(2025 Edit) Technomancer: A Magical Girl's Sidekick [Post-Apocalyptic][Mecha][Magical Girls]

"So a bunch of Magical Girls managed to evacuate most of downtown?"

Bishop nodded. "Yeah. I'm still holding out hope that Emi managed to get swept up in the wave of people and she's just safe at a shelter without reception."

I frowned. I hoped that was the case too.

"Still, there has to be around ten thousand people down here at a given time if not more. How many did they manage to evacuate?" Midori wondered.

Bishop sighed. "I have no idea. Maybe a thousand that I saw? It's not exactly like there was a clear chain of command and leadership at the time, ya know? Everyone was panicking. This sort of thing doesn't happen here. There wasn't even a proper announcement - it was all chaos. Then a girl came in with a white dress and pink sparkles and started playing her damned flute. Created a complicated system of slides, chutes, and landing zones that people could rush through that she did. I could see her moving hundreds of people through her little system every minute."

"That's a relief, at least. That some people got out in time," Midori said, nodding. "That had to be incredibly taxing on her mana though."

I breathed. "Turns out having so many dessert shops, dress designers, shops for magical supplies, and a massive mall complex was good for something, after all. Could've been a worse place to have a giant mutated dragon come out of nowhere and start raining hellfire and brimstone on us, you know?"

Clementine whimpered, eliciting a glare from Midori aimed directly at me.

I grimaced apologetically.

Bishop coughed. "In any case, we should be careful. There are still many people out here who could be corrupted, and we don't know where the chaos beasts and zombies are."

Midori nodded, glancing at me. Bishop didn't know I'd been using Rai-chan to access the city's cameras and guide us with her map of the city, which was how we were moving so quickly.

And it was better if we kept it that way.

It was strange. The streets were mostly empty already, with the exception of the occasional shambling zombie we could move around. The air was cold and the city was eerily quiet.

We passed by a convenience store, and the lights were still on, but nobody was inside. It wasn't even looted - which I'd come to expect from my upbringing on Earth, but that was the last thing on anyone's mind in a place like Shoreline City. Feng Shui was a very real thing when it came to entropy cascades, and rioting and looting was a good way to attract chaos beasts and aberrations to your position.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Maybe it was because I'd been through so many salvage and survey runs back on Earth with my sister and dad, but I couldn't help but feel like we were being watched.

There was something about... liminal spaces like this that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Whether it was a long, empty quiet hallway, a dark and empty underground car park, or the streets of an abandoned city, something about it made me feel uneasy.

The lights in the convenience store didn't flicker or anything. It just felt wrong.

"Hey, are you okay?" Midori asked.

"I'm fine," I said, swallowing. "Just... something about this doesn't feel right."

"There's plenty about this that ain't right, innit?" Bishop said, narrowing his eyes. "This city was supposed to be safe. Secure. Not the kind of place where a fucking Chaos Event of this scale would happen."

Clementine shuddered.

"We'll get through it, though," Midori said, ruffling the little girl's hair. "We'll get through it."

She turned to look at me a. "Right?"

I nodded, and then felt a pang of guilt. I had to be strong for her. "Yeah. We will."

"Good," Midori said, nodding. "Let's just keep moving."

It was almost imperceptible, but I saw Midori glance at the convenience store with a wary gaze, before staring at the road ahead for a long, hard second. I wondered if she felt it too.

This entire street was...

I stopped after taking a few steps.

Bishop frowned too, stopping at the same time. He looked at Midori, then at me. "I take it I'm not the only one who noticed?"

"Let's... take a different road," Midori said, placing a hand on the hilt of her sword.

I nodded.

"Yeah," I said.

The streets were completely intact, and the convenience store, as far as I could tell, was completely untouched.

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But that was the issue.

It was too clean.

Everywhere we'd been since we left the Renaissance Hotel and the mall complex, there were signs of chaos. There were broken windows, overturned cars, fires, and zombies and chaos beasts wandering about.

But here, it was like nothing had happened. It was as if the Chaos Event had never reached this place. The cars were all lined up in neat rows on the street, without a single corpse or zombie in sight. It was like the streets were frozen in time, and it felt like we were intruding in a space that was not meant for us.

"Guys?" I murmured, frowning as I pointed at a car.

The door was open, and the keys were in the ignition. There was a shopping bag in the passenger seat, and the driver's seat was empty. There was a purse on the floor, and a pair of shoes on the pavement. It was like whoever was driving the car had just disappeared.

"Ikki," Rai-chan said in my mind. "It's like that time..."

"A Count-class," I said out loud, causing Bishop and Midori to stare at me. "It has to be. I've encountered something like this before."

Bishop's eyes widened, and he immediately reached for his gun, looking around. Midori did the same, pulling out her sword and holding it at the ready. The blade was glowing, and I could see the runes and markings on it.

Rai-chan immediately began to analyze the environment. She'd been doing that for the entirety of our run here, but now it felt like she was actively on the lookout for a specific Aberration we'd run into weeks ago.

We slowly backed away from the convenience store, Bishop and Midori keeping their weapons drawn. I could see the tension in their eyes.

We were halfway back to the intersection leading down this road when the sound of glass breaking interrupted our thoughts.

I froze, and Bishop and Midori immediately turned to look at the sound. It was coming from the convenience store, but the lights were still on, and the store was still completely intact.

Suddenly, I felt a presence and I looked at the sky.

A robed, humanoid figure was floating in the air above us. It had a featureless face and wore an orange hooded robe, with what looked like two pairs of long, black shadowy tendrils trailing from the edges of its sleeves and robe. I felt an enormous headache coming on. I didn't know how, given its blurry face, but it felt like the thing was smiling at me. Its arms were outstretched towards us.

Then the world seemed to warp.

"Hey, you alright lad?" Bishop asked, shaking me out of my trance.

I blinked.

When I opened my eyes again the robed figure was gone, leaving nothing but a cloud of smoke hanging in the air.

"Ikki... are you okay?" Midori asked. "What are you staring at?"

I looked at her, confused.

"What?"

"The store, Ikki. The store!" Rai-chan suddenly screamed in my head.

The stupor left me in an instant, and I snapped my head towards the convenience store.

One moment, it was as we'd left it.

The next, it warped.

In the blink of an eye, the lights were off and the glass doors were shattered, and there was a massive hole in the ceiling. It was like a bomb had gone off. The shelves were toppled and the products were scattered everywhere. There was a dead body on the floor, with a gaping hole in its chest.

Three zombies with glowing blue eyes and blood-stained mangled bodies stalked around inside, noticing us instantly.

Midori, Bishop, and Clementine were staring at the store, their expressions tense and their weapons drawn. Bishop was holding his gun with both hands, while Midori was clutching her sword with a white-knuckled grip.

"Bloody reality distortions," Bishop growled, gritting his teeth and aiming at one of the zombies.

He fired thrice in one clean sweep, hitting each of them in the head with each bullet, before they slumped to the ground.

Bishop lowered his pistol and sighed, looking at the store. "Let's get the hell out of here before whatever caused—"

"Look out!" Midori suddenly shouted.

Bishop instinctively dropped and rolled to the side, right as a shadowy clawed hand shot out of a shadowy portal and swiped at where his head was a moment ago.

The hand was attached to a long, shadowy arm, and as it retracted back into the darkness it revealed a large, black, and humanoid figure staring at us from the abyss.

The figure was tall and muscular, with long, gangly limbs and claws that glinted in the dim light. It had no face, just a featureless black void.

The only thing that stood out was the glowing blue eyes, which seemed to stare at us with an intense, hungry gaze. The figure moved slowly, deliberately, as if it were stalking its prey. It sank back into the darkness and disappeared, the ground swallowing it up.

"You were right, boy..." Bishop growled with an undertone of fear. "We have to move! A bloody Judi-"

Midori stepped forward, and then she flashed green.

I felt a sudden gust of wind as she disappeared, and a moment later I heard a loud crack, a grunt, and a thud. She reappeared a moment later, about three meters away with her sword drawn.

And behind her, there was a gaping purple slash in the middle of the air. Midori flicked her sword and sheathed it.

The shadowy figure appeared again, its body twisted in an unnatural way. Almost like it was taken by surprise, or had its momentum suddenly stopped.

Then, its lower body crumpled to the floor as its upper half stayed suspended in the air, split cleanly in two.

Then the slash vanished, and Midori stood there, her sword sheathed and her eyes closed.

"I've always wanted to try doing that," Midori murmured, sighing and looking at her sword. "I'm glad it worked..."

Bishop was staring at her with wide eyes. "Bloody hell, lass... where'd you learn that?!"

Midori shrugged, then beckoned for us to follow her as black smoke rose from the Aberration's body.

"It shouldn't be able to snap its horde back on us from its pocket dimension," Midori said, "But let's not wait to find out. Come on."

I stared at the corpse of the shadowy figure, which was slowly dissolving into a fine black mist.

I felt a chill run down my spine and I shivered. I glanced back up at the sky, and the hooded figure was still nowhere to be seen. There were no shadows in the sky, and I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Ikki. What did you see?" Rai-chan asked again.

"I don't know," I murmured. "It was like a ghost or something. A faceless man in orange robes. It might've been the same entity we encountered weeks ago."

Midori suddenly bent down in front of me, checking on the cuts along my torso.

"We have to get you to a shelter, Ikki," she said, looking worried. "You're visibly suffering from the effects of chaos energy exposure."

"Maybe..." I said, glancing at the sky one more time before running after Midori.

I could feel Clementine staring at Midori in awe from around my shoulders, and I smiled weakly. Maybe there was a chance we'd get out of here.

But... why did I feel so uneasy?