Magical Girl
Puff... puff...
I feel so bad, but... she won't be a threat to you, now.
Uh...
Hmm?
Art thou... verily, a... veritable Magical... Maiden?
Heh, of course I am~ I'm a Magical Girl, fighting to vanquish these evil Arcana!
UOOOOOHHHHH!!!
T-then this 'magic' in the legendary codices does exist, for truth? A-and thy most fashionable cos-tume must be, forsooth, to gather the magical powers -
Don Quixote. Calm yourself.
Huh? Where are you guys going~?
Faust somehow managed to precisely snatch Don Quixote's wildly flapping arms mid-motion and dragged her away from the 'Magical Girl' and back to our group.
W-wherefore didst thou drag me from this consultation of great significance? I have mountains of questions to ask her -
That thing is no 'Magical Girl'.
What is with thy conspiratorily low voice, and this - hoh?
O-01-04, Risk Level WAW. It is a veritable Abnormality... dubbed 'The Queen of Hatred' for recording purposes.
Fie...?! T-that maiden there is an Abnormality?! Yet she speaketh, and... appeareth just like a human.
And to label someone whose sheer appearance exudes justice, Queen of Hatred...?
I believe that it has been impressed upon you many times in the past that Abnormalities should not be judged by their exteriors.
... Indeed, they possess the sense of self; they think, and they feel.
Perhaps, by the Head's standards, they may meet the criteria of what is considered a human.
However, that is... an Abnormality, no more, no less.
We slowly turn around to look at the blue-haired... thing, compelled by Faust's stern tone.
Hm~ Hm hm~
But it was just there, humming a light tune, swinging that staff around...
<... Oh, the lights.>
Wonderful~ Looks like I managed to protect the peace once again!
And when the red lights turned off, and the alarm stopped blaring in our ears...
... it puffed away with the same pink swirl of light she first appeared with.
Phew... this is annoying. Why did that Abnormality have to be contained at our department?
It couldn't be helped, Tiphereth. Not even the manager knows which Abnormality will appear at the Headquarters.
... Yeah, that's true.
But she just gets on my nerves, you know? Always showing up at the tail end of a huge mess like the Second Warning, barely doing anything to help, leaving the scene like she did something...
... And you know how she completely loses it unless we baby her all the time, right?
Tiphereth? The mic is still on.
Yeah, so? Let them listen! The employees have to know, that this -
Bzzt.
<... Abnormality is still an Abnormality at the end of the day, I guess.>
Her management appears to be quite the source of stress, it seems...
Yet aught is odd here! The maiden hath assisted us dearly in our battle, did she not? To suggest that she is hardly of any help is preposterous!
Please review this document. It is a consolidation of management reports for that Abnormality from the former L Corp. Fortunately, it seems that an extended period of management experience has left quite a detailed report behind.
Hup...
Oh, damn...
She wasn't kidding about having to baby this one, huh...
The Sinners' expressions all start to turn rather sour the further they read along the report.
<I skimmed through it, and... looks like she's got this compulsive obsession that she always has to be on the side of justice.>
She grows more and more 'hysterical' the longer a peaceful period lasts…? What is her problem...?
Got anything to say to that, O great scholar of Fixers?
... Ahem. Indeed, 'tis quite... different from what I anticipated.
As fortune should have it, we did not encounter the mutated form of the Queen of Hatred today.
However, as they also possess such a thing as psychological stability, or... 'Sanity'...
... it seems that employees assigned to this Abnormality had the responsibility to keep it at higher levels at all times.
It cannot have been... easy to put up with humoring a monster in human skin.
... At least 'humoring them' is the extent of the required effort at this point.
Hm?
You are implying that the management of Abnormalities entail something far more complicated than simply calibrating their sanity at a reasonable level.
Yes, that is correct.
It seems that this Headquarters is yet to extract a larger quantity of Abnormalities.
A moment, if you will. To say that they extract...
Yi Sang furrowed his brows and started, noticing a strangeness in her choice of words, but...
... we already found ourselves returned to the mess of machinery that was LCE's vehicle.
... Ah, it seems that this is where this 'scenario' ends.
Dante. As there may be further information that can be garnered from this experience, repeated visits to this Walpurgis Night is also recommended.
<... Okay, got it.>
Yi Sang approached Faust to continue his earlier question, but Faust only shook her head in response, as if to say...
... that she wasn't certain, or... that she couldn't tell him just yet.
To me, someone who doesn't even know what's going on with the company they're working for, all these stories from the former L Corp. and the Library are filled with nothing but confusing mysteries.
But... something about it makes me feel as though everything that happened in those two places are at once foundations and clues to what we are going through.
Maybe... maybe I can even use these moments to understand the stories I've forgotten, the purpose of this company I work for.
So...
<Well, who's up for a second run?>
Let's, like Faust, focus on looking for those clues left behind.