Snippet #2815341

The late September sun edged slowly down over the horizon, coloring Ran-no-Machi with a soft pink and orange glow. The streets were lined with people commuting to and from work as normal day jobs drew to a close and night shifts began, and kids from the local schools milled about in parks and the downtown shops with their friends before going home. The evening breeze was beginning to get a chill to it, and carried the scent of flowers across the city streets. And above their heads, two girls in brightly colored outfits shot through the sky.

"It’s going left!” shouted the magical girl Budou, firing a violet bolt of energy from her wand. It went wide over its target, dissipating into the air. ”No, not that left, the other left!”

”There’s only one left!” Ringo retorted, diving low to avoid another volley from her grape-purple clad companion.

Their quarry was a mish-mash of a creature - it had the head of a goat, teeth of a wolf, arms and claws of an eagle, tail of an eel, and the wings of a dragonfly, yet had proven far more quick and agile than such a combination would imply. It was a Thoughtless, ill-intent refracted into monstrous form by the strange magic of the otherworld known as Layers, and ending its encroachment into the human world was the sworn duty of the Magical Girls chasing after it.

It zigzagged through the sky as it veered downtown, its tail spinning slowly in the air behind it as its hunters tried to keep up, taking potshots at it in an attempt to turn it away from the city center. A number of the people on the sidewalks beneath them looked up as they zipped past, a few fumbling with cell phones to try and snap blurry pictures for social media before they were out of sight.

”This would be so much easier if Momo were here!” Budou yelled in frustration, thrusting out her arm, fingers releasing their grip on her wand and splaying wide as a small mouse with a single horn on its forehead ran down from her shoulder. Budou’s familiar leapt onto her wand before it fell, and both vanished in a burst of purple light, being replaced with a short spear that had grapevines curled along the shaft. ”I’m just gonna rush it!”

”Ah, wait wait wait!”

”GRAPE FLAVOR BURST!!” Budou’s form was swallowed in cascading purple energy, and she rocketed forth with a violet sonic BOOM echoing behind her. In the next instant she tore through the left-side wings of the Thoughtless, cursing her unpracticed aim as it went corkscrewing toward the buildings below.

---

---

The wooden chairs scraped quietly across the floor as Aoki Kaho set them in a neat circle. One of her bar’s side tables sat nearby, set with 2-liters of green tea, plastic cups, and rice crackers. The rest of the furniture had been stacked against the wall; not far from the ring in the center of the small, hole-in-the-wall establishment, but distant enough not to be in the way.

Kaho leaned back against the bar for a moment, judging the setup, then looked over to the clock on the wall. A little after five, about twenty minutes before the group which rented out her bar every Monday night started filing in. She sighed through her nose, then pushed off the counter, a thin black snake crawling up her arm to her shoulder as she moved away toward the front door. Better to fuck off for two hours than stick around for something she didn’t care for.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk in the nightlife district of downtown, she pulled a cigarette out of the inner pocket of her black silk vest, tapping it once against her hand before lighting it and taking a shallow drag. She didn’t like smoking inside if she could help it, and stubbornly denied patrons the opportunity to do the same, but one would be hard pressed to find her outside without a cigarette hanging from her lip.

The bell of the door rang quietly as it slid shut behind her, and she looked over her shoulder once, locking eyes with the giant anime decal of Shinii-tan, the bespoke mascot plastered across the front. Sin Eater wasn’t what one might call a “popular” establishment, but it did well enough for a business who’s only attempt at advertisement was the black-haired cartoon angel sipping sake on the front door. Shinii-tan’s red eyes seemed to tunnel into Kaho, mocking her for being chased out of her own establishment. Kaho clicked her tongue and wandered off.

Normally Kaho would spend the evening doing the accounts and payroll for her… one employee, but she hadn’t bothered to put those off this week, which meant she had nothing to do for the next two hours. Maybe she could go see a movie? There was an American thing she’d been interested in, but going to a theatre alone always felt a bit-

She looked up as a sonic boom exploded over her head. A purple ring stretched out in the sky, and she trailed the shot of purple light from it to… a monster. Falling toward her bar. Ah.