Later that day, you’re driving around a D*ihatsu M*dget II you borrowed from your neighbor and shopping around for ftpack furniture, small appliances, and everything else you think you’ll need in Nacht Base, with Venalita riding shotgun.

  You are irely sure how she just hover in pce over the car seat while you’re driving, but you suppose if you keep trying to apply logiagic, you’ll be here all day. You’ve got more important things to pin about, anyway!

  “It’s a total agination,” you say. “In the first pce, just titling a light novel directly after what happens in it seems like a good idea at first gnce, but a rote description of a vague storyliually says less than a more artful, mood-appropriate title does. And for such slight volumes, they’re so full of padding! Does the same description of the same tired tropes of the same entry-level plots and the same reams of useless, text-free stat ss really help anything? They could easily simplify that stuff, but kids today just want to see their numbers go up, regardless of text! Even though these numbers only have meaning in the text of their iions! It’s all theatre! Instead of talking about how a character gets stronger, you just show a stat s! Boom, do that a few dozen times and you’ve padded out a volume! They’re so long and absolutely nothing happens! It’s teag kids bad writing habits and bad expectations for their future!”

  “I see…” Venalita just sort of stares into space, w what she said for things to go this wrong.

  “Don’t get me started on ‘isekai’. Do kids have such little imagination that they ’t imagihemselves in the shoes of a character immersed in the fial world? It’s an excuse for zy worldbuilding. It’s not clever to ent on the same fantasy tropes when everybody is doing it and the authors themselves choose the tropes to be there. I guess maybe viliness isekai is okay, but –”

  (I should be careful what I talk about near Naoko, thinks Venalita, shaking in fear at the sheer force of the ranting of an adult with hidden otaku tendehis is why we don’t do Christmas cakes…)

  You’re driving to the IK*A to pick up your st big order (you’re very effit at stag things inside your M*dget thanks to all your practice pying Sokoban when you should be w), when you decide to take a turn downtown to take a break and grab some coffee for yourself (and, uh, maybe for Venalita?), briefly wing at an ued speedbump, when you see a pop-up store for the Tres Magia…

  and, it seems, the Tres Magia themselves are making an appearance.

  (“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Magia Magenta whispers to her partners, as she passes out flyers and promotional items. “We might be te for css like this…”)

  (“It ’t be helped. Vatz says she’s worried that Enormita might make an appearance around this time,” says Magia Azul, as she poses for photos with her fans, blushing as she imagines Magia Baiser creating a monster from a camera and f her to pose ily. “Not to mention they have a new member…”)

  (“What I wanna know is where she found that out,” says Magia Sulfur, as she signs autographs for the kids.)

  Ugh. What an eyesore.

  It’s tacky and it’s gaudy and it’s hideous and it’s so full of light and friendship and dy and fluffiness and it just makes you want to puke. Isn’t this a weekday? What, are they hoping to catch all the kids stealing their parents’ credit cards at lunchtime? And they’re selling the absolute worst tat imaginable. Fake transformation items, mostly.

  “Ugh. Look at all the stuff they’re hog. A waste of the p, it is.” For some reason, this makes you upset in a way seeing Utena collect everything didn’t… “Stuff like this is going to just wind up wasting away on the beaches of the world someday, like those G*rfield phohat washed up on the shores of France. Pstic magical girl toys are a blight on the Earth!”

  “What about G*np?” says Venalita.

  “…what?”

  “It’s also made of pstic, isn’t it? With all those runners you discard? Don’t those end up iic waste stream eventually?”

  “Absolutely inparable. Spare runners are super useful for any experienced modeller! Besides, they’re making kits out of L*MEX and recycled pstics these days.”

  “Sure, as a marketing gimmick –”

  You scowl at Venalita, who immediately drops the subje favor of a much more productive one.

  “Either way, this is a perfect opportunity, don’t you think?”

  “Eeh, I dunno…fighting them at a time like this seems pretty underhanded.”

  “Duh, we’re the bad guys! You o show those magical girls what you’re made of, you know?”

  You hate to admit it, but Venalita has a point.

  …well, this is it. You’re finally itting. You didn’t think it’d be so soon, but you ’t very well back down from a challenge like that. Magical girls are supposed to defend the phey’re like the Earth’s immune system against evil! But invariably, invariably, all they do is market the shittiest toys imagihey’re absolutely, directly, 100% responsible for the entire existence of global warming! Surely!

  (You’re not looking forward to fag them, though. Not o.)

  You drive your M*dget into a nearby parking lot, pay the fare (you’re a viliness, not a monster), and quickly sneak into a dark alley, very much like the one you saw your daughter in when you discovered her noal activities, and pull out your transformation star.

  Yes, it’s time…

  it’s time to punish the magical girls ??

  “Trans-Magia!”

  The feeling of power surging through you…it’s inparable. You’re absolutely certain a teenager in the prime of their life could never uand! Beien down by the weight of the world, having the strength to fight back is utterly intoxig. Even just the slightest taste of it yesterday enced you to corred reeducate those who foolishly decided to challenge you.

  The electrical impulses inside your body ence you to let loose, accelerating your erosion. Your puterized brain fres alongside yic as you emerge from your transformation, knowing the Tres Magia will be able to sense you just as readily as you ow sehem. You’ll only have one ce to strike in front of a live studio audience like this, an audience full of kids who o know the real appeal of magical girls…

  You your tentacles around, using them to boost yourself through the alley, stabilizing your flight with your wings and floating through the sky, only to nd right in front of the Tres Magia in the small gap between them and the crowd.

  God, that feels good.

  Dust and smoke follows your crag entrance as you stand, the three Tres Magia freezing up as they take a look at you…

  “Who…who’s that? That’s not Magia Baiser, is it?” asks Magenta, raising her wand. “Quick, everyone, run!” Their lunch break ***** schooler fans (and adults who should really know better) scatter and scream as you slowly steady yourself on your heels, lig your fangs and your lips. You have to make an impressiht? Just like the faint memories of the ways vilins used to impress you…

  “What happeo the barrier we put up?” Azul asks, flourishing her wand to create a sword of ice. (Oh, that’d look so good in the hands of someone who’s fallen to evil…)

  “Um, I think it got run over by that M*dget that passed by,” says Magenta. (She’s so i, so infuriatingly i, that you want to i it entirely…)

  “Again?!” Sulfur rubs her forehead. “We really o stop just leaving those out where people hit 'em.” (She’s supposed to be a defensive magical girl, so you want to see how much punishment she really take.)

  “You’ve been causing a lot of trouble for anization,” you say, stretg out your cable tentacles auring broadly to the audience, openly grabbing one of your tits and fondling it. “It’s clear now that I ’t keep watg from the shadows. Rejoice, Tres Magia, for you now meet the true leaderess of Enormita!”

  (.)

  “Who…is she?” Magenta blinks. “She looks…”

  “She looks like Magia Baiser, doesn’t she?” Azul stares, taking a look over her from head to toe. “But she’s gotta be way older than us.”

  “I bet she’s Baiser’s mother,” Sulfur decres, grinning. “I knew Baiser wasn’t takin’ us seriously, so now mama bear’s e home to roost!”

  “How perceptive of you,” you say, raising your hand to your face. “Oh ho ho~ Why, you’ve been making a mockery of my daughter! I ’t let that slide, Tres Magia!”

  “D-don’t say something like that when she’s put us through such humiliation!” says Azul, trying not to think about the ‘humiliation’ she’d personally endured. “W-who are you to e here and interrupt our fa?”

  “Me?” You snap your fingers, a peal of thunder and lightning falling upon you and c through your body. “I’m Victricia Baiser! The queress of Enormita!” Yeah, that’s a good name, right? You khose Latin csses would e in handy one day! “You call this a ‘fa’…but it’s nothing but a cheap, tawdry merdise stall! Look at all this absolute junk!” You wave a tentacle forward and send all of the Tres Magia’s merdise flying! This really does feel so amazing~ “Things like this are just a sign that humanity is irredeemably cursed! It’s a waste of the p!” You crae of your cables like a whip, and it sparks. “The campaign starts here!”

  “D-don’t be ridiculous!” Magia Magenta pleads. “We would never hurt the enviro, Victricia! All our toys are made from 100% recycled pstic bottles, shopping bags, bendy straws, and six-pack rings! And also L*MEX!”

  Magia Sulfur rolls her eyes. “Uh huh. And if you believe that, I have a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge for you, hon.”

  “You’re not helping!”

  Azul ighe bickering of her friends and steps forward, posing with her bde. “I won’t stand for it! The world’s fate isn’t for Enormita to decide! Isn’t that right, Magenta, Sulfur?”

  “Y-yes!” Magenta flourishes her wand, unleashing her spear. “For the sake of the world’s everyday happiness!”

  “And because we’ll never five evil!” Sulfur holds out her own wand…

  Aah, all three of them, is it? This might be tricky, actually, but…you know you have an advahey ’t fight yet. Your puterized brain, that works faster than even a magical girl’s!

  The three rush in for their close bat attacks, probably to avoid damaging the nearby buildings, but your starry eyes flicker as you slip through like light through an optic cable, letting all three of them sail past as you strike at them with your cables.

  “Eh?! She’s so fast!” says Magenta, as she catches herself in the ground with her spear to keep from stumbling. “She just dodged right through us like in D*rk S*uls or something!”

  “I bet it’s her fancy cybear.” Sulfur quickly turns, raising her wand to put up a barrier. “Dontcha know, Auntie? Mecha is so out of fashion these days.”

  “They said the same thing about magical girls before you girls came along.” You toy with the girls a bit, making a show of uselessly filing your cables against the barrier. “Besides, I hear mecha is making a eback.”

  Magia Azul refocuses herself as she prepares to strike with Magenta while you’re (apparently) distracted. But she herself…

  Magia Baiser was a terrifying oppo. Someone who was assaulting not her body, but her spirit. She could feel herself erode, more and more, every time the younger Baiser touched her. It was getting to the point where she was having nightmares about it, about the horrible thing she’d do to her, and every time she woke up, there was a huge wet spot in her sheets…s-she’s so terrified of what horrible, highly erotically charged things Magia Baiser will do to her that she’s urinating herself nightly! Clearly!

  But Victricia Baiser is different. A woman old enough to be her own mother doesn’t scare her o. Those cables are clearly ons, not implements of sexual torture. She do this…!

  Nodding to Magenta, the two of them leap forth from behind Sulfur’s barrier! Magenta fires pink beams in a scattering pattern to distract you, so that while you’re focused on Azul’s sword, her icicle crash strike from behind –

  “Amateurs.”

  A, despite looking like you were pumping tons of electricity into Sulfur’s barrier, it was a bluff! Just as you’d p. These headstrong magical girls were so used to your daughter’s toying that they’d fotten how to fight for real!

  “In battle, you should always think two or three steps ahead,” you gloat, flying upwards as your cables sm Magenta into a nearby building…and tightly Azul, crag with power. “I’ve studied your battles! Nothing you do escape me!” Such…such a young, supple body~ Azul’s the most developed, certainly. You almost appreciate your daughter’s desire to simply toy with them, but…

  you do that after you’ve defeated them, ’t you?

  (She’s really going all out, Venalita thinks, from a high vantage point. But as long as she doesn’t pn to kill them, the pn will work out in the end…)

  (She couldn’t deny she was worried, though.)

  “You remind me a little of a magical girl I liked when I was young,” you say, hands on your fa a trance-like state as your cables crawl over inch after inch of Azul’s body, snaking under her e. “She was a water user, but when she fell to evil, she used a bde of ice like yours…”

  “Hey, don’t act like I’m not here –” Despite her obvious defensive prowess, the moment Sulfur lets down her barrier, she’s smmed right into the same wall Magenta’s currently halfway embedded into. Magenta might take a bit, but you’ll only have a few moments before Sulfur is right back up…

  still. Plenty of time. Despite everyone being told to run, you’ve still got an audience, and it’s time to show the world the true weakness of the magical girls!

  “But then her idiot friend had to go and un-brainwash her! Ridiculous! She was much better when she fell to darkness! So much more beautiful!” You wander right up to your captive Azul, cables snaking into her mouth and stuffing it as she squirms, your tail-cable giving her mild shocks as it runs across the exposed portions of her body. “Besides, what is un-brainwashing if not just more brainwashing? I’m eager to find out.~”

  Azul utterly trembles. What is she talking about?

  It’s bad enough that she’s caught in a trap just like Magia Baiser’s; her mother is clearly just as terrifying, even reag out to fondle one of her breasts. But you’re talking about things even worse than anything your daughter ever did to her! Brainwashing? Falling to darkness?! Could it really happen? Would Azul be forced to her knees and reshaped? It’s a total fall to evil…

  A single, sharp shock reframes it. Or rather, tosses into sharp relief that her thoughts of Magia Baiser hadn’t been of fear. And she realizes that thought, that feeling, had been maniputed by that shock. You, Victricia Baiser, weren’t bluffing. Not only could y out the truth that she’d been ag to lose to Magia Baiser, but you could really her any way you wanted…

  “Darkness, abide with Enormita!” you yell, as you shock Azul again, f her to realize how often she’s been masturbating.“Darkness, ehin us all!” you yell, as you shock Azul a third time, f her to realize just how close she was to surrendering to Baiser, how it would take just one more all-out fight before she broke.“For I shall be the oo cast the die!” you yell, as yrip tightens, and your cable digs right into the wetness between her legs…

  “Heh. Yonna have to try harder than that, Auntie!” Battered but not broken, supported by a toss from Magenta, Sulfur rockets forward into you, barrier-first! “You think you’re big just because you’re an adult?”

  “Don’t uimate adults!” you say as you fill the helpless Azul’s whole body with electricity to knock her out before tossing her aside. Then…you catch Sulfur in both hands, your arms unfolding into splindly robotiductive rods…

  "Victoria… Colisor!" you yell, as you trate your power into one point, and Sulfur’s barrier shatters on impact! Her clothes tear as she tumbles into the ground, and Magenta steps up, half-naked a unbowed…

  but Sulfur quickly grabs her.

  “We have to go,” Sulfur says, quickly using her barrier to grab Azul as well, carrying them both under her arms and flying away. You reach up with your cables, but…

  heh.

  Your parking timer’s running out, isn’t it? Besides which, it’s better you let them savour the taste of defeat. It’s better you let everyone savour their defeat. You see in the distahe faces of those who foolishly put their hope in such ridiculous things as magical girls, even as you steal the cash they’d been colleg for their merdise…

  and there’s just one face. Just one, out in the distance. A girl in gsses, one just a little bit older than Utena, in fact. A girl who isn’t scared of you.

  A girl that’s jealous.

  A girl that wants to be just like you, like you wahe magical girls to lose when you were young…

  You remember now! And you’re proud, so proud to have brought her that revetion, that you give her a quick wink and a lick of your lips before leaping off into the void areating to your borrowed truck.

  (…is she really proud of literally stealing a bunch of kids’ lunch money? Venalita thinks as you return, as she once again residers her life choices.)

  A good distance away, at the shrine caretaken by the Minakami family, an exhausted Tres Magia retreats inside, untransformed and broken.

  “That was terrifying,” says Haruka, trembling and shivering as she pulls out her first aid kit and starts bandaging the irls. “I really thought I was gonna die.”

  “Auntie Baiser’s nothin’ like her little girl,” says Kaoruko, as she stares up at the roof of the shrine. “I think we’re gonna have to do some special training to match her at this rate, especially if she brings Nero Alice along for the ride…”

  As for Sayo?

  She just kind of…stares into space. Her two friends didn’t press the issue; she got it harder than any of them. It would be natural for her to be in shock.

  A…

  Sayo thinks, it’s not Victricia Baiser she has to be really scared of, but herself…

  That day, Hanabishi Haruka, Minakami Sayo, and Tenkawa Kaoruko didn’t return to css after lunch.

  And that day, all Hiiragi Utena could do was tremble while staring at her pho the hat her beloved Tres Magia were forced to retreat before overwhelming odds…

  “M-mom…”

  Was this really such a good idea?

  queenfiona