Magical Girl Overtime [Second Arc Complete!]

Pallas Athena couldn’t believe that she was missing Scotus’ shadows as her enemies. The pocket dimensions, as terrifying as they must have been for the victims of those abductions, at least prevented damage to the environment and innocent bystanders, unlike the current attack of the ‘players’ from the Rodent Regiment’s dimension and the Dream Empress, whose dream bubbles spread throughout the city.

Athena accelerated her flight between the high rises of Tokyo, goading the Dream Empress into chasing her, while she was doing multiple things at once: she took potshots at the invading ‘players’ with summoned creatures from her magic cloth, prevented the further spread of dream shades by firing spells at the feathers her opponent shed, and exchanged blows with Maria whenever they got close enough. Luckily for her, the villainess appeared to not be interested in anyone but her in the first place.

She came for her, time after time again, swinging her scythe to bisect or decapitate her, and every time Athena moved Pallas in the way, blocking her opponent’s attack with a deafening clang of metal meeting obsidian.

“Come on, say something! This is your world, too, so why are you helping these invaders?” she shouted, pulling her spear to the side to divert the Empresses’ blade away from her neck before she slammed the shaft of her spear into her opponent’s side.

There was nothing. Not even a grunt of pain, like the Empress was a zombie who could shrug off hits without issue while pursuing her prey relentlessly. The only reaction she got out of the winged menace was her breaking free from the bind and taking another swing at the Magical Girl. Athena let out a curse and suspended her powers of flight, falling like a stone for a brief moment to evade the obsidian, god-slaying blade.

On the way down she spotted two people who were pursued by one of the invading ‘players’, a human with a rifle, intentionally dressed to evoke the visuals of a cowboy. The people running away appeared to be a couple, with the man quickly pulling the woman along and to the side whenever the asphalt exploded from a landing shot. Some other players stood behind the cowboy, taking aim with their own rifles, quite obviously intending to shoot the couple dead the moment they got bored of making them dance.

Athena acted immediately: She let the magic cloth on her helmet expand and made shimmering images appear on it, which rotated before settling on the creature of her choice: a griffin. A blast of magic shot from the cloth towards the ‘players’ and shook the ground between them, making the majestic mythical creature appear. Its sharp beak pecked straight through the first player, and the next was swiped aside by a strike of its tail as it emerged in its full size from the magical orb.

Instantly, the players diverted their attention towards the beast and ordered each other to shoot at it with panicked voices. Loud bangs and the creature’s shrieks filled the street, and Athena looked on as the pursued couple fled safely around a corner, while players were reduced to colorful cubes.

Her short shift in attention had its price. She only barely dodged another strike from the Dream Empress, and the obsidian blade carved a scratch across her upper arm. Black flames burned on the edges of the open wound for a second before they vanished, and Athena knew that this strike injured Seika as well.

“This isn’t sustainable. We need another plan!” Pallas communicated to Athena’s mind, and she agreed. She circled around and charged Maria, aiming to at least incapacitate her with her next strike. Her hope was to injure, then capture her and force her to keep her spell up until the invaders were dealt with to keep the civilians safe.

Her spear aimed for Maria’s shoulder, the one her opponent had already been injured in multiple times. The Dream Empress, however, appeared to anticipate her strike and simply swiped it aside with her scythe, and Athena had to quickly dodge the villainesses’ hand, which attempted to grab her face, no doubt to force her into a dream. Athena accelerated again, shattering some window with the passing shockwave as she led the Dream Empress into another chase. And then, she put the puzzle pieces together.

I finally know what’s wrong with her!

“And what would that be?” Pallas asked, sounding exasperated. Athena could imagine that meeting the cursed blade that cut one of the oldest Deogemma in direct combat wasn’t exactly pleasant for her, no matter that she was a weapon herself.

I’ve only ever seen one person act like this. It was Bellona when she got controlled by the Dread Enchantresses’ poison!

“Why would she need to be mind controlled? I thought she already hated your and Bellona’s guts! She’s come for you, poison or not.”

That’s what confuses me the most about this. But now that we know this, we should identify where exactly the poison needle on her body is and remove it.

Athena turned to face the Empress again, who was surprisingly close already and slammed right into the Magical Girl, sending her tumbling through the air, right towards a high rise. She braced herself for impact while trying to accelerate in the opposite direction, but just as she was about to break through the windows, a blue light surrounded the building and she simply phased through it, as it became transparent and, finally, vanished entirely, only leaving the naked ground behind where it used to be.

“What the…”

Athena fended off another attack by the Dream Empress, shooting fireballs her way to keep her dodging in the air as she frantically looked around, trying to find the origin of the strange phenomenon. She saw more ‘players’ on the ground, high-fiving each other and standing next to strange pole-shaped objects with whirring tops that spread odd lights.

“That feeling… that house got transported to another dimension, and all the people inside besides!” Pallas spoke up and Athena grimaced, extending her magic cloth and sending her snake companion into the streets to deal with the invaders, though she knew she was too late.

However, just as she was about to use her magic, something odd happened. A portal appeared, one of Mana’s, and a fully armored knight with futuristic weaponry stepped out. Athena couldn’t hear what he was shouting as he furiously attacked the invaders, but it sounded angry.

She realized that she recognized the design from one of the miniatures in Rinko’s place and breathed a little sigh of relief.

Good. Nicola mentioned that she wanted to train the girl. But we’ll need to figure out which world those people were abducted to and mount a rescue! But to be able to do that…

She turned around to face the Dream Empress again, but something odd happened. Her assailant had stopped mid-air and just stared ahead, like she saw something, somewhere far away. Athena approached cautiously, uncertain whether this was some abnormality with the mind-controlling needle.

As she approached Maria, the woman’s head snapped around, focusing Athena. The Magical Girl took a defensive position, but no attack came. Instead, the Dream Empress grabbed her own mask and pulled it off. Black hair, with a white gradient towards the tips that had grown out a little too far spilled forth, and pale blue eyes stared at Athena, confused, yet hateful. Maria Hattori’s face was marked with a scar running diagonally across her face, crossing over the bridge of her nose, and a small trickle of blood ran down her forehead, where the poison needle on the inside of her carnival mask had pierced the skin.

“Where…?” the woman started to ask a question, but then she immediately took a swing at Athena, locking weapons with her in a clinch.

“You…!” she hissed, with venom dropping from that single word.

“It’s your fault! Because of you I was imprisoned, and…!”

She trailed off, and Athena pushed back against her. This woman was freakishly strong, she realized; despite having no otherworldly partner, her body was altered to a point where it was a stretch to still call her human.

“No… it’s her fault! Hers! That I’m in this shit! That my life got ruined! That… I’m going to make that bitch regret everything she ever did to me!”

Maria kept mumbling maniacally, then she locked eyes with Athena.

“I have no time for you! Out of the way!” she shouted and shot her hand forward. Athena was caught off guard and felt the Dream Empresses’ fingers closing around her face.

A dream engulfed her mind. She saw herself, with Bellona, Seika, Miori and Ayame, living a simple, peaceful life somewhere in the countryside, in a small house that could accommodate them and their daughter, Arisu. The view outside the kitchen window was a beautiful vista of a Japanese mountain range, and the entire family was gathered for breakfast. Athena considered sitting down with the rest of her family and letting the day begin in the presence of her loved ones, but Seika’s head snapped around, making eye contact with her.

“You’re going to hit the ground.”

And so, she did. Athena let out a groan and rose from the dirt, realizing that she landed on the now empty plot of land that the high rise vanished from. The sounds of the ‘players’ clashing with the silver-armored knight reached her ears, and her addled mind worked overtime to remember what she did before she was made to dream.

Damn it, the Dream Empress!

She looked into the sky and saw the black-winged woman flying away in the distance. North, towards Saitama. She groaned and got up, shaking some dirt off her before noticing that she landed right next to one of the odd, whirring rods, and something told her that it was important, somehow. She grabbed it and yanked it out of the ground, stowing it inside her crystal before she ascended into the sky and followed Maria.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Rinko cursed as she looked into the display case that used to house the diorama. All the miniatures were gone by now, but there were still spots in the world that were under attack without any support from the sci-fi knights and goblins. Mana watched her as she hastily walked around the store, checking if she missed a display case somewhere.

There was one right next to Mana, but for some reason, Rinko didn’t even consider approaching it. Inside there were various miniatures of characters who looked super strong, at least to Mana’s inexperienced eyes, yet Madame Bille’s eccentric pupil didn’t even look their way as she scrounged through the store, looking for miniatures that were assembled by staff to be displayed in other display cases, once the painting was finished.

“Well, that does it. We’re going to make some defenders out of unpainted grey plastic,” Rinko confirmed and brought some half-assembled miniatures to a desk where she immediately got to work. She cut parts out of a sprue with a pair of side cutters and attached them to the rest of the models with plastic cement, after taking extra care to rub off thin, uneven lines on the model with the back of the hobby knife she used, making those areas smooth in the process.

“This takes too long, Rinko… why don’t you just use those?” Mana complained, grabbing Rinko’s shoulder and pointing towards the display case. Rinko followed her gesture with her eyes and immediately jumped out of her seat, looking at Mana like she just suggested that they should try eating a baby.

“Never… suggest such a thing… ever again… Mana! You don’t know what you’re saying! Do you have any idea what those are?!” Rinko spoke with previously unheard-of intensity, and Mana shook her head, staring at her in utter surprise.

“Oh, the ignorance! These miniatures in there are being rotated between stores, to show off the pinnacle of skill! Each and every one of them is a winner of the highest painting prizes in the entire hobby, the Aurum Daimones! Genius artists and craftsmen spent hundreds of hours on them, every brush stroke is a perfect expression of mastery, motor skills, artistic vision…! Every little bit of posing, of work put into the scenic bases and dioramas they are placed on…! To suggest exposing them to the danger of getting scratched in combat, that’s like a declaration of war against the soul of the artists who created them!”

Mana didn’t know why, but she felt like Rinko was one wrong word out of Mana’s mouth away from becoming a true villainous Madame Bille, so the witch simply shut up and nodded. And, just like that, Rinko was back to her timid old self, awkwardly rubbing the back of her head.

“Ah… ahah… well. As long as you understand…! Come and help me put these together so we can send them out, alright?”

Mana nodded, still a little stunned by Rinko’s previous outburst, but she sat down at one of the paint stations, anyway. She was handed a sprue full of parts, a half-finished miniature and a paper with building instructions and started to help Rinko put the rest of her ‘army’ together.

The image of Miss Hitoishi briefly flashed in front of her mind’s eye as she remembered a rant of hers about Magical Girls that Mana once walked in on while delivering her latest manuscript.

Otaku are scary…

Bellona slashed through a player who approached her, while Kuma grabbed another and quickly bit their avatar in half. He swallowed noisily, and Bellona shuddered a little.

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“Their bodies might be fake, but the magical energies sustaining them are real,” the giant explained matter-of-factly, and Bellona grimaced. She didn’t quite like what he did, but if it kept him in the fight for longer, she had no right to complain to him about it, given their situation.

“There’s no end to them,” Bellona chose as a topic to complain about, instead. She had her armor’s HUD scan their battlefield, and it showed her various red highlights in the surrounding area that grew in number. More hostile players, coming for her, though some appeared to fight someone – or something – else.

Then there were two friendly markers that rapidly approached her and Kuma. She turned her head and her HUD zoomed in, letting her clearly see Arisu, who was carrying Marisa while flying straight towards her. And right next to her, as a bodyguard, was one of Rinko’s strange ‘Space Knights’. Bellona had conflicting feelings about this; on one hand, she worried as any mother should about her daughter’s safety, and how she’d rather have her anywhere but in the middle of this invasion, but her rational mind, on the other hand, knew perfectly well that Arisu’s ability was the key to shut down the invasion of the ‘players’ for good, as long as Annette came through and found someone in her world who had the necessary connections.

“Hold your ground, Kuma. I’ll be right back,” she spoke to the giant, who turned his head towards her and gave her a single nod before he grabbed and devoured another player.

Bellona accelerated, folding her gladii behind herself like wings before using their propulsion as an afterburner. She saw three players converging to attack her daughter, but the first was quickly fended off and slain by the silver knight. The next one suddenly fell out of the sky and then blinked out of existence after Marisa opened a portal and weaved a spell. The third one, however, came dangerously close, so Bellona accelerated even further and slammed into him at almost supersonic speed, impaling the man with dragon features on her halberd’s spike. She could see the confusion in his eyes before his avatar burst into the signature cubes that marked his kind’s death and she turned around, facing Arisu and Marisa with a tired smile.

“Are you hurt at all, you two?” she quickly asked them, and they shook their heads. Bellona took a deep breath before she allowed herself to smile, then she brought them back to Kuma to talk about their next steps.

“We’re the biggest target in the city, so we hope we’ll draw most of the players. I’ll leave it to you two to take them out of the game permanently.”

“That will only work for as long as they don’t realize that attacking us also destroys their game devices,” Marisa spoke, and all heads turned her way, so she explained further.

“If that’s a game, then they have social media, official forums, stuff like that. The players whose devices we destroy are probably already posting about it. It could be that they’ll start avoiding us.”

“And we can’t deal with everyone in the world from here! Mana texted me earlier that they’re all over the world!” Arisu complained.

“Annette and I have a plan for that, don’t you worry. We’ll just have to hold out until she comes,” Bellona reassured the two young girls. She just hoped that she was right.

***

December 2384

“Remind me why you’re not doing this yourself, PPiper?”

“Well, for starters, you have a squeaky-clean record. I have multiple minor infractions for trying to get NPCs to realize that they’re in a game, and some for… well, I didn’t exactly start out being nice to the guys I took out, so I have some trolling offenses and foul language warnings, too. If I were to walk up at the headquarters, their systems would likely light up like a Christmas tree.”

“I’m not sure I want to do this anymore,” he complained as he looked up the imposing corporate headquarters of Hayder-Katsuya. He could see lights in most of the thousands of rooms as two hundred floors of a pyramid-like structure dominated his field of vision and made his neck hurt from looking up. Water got into his eyes, too, owing to the harsh rain that fell that night, coupled with thunderstorms.

“Man up, ‘Ka’zarr’. Aren’t you a mighty warrior of Valhalla now?” PPiper egged him on through his headset and Zach let out some hot air through his nose.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned that… you’re just going to make fun of me forever for it, aren’t you?”

“Well, if that doesn’t get you moving, think about that ghost you like so much. Mana, I think? The little witch? You’d want to save her from being killed by another player, yes?”

“I suppose,” he grumbled and walked up to the large corporate building. There was a customer entrance that displayed all of the company’s newest products. It was mostly consumer electronics. Holographic TVs, the newest in AI-assisted implants, deep dive peripherals, and so on. But he knew that this was not everything that Hayder-Katsuya sold. Just one room over, there was a showroom for the newest in arms manufacturing as well.

Hayder-Katsuya sold to various other corpo-governments around the globe, but their private military still got the cream of the crop: heat-seeking missiles, DNA-sniffing autonomous assassination drones, humanoid armored combat suits, smart munitions; the company even had its own aircraft carrier fleet, and they were actively subjugating smaller nations for their raw resources, or used to, until asteroid mining became more profitable for them.

A showroom showed the founders, Christian Hayder and Kenji Katsuya shaking hands, which was a bit of a grotesque display given their history. It was an open secret that Hayder had Katsuya assassinated around fifteen years ago, and Katsuya’s son Masao had vanished entirely after the incident, likely dead himself. He was supposed to steer the company in a new direction, too, given his interest in hydroponics and expanding the field to make real vegetables affordable for the common man again. An aspiration that no doubt made him many enemies among the elite.

HK was a ruthless corporation, which also sold mindless entertainment: movies, TV shows, video games, half of them pro-corporate propaganda, but they were the best the residents of this city could get. And some of this mindless entertainment was Zach’s goal today.

“The fully immersive experience costs some good money, especially during events like this, you know…” he mumbled, and raised a brow immediately after as PPiper simply wired him two hundred and fifty creds.

“Here you go, do spend it all at once.”

“Generous. You just got those creds lying around somewhere?”

“I’ve been living an ascetic lifestyle. Work, eat, sleep, stop the Rodent Regiment from killing people. Rinse and repeat. I keep my meals simple, too,” PPiper explained, and Zach couldn’t discern how she felt about it at all from her tone of voice.

“Sounds sad. You’re supposed to spend it when you have it.”

“Yes, that’s what the corpos keep telling us twenty-four seven with their barrage of advertisements, don’t they?”

“Touché.”

Zach walked up to the counter, where a lady with a beautiful smile greeted him.

“Welcome, valued customer! How may Hayder-Katsuya serve you today?” Her voice reminded him of all the electric terminals throughout the city that offered services, like those of vending machines. Supposedly, the big corporations made their customer service employees get vocal augmentations and they all had the same voice that was scientifically proven to get the most people to make a purchase decision.

“I’d like to book the fully immersive experience for today’s event, please,” Zach told her and the lady bowed.

“An excellent choice! Do you wish to jump in with a new character and a fresh account, or will you use your own?”

No need to be incognito about this, I guess. If what PPiper said is true, then this will be the last time I log on, anyway. If not, then no harm done…

“I’ll be logging in with my existing character,” he confirmed.

“That would be two hundred and fifty Universal Credits for a full session of four hours,” the woman spoke and gestured towards Zach with her palm upturned. A prompt popped up on his ocular implant with a payment request, and with a thought, he confirmed it.

“Payment confirmed! Valued customer, you can enter through the door to my left and the lights on the floor will guide you to your very own immersion chamber!” the lady announced, and just after she finished her sentence, the aforementioned door simply slid open.

Zach entered into a corridor, and as he was told before, the lights on the ground were showing the way. They were animated, so it looked like a dotted line was walking the way with him, guiding him around corners whenever there was a fork in the path.

He passed by many doors, all of them having a number on them. There were hundreds of rooms for the fully immersive experience, and most of them looked occupied. As he predicted, demand went up during an active community event.

Finally, the dotted line flowed right into a door that opened as he approached. Inside was a large pod, while the walls were covered in sound dampening foam. After the door closed, the only sounds he could hear were his own breathing and his footsteps; the same voice as that of the woman at the counter came from a speaker, though he was certain that this was a pre-recorded message instead of her talking to him.

“Welcome, valued customer! Is this your first time in the immersive experience?”

“It is,” Zach confirmed.

“What a great purchase you made! The immersive experience offers state-of-the-art sensory deprivation techniques coupled with Deep Dive gear to really make you forget that you have a real flesh-and-blood body! Coupled with near-zero latency from being located right below World of Infinity’s central servers, this is the best way of experiencing the game in the entire world! To proceed, please disrobe, shower and wear the supplied Dive Gear!”

Zach approached a table in the corner of the room. There was a waterproof Dive Gear set, ready to use. The rest of the table was empty to accommodate his clothes, and he quickly disrobed, just as he was instructed, and stepped into the shower, washing any impurities off his body that could dirty the isolation tank. After he was done, he dried himself off and said ‘ready’ to the speaker, after which the pod let out a small hiss and opened, revealing the inside, which right now was bathed in a gentle blue light. There was water inside, but it felt thick. Salty.

“Please put on your Dive Gear and lie face-up in the liquid!” the voice instructed him merrily, and Zach obeyed. He put the device over his head, and it switched to roaming mode, allowing him to see his surroundings through the front cameras. He approached the sensory deprivation tank and took a deep breath, stepping inside and placing himself in the water.

It didn’t feel like any bath he was used to. It was like he floated on a mattress, almost weightlessly, with only a small hint of an oily feeling due to the high salt concentration. He reached for a button on the side of the tub, and with a click, the lid closed and the lights went out, leaving him in complete darkness, with only his heartbeat and his breathing to accompany him.

The darkness didn’t last long. The visor covering his eyes turned into game mode, and he was greeted by the company logo, followed by a selection of various Hayder-Katsuya-developed games. He immediately selected World of Infinity and logged into his account with just a thought and an iris scan.

He entered the white void of the waiting room, like he had so many times, looking at his hands, which were those of an oversized rodent.

He felt amazing. Dives have always been fully immersive, connecting to implants and giving neurological feedback to the users, while preventing any flailing by blocking nerve signals to the body, but he always had phantom sensations from his real body lying in his bed at home. A sudden cold breeze hitting his skin, or an involuntary twitch of his muscles. The feeling of his body sinking into his mattress. None of those feelings were present now. He truly was Ka’Zarr, the war chief of the Rodent Regiment.

“Hey! Glad to see that you made it!” a familiar voice shouted from behind, and he turned around to face PPiper. She was wearing her ridiculous outfit, as always, and immediately slung her arm around his shoulders. With their avatars, she was twice his size and had to kneel to do it.

“Ready for the greatest event ever?” she asked him, and he nodded. In here, the words they spoke were monitored, and while careful allusions worked, they were still risky. They simply pretended to be gaming buddies who would cause mayhem on Tokyo’s streets.

“Good! I’ve had a peek and everyone’s trying to bring that giant and the blue Magical Girl down. Can’t let them have the glory now, can we?”

Zach nodded again, and a portal appeared in front of them, showing the chaotic city on the other side.

Now to see if there’s any truth to these ‘ghosts’, or if I’m just losing it.

December 2025

“It’s like I said… they’re starting to avoid us,” Marisa observed. They just destroyed another player’s headset, and their avatar, a catgirl just like the young witch, blinked out of existence. Bellona grimaced and gestured for them to follow her as she set course towards another part of town.

“If they’re avoiding us, then we’ll have to go and hunt them down,” she told the young girls, though she quickly stopped as she was face to face with someone she knew.

Annette, or PPiper, floated in the air in front of them, holding a familiar-looking rat the size of a child in her arms. The little fellow looked less than thrilled, with his front legs, or arms, hanging down as her arms were closed around his chest.

“Hey Ka’Zarr!” Arisu spoke immediately, waving at him, and the little fellow even returned the gesture.

“We only have a few moments before I get banned for saying this, Bellona, so here’s the deal: have your daughter bring you where this fellow’s real body is located, and the entire game’s infrastructure is right on top of his location. Quickly!”

Bellona nodded towards Arisu, who focused the little rat fellow with her eyes – but before she could instruct Marisa where to open a portal to, she shouted in surprise and Bellona turned back towards PPiper. Her body became translucent and glitched a little in place.

“Ah shit, I didn’t expect it to be that fast! Hurry and-”

She vanished, and Ka’zarr, who she just held in her arms, let out a scream as he was dropped. Bellona quickly rushed after him, with Arisu and Marisa in close pursuit, though Marisa screamed even louder than the rat soldier as she was dragged into a descent faster than freefall by the girl holding her.

“I got it!” Arisu shouted behind Bellona, and a portal opened close to the ground. Bellona rushed towards it and heard the typical death sound of the ‘players’ as the rodent unceremoniously hit the ground next to the portal.

***

December 2384

Bellona landed in a strange, padded room. There was a large, spherical object next to her, and as she looked around, she saw a shower and a table with some clothes on it.

“Valued customer! The fully immersive experience is intended for only one person at a time! Please be advised that this facility is not a spa, or a love hotel, but a gaming service facility!” an annoyingly friendly female voice spoke over a speaker in a not-quite chastising tone.

She would be lying if she said she wasn’t disoriented by this turn of events. She expected another apartment, maybe one that was next to wherever the game was being hosted, but this looked more like a relaxation facility.

The spherical object hissed, and a lid opened up, revealing the inside: a shallow bathtub with a single, blue light that turned on as the lid was half open.

A man stood inside, covering his crotch with one hand while he pulled off a headset with the other. The water that dripped off his ginger hair looked much too thick to be normal water, and he blinked into the light like he needed to get used to it again.

“Motherf- you really are real people!” the man spoke, with thousands of conflicting emotions flashing across his face, then he shook his head, pointing at the ceiling. Thankfully with the hand that he had on the headset before, not the other one.

“The game servers are up there! Go!” he shouted, and Bellona nodded. Her floating gladii gathered around her and focused a single point she designated – and then, with a single shot from all of them, the ceiling burst wide open. Alarms blared and the room was tinted in a red light, but Bellona was already flying through the new opening in the ceiling.

She vaguely knew how online games were hosted in the real world. In her mind, she should see rows upon rows of noisy server racks, blowing hot air, with small status lights blinking in various colors, but none of that awaited her here.

She instead found herself in an enormous hall, with untold numbers of tubes and cables, all feeding into a giant machine at the center. To her eyes it looked like a vertical tube with the occasional window allowing her to see inside, to see some kind of cylinder, spinning and creating a blue glow that broke through the windows and illuminated the inside of the hall.

The contraption spanned from the floor to the ceiling, and Bellona had a feeling that it spanned the entire building from bottom to top.

Control panels and fuel supplies were connected to it in various places, though Bellona had no time or interest in pondering their exact function. She was here to destroy this world’s means of invasion for good.

She accelerated towards the machine and passed it, slashing through it with a mighty swing of her halberd. At first, it was like nothing happened, but soon she saw that part of the cylinder slowly stopped spinning, as its connection to the rest of the contraption was now severed.

Panicked shouts and curses were screamed all around her, and only now did she notice the many people in lab coats, as well as the armed guards who pointed their automatic weapons at her.

I’m putting an end to your machinations!

Bellona flew towards the machine again, and her magical barrier deflected various projectiles as she hacked through it with her halberd once more, then again. This time she struck it vertically, and as her halberd got stuck in the metallic shell that encased the spinning machine, she grinned.

She flew up towards where she presumed the top of the building and the sky to be, ripping the machinery open through the entire height of the building as her gladii shot holes into the ceiling for her to pass through.

Explosions followed her, and every floor she passed she saw people in lab coats and people in expensive-looking business suits who operated holographic terminals flinching away from where she tore through the concrete and steel, bringing violent explosions with her. Her ascent took half a minute until she finally broke through the ceiling of whatever building she was in and she finally saw where she was.

A city stretched out in front of her: neon-colored advertisements and the lights of countless apartments and office spaces illuminated the otherwise dark, blocky expanse, as heavy rain fell down on it. The smoldering hole behind Bellona spewed fire from time to time with the ongoing collapse of whatever that tube was and she could hear the alarms from inside the building as evacuation orders were given.

Lightning struck somewhere in the distance, and there, behind a large city wall, Bellona saw another remarkable thing: the buildings from Tokyo that had been taken away by the players, standing in a barren wasteland outside of the city, barely visible over the horizon from her elevated position.

A portal opened next to her, and Marisa poked her head plus witch hat through the opening.

“You did it! The players all suddenly disappeared!” she shouted, and Arisu poked her head next to her through the opening.

“Come back, mama!”

Bellona shook her head, pointing towards the buildings in the distance.

“There were still people in those buildings. I will get them out of here!”

“We’re coming with you, then!” Arisu promptly declared and tried to climb through the portal, but something strange happened. The little hole in reality flickered and its size looked unstable, so Bellona quickly pushed her daughter back before it would bisect her.

“Something happened… it’s like someone activated a spell or machine that interferes with my portal magic! Just like what Mana told me happened with the High Enchantresses’ world,” Marisa complained, and Bellona narrowed her eyes as she quickly went through her options.

“It’s fine. You two go and help the city, and right after, I want you to go to Janus and see if he can craft a key to this world.”

She saw doubt in her daughter’s eyes, so she followed it up with something else.

“You’ve seen Annette, yes? You know where to find her?” she spoke to them, and Arisu let her head hang a little before she looked at the buildings, then back to Bellona and nodded.

“Good. Craft a key for Annette’s apartment. Contact Annette, and we’ll figure something out from there. And if you don’t find me, use one of Nicola’s locator rings.”

Bellona reached out and gently patted her daughter’s head while the portal was still a head wide, giving her a gentle smile – then the portal collapsed, forcing her to retract her hand and trapping her on this side for now. She turned towards the buildings standing in the distance and gathered her gladii behind herself again, using their propulsion once more and launching herself towards the city wall. There were people who were waiting to be saved, and she was going to answer their calls. She could figure out how to get home after she had done that.

December 2025

Athena’s eyes wandered from side to side as she followed the Dream Empress. Everywhere across the city, the ‘players’ vanished, and in their wake, the dream bubbles and shades collapsed as well.

“For her to undo her spell… it’s unexpected,” Pallas spoke quietly, and Athena nodded in response.

“Whatever her goal is right now, she has no need to keep the city’s inhabitants imprisoned for it.”

Saitama came into view, and with it she soon saw gaping holes where warehouses used to stand. Maria suddenly accelerated while descending, and Athena pushed hard to keep up with her.

For taking a few good hits earlier, she’s surprisingly mobile.

To Athena’s surprise, Maria landed next to one of the vanished warehouses and appeared to stare at the ground. Miyu and Momo were already present as Luna and Sol, and, predictably, they turned towards Maria and pointed their weapons at her, expecting a fight which never came.

Maria fell on her knees, and now Athena could see the bloodied corpse of an elven woman. As Athena landed, she exchanged a look with the Celestial Sisters, who still held their weapons pointed at Maria’s chest, but the latter didn’t appear to care.

The elf’s eyes were lifeless and open, staring into the sky, and a trickle of dried and wiped-off blood marred the corner of her mouth, which appeared to be raised in a bitter smile. There were multiple stab wounds on her torso, and the murder weapon wasn’t far: a gilded dagger, currently clutched by two hands of another dead elf, who had rammed the blade into his own heart. His facial expression betrayed desperation.

“What happened?” Athena asked Sol, who stepped closer, leaving Luna to watch Maria.

“It looks like the High Enchantress and her people were tricked by one of your Deogemma foes: Fames, the goddess of hunger. We told this woman as much, but the moment she looked like she believed us and wanted to go back to talk to her mistress…”

“Fames must have taken control of that guy over there!” Luna took over and glared at the dead man.

“Made him stab her, like, a dozen times. When he came back to his senses, he killed himself out of guilt while we were tryin’ to keep her alive.”

“Why…”

The voice that interrupted them was quiet, weak, and expressed complete disbelief. It was Maria’s.

“Why command me to free myself? Didn’t you hate me, Taenya? Wouldn’t that have been ideal? For me to die fighting one of the Magical Girls?”

“Shut your mouth! A lot of this is your fault!” Luna barked her way, and Maria looked up at the Magical Girl threatening her with a magic arrow. She grimaced and pushed her forehead into the magical projectile’s tip, until blood ran down her face.

“Then do it, you little idol bitch!”

“I’m gonna!”

“Do it!!”

“No one kills any more people here!” Athena shouted, and Luna flinched back a little. Maria scoffed and went back to wistfully staring at the corpse in front of her.

“We’ll take her to Madame Bille’s and have a talk. I doubt that the chaos, the killing or the theft of rice was the true goal of this invasion! Something is up, and we’ll need to figure out what that is, fast!” Athena commanded the two idols, who nodded. Luna quickly grabbed a magic ring that became magical shackles when activated and put them on Maria’s wrists, tying them behind her back. The villainess didn’t resist but kept staring at the dead elf.

“What about them?” Sol voiced Maria’s unspoken question, pointing at both the dead woman and man.

“We’ll take them with us. I shudder to think what Triple-Eye would do with their bodies if they got their hands on them,” Athena confirmed. She turned around to look towards Tokyo. Smoke rose from various places, and the skyline was fundamentally different, now that various of the taller buildings were gone.

The attack on Earth left deep scars, and Athena knew that the world wouldn’t ever be the same again.