Magical Girl Overtime [Second Arc Complete!]

???

The clang of colliding blades filled the air around Ayame’s ears. She sat on the ground, helplessly, as her wives fought another threat to her and everyone’s well-being.

It was an odd mix: shadowy creatures closed in on them, and with the mighty lasers from Bellona’s flying gladii, they vanished just as fast. The lizard creatures which Minerva fought from time to time attempted to swarm Ayame, but Athena was there just in time to knock them out.

The mixture of threats was utterly bizarre, and once more Ayame cursed her inability to step in and help her wives.

Multiple Shadows in the shape of gigantic creatures straight out of mythology emerged, and the Magical Girls readied their weapons to fight them, but just as their fight was about to begin, the ground tore open, and thorned tendrils emerged that wrapped themselves around Athena and Bellona both.

Ayame stood up in a panic as she witnessed Lethe appear out of thin air. She wanted to run towards her wives, but she was rooted in place, by fear and the knowledge that she could do nothing to help them.

“Don’t you ever grow tired of being so weak?” a mocking voice spoke behind her.

It belonged to Maria, and as Ayame turned around, she saw her approaching, with her face still bleeding from the wound Ayame inflicted on her, while she wore the night gown she owned when the two of them were still in an intimate relationship.

“You get in relationships with the strong, and then you become a liability. If you had been the Magical Girl I wanted to hunt down and kill, you would have even saved yourself so much pain…” she spoke, looking at a distant place in the darkness surrounding them.

“I know that! But I managed to help, regardless! I empowered them! I held you back long enough to keep Mana safe!”

“So? There are way more terrible things than me out there, and you won’t be able to rely on the others forever.”

The specter of Maria stepped closer, and as their faces almost touched, she whispered.

“Grow strong! For your own sake!”

***

December 2025

Ayame shifted and turned, groaning as she finally woke up. She was alone in the large bed of the throuple’s apartment, and she let out a long sigh as she remembered bits and pieces of her dream.

Once again, she was staying behind while the loves of her life were risking theirs. On top of it all, her own daughter was tasked with keeping her safe through these tumultuous times, not the other way around, as it was supposed to be with parents and children.

She stepped on the little balcony of their apartment and looked at the skyline of Tokyo, which was missing a few buildings. She took a deep breath and let the night air clear her head; at least that had a somewhat calming effect on her.

I wish I could do something to take a little of the burden off their shoulders.

For now, she turned around and walked back into the apartment, and then into Arisu’s room. Her daughter was asleep, though she could tell that the current situation took a toll on her, the way she was twisting and turning in her sleep.

She decided to do what she could. She climbed into Arisu’s bed and gently embraced her daughter, holding her in a hug. It took only a minute for the young girl to calm down and lean into the embrace, then Ayame closed her eyes to try and fall asleep again herself.

“You’re not satisfied just waiting, aren’t you?”

Ayame’s eyes shot open again as she heard the voice speak to her mind. She peeked past Arisu’s shoulder and saw the shimmering, pink gemstone of Amicitia in the girl’s hand, with her own resting on top.

It’s not nice to peek into my mind while I’m unaware.

“Oh, I didn’t. It was obvious from the way you acted. From the fact that you’re wide awake.”

I worry about the ones I love. That’s just natural, isn’t it?

“It is.”

Let’s talk about this tomorrow. Right now, I just want to sleep.

Ayame felt a strange warmth inside her body that must have been a Deogemma’s way to express affirmation. She kept her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around her daughter, slowly drifting off to sleep.

March 2026

Ayame entered Atelier Antoinette, after a morning spent with her wives and daughter. Seika and Miori both took their partners with them today, due to the increased danger posed by Triple-Eye agents, which Arisu had seen yesterday.

Ayame greeted her colleagues and walked past a few of the sewing machines, inspecting the work; there was Lolita fashion, as usual, but their selection had expanded, ever since her inheritance from Maria.

Skirts and jeans alike were now prototyped next to frilly fabric. Diamond shapes were cut out of pants at tailbone level, then sewed back in with a stylish, differently colored patch that could easily be removed by the consumer, allowing for sales to regular people while giving options to the new population of young people with animal tails.

Of course, this wouldn’t cover all the possible variations that were there. Ayame witnessed a girl with lizard-like features, like sharp scales on her thighs and hips that tore through most clothing. Ayame personally made reinforced clothes for her that she could wear, but for most normal clothing, she would either need to wear something wide that didn’t touch her skin much, or she had to leave her scaled parts uncovered.

“Ah, Takanashi! Perfect timing, we just received the delivery of fabrics from… uh… Bay of Light,” one of her colleagues spoke, skeptically looking at the documents she held in her hand, with the text written in elvish.

She wore a pair of the translation glasses, together with the collar and earpiece – necessities as she had to deal with elven weavers now on top of the usual textile companies.

“I’ll go and have a look,” Ayame confirmed and headed towards the storage area, where a freshly opened crate waited for her. Shimmering fabric was inside, and as she lifted it in her hands, it felt like they were moving through a cloud.

“If they ever manage to mass produce this, we’re in trouble,” she chuckled as she lifted a folded stack to inspect it next.

Cloudsilk. That was the name people gave it, and quite fitting indeed. Worn over the body, it kept a perfect body temperature. In summer it would feel like wearing nothing at all while offering protection from the sun and people’s gazes, letting one cool down to a comfortable degree, while in winter it would keep one warm like a thick coat.

It was a luxury product. The elves of the other world spent a long time making a single bolt of this fabric, and it was pricy in kind, so Ayame had her eyes on it for the other end of the spectrum of clients, away from affordable clothes for the mutated masses.

She couldn’t stop a grin from creeping on her face as she held the fabric close and already imagined her ideal world: cute, frilly Lolita styles, which were usually prohibitively hot in summer, would be able to be worn all-year round if made from this fabric! Breezy outfits, which marked summer, would also inversely be able to be worn in winter amidst the snow.

This cloth opened the doors for all kinds of experimentation in the world of fashion, no longer dragged down by the elements!

Ayame had to stop herself before she’d drool all over the fabric and put it back into the crate, clearing her throat. She turned towards her colleague and smiled.

“This will do nicely, thank you. Let’s make some prototypes with a similar fabric before we commit to the real thing!”

***

Before she knew it, it was already lunch time. Ayame elected to join her colleagues, visiting a nearby ramen restaurant. By arriving ten minutes before official lunchtime, they secured spots before a queue would form and were waiting on their bowls which were placed in front of them one by one.

“I’m glad we’re doing this, you know? The affordable clothes that can be bought by both normal people and those with tails?” one of her colleagues, Hanabi, spoke up. She was a woman in her early forties, and worry was written across her face.

“There’s so many girls who could benefit from what we’re doing…”

“Your own daughter would, too, wouldn’t she?” Ayame’s colleague Rena spoke from the other side.

“Yes, she did… she’s taking it surprisingly well, all things considered. The worst part of it all was how much pain she was in when it happened a few months ago, all while those terrible things happened all over the world.”

Some of the others lowered their eyes, thinking about her words, including Ayame.

“I… honestly feel guilty. I was more worried that her crying would attract those strange people who went around and destroyed things all over the place.”

“Nonsense,” Ayame spoke now, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“None of us have ever experienced a life-threatening situation like that before, and you worried about both your safety in the end. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

The woman nodded and the group continued their lunch, until Rena spoke up again in an attempt to swing the mood the other way.

“Anyway, Takanashi… I heard some things. You settled down?”

Ayame cleared her throat before she answered with a smile.

“Well, you could say that. Though it’s by no means a regular steady relationship…”

“Oh? Give us the details!” Yet another of her colleagues spoke up.

“You’re all awfully nosy, aren’t you? But alright…”

***

“You’ll have to bring Arisu to work one day! She looks good in those dresses, maybe we can have her fit a few more?” one of her colleagues spoke with a laugh, inspecting a photo of the young girl and Miori, with both wearing Lolita style dresses, taken during their family outing back in summer.

Some others seemed still befuddled by her confession that she saw two women at the same time – at least she only told them about her human partners. She never divulged much about her previous intimate life, so all they knew about her until this point was that she liked the company of women and men both, never that she liked to join a couple during their nightly activities – so from their perspective, it was quite a jump from Ayame’s dating life to being in a relationship with multiple people at the same time.

“Takeuchi and Hitoishi, huh? You settled down with both your longtime best friend and your childhood friend? I’m a little jealous,” Rena spoke as she finished her bowl and put down the money for the owner.

“In essence, yes,” Ayame replied with a nod. Now that this was out there, she wanted to keep the details as sparse as possible, lest she slipped up and revealed too much.

“Must be exhausting!” Rena said with a grin, gently bumping Ayame with an elbow, who rolled her eyes.

“There’s enough of me for everyone, don’t you worry,” she retorted, before their merry get-together got interrupted by the collective shriek of a disaster warning on everyone’s phones.

‘Unknown Attackers

Immediately evacuate the area!’

Ayame gave the message on her phone a worried glance, then she stood up.

“Let’s not waste any time. If we return to the atelier, we should be out of the radius,” she instructed her colleagues, and after a few nods they packed their things.

Money was left for the owner, and the little group walked outside in an organized line, together with the owner, who made sure to lock up behind himself. As far as Ayame could tell, nothing was out of the ordinary at first glance, but the fact that the invaders were unknown to the early warning system gave her enough reason to not drop her guard.

“It’s been a while since an ‘unknown attacker’…” Hanabi spoke quietly, with her eyes darting from side to side.

“With things being as strange as they are right now, we’re probably going to see more and more ‘unidentified’ ones,” Rena remarked bitterly, all while Ayame kept an eye out for any activity.

Trouble didn’t take long to find them, after all. A creature approached from behind a corner, and a disturbingly human one at that. It wore tattered, ancient-looking clothes that dripped water everywhere, and its skin was a sickly green. Its eyes emitted a red glow as it looked at the group of women in front of it.

Ayame didn’t even realize that she reflexively moved in front of the others as more of those creatures came out from behind a corner.

“Go and hide somewhere! I’ll draw them away from you! I should be able to outrun them until someone comes to deal with them!” she said, still unthinkingly, and before the group could even protest, she ran in front of the group of monsters, then away into the nearest side street.

The slavering beasts in the shape of men and women followed her, while she could hear the shouts of her colleagues. Now-useless pleas for her to reconsider and return, and soon they gave up and brought themselves to safety, just like Ayame instructed them to.

“These are revenants, torn from their graves by Mors. I think she sent skeletal pirates to this city before,” Amicitia spoke directly into Ayame’s mind, and she came to a halt in a dead end, turning around to face the creatures following her.

Two dozen creatures, slack-jawed and empty-eyed, shambled into the alley after her, cutting off her retreat, lifting their arms towards her to greedily reach for their meal.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she addressed the revenants, and for a moment, they looked like they stopped, surprised by her words, or at least the one controlling them was given pause by her declaration.

“I won’t be easy prey.”

December 2025

“Arisu, dear… can I look after Ami today?” Ayame spoke up as her daughter was already getting ready to leave to visit Janus.

“Eh? I don’t mind, but why…?”

“I just want to have a little talk with her. Get to know her better, hm?” Ayame spoke, smiling as she leaned over and stroked Arisu’s hair.

“Mh…” her daughter sounded and pulled the pink gemstone out of her pocket. She looked at it for a moment, then she nodded, holding her hand out.

“She says it’s okay! You can take her for today, mama!”

Ayame nodded and gently picked the gemstone up before she gave her daughter a hug.

“Be safe out there, alright? I know you’ll probably do more than just visit Janus…”

Arisu shifted a little, averting her eyes with a bashful smile.

“Probably…”

“As I suspected…” Ayame sighed, then she let go of Arisu, watching her leave through the front door to head to Mana’s place.

She moved over to the kitchen area and sat down at the table, with her hand in front of her as she looked at the pink, faintly glowing gemstone.

“Well, we can have our talk now,” she spoke out loud. She was aware that she could simply think her words, and the gemstone would pick up on them, but she preferred things like this.

“First things first: I’m still not entirely sure if I can trust you, Amicitia. You used to work for those… other gods. From what I understand you caused a whole lot of problems for Arisu and Mana, to the point it made Arisu cry.”

There was a suffocating silence after those words. Ayame felt a little bad right after those words left her mouth, even more so as Amicitia spoke and sounded heartbroken as she did so.

“I am so sorry. I was too afraid to stand up to Uncle Scotus and instead chose to cause your family pain. It was only through Mana’s generosity that I even got the chance to make things better.”

Ayame closed her eyes and let out a long sigh before she continued.

“No, I am sorry. I shouldn’t continue to blame you for any of that. We wanted to talk about something else entirely.”

Another moment of silence. Amicitia was waiting for her proposal.

“I don’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore. I want to help people, just like they are. I want to make a real difference, more than just helping them get more powerful. I…”

Ayame sorted her thoughts before she settled on the most condensed form of what she wanted to express.

“I want to stand by their side, no matter what they are going through.”

Again, Amicitia was quiet as she considered her words.

“You are looking for a Deogemma’s power. I would gladly give you mine, but… I am not a war type, like Minerva and Bellona. I am a minor one, tasked with bringing humans the joys of friendship and intimate love.”

Ayame nodded. She expected that much, but she wasn’t entirely out of options.

“And do you feel those sensations yourself? Friendship, love and sex? How strong are your positive emotions from all that time you have been alive and spreading those feelings? Do they significantly outweigh the sadness you’ve felt recently?”

“I don’t know what you are getting at… but I do. Even now, if I experience a happy moment between Arisu and her friends, I experience a hundredfold the joy a human would. It is how I was made.”

“That is all I need. If you’ll lend me those feelings, I can make this work…!”

Their little talk got interrupted as a portal opened in the middle of the kitchen, and her daughter looked at her.

“My? Welcome back, Arisu. And you brought back Mana and Marisa, as well. Are you going to stay for dinner?”

March 2025

A shining light illuminated the back alley, making the undead creatures flinch away, letting out slurred groans as they couldn’t see their prey anymore. A person stepped out of the light and stared them down.

Amicitia lent her power to Ayame, enveloping her like a suit of magic armor, just like Minerva and Bellona had been doing all this time with their partners. Her hair was glowing in a bright pink tone, while being much shorter than Ayame’s, reaching only to her shoulders.

“Your little invasion will stop right here, Mors!” she shouted at the revenants, retrieving a hand mirror from her pocket. She raised it high above her head and cracked a smile as she recited the Kuma Group’s transformation chant.

“Pure Heart Form!”

A second bright light made the revenants recoil as Amicitia entered a second transformation. Her clothes disintegrated and were replaced, one by one, by a military coat with a floral pattern, with fitting gloves and boots.

The signature bear-eared headset of the Kuma Group appeared on her head, and a weapon materialized in front of her; a katana with a peculiar feature: instead of the usual kashira, it had a protruding handle with a hole at the end, through which a pink, magically glowing string threaded, waving in the air behind her.

A new Magical Girl was born, and she proudly announced herself with a pose to the stunned creatures.

“I am the messenger of love and friendship, Amicitia!”

It only took a single moment for the amazement to fade and make way for violence. The revenants caught themselves and hissed as they charged Amicitia, who met them head-on.

Her katana left a pink trail in the air as she sliced through the first revenant’s neck and sent its head flying. The creature collapsed, with its remains being engulfed in purple flames until it was reduced to nothing.

Amicitia didn’t stop there; she propelled herself forward and cleaved through the next three revenants, then two more. There was a small group still pouring into the alleyway, and with a swift motion, she threw her katana, missing the revenant in front by only a few centimeters, causing the creature to let out a raspy laugh – until Amicitia grabbed the glowing thread attached to the blade, anyway.

She yanked the thread sideways, causing the blade to spin around the whole group of monsters and wrap the enchanted string around them, pulling them close together and bunching them up. With a grin, Amicitia channeled her power into the thread and gave it a good, violent yank, mercilessly cutting her opponents into pieces.

Another revenant appeared from around the corner, though this one stopped, looking at her with its dead eyes – and then its jaw moved as it spoke, each syllable dripping with hatred.

“Sister… failure… traitor!”

Amicitia didn’t reply. She could sense Amicitia proper inside her feeling uneasy and a little hurt by the words, but she didn’t falter. She rushed ahead, cut the head off the creature’s shoulders and then she took off into the sky to assess the situation.

The streets were filled with revenants, which thankfully were slower than people running away from them. Amicitia spotted Ayame’s colleagues a little further ahead, though they had their means of escape cut off by another group of undead. She accelerated, landing right in front of the group, and a few mighty swings of her blade later, the remains of the creatures were burning away on the ground.

“Are you unharmed?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder and meeting Rena’s eyes.

“We were alright! Just… these things came out of the street that we wanted to take to get out of here!” the seamstress replied breathlessly, and Amicitia nodded.

“Those were the last ones in this street. Get yourselves to safety and I’ll clean up the rest!” she instructed them, and they nodded, though Rena still had something to say.

“There was another one of us who ran to distract them…! She didn’t listen when we told her to come back, please tell me you saved her, too! She has long brown hair with a red streak and wears a red dress!”

Sorry for worrying you.

“She is safe. I saw her earlier and got her out of trouble. Now, go!”

The women nodded and ran in the direction of Atelier Antoinette, giving Amicitia the room to let out a long sigh.

How do Seika and Miori balance this secret in their lives?!

She set off again, tracking down the scattered remains of the revenant attackers, and thankfully she didn’t encounter any seriously injured or worse-off humans as she did.

As she saw her final target, she landed on a busy main street, tossing her katana and wrapping her magic string around a revenant, pulling it towards herself before kicking it hard enough in the head that it dropped down, motionless.

Right after she was done cleaning up, she saw a red glow from the corner of her eye as Minerva Crimson landed next to her.

“I came as fast as I could, but it seems I was too late… good work!” the world’s oldest Magical Girl spoke with a grin, examining the other one in front of her. “And who might you be?”

Amicitia felt a spark of mischief within herself. She made a flourish with her weapon, making the attached string flow around her like a gymnast’s ribbon before striking a pose.

“I’m the newest Magical Girl in town! The messenger of love and friendship!”

“And your name?” Minerva asked with a strangely mischievous expression.

“Ah, it’s, uh…!” Amicitia stammered while her eyes darted from side to side as she frantically looked for something, and her eyes landed on a sign.

“Amora! I am Amora! Happy to make your acquaintance, Minerva Crimson! I’ve been a long-time fan of yours!” she lied quickly, and Minerva let out a little chuckle.

“A fan of mine who became a Magical Girl!” Minerva exclaimed happily, stepping closer. Much closer than Amicitia expected, actually. She stopped right next to her and whispered into her ear.

“I knew you two wouldn’t sit still for long. I’m happy for you both, Ami and Ayame.”

Amicitia managed an awkward smile before Minerva simply took off, returning to Seika’s place of work.

Well, so much for mischief. She saw right through us.

Ayame pouted with her arms crossed on the couch as Seika and Minerva kept laughing on either of her sides.

“Really! Amora! That’s the best you could come up with on short notice?” Seika giggled, bumping her elbow into Ayame’s side.

“I wanted to surprise you! Have you wondering ‘Ohh, who’s that mysterious Magical Girl?’ for a while…”

“There’s only one type of Magical Girl with glowing hair, and it’s Deogemma-based ones,” Minerva explained, patting Ayame’s head.

“Ugh… and here I thought I was being sneaky enough. I trained our transformation in secret, I checked whether her emotions could fuel the Kuma Group transformation, and I even went out of my way to make a choker that I can wear her on without causing suspicion!”

“Well, you did surprise us with Amicitia being able to fight, so I’ll give you that,” Minerva noted, curiously looking at the pink gemstone which snugly sat at the center of the aforementioned choker around Ayame’s neck.

“Actually, that part about the emotions is interesting,” Seika admitted, then she got closer until her face almost touched Ayame’s, with a rather manic expression.

“How does it work?! Tell me, tell me!”

Ayame recoiled a little as Seika’s inner Magical Girl otaku surfaced again, but she was near-instantly caught and held in place by Minerva in her back, who had her hands on her shoulders.

“Well, the Kuma Group’s powers are based on positive emotions, right?” Ayame started, and was met with quick nods from Seika, so she continued.

“Ami is the goddess of friendship and… well, sex. She can recharge the Kuma Group’s hand mirror easily by spending a day with any of us. Arisu when she’s out with her friends will fill the mirror a hundredfold. And I don’t think I even have to mention what we’re doing.”

Seika grinned, then her hand placed itself gently under Ayame’s chin.

“Well, in that case. You fought very bravely today. Your reserves must be drained…”

“Actually, I should be good for a whole week of fights like this,” Amicitia noted inside Ayame’s mind – and then she let out a laugh as Ayame’s lips were sealed by a greedy kiss from Seika, rendering her unable to even give a response with her thoughts.

“Well, it’s not like we need to tell them about that right now.”