Magical Girl Overtime [Second Arc Complete!]

March 2026

Arisu twirled once in front of her mirror, admiring herself. It was only a slight change in color, but the red stripes of her uniform were a world of difference to her. She was a proper high school girl now, 15 years of age, at least as far as people outside her family knew, and, most importantly, she would be able to spend lunch breaks with Mana and Marisa without sneaking off through Mana’s portals.

She wanted to sit together with her girlfriends during lunch; openly, in the schoolyard, not tucked away on the rooftop, even if the latter made her feel like an anime protagonist and the view was enjoyable.

She hummed happily and stepped out of her bedroom, joining her mamas by the table. Mama Miori was quietly grumbling as she went over her studying materials, while Mama Ayame sat next to her, explaining various things to her.

“Good morning, Arisu,” Mama Bellona spoke and embraced her from behind. She looked up at her mother’s smiling face, leaning a little against her. It was strange to see Mama Bellona in anything but armor – but here she was, in comfortable loungewear no less.

“It’s getting a little cramped here, isn’t it?” Mama Seika commented as she brought food from the kitchen to the table, placing Arisu’s breakfast down first and encouraging her to dig in. “We moved in with just two people at first, with space for a child, then Ayame joined us, and now you two can just appear out of your crystals. Maybe we should think about moving.”

“Maybe to a place where Ami can move around as well?” Arisu suggested, poking her fried fish with chopsticks and bringing it to her mouth.

“Right, she lives with us as well,” Mama Seika commented with a little sigh.

“At this point we might consider taking out a loan for a house. Once Miori is done with her studies, we’ll have three incomes,” she spoke, tossing a glance towards Mama Minerva who was still in the kitchen, humming as she fried an omelet.

“It’s not like you two could go work, not like that at least…”

“Let’s leave the money talk for after we see our daughter off to school, hm?” Mama Ayame winked at Mama Seika, who let out a sigh and nodded.

Arisu simply kept eating, shoveling rice into her mouth as she half-heartedly listened to the grown-up talk as Mama Minerva walked over and hugged her.

“A high school girl! Our little one is growing up so fast! I barely got to know her before she became a charming young woman!”

“I’ve only been here a few months…!” Arisu responded with a chuckle and leaned her head against Mama Minerva’s, who let go of her with a gentle smile.

“Well… I packed you a lunch, too. Grab the box once you’re done eating. And do be in time for the opening ceremony! No getting distracted by something you’re seeing on the way to school, hm?” she spoke and Arisu blushed a little.

Just the other day she had followed a stray cat with an otherworldly energy to it, and before she knew it, she was in an entirely different part of town and had lost track of the creature. She was heavily chastised by her teachers for getting to school late.

“…that was just the one time…!” she complained, and Mama Minerva laughed, leaning in to plant a kiss on her forehead.

“Sure, sure… the other time when you fought kobolds on the way to school didn’t count, hm?”

“People were in danger…!”

“And I was a mere second away. But still, I’m proud of you.”

“Then stop teasing me about it…!” Arisu pouted, and her mamas shared a laugh. She wasn’t really mad, either, if she was being honest.

***

Arisu hummed quietly to herself as she walked towards the station, taking in the world around her. The number of visitors had increased even beyond the visible elves and humans from Annie’s world; as far as she could tell, the barrier between dimensions in general had worn thinner than ever before.

Anomalies happened irregularly in the city, stranding monsters or intelligent beings in Tokyo – and sadly, most felt compelled to attack their surroundings when that happened. Arisu, her mamas and all their friends did their best to stop those attacks and avoid arming the stranded people, but it was a race against time – against Triple-Eye.

She was now fully aware that the insurance company that only demanded salvage rights to incident sites was also capturing otherworldly beings, for an unknown purpose, putting those visitors at an even greater risk than before.

Arisu’s thoughts about the invasions came to a halt as she reached the station; after a short wait she hopped on the train together with other girls wearing her uniform. She didn’t know any of them yet, so she simply greeted them with a little nod, which they returned. One of the girls had what looked like long horse ears, with a thick tail to match, both in the same fire red color as her hair. She looked a little uncomfortable with the gazes she got from the other passengers, so Arisu moved in front of her, at least covering up the tail.

“Thanks…” the girl mumbled, and Arisu nodded in response.

“You’re wearing red stripes… so you’re starting your first year of high school as well?”

The girl nodded, and Arisu smiled at her.

“We’ll be in the same year, then! My name is Arisu Takeuchi. You can just call me Arisu, though!”

“Ah…! My name is Saki. Saki Katou.”

“Nice to meet you, Saki! Let’s walk to school together, then?”

Saki nodded. Together, the two rode the train to the next station, and from there to Shibuya, from where they walked through the residential side streets towards their school. They passed by the Inari shrine on their way, and a familiar figure with white hair stood below the torii gate, sweeping the stairs. Arisu immediately waved towards Inari, and the goddess in disguise returned the gesture. Saki followed the exchange and tilted her head.

“You know the shrine maiden?”

“Ah! Y-yeah, I sometimes come here to… pray for good grades,” Arisu quickly lied, grinning awkwardly. Saki looked at her with a raised brow, though then she let out a sigh.

“Maybe I should do that, too… I know I’ve been slacking in English.”

Arisu quickly averted her eyes. That was one of the subjects she was strangely good at in the eyes of her classmates, thanks to her inherent power to understand and translate the intent of foreign words. Getting her hand to consciously write the words in Japanese or English was the hardest part, and after that, she automatically translated like a professional. Another subject, however, completely eluded her so far.

“Hah… yeah, I need to study harder when it comes to math.”

Arisu kept walking with Saki, feeling Inari’s eyes on her back. She looked over her shoulder and gave the goddess an awkward smile as she saw the wordless instruction to keep the real identity of the ‘miko’ a secret in the woman’s expression – and the gesture as Inari put a finger on her lips.

Come on… I’m not a blabbermouth!

“Oh, I’ve heard that a lot of otaku have come to that shrine recently… is that maybe one of the reasons you’re here? Are you an otaku?”

“Huh?! No! Well, I like anime, but…”

Suddenly, Arisu felt a familiar and thoroughly unwelcome tingle at the back of her head. An incursion, she realized. She took a step away from Saki, clearing her throat as she came up with an excuse on the spot.

“Uhm… I forgot something. You go on ahead without me, though…!”

“Are you sure? The opening ceremony is in ten minutes! They’re going to chew you out if you miss it!” Saki cautioned her, but Arisu shook her head. She turned around and walked to find a quiet corner – but at that moment, she saw a crimson streak in the sky, which descended and stopped, hovering above the street.

Minerva Crimson in the flesh was there, looking around, scanning the area – and then she made eye contact with Arisu, for only the fraction of a second. Without so much as saying a word, she conveyed her will to Arisu, who let her shoulders hang, then the Magical Girl vanished as soon as she had appeared, with only a shimmering red trail remaining in the sky above.

The girls around Arisu had all stopped to look at their crimson defender, while Arisu turned around and rejoined Saki, who herself had been too busy staring at the Magical Girl that she didn’t notice what happened between her and the young half-Deogemma.

“…changed your mind?”

“Yeah. It can wait.”

“…now, the world has changed significantly. Strange incidents have tripled in occurrence, and some of you have experienced changes in your own bodies. So, it is our duty to remind you all to be diligent in your studies, and be careful, both on your way to school, and back. Resilience is what makes our students excel, and…”

The entrance ceremony was proceeding without any issue, or any student being late for that matter. Arisu stood anxiously amidst the crowd of first-years, next to Saki, while she let her eyes wander and already tuned out the words of the principal.

Roughly ten per cent of the girls attending this school sprouted animal ears and tails since the incident in December. To Arisu’s relief, it didn’t appear like their classmates treated those girls any different than before, given that they already had unusual hair colors thanks to their exposure to the other world. Some girls, however, were afraid that it wouldn’t stop at ears and tails; Arisu pondered how she could tell them that the mutations wouldn’t go further than that without raising suspicion – maybe she could ask Stevyn to do it in her stead.

A hand waving in front of her face tore her out of her ruminations, and she turned her head to look directly at Saki.

“The speech is over. We should check our classes on the roster.”

“Ah! Sorry, I was spacing out…!”

“Sheesh, Arisu. This is important, you know?”

Arisu grimaced; in a way, Saki was right. This was her first entrance ceremony as well, seeing how she was only born in the middle of the last school year. Still, the platitudes quickly became a same-y droning that she couldn’t focus on anymore, so she wasn’t entirely certain if it was such an important part of her school life.

For now, she followed Saki outside, to the school’s bulletin board, where all the other girls attending the school were gathered. In the collection of school uniforms, she spotted two familiar sets of cat ears. Mana and Marisa grinned, waving towards her.

“Arisu! You’re finally going to the same building as us, hm?” Mana spoke with a smile, then she put a hand on Arisu’s shoulder as she stepped closer. That was about the amount of touch the two could get away with in public without drawing eyes.

“Yes! Now we can eat lunch with the others instead of…”

Arisu caught herself before she made a mistake. She cleared her throat and grinned awkwardly Saki’s way, who blinked and tilted her head.

“Yeah, we were delinquents and snuck away since we were in different buildings,” Mana quickly intervened, leaning conspiratorially towards Saki and speaking with a lowered voice.

“Ohh! I get it, I’ve done that, too!” Saki said and nodded enthusiastically. Arisu breathed a sigh of relief, as Mana and Marisa introduced themselves to Saki, and likewise.

“You two are twins, then?” Arisu heard Saki ask them as she stepped closer to the bulletin board, pushing herself past the other students so she could get a closer look. She squinted her human eye, while her crystalline one did the real work behind its eyepatch, reading the writing.

“1-2,” she read off the bulletin board and nodded, then something else caught her attention. Amidst all those names written in Kanji was one written both in a foreign script and katakana. Elvish script, to be precise.

“Nerys,” Arisu read off, raising a brow as she recognized that this one was also in class 1-2.

“Hm?” someone spoke next to her, and Arisu turned her head. She locked eyes with the girl next to her, whose shimmering purple eyes radiated lust for life. The pointy ears clued Arisu in on this girl being the one whose name she just read out loud.

“Ah…! I was just reading the roster,” Arisu quickly stammered, and the elf girl giggled, leaning a little bit closer.

“Curious? I guess I’m a rarity around here!” the elf said with a wink, then she stood back up straight.

“And judging by that eyepatch, you must be Arisu! We’re in the same class, so we can wait with the introductions until our first lesson!”

“Wait, how do you know that I’m-”

“I’ll explain later! Come!”

***

Arisu sat in her seat – in the second row according to the seating plan, organized by the students’ family names’ first syllables. Their homeroom teacher was a young woman, roughly the age of Mama Seika, and she carefully went over her roster. Besides Saki, there was another girl with animal ears in class, though hers were those of a cat, just like Mana’s. The only person she recognized from her middle school class was Ishikawa, who sat right in front of her, while Saki sat to her right in the row behind her. Nerys was a little bit further back – lacking a family name like all elves from her world, she was seated according to the kana spelling of her first name instead.

“Ishikawa!”

The voice of her teacher called the students one by one. The girl in front of Arisu quickly stood up and cleared her throat.

“R-right! My name is Hina Ishikawa. I, uhm, like dancing and spending time with my friends! I’m looking forward to a successful year with you all!”

So, she’s called Hina…

“You never learned her first name?” Ami asked curiously, while the teacher continued down the line of students.

Arisu almost jolted up in surprise, before she remembered that she stuffed Ami into her uniform pocket this morning, to keep her by her side.

We weren’t really close. I mostly left her alone after Okumo abducted her.

“Hmm, I see. Well, maybe you’ll get to talk to her this year.”

“Takeuchi!” her teacher’s voice pulled her back into reality, and Arisu shot up into a standing position. She swallowed heavily as she looked around the classroom, with all eyes on her. Memories of her embarrassing introduction last year came back to her mind, and she had to actively remind herself that this class didn’t have anyone in it who would sabotage her.

She simply spoke as she would with friends.

“Uhm...! I’m Arisu Takeuchi. I like anime and movies, and on my days off I like to go exploring!” she wove some truths about her extradimensional adventures into her greeting.

“I hope we’ll all have a successful year together!”

“Make sure you don’t enter dangerous areas during your explorations, Takeuchi. And this is for everyone: there are anomalies out there, which can even turn a door into a portal to some strange foreign world. Always be careful and look first, or you’ll be stranded and have to hope for a Magical Girl to come get you,” her teacher diligently reminded the rest of the class, before she signaled for Arisu that she could sit back down.

The greetings continued and were rather normal, with Saki telling the class how she liked to go to the arcade. And then, finally, the round reached the otherworldly visitor.

“Right… Nerys,” the teacher spoke, visibly a little uncomfortable with the fact that she had to address the girl by her first name.

The elf jumped up and grinned.

“Hello, nice to meet you! I’m Nerys and I’m from the Enchantresses’ world. I like to study magic tomes and learn about other civilizations! I’m a hundred and forty years young, which is equivalent to fourteen or fifteen years in your time!” she announced.

Arisu doubted the truthfulness of the statement about her age, but she didn’t say anything. All the other students’ eyes were glued to the elf girl who put her hands on her hips and basked in the attention.

“R-right… so you are here because…?” their teacher nudged her to continue her introduction.

“Well, as I said, I like to learn about other civilizations! What better way than to attend the local educational institutions?”

“And that’s the only reason?” Arisu heard herself asking, before she caught herself and slapped a hand on her mouth, just in time for her teacher to chastise her.

“Takeuchi! It’s Nerys’s turn to introduce herself. Please save your questions for later, when-”

“Oh, I don’t mind! Well, there’s a few other reasons, but one of the biggest ones is… hm…” the elf girl pondered and pointed out of the window, westwards where Shibuya Station was located.

“Do you all know that rooftop park by the station?”

“Miyashita Park, yes. Why?” the teacher asked now, and Nerys grinned.

“My family’s estate is now there, in place of the hotel that used to grace it. I hear the hotel is making good business in our city, though…!”

A quiet chorus of understanding ‘oooh’s reverberated through the room after the explanation, then Nerys let out a laugh.

“But I’ve already taken up more time introducing myself than anyone else here!”

With that she sat back down, and Arisu noticed her teacher letting out a long sigh. The woman appeared completely unprepared to handle an eccentric class, least of all one that had an otherworldly visitor attending.

“Arisu, let’s eat together!” Nerys announced, walking up to her side and grabbing her arm with a wide grin.

“Ah?! Eh, but I…” Arisu stammered. She wanted to go out and sit together with Mana and Marisa, and maybe even Saki, to have a proper high school friend group, but Nerys’s grip on her arm tightened, with the elf’s mischievous expression not letting up in the slightest.

“If you want to meet with Mana and Marisa, that’s not a problem!” she announced. Arisu looked at her with a doubtful expression, looking around the classroom to try and catch the attention of Saki – who just walked out with the cat-eared girl from their class. She stopped as she noticed Arisu’s eye on her and gave her an awkward smile, demurely raising her hand in an apologetic gesture.

I guess she wants to make a friend who’s a little more like her.

Arisu let out a long sigh, nodding and giving Saki a smile in return, then she turned towards Nerys with a large pout, which caused the elf to let out a loud laugh.

“Come on, don’t act like it’s my fault! Let’s go find the two and sit down together.”

“How do you even know about them?”

Nerys looked from left to right, before she leaned closer and whispered, conspiratorially.

“I worked in Romystedt after… well, you know. We’re not supposed to talk about that in this world. Everyone here has devices on them that can be used for spying, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“Yeah, like one of these,” Arisu commented and fished her phone out of her pocket, showing it to Nerys.

“Oho! Yes, just like that!” the elf excitedly exclaimed as she grabbed the device and inspected it.

“You’re going to school here, but you don’t have a phone?”

“I just arrived here last week! Maybe I should go buy one…”

“Well, you should get one, soon… but come on, let’s go and find Mana and Marisa so we can eat.”

***

“A hundred and forty isn’t really equivalent to fourteen human years, is it?” Arisu asked skeptically as they finally sat together at a table. Mana and Marisa shared a bench and dug into their bento boxes, while Arisu ate her own absentmindedly and kept her focus on Nerys.

“Oh, of course not. We mature at roughly the same age that humans do. At thirty.”

“…that’s about twelve years after we mature.”

“It’s cute that you think that way,” the elf spoke with a wide grin, and Arisu gave her an annoyed look.

“So, why are you entering human high school, then? With you being a hundred and ten years above adulthood,” Mana joined the conversation now, piercing the elf with her gaze.

“Because I want to learn all I can about this world! Maybe I’ll even decide to live here permanently and start a trade, seeing how my house was so rudely brought here,” the elf spoke, gesturing with her chopsticks as she did so.

“I do like the food, at least! Though the rustic charm of Romystedt’s cuisine wasn’t bad either… ahh, decisions, decisions…”

“Well at least you’re not doing it just to wear the uniform for… reasons,” Mana commented dryly. “The things Lithael says sometimes… are all elves like that?”

Nerys’s face turned a whole shade darker at the mention and she cleared her throat.

“Please don’t associate me with that lewd drunkard healer’s utterances, thank you very much!”

“Oh, she has experiences with her,” Marisa commented now with a giggle.

“Definitely. What did the healer do to you? She’s also not the type to do things against someone’s will, so you probably agreed to it,” Mana probed.

“She… this conversation is finished! Change of topic!” the elf protested, and the group laughed.

School was out, and the odd quartet walked through the side streets towards the station. Nerys was interested in buying a phone, and, surprisingly enough, she had money for it, thanks to a currency exchange system established only a few weeks ago.

“I don’t know which one to get, so you better give me good recommendations!” The elf girl demanded with a grin, and Arisu nodded.

“Well, my mamas gifted me mine, but I’ll still help you look!” Arisu declared, followed by an enthusiastic nod from Marisa, and then a little sigh from Mana.

“None of you know what you have to look out for, so I’m going to help you out. Just leave it to me, got it?” the cat-eared witch spoke in a huffy voice, even though she couldn’t hide a little smile as she did so.

Their little group passed by Inari’s shrine, with the miko still sweeping the stairs, as she had in the morning, while a few otaku-looking men were quietly praying in front of the shrine in the courtyard.

Arisu waved at her as she did in the morning, and this time, the goddess approached her.

“Would you four care to join me for a little talk?” she spoke with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and Arisu tilted her head.

She glanced towards her friends and realized that Inari may have wanted to talk to her in the morning – but at that point she was in the company of a girl who didn’t know much about the real nature of gods and other worlds, unlike Nerys and the witches.

“Uhm… sure!” Arisu confirmed, and her friends followed the miko towards the first torii gate.

Inari looked around for a moment, and her eyes lingered on a street corner. Arisu couldn’t see anyone there, but it appeared to cause the goddess some concern. After what felt like an eternity, once there were no other girls in the street, she walked ahead and vanished in the green glow that marked the portal to her world behind the torii gates.

“I really don’t like that I can’t see it,” Mana mumbled as the group followed and the world around them turned transparent until they were in the golden realm full of rice fields, patrolled by foxes. It was here that Inari turned around towards them and spoke freely.

“Have you not noticed a malign presence today at all, young Deogemma?” she inquired, and Arisu was taken aback.

“Something evil? Around me? No…” she mumbled, and now that she thought about it, her eyes widened.

“You understand, I see. Your ability to sense visitors is being dulled by the sheer volume of otherworldly magic that now permeates your home.”

“I can still see home worlds and such, but…!” Arisu started, and Inari nodded, continuing for her.

“…you need to look directly at people to notice it now. No longer will you see it briefly while passing by strangers or sense it behind you.”

Arisu nodded. She looked at her friends, Nerys in particular, who walked around and took in the otherworldly sights with the enthusiasm of an adventurer. She could see her home world clear as day.

“I meant to tell you this morning, but you were with someone who is better off not knowing: there are strange people who are keeping an eye on young girls with otherworldly bloodlines, as well as on visitors. They have something… familiar about them.”

“Familiar like what?”

“Like the people in that warehouse we explored together,” Inari cautioned her, and Arisu grimaced.

“Tread carefully, young Deogemma. I fear even after averting the collision of the worlds, there are dangers yet to come.”

***

The quartet left Inari’s dimension through one of Mana’s portals, closer to the station. Arisu pondered Inari’s words as they continued on, still not dissuaded from going shopping with Nerys despite the warning.

As they entered Shibuya, they saw many girls with animal ears at the busy crossing. Gaggles of schoolgirls were gathered around the fancy stores and headed towards the karaoke places. And now that she was made aware of it, Arisu saw them: men in business suits, who wouldn’t look out of place if she didn’t know what to look for. But now that she was aware, she saw them stealing glances at the mutated girls and the mutated girls only.

She made eye contact with one, and now she saw it, clear as day: a shapeshifter, from a rocky, hot world. He quickly walked away and turned a corner once he noticed that he had her attention, and as if an invisible signal was given, a dozen more men in suits started to move, leaving the area.

Arisu clenched her fists, with Mana putting a hand on her shoulder.

“They’re gone… we can relax a little.”

“I don’t know what they want, Mana,” Arisu spoke quietly. “But I know that I won’t let them do what they did to Inari’s friends in that warehouse.”