January 2025

  ***

  Miori looked at the name plate in front of her. ‘Takeuchi’, it read.

  She stood in front of the gate to her childhood home for a few minutes already, preparing herself mentally for what she needed to do. She rang the bell and waited for a response.

  “Yes?” a voice came from the intercom.

  “Mama, it’s me,” Miori said, noticing that speaking to her mother brought something childlike back to her voice.

  “Oh, Miori! Come on in!” the lock announced its opening with a buzzing sound and Miori pushed the gate open, approaching the small house across the small yard.

  Her wish from the shrine visit came back to her mind.

  I want to date Seika and Ayame openly, with the approval of my parents.

  Her mother was already supportive of her being a lesbian, and maybe she would even accept their strange polyamorous relationship. What worried Miori was her mother’s potential reaction to the fact that her and Seika were both Magical Girls.

  “Miori! Welcome home!” Her mother smiled as she opened the door; she was a beautiful woman, even as she was already approaching her fifties. Long black hair fell over her shoulders, making it hard to believe that she was the blonde’s mother, but that’s how skipped generations work out sometimes.

  Miori slipped into loafers after stepping out of her own shoes and followed her mother into the living room.

  “Is papa overseas again?” she asked, looking around. Her mother nodded.

  “Always on the move, always working with overseas clients. It’s a small wonder he had enough time to get me pregnant with you!”

  Miori rolled her eyes as her mother let out a dirty laugh.

  “Anyway, have a seat!”

  Miori sat down on the couch, smiling at her mother.

  “My, look at you. Still wearing those princess dresses! They look so good on you!”

  “It’s gothic lolita. It’s a whole subculture, mama, it’s -”

  “Ah, never mind that! Anyway, I was talking to my neighbor recently, and she told me the strangest thing! Told me she saw you on a poster in that large boutique in Harajuku! Said you are a model!”

  Miori cleared her throat.

  “Right, that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She opened her handbag and fished a folded-up paper out of it. It was an A4-sized printed copy of the banner ads showing her in Ayame’s newest creation.

  “Oh dear! So, she was right?!” Miori’s mother got wide eyes, picking up the print. “Atelier Antoinette? Never heard of it.”

  “As I said, it’s a subculture. And that studio is still very small.”

  “Fascinating!” Her mother grinned, then she walked over to the partitioned off kitchen and pinned the print to the fridge using a magnet, right next to a childhood drawing Miori did of her family.

  “…really?” Miori sighed, but a little smile snuck into her expression.

  “It turns out, that might not even be the last modeling I’ll be doing. My dear friend, who talked me into this, is receiving almost a dozen inquiries about me from other fashion brands or modeling agencies.”

  “Well, you should go for it! Can’t count on being a barkeeping maiden who’s luring the people with your looks forever!” Her mother said. Miori grinned in response.

  “As opposed to modeling where I don’t need to be alluring?”

  “You could always be a hair model, or a hand model!”

  Her mother shrugged, and they both shared a little laugh.

  “Should I make some green tea?” she asked Miori.

  “Of course!”

  ***

  They enjoyed their first sips of green tea before Miori put down her cup and cleared her throat.

  “Mama, there’s something you need to know.”

  “Finally found a girl?”

  The question hit Miori by surprise, and she looked at her mother with wide eyes.

  “You have the shiny skin of a woman in love, my dear. You can’t hide things like that.”

  “Well, I’m going to blow your mind, still.”

  Her mother now raised an eyebrow, taking another sip from her tea as Miori continued.

  “I found two girls.”

  Her mother paused and furrowed her brow, putting the cup down.

  “You’re cheating?”

  “No!” Miori immediately answered, maybe a little louder than she intended.

  “Wait, you’re actually three women dating each other?” Her mother raised her eyebrows and needed to take another sip from her tea to process it.

  “I have… my girlfriend, Seika. And we are both seeing our mutual best friend Ayame. We noticed soon after we started our relationship that we couldn’t imagine a life without her.”

  Her mother looked deep in thought, putting her cup of tea down again and looking Miori in the eyes.

  “I… don’t know. Just make sure no one is getting their heart broken, Miori.”

  Miori nodded, smiling. “I will.”

  She then cleared her throat again.

  “Well, there’s one more thing, and you’re not going to like it.”

  ***

  “A Magical Girl?!” Her mother shouted.

  “The first one to ever exist. The one I was in love with from the start.”

  “Unbelievable! That is…!”

  Her mother paced up and down the living room, covering her mouth with a hand as she processed the shocking news.

  “Did this Magical Girl tell you to date in a three-way?” she demanded to know, now visibly more irritated.

  Miori raised her hands in a calming gesture.

  “Actually, no. In fact, me and Ayame had to convince her that it’s alright to start this relationship!”

  “Hmph! I’m sure she’s still corrupting you in some way or other. Magical Girls… I thought I raised you better than that…”

  Her mother kept rambling on and Miori had to step closer, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Mama, please…”

  “No! I… they fly around, think they can do whatever they want! Their battles destroy entire streets and get people hurt! I don’t want one of them to have my darling daughter! You would only be dragged into danger you can’t handle! I could lose you!”

  Miori sighed.

  “They can’t ‘have’ me. I can take care of myself. And besides…”

  Sorry, mama…

  Miori transformed in front of her mother.

  Miori approached Atelier Antoinette with a troubled expression.

  Her mother was severely shocked that Miori herself was a Magical Girl and looked like she wanted to cry, but at the very least she admitted that this meant Miori could handle herself among other Magical Girls.

  She wanted some more time to herself to properly think this new information over, and Miori gladly let her mother figure her own racing thoughts out for now.

  She rang the bell on the door to the workshop and a stylishly dressed woman opened the door for her, smiling.

  “Ah, Takeuchi. Takanashi is already waiting in her office.”

  Miori was led to Ayame’s office and the two were alone, greeting each other with a quick kiss.

  “So… you wanted to go through all those inquiries with me?” Miori asked as she sat down, looking at a stack of letters. “Oh dear.”

  Ayame grinned at her reaction, pulling the first of the letters off the stack.

  “I told you. You’re gorgeous and many people want to know how they can get in contact with a bombshell like you!”

  Miori raised a brow as Ayame opened the first letter.

  “Oh my! I know that brand. Decent selection of summer dresses. You’re good with summer dresses, right?”

  Miori nodded.

  “They’d even show you completely. A lot of brands these days only show half the face, or no face at all, because then they have to pay less. Also, the high-class brands just pick models in Paris to show off their lines.”

  “Ugh, don’t tell me they’re only interested in me because I look foreign…”

  Ayame shrugged. “Well, this one is a freelance offer. Are you interested?”

  Miori nodded, and Ayame put the letter aside.

  “The next few are agencies, but… well, unless you want to give up on bartending entirely and have your life revolve around this, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “I’m just looking for extra income here, not a whole career change, so better not.”

  Ayame put those letters in a different pile. They went through a few more offers until suddenly Ayame looked at the sender’s name of one of the inquiries and tossed the letter into the garbage.

  “What was that about?” Miori blinked, looking at the now crumpled letter.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Ayame’s insistence was suspicious, but Miori decided to leave it at that.

  “This one is already looking to do a shoot for its fall collection – it will be vastly more comfortable than the summer dresses, I can tell you that much.”

  “Comfortable?”

  “Oh, Miori dear, they’re going to do outdoor shoots on a snowless, clear day and then turn up the saturation to pretend that the photos were taken in summer. Prepare to freeze your pretty ass off. Actually, please don’t. I like that ass, and we both know it’s Seika’s favorite part, so keep it safe, hm?”

  Ayame shot Miori a wide grin as the latter could only raise an eyebrow at her partner’s crude comment, yet the corner of her mouth still rose into a smile.

  ***

  Miori left Atelier Antoinette with three inquiries in her hand. She didn’t quite know how she felt about the fact that she got them due to knowing Ayame, due to a friend convincing her to model one time. But in a way, it felt good that her efforts to look pretty for her beloved Seika bore fruit even if it was in such unexpected ways.

  Her phone vibrated, and she half expected to see a message from her mother after this day’s events. Instead, she saw that it was a reminder she set for herself.

  “It’s almost time to meet Annette,” she quietly spoke to herself, with only Bellona there to listen to her.

  Annette, or rather PPiper, appeared through a portal right in Miori’s apartment, who was awaiting her as Bellona. She immediately greeted her with a grin and the two hugged briefly before Bellona summoned ‘Realm of Duels’ and transported the two of them into a copy of Annette’s apartment.

  “Any news?” Bellona asked, sitting down on Annette’s couch as the latter went through her usual ritual of pulling the full dive gear off her head and putting on her pants.

  “I’ve been… busy with another character. Been going to an actually dangerous world to level her. Now that your world doesn’t have Rodent Regiment attacks anymore, I’m trying to protect other worlds from other players. Sadly, I was only so successful until now because the Rodent Regiment are role players and were all made up of a single race that I was able to control with an otherwise useless spell.”

  Bellona saw a hint of pain in Annette’s eyes.

  “It’s hard, knowing that there are real people getting slaughtered or worse because the players playing this stupid game have no idea.”

  Bellona gently patted Annette’s shoulder.

  “Have you ever considered joining forces with the Rodent Regiment? They seem pretty content with the playground Mana gave them. Maybe they’ll accept some ‘quests’ to stop other players.”

  Annette shook her head.

  “They hate me. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a troll who harassed them for years.”

  “Hm,” Bellona sighed, standing up to look outside the window.

  “As far as I see it, nothing will change unless someone tackles this corporation running the game, Annette. It’s admirable that you’re trying for the small victories of saving innocents, but we need to look at the big picture.”

  Bellona turned around towards the redhead.

  “We need to find a way to get me and some other Magical Girls into your world and cause a little bit of chaos.”

  ***

  February 2025

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  ***

  “Very good, very good! Now look over here, into the camera!”

  The photographer danced around Miori, snapping picture upon picture. Miori wore a breezy summer dress, shivering a little. It was cold out, yet here she was, dressed only in her underwear and this fluttering, thin dress, utterly out of season as photos were shot in preparation for the actual summer sales. Adjustments in saturation and other tricks of the trade were used to make the images taken against the backdrop of Tokyo in early February look like genuine summer photos.

  They were on top of a shopping center in Shinjuku, with the accessible roof reserved for the photo session. Sometimes the city served as the backdrop, and sometimes it was only the sky, depending on the elevation and direction of the photographing cameras.

  “You look gorgeous, give me a look like you know it! Now look at me like I’m an insect! Very good! Now look to the side, wistfully!”

  The demands for various facial expressions and poses continued for a while longer until the set was done. A little rest area was set up with a camping chair and a heat lamp, and Miori was given a bathrobe to wrap herself in to keep warm while the crew discussed the next steps.

  She had some time to think over what she was talking about with Annette. She could say many pretty words that Annette needed to hear, and she meant them. If she ever got the opportunity to go to her world and intervene, she would seize it and topple whatever megacorporation sent unwitting players to kill real human beings in other worlds. But for now, neither her nor Annette had any clue how she would even get there. Earlier this week she went to Romystedt, enjoyed some tea and a salacious discussion of each other’s love lives with Madame Bille and broached the subject of getting to another dimension of her choosing, but it appeared like even the aristocrat who could craft keys to Earth with relative ease needed more concrete information about the dimension the virtual attacks came from. Annette had no clue, and Mana, the girl who helped quell the attacks of the Rodent Regiment, needed coordinates to use her magic book ‘Portal’ in the first place. In short: Miori’s research came to a grinding halt.

  Her contemplations were interrupted by a murmur. The photographers and rest of the crew sighed audibly and exchanged hushed words as a fancily dressed woman sat down next to Miori, from outside of her view. Miori turned her head, facing the woman with over-the-shoulder length hair which was dyed in a gradient from black at her roots to pure platinum white at the tips. She wore rather gaudy sunglasses and crossed her legs provocatively as she inspected Miori from head to toe.

  “My, what a pretty one you are. You should do better things than bottom of the rung work for this bunch of amateurs.” She spoke, showing Miori a wide, and obviously fake smile.

  “For the last time, Miss Hattori, stop harassing our models when we’re working. We both know that barely any of the ones you asked to come work for you ended up doing work that involved clothes,” one of the photographers complained, but stopped himself with an angry eye roll as the strange woman lifted a hand, as if commanding him to stop speaking.

  “Oh please, I’m just drawing out people’s natural talent for what they’re best at. Is it my fault that you’re putting clothes on born AV actresses?”

  The strange woman winked at the assembled photographers from behind her sunglasses, then she brought her attention back to Miori.

  “Besides, this one right here… she’s born to wear the prettiest clothes and show them to the world. Born to wear my clothes, not your amateur hour sewing projects.”

  “With all due respect, Miss Hattori, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the photographer insisted again, and she let out an annoyed huff. She got out of her chair and fished a card out of a case before she held it towards Miori.

  “Give me a call if you want to make some real money, hun. I already sent a request for you to Atelier Antoinette, but I think my ex-girlfriend is jealously keeping you for herself.”

  Things fell into place for Miori. First Ayame’s panic attack during her first night with the couple, and how she immediately discarded one of the inquiries. She narrowed her eyes at the woman in front of her and kept her hands by her side instead of reaching for the offered card.

  “I’ll have to decline the offer,” she said and gave the other woman one of her joyless smiles.

  She could have sworn she saw a twitch at the corner of the woman’s mouth, but after Miori blinked, it was gone.

  “Ah, too bad! I tell you: you’re too good for this lot,” Hattori said and reached out to touch Miori’s shoulder, but the blonde immediately rotated out of the way, making the other woman’s attempted shoulder pat whiff. For a split second, Miori saw something ugly in that woman’s expression, but it faded so fast that she barely registered it. Maria Hattori then simply turned around and raised a hand to wave at Miori as she left the rooftop with quick steps.

  “Sorry about that,” one of the photographers said as he approached Miori.

  “She sometimes comes here and scoops up talent. Never seen her be this persistent with a person before, though.”

  Miori furrowed her brow. Some models may have been flattered by having that woman’s undivided attention, but with everything she knew about her, the only thing she felt was disgust.

  Miori went to two more photoshoots that week. One for a fall collection, which went without any issues and was thankfully warm enough to wear by itself, without her needing a warm cloak or a heater during photo breaks.

  The other one was surprisingly enough for gyaru fashion. She got heavier make-up than she was used to, had her nails painted in unusual patterns, got a fake tan sprayed on her face – all the works.

  She presented quite a few items, and luckily all of the photos were being taken in an indoors studio, so the way too short skirt or short-sleeved shirts didn’t have her freezing on a rooftop or similar.

  She still had to go work at Snack Starlight at night, so she didn’t spend as much time with Seika and Ayame as she would have liked, but she intended to make up for it with some gifts she could buy from the extra income.

  She mixed drinks and held casual conversation, as always, doing her job with the expected professionalism. But for some reason, she had a strange gut feeling.

  Her meeting with Maria Hattori felt like it was indicative of something greater which was about to happen, but she didn’t know what. She didn’t like that feeling.

  ***

  On her way home the strange feeling of dread only intensified. She felt watched, or maybe even followed. She looked from side to side, trying to find whoever was on her tail. The street had a few people in it, and this late at night she couldn’t even make out their faces, only vague, black shapes illuminated by the neon signs.

  “You are not paranoid, Miori. I feel it, too.”

  What should we do?

  “Break line of sight and transform, I can get us somewhere else fast.”

  Wouldn’t that clue them in who we are?

  “We’ll fly at ground level until we’re far enough away.”

  I trust you, partner.

  She accelerated her steps, glancing over her shoulder from time to time. No one appeared to react to it in any way, none of the people in the street accelerated to follow her, but then she saw it: a strange ripple in the air followed her. She couldn’t make head or tail of the strange sight, but it accelerated at the same time she did, and before long she was running, with the ripple following suit, but it was still far enough away for her to execute her plan. Miori turned a corner and immediately transformed, spooking a man who turned around and fell to the ground after being face to face with a Magical Girl. After pushing past him she immediately flew, taking sharp corners while flying barely two meters high. Only after flying for a good minute like this, she ascended into the sky, leaving the streets behind. She glanced over her shoulder, noting the lack of strange ripples in the air.

  “Good. That solves that.”

  “Watch out!”

  As Bellona proper shouted the warning, she saw the jet-black blade of a scythe approach her from her left side. A loud clang could be heard as she summoned a parrying dagger into her left hand just in time, letting go after she summoned her trusty halberd and attempted to stab her assailant.

  After gaining some distance from each other, she could finally take in the unusual appearance of her opponent.

  A venetian carnival mask sporting an unnervingly neutral expression, with red lips and golden decorations around the eye holes. Bellona could see pale blue eyes behind those holes, with black make-up obscuring everything around them. She wore a red vest with more elaborate golden decorations, and dark riding pants with high heels. She wore a tricorne hat with a large feather, and a red cloth wrapping around the back of her head obscured everything that might show where the mask ended, and her actual head began. Black wings sprouted from her back, and their heavy flaps kept her suspended in the air.

  “You again…” Bellona narrowed her eyes at the strange woman, who raised her scythe and pointed it at her.

  “I will have my revenge. Accept your fate or struggle! It doesn’t matter much, beyond the fact that it will be more amusing if you wriggle and scream!” she exclaimed before readying the weapon again.

  “You can try!” Bellona responded, grinning madly at her assailant as she let her battle lust take over. She hadn’t felt it in a while, and here, all the way above the city with no risk of collateral damage, she was going to give in.

  The masked woman let out a scream as she charged at Bellona, swinging her scythe in wide arcs. The strange blade, hewn from pure obsidian caused some unease in Bellona whenever it got close and she deflected it.

  “I don’t know why, Miori, but I think this thing can seriously hurt us… don’t let it get close!”

  Bellona nodded as she avoided the slashes from the scythe, backing away slowly. She didn’t risk a direct confrontation, instead she summoned a long gun to her side and immediately unloaded it towards the attacking woman, who deflected the shot with a magic shield.

  “So you can use magic and know how to use basic defenses! Unlike last time!” Bellona provoked her but got no response in turn. The lack of a reaction worried her. The villainess came at her again, with wide, aggressive swings. Bellona could see that the woman had received training in wielding her unusual weapon, but she was still no match in a direct confrontation, or so the Magical Girl assumed.

  She caught the next swing with the back of her halberd’s axe head, locking the crimson woman’s weapon in a contest of strength and agility. She could see the woman desperately pulling on the stuck weapon, while Bellona didn’t give her an inch, skillfully turning the blade to keep her right where she was, unless she let go of her weapon.

  “Got you. And now, unless you want me to impale your other shoulder, you’re going to tell me why you’ve been stalking me, or…”

  Bellona didn’t get to finish her sentence. Her raised combat awareness alerted her to approaching danger and she separated from the Dream Empress before a magical beam would have cleaved her in two. It uselessly went up into the sky, where it fizzled out after some distance.

  Bellona looked around to quickly assess the situation and found herself surrounded by four mirages. The same kinds of phantoms which haunted the streets some years ago, or one of which went around stomping through Tokyo months ago.

  Their shapes took a stable form, and she was faced with the spirits of Magical Girls. She recognized two of them as wearing outfits of the Flower Brigade, while the two others wore the headsets of the Kuma Group.

  Bellona’s eyes darted nervously around between them, and in that moment, all four attacked her at the same time.

  ***

  Bellona dodged a mechanical fist aimed at her face, with the Kuma Group-looking ghost catapulting itself towards her at impressive speed with the assistance of some jets attached to her armor. She couldn’t do much in the ways of retaliation, as she had to dodge the next attack, a magical beam. A thorned whip originating from one of the Flower Brigade ghosts hit her and wrapped itself painfully around her arm, restricting her movements severely. She was glad that these phantoms didn’t appear to trap her in a bubble when they touched her, but her thoughts were interrupted as she was hit by a kick to the stomach from the second Flower Brigade ghost. She reeled and the kick felt strong enough to even make her Magical Girl form want to vomit, but she forced her mind to focus and summoned a sword into her free hand to cut the thorned vine around her wrist. Just in time, as it turned out, as her crimson opponent joined the melee and swung at her, aiming to decapitate her.

  Bellona pulled back to avoid the majority of the scythe’s blade, but it grazed her cheek, leaving behind a cut. Despite its shallow depth it burned like fire, and Bellona realized there was more to this weapon than met the eye.

  She grimaced and flew away to build some distance, and her adversary followed together with the four ghosts. Bellona had to dodge beams and the occasional jet-propelled Kuma girl soaring past her, then she summoned a sheathed katana to her side.

  Time to use our new trick on her.

  She took a stance and let some of the ghosts come closer before she unsheathed the katana in a single slashing motion. Blue energies covered the blade, and the slash traveled through the air as a blue line.

  The villainess herself recognized the danger and dodged to the side, with the traveling energies clipping some of the feathers off her right wing. The dream phantoms dodged as well, but one of the Flower Brigade ghosts was caught and bisected by the traveling cut. It glitched and vanished entirely.

  “Good. Now let’s deal the same way with the rest, one after the-”

  Bellona proper couldn’t finish. A kick to Bellona’s back launched her towards the approaching group. The Kuma Group girl with the mechanical weapons who soared past her earlier made a loop around to attack her again.

  There’s just too many of them! I’ll use this…

  The phantoms were about to welcome her with braced weapons, then Bellona pointed her halberd at her adversary.

  “Realm of Duels!”

  The phantoms vanished, and Bellona got herself to a stop as their environment was encased by blue energy lines on the horizon and permeated by a faint light shining from the horizon. The masked woman looked around and Bellona could hear her clicking her tongue.

  “A pocket dimension? To keep me isolated from my phantoms?” she remarked and then had to fend off a blow from Bellona’s halberd. The two were locked in a struggle again and Bellona could see cruel, ice blue eyes behind her mask scanning her, narrowing with amusement.

  “Good thinking! However…”

  She kicked Bellona away, and as the Magical Girl wanted to charge the villainess again, she stopped dead in her tracks as she saw what the winged woman was doing. With a single slash across the air, the pocket dimension collapsed, like the villainess merely popped a balloon the two were inside of.

  The three surviving phantoms surrounded Bellona, and she had to dodge their thorned whip, rocket-propelled punches and magical beams again with no breathing room.

  “You can’t trap me elsewhere, Bellona. And now, utterly outnumbered, you will die!”

  Bellona feverishly tried to think of a way out of her situation, but all of a sudden, the phantoms fizzled out, clutching their heads and screaming until they were completely gone. The villainess appeared just as dumbfounded as Bellona by this development.

  “What?! Impossible, I hid the children in…”

  Something fast came from below, out of the city, and caught the villainess with a punch to her face. The black outfit with white trims identified the Magical Girl as Luna of the Celestial Sisters. The villainess was sent backwards, tumbling through the air and had to flap her wings heavily to stabilize herself.

  “No one abducts children in this city without incurring our wrath!” Luna declared, pointing at the villainess. She wore strange, golden shoes with wings sprouting from them, explaining her fast flight, and her arms were covered in strange, metallic arm guards which extended into metal rings akin to brass knuckles; clearly a weapon meant for punching.

  The red-robed villainess growled under her mask, clutching her scythe, but then she had to dodge another Magical Girl’s attack as Sol came up behind her, swinging a golden great sword at her.

  “You’ve been lucky! I’ll get you next time, when you are alone… and vulnerable! Mark my words, Bellona Azure! The Dream Empress will claim your life!” the villainess now shouted as she realized that she was outnumbered. Luna and Sol both rushed her, but it was too late: the so-called ‘Dream Empress’ had already opened a portal elsewhere with her magic scythe and jumped through.

  ***

  Sol was immediately by Bellona’s side, touching her shoulder.

  “Are you alright?”

  Bellona nodded, letting out a long sigh.

  “I was not prepared for the fact that she could escape my pocket dimension. Without knowing where she had her hostages, I was just outnumbered and couldn’t fend off all the ghosts at once…” she gritted her teeth, tightening her grip around her halberd.

  “…being reset every two years for the past nine years really held me back, huh?”

  Luna joined the two of them, giving her an awkward smile, then she simply hugged her.

  “No moping, Paisen! You’re still, like, amazing!”

  “Kayfabe, Momo.” Sol reminded her.

  “Pff! No one’s, like, looking up here!” Luna complained

  “So, you two took care of the hostages?” Bellona asked with a smile.

  Sol nodded and pointed at the city.

  “She held them in a park, below the foliage. Luna and I caught wind of missing children and got them with a locator ring. We didn’t even know she was after you!”

  “Yeah, and then we saw, like, a blue glow in the sky and knew we had to go and help you, Bellona-paisen!” Luna added.

  “Thank you two, anyway. You’re still not using the earrings Madame Bille made for you?” Bellona now asked, looking around between the two.

  “Well…” Sol looked a little uncomfortable before she continued.

  “Yes. I don’t want to rely on any kind of power that comes from the Enchantress.”

  Luna looked towards Sol with a slightly concerned look before she looked at Miori.

  “That bitch ripped our old earrings straight off our ears back then. Had to get, like, plastic surgery for the tears.”

  Luna guided Bellona’s hand to her ear, making her touch her earlobe. Bellona could feel the small bump of an invisible scar.

  “Madame Bille assures us that the Enchantress can’t control these, but… I can’t bring myself to use any of her powers.” Sol added.

  Bellona nodded and let out a sigh.

  “Well, thank you again. I wonder how she caught up after I fled from her tailing me in the street with a cloaking spell, though. I was sure I made some distance between us…”

  “Cloaking spell?”

  Luna and Sol exchanged a look and then looked at Bellona.

  “Don’t you think she would have used that to attack you in the first place?”

  The words hung awkwardly in the air for an uncomfortable amount of time, and Bellona looked back at the cityscape with uncertainty.

  ***

  “Miori! What happened?!”

  Ayame was immediately by her side as she entered her apartment and undid her transformation. Miori blinked in genuine confusion until Ayame took a handkerchief and wiped her cheek. It stung, making her realize that her cheek was bleeding. The cut from the strange scythe persisted instead of becoming a bruise like all her usual injuries.

  “I have adhesive strips and disinfectants in my bathroom, don’t worry!”

  Miori nodded and let her girlfriend treat her without making a fuss. After the wound was properly treated and covered, she spent the rest of the evening in Ayame’s arms.

  “I don’t like this,” Bellona commented quietly in her mind.

  “Nothing should be able to seriously injure you while you wear me as armor. That scythe also looks familiar… I fear it might be from my home world.”

  Miori stared ahead and let out a sigh, leaning her head against Ayame’s shoulder, letting her kiss her forehead while they waited for Seika to arrive.

  I’ll be careful, partner.

  Her troubled thoughts were interrupted as her phone rang, and as she checked it, it was a message from her mother.

  ‘Hey, Miori,

  ‘I did some thinking these past few days, and I’d like to apologize.

  ‘Back when I was a teen my mother never understood my choices and I swore I would do it much better than her. I failed doing just that. I was supportive when you came out as being attracted to girls, but then I went and pushed back against the one girl you’re really into, anyway. I’m sorry.

  ‘What I want to say is that I support you. Your choices for your relationships and your heroism, too.

  ‘Love you, Mom’

  “Well, I’m glad to have her approval at last.” Bellona chimed in, making Miori chuckle.

  I’m sure she was charmed by your appearance, my dear partner.

  “As charmed as you or Seika, hm?”

  Miori grinned to herself until Ayame peeked over her shoulder.

  “Hm? What do you have there?” she asked and then her eyes went wide. She leaned in to claim a kiss from Miori with a radiant smile.

  “You have her approval? Wonderful! Let’s wait for Seika and tell her the good news!”

  “Nosy idol bitches!” the Dream Empress cursed as she stepped out of her dimensional tear in her own apartment. She took off her mask and inspected her cheek, nodding in approval as she didn’t notice any damage.

  “I could have had her, if they didn’t interfere!” She slammed a hand on her desk before she tossed her mask aside and undressed.

  Maria Hattori, the fashion CEO, looked at herself in the mirror and traced the scar on her left shoulder with a finger, where Bellona Azure drove her halberd into her five years ago.

  “You will still have your chance.” A quiet voice came from behind her, and Maria turned around immediately, grabbing her scythe and holding it at the ready, undressed as she was.

  A beautiful woman with pointy ears stood in front of her. She was dressed in simple green fabric with protective pieces of leather over critical areas like her shins, forearms, her torso and her neck. A large number of knives were tucked away in various spots on her leather armor and her belt held two slightly longer daggers.

  “Who are you?!” Maria demanded to know. The elf stepped closer, unimpressed as her jet-black hair gently swayed with every step. She ran a finger along the side of the scythe’s blade as she answered.

  “We have the same benefactors. And we share a common goal. I can help you.”

  “And what would that common goal be?” Maria asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “The death of this world’s most meddlesome guardians: Minerva Crimson and Bellona Azure.”