Chapter 206: Chapter 12: The Neighboring City’s Magical Girl (Bonus Chapter for 300 Power Stones)
The little cat was not happy. She’d already decided to help Madoka become a Magical Girl, and then at the very last second Blue-Hair had blocked her again. She’d better not grow up to be the kind of adult who says one thing and does another.
"That’s only natural, right? We didn’t know the true nature of Magical Girls until now. Mami-senpai had no choice, but there’s no way it should fall on Madoka—whose family and friends are perfectly happy—to make that kind of sacrifice."
"The true nature of Magical Girls... which is what, exactly? And what sacrifice?" Madoka still looked at Sayaka in confusion.
"You don’t need to know the details. Just—Madoka, never become a Magical Girl."
Sayaka poked Yimi’s forehead. "And this unhealthy stuff—quit researching it. If I ever catch you trying to get Madoka to sign a contract, I’ll tan your hide."
Faced with the threat, Yimi pointed at her, displeased. "What’s your name?"
"Sayaka Miki! You seriously didn’t remember my name from yesterday?"
Yimi kept pointing. "Small-Fry Sayaka."
"Hah? What did you just say?" Sayaka pinched both of Yimi’s cheeks. "Save that kind of talk for boys."
Hearing this, Yimi stared at her in genuine amazement. "You’re a girl!"
As if she’d forgotten she herself had once worn her hair short.
"What are you even surprised about, you mischievous little sprite... It’s getting late. Come on, Madoka, let’s get back for our afternoon nap or we’ll be dead in class."
"Oh—Yimi, you haven’t eaten yet, right? Here, take this. Stop running around outside and go home after you eat, okay?" Kindhearted Madoka held Sayaka back long enough to hand Yimi a portion of her pocket money.
Not happy.
Watching the two of them leave, Yimi wasn’t giving up. She trotted off on her own, ducked into an alley, and pulled Kyubey’s corpse out of storage space, staring at the red markings on its back that had nagged at her before.
She summoned The World. Those hands that could overwrite reality reached toward the markings on Kyubey’s back. She’d chopped the body into pieces while cooking and found nothing unusual, yet now the panel sprang open like a mech’s cockpit hatch, revealing a space beyond that led to who-knew-where.
This was where Kyubey collected energy. When a Witch was defeated, the Grief Seed it dropped would first be used by Magical Girls to purify their Soul Gems. Even after the girls considered a Grief Seed spent, it still retained an enormous reservoir of energy, which Kyubey would then reclaim through this dorsal port.
Normally, when a Kyubey unit died, this door would "close" along with it—but The World had restored it to its original state.
Yimi examined it from every angle, couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and simply grabbed a handful of cat grass and stuffed it into the opening. "I want the method for creating Magical Girl contracts."
"..."
...
What Kyubey possessed was less a "power" and more a "technology." That was precisely why, when Homura Akemi hunted them, they never attempted more direct countermeasures.
Judging that approaching her was still too dangerous—and that there was even a risk of technology leakage—this time no lone Kyubey came out to talk to Yimi.
Emotional energy converted into power was entropy-free. The technology that fundamentally altered human souls existed solely to turn girls into Witches who would generate genuine energy for the universe. The end result was that Magical Girls were sacrifices by design—and eventually, they might even be killed by their own former comrades.
This was bad. Kitty wouldn’t do that.
But wasn’t a Magical Girl simply a girl who could use magic? Otherwise, her kind and gentle mother would never have loved them. There had to be another way to create better Magical Girls.
Magical Girls could barely replenish their own magic. But if Yimi could use Third Magic to craft an external device—a mana reservoir like the Lesser Grail of Fuyuki—and link it to a Magical Girl, perhaps she could create something genuinely better.
Yimi was currently sprawled aboard a bus heading to the neighboring city, riding on the open-air upper deck and watching the scenery roll past.
She’d slipped aboard in cat form, picking a random bus. The little cat couldn’t actually tell which ones went to the villages and which went to other cities—she left it entirely to luck.
The bus was like a sightseeing coach, double-decked. No roof on top, though canopies could be deployed in bad weather.
The route crossed curved overpasses, but aside from winding roads and dense clusters of buildings, there wasn’t much worth sightseeing.
It wasn’t that Sayaka’s threat had worked. It was what Mami had said—every city had at least one Magical Girl.
Yimi wanted to check out Magical Girls in other cities first. She hadn’t made a shred of progress here.
Maybe every region had different tastes. Just like every world Yimi had traveled through had slightly different cuisine—maybe somewhere out there, someone would actually enjoy eating Kyubey.
She wanted to try.
Cross-city travel was turning out to be painfully slow. The urban sprawl of high-rises didn’t exactly let her take a straight line anywhere.
"Kazamino City—we’ve arrived."
By the time she got off, the sky was already darkening. She’d originally planned to visit Tomohisa before nightfall to ask more about sashimi preparation.
Right—sashimi also needed lonely sauce.
"Lonely sauce, lonely sauce, lonely, lonely..."
Mumbling the word over and over so she wouldn’t forget, she shifted to human form and ran into a convenience store. She slapped Madoka’s money onto the counter. "Give me lonely sauce."
"You mean wasabi paste... Little miss, what kind do you want? Real wasabi, or...?"
More words she didn’t understand. She tipped her small face up impatiently. "For sashimi. Lots of it."
"For sashimi, huh? I’d recommend this one—it’s a bit pricey, but your money is just enough. Did your mom send you out on an errand? What a good girl."
The clerk placed a bottle on the counter.
"Be careful on the way home."
But Yimi, wasabi in hand, didn’t leave. She tipped her face up at the woman again. "Are you a Magical Girl?"
The clerk, a woman in her thirties: "?"
"..."
She wasn’t one. Kitty’s luck was malfunctioning.
Yimi left the store with a sour face, hugging the bottle, and looked up to think about what Tomohisa had said.
She hadn’t asked for details at the time. All she remembered was him saying to slice the meat and pair it with wasabi. To think there existed a condiment so powerful it could make meat delicious without even cooking it.
Curiosity got the better of her. She twisted off the wasabi cap and took a mouthful.
"Cough cough cough! Hack hack hack—"
It hit her nose. Yimi immediately redirected the misfortune outward, but even so, the sheer force of that single instant left her streaming with tears and snot.
Humans were terrifying creatures. They actually liked this stuff.
She stashed the wasabi in her storage space and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
"Tch."
A click of the tongue. A red-haired girl who’d just been passing by turned around, scratched the back of her head like this was the last thing she wanted to deal with, and looked down at Yimi. She fished out a particularly red apple from the paper bag she was carrying and held it out.
"Eat. Stop crying."
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