or, for the few boys who participate in hunting magical beasts, magical huntsmen. These stones come from the most well-known of the worlds these portals lead to, Halargia, and give the wielder attached to the ring the power to change outfits and carry weapons in an instant.”

Hikaru was fascinated by the bright red stone on the ring and reached for it. “Mind if I hold it?”

“Sure.”

Masae then placed the ring in his hand. As Hikaru held it up, he asked her, “How did you… Well, you and your friend Kobayashi-san… How did you two get roped into all this?”

Anju and Masae looked at each other first before the latter answered the question. “Three years ago,” Masae explained. “We were almost killed by a magical beast in Yokosuka. We were only fifteen back then and were in our last year of middle school, and happened to be in Yokosuka for a visit to one of Anju-chan’s relatives.”

“It was horrible,” Anju remembered. “The monster broke my arm when it grabbed me with a long tentacle. It looked like some kind of two-headed lizard, but in addition to its regular legs, it had a few tentacles it grabbed things with as well. I tried fighting it off, but I broke my right forearm doing so. I thought for sure we were gonna die, but then…”

Hikaru asked her and Masae, “But then what?”

“This other girl and a boy rescued us,” Masae replied. “They were apparently also in middle school at the time. I think the girl was a second-year and the boy was a first-year. The girl was blonde-haired, and when she fought, she spoke very casually and she swore quite a bit, but once she came to us, she switched up very quickly and spoke very politely to us. The boy had dark green hair, and didn’t really pay us much mind. They both had swords and they slaughtered that magical beast like it was nothing. The girl then helped Anju-chan to her feet and sprinkled some healing dust from Halargia on her arm, which helped it heal a bit faster.”

“Afterwards, a second girl came over and talked to us,” Anju further explained. “This girl was black-haired and spoke very formally, even more so than the first girl. told us who they were and what they did, and that most likely, the Protection and Research Agency, the official organization that helps oversee us, would contact me to come up with a cover story for my arm.”

Hikaru was surprised to hear they had government backing. “So you’re saying the government has a semi-secret agency using magical girls to fight monsters?”

“Basically, yes,” Masae replied. “After we came home and with Anju-chan’s arm still in a cast, we got in contact with a recruiter, signed a contract, and began hunting magical beasts. Three years later, we’re still doing it.”

“Going back to the whole Halargia thing, you said you got healing dust?”

“Yes. Halargia has been explored the most of all the worlds the portals open up to. There’s a special dust you can find there that will heal wounds faster, although it’s expensive. Sometimes, we have to go into portals and fight the magical beasts on their own turf. Other times, they come to us. Either way, it can be very dangerous, but we do at least get paid.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” Hikaru nodded. “I’d hate to do this for free.”

Both Anju and Masae then got an alert on their phones and pulled them out. Once they read it, Masae said to Hikaru as she packed away her lunch, “Well, we gotta get going. We just got a report of a portal opening up on school grounds.”

“Wait, right now?!” Hikaru then immediately jumped to his feet and packed away his own lunch. “Hang on, let me go with you!”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Anju pointed out. “This is pretty dangerous. There’s no tel-“

“Sure,” Masae then interrupted, overruling her friend. “Just stay back and don’t get yourself into a bad situation.”

Anju asked her, “Masae-chan, are you sure?”

“We don’t have time to debate this. Come on!” All three of them then rushed to the entrance to the roof and flung open the door, running down the stairs to confront whatever magical beast would come out of the portal.

…

In front of a desolate storage shed behind the school, Masae checked her transformation ring, the stone on it glowing a bright red. “This is the place for sure. The stone on our rings will glow if a magical beast is nearby, and it looks like whatever came through the portal is in this shed. For all we know, the portal’s in here, too.”

“Let’s open it up,” Anju replied before she held out her ring and closed her eyes.

Hikaru was astonished as a bright red light enveloped Anju, and within less than a second, she had changed into the same outfit she had on the day before. Masae soon joined her, and once both of them had changed into their magical huntress outfits, Anju pulled out two knives before kicking the door in. Masae told Hikaru, “Stand back and don’t go in too far!”

Hikaru needed no convincing to follow Masae’s orders when he saw just how dark the inside of the shed was. Instead of sunlight beaming through the windows, the interior was pitch black, completely devoid of any light source. Masae and Anju, on the other hand, ran right in, not caring about how dark it was. As he began to follow, he remarked to himself, “Those two act like this is nothing for them…”

Inside the shed, Masae and Anju ran through the darkness and eventually emerged into a grassy field. All around them, a fierce wind was accompanied by dark clouds and thunder from above. It was a dry storm, with not a single raindrop accompanying the lighting that soon crashed into the ground in the distance. As Anju shielded her eyes, she asked Masae, “Where’s this thing at?! Is there even a magical beast here?!”

“There!” Masae then saw their target in the distance and pointed one of her kusarigama at it. The creature in question, this time, was a large lion-like creature, but what set it apart was not only the fact it was over twice the size of an actual big cat, but its fur was a dark shade of red. The beast opened its mouth and roared, its teeth razor sharp, before it charged at the duo.

Hikaru soon caught up with them, and as he did, he saw the beast angrily running towards them. “Oh my God, look at that thing!”

“Get back,” Masae warned him. “You don’t wanna end up as food for this magical beast!”

The duo then let the beast pass them, stepping out of the way and dodging its attack. Masae then threw the weighted end of her right-handed kusarigama, wrapping it around the beast’s neck and causing it to stop in confusion as it tried to force its way out of the chain. She pulled on the chain to disorient the beast as Anju then threw both of her knives at the beast, striking it in the right forearm and causing it to scream in pain. In response, it tried to spit at both of them, and when a very small amount of it brushed against Masae’s shoulder, it caused a bit of the cloth on her outfit to disintegrate. The rest, meanwhile, burnt the grass it landed on. Anju told Masae, “Looks like it’s got caustic spit!”

“It sure does!” The beast tried to swing at Masae with its uninjured arm, but she jumped up and dodged the attack before landing on the beast’s back and tugging as hard as she could on the chain, strangling the beast slowly. Then, she stabbed the beast in the back with the blade end of the kusarigama and hopped off on the beast’s right side, pulling out both of Anju’s knives from the beast’s right foreleg. She told her as she tossed the knives back, “Here you go!”

“Thanks!” Anju caught both knives by their handles and quickly got to work as the beast fought against the chain wrapped around it, slashing one of its legs as it tried to kick her. It then roared into the sky, forcing all three of them to cover their ears from how loud the beast roared. “Agh, what the Hell?!”

When the roaring stopped, Masae grabbed her left-hand kusarigama and threw the chain around the beast’s hind legs, pulling as tight as she could from the blade end once they wrapped around both legs. She then readied her first for one final attack as the beast tried to spit at Anju. Masae told her, “Shit, did it hit you?!”

“No!” Anju had managed to dodge the caustic spit just in time, which had once again burned the grass nearby. “Be careful! It’s getting desperate!”

Masae then jumped up into the sky and aimed right for the back of the beast’s head, striking it with a hard punch that sent a shockwave right through its head and killed it. A loud blast filled the air as Hikaru looked away briefly before turning back around to find Masae sliding off the beast’s body and back onto the ground. She sighed and said to herself, “Thank God it didn’t burn much of my clothes.”

Hikaru then ran over, asking the girls, “Holy crap, are you guys alright?! That looked intense!”

“Yeah,” Masae assured him as she began to unwrap the chains from the dead body of the magical beast to get her weapons back. “Some of my shirt got burned off on my shoulder by that thing’s spit, but I didn’t get burned on my skin.”

Hikaru was shocked. “Burned?! How hot was it?!”

“Hot enough to do that to the grass,” Masae said as she pointed to the burned grass near the body of the beast. “So yeah, pretty damn hot.”

Then, at that moment, Anju shouted something in their direction. Neither of them heard what she had said exactly the first time, but the second time she shouted, they understood it clearly. “LOOK OUT!”

Masae quickly grabbed Hikaru, taking him by surprise, and pulled him away, the two of them falling to the ground as a thunderous roar filled the air and a gust of wind nearly swept away both of them. As they crashed into the ground, Hikaru looked up as a giant flying creature similar in shape to a pterodactyl flew up in the air and began to turn back around, having barely missed snatching both of them. “What the Hell is that?!”

Masae quickly grabbed Hikaru and pulled him up onto his feet. “You gotta be kidding me! That magical beast’s roars attracted this?!”

Anju pointed at the portal, which was starting to slowly shrink in size, “It’s closing! Let’s get out of here! I already got some pictures for the report!”

Hikaru asked Masae as the two of them made a run for the portal, “What about that beast?!”

“We’ll kill it another time! As long as the portal closes up, it won’t travel to Earth, but we gotta make sure we get back!”

All three of them then reached the portal as the flying beast charged towards them from above. Anju and Masae stopped to let Hikaru go first, the former telling him, “You go first! We’ll go in behind you!”

Hikaru replied as he crossed through, “Thanks!”

Anju crossed over next, tossing two of her knives at the beast as far as she could, although both of them ultimately missed. Finally, Masae ran through, just barely missing the flying beast’s bite as it tried to devour her. Right as she crashed onto the floor of the shed and hit a few boxes stored inside, the portal closed up, and all three of them found themselves in a now completely normal shed.

Instead of the pitch-black interior of before, sunlight flooded in from the windows on the left side of the shed. As they all stopped to catch their breath while still on the ground, none of them could believe how close they got to being killed by a second magical beast. “Damn,” Masae said to the others. “That was too close…”

Hikaru asked the duo, “So, uh… Is that an average day for you?”

“No, no, no,” Anju assured him. “That was… Something.”

“Most battles are easier than that,” Masae said as she got up and brushed dust and grass off of her outfit. She then closed her eyes as a bright light enveloped her, changing her back into her normal school uniform. “Anyway, we probably should hurry back to school. We spent longer than I thought in Halargia.”

“What time is it?” Hikaru then pulled out his phone and saw the time, causing him to panic as he realized how close they were to being late. “Oh crap, we gotta hurry!”

Anju quickly de-transformed and soon followed the other two as they ran out of the shed and back into the building. “Wait for me! Hang on!”