Chapter 10
You can probably guess this from the fact that I mentioned magical girls often work as idols and celebrities, but their abilities are also frequently used in television programs.
Then surely everyone has thought of this at least once.
'Wouldn't it be fun to have a program where magical girls fight each other?'
Think about it. So many people watch UFC, where fighters battle without anything like superpowers. Would a fight between magical girls with abilities that put movie heroes to shame really be unpopular?
And on top of that, all of them are guaranteed to have idol-level looks?
Naturally, it was a program many people had thought about.
But there were quite a lot of obstacles to actually putting it into practice,
For starters, it wasn't easy to recruit magical girls to film it.
UFC works because combat sports are its whole premise, but why would a magical girl contracted to fight Abyss Ones agree to fight another magical girl? Why?
And even if they did fight, how would they prevent all the damage caused by battles between magical girls who surpassed human limits? And if one of them happened to get hurt during the fight, what would they do if an Abyss One appeared at that moment?
Blocked by countless difficulties besides the examples above, the magical-girl battle program was not put into practice for a long time.
However, ten years had already passed since magical girls first appeared in the world. As these once-unusual beings blended into everyday life and everyone grew accustomed to them, people managed to overcome some of those obstacles, and a program began airing not long ago...
"Welcome, viewers! Today is the long-awaited final of the Rookie Magical Match! Which side will claim the title of the strongest magical girl this year!!"
'Wow. What terrible naming sense.'
Rookie Magical Match.
As you can probably guess from the name, it was a tournament program featuring rookie magical girls who had debuted less than a year earlier.
Because these rookies still couldn't properly control their own abilities, a few experienced magical girls making sufficient preparations in advance was enough to prevent safety incidents.
The magical-girl community had grown quite large by then. Simply making a contract was no guarantee of survival.
Before the world changed this way, how many idols and celebrities had faded away without ever making a name for themselves?
Now magical girls, too, had to desperately promote themselves in order to raise their profiles.
If you charged into the world relying only on a mediocre face, you were bound to suffer a rude awakening.
Magical girls were all basically pretty and cute, after all.
You may have spent your ordinary life hearing every possible compliment about your looks, but the moment you became a magical girl, that became a prerequisite that every magical girl possessed, leaving you with no competitive edge.
Of course, even among magical girls, looks had their tiers, but that simply meant the lowest tier was already that high.
Anyway, unless you were content to live as an obscure magical girl quietly defeating Abyss Ones, you had to be prepared to fight for your life if you wanted to gain wealth and fame as a magical girl.
No wonder there were even magical girls who adopted the concept of an adult magical girl and worked with a sexy image in order to gain a competitive edge.
Apparently, the attempt worked to some extent, since they seemed to be fairly famous in that particular niche... but I didn't pay attention to that side of things, so I didn't know the details.
If it was the result of struggling desperately to survive and actually achieving something, then respecting it was only proper.
"Now, let me introduce today's commentator! Ah~! She is a living legend of the magical-girl world! A legendary magical girl who has been active for ten years since her debut, yet whose reputation has never suffered a single blemish! The one and only Alice, ranked fourth among the S-ranks!!!!"
-Clap clap clap clap clap clap!!!!!!!
"Hello! The stars are especially beautiful today~. Did everyone have sweet dreams?"
"Haha, Alice? It's daytime, so you can't see the stars right now."
"They only can't be seen because they're hidden by the sunlight. The stars are always watching over us from high above, just as Alice is always rushing to your side whenever you fall into danger. The starlight is always watching over us."
"Ah~! Thank you for those wonderful words! Come to think of it, I watched several videos of Alice in action when I was younger... You were truly amazing."
The blonde magical girl with a ponytail kept talking to me as the host, and I gave her suitable responses. As expected of a professional, she cut off the small talk at a reasonable point and properly got the program underway.
"Now... Alice? By the way, do you usually watch our program?"
"I don't particularly like watching fellow magical girls fight each other, but as a senior magical girl, it's also my duty to watch my juniors in action. So I check in from time to time."
"Oh~! Then you know who's appearing today too, right?"
For reference, this part is scripted. I don't normally watch it.
I only know that there is such a program; there was no way I knew who had appeared or who had performed well.
"Of course. Black Rose and Berte, right?"
"You're well-informed! All right, then! While we put their brief profiles on screen, let's hear a short commentary from Alice!"
Brief profiles of the two magical girls appeared on the screen, along with their weapons and the abilities they had publicly revealed so far.
The one called Black Rose had adopted a bizarre concept: a gothic lolita dress, black twin tails, and dual pistols as her weapons.
Berte was... well. Ordinary.
I wasn't important enough to examine the profiles of the juniors I would be seeing for the first time today all that closely. Nor did Berte have a bizarre concept like Black Rose.
She was pretty, but that went without saying. She was a magical girl.
But what else was distinctive about her...? Hmm... For some reason, her three measurements were listed on her profile?
Since Black Rose hadn't disclosed hers, it was probably a form of self-promotion that Berte had requested herself...
...Well, the numbers were fairly impressive, so if she made that her selling point, she seemed likely to survive reasonably well. She knew it herself, too, which was probably why she'd made them public.
Anyway, that was my personal assessment, but since I was being paid, I had to fulfill my role as a commentator as well.
"Black Rose often shows off the trick of shooting down her opponent's attacks with her dual pistols. In fact, she leveraged that strength to neutralize most projectile attacks and make it all the way to the finals. Naturally, they're magic bullets, but at the juniors' current level, it would be difficult to react to the speed of a pistol. So she has mainly relied on one-sided exchanges, shooting down all of her opponent's projectiles while making attacks they can't react to herself."
I'll stop here for a moment. My mouth hurts, and I need to give them time to organize the subtitles.
"Most of the juniors' main attacks at this stage are projectiles, so she has a perfect matchup advantage. Even if someone has honed their close-combat techniques, dual pistols are ranged weapons to begin with. Unless they can demonstrate the kind of magic control that infuses their projectiles with enough magical power that they won't be shot down no matter how many magic bullets hit them, it will be difficult to defeat Black Rose."
"Oh wow! This is a much higher-quality analysis than the other commentators we've had so far! As expected of an S-rank! Guns really are appealing in that regard. What do you think, Alice?"
"Hmm... Guns are a type of weapon that shows high efficiency at low ranks. Conversely, once you reach a high rank... C-rank or above, in other words, their efficiency drops sharply. In particular, the dual pistols Black Rose currently uses don't have much destructive power per shot, so I expect that higher-rank Abyss Ones would be difficult to pierce through their defenses."
"I see. What would be a way to overcome that?"
"To overcome this... I would recommend either honing yourself until you can create techniques with greater destructive power, or specializing in fighting large numbers of low-rank Abyss Ones by making this your signature skill."
Even if she were a sniper, it might be different, but dual pistols that spray magic bullets rat-a-tat-tat would inevitably become far less effective once Abyss Ones began developing genuine resistance to magic.
"Come to think of it, this is something I heard from the production staff... I heard that Black Rose is a huge fan of Alice. There's even a rumor that she jumped up and down with excitement when she heard Alice would be coming as the commentator..."
"Oh my... To love Alice so much... Alice loves you too, Miss Black Rose."
-Aaaaaaaah!!! What do I do, what do I do!!!
-Thud thud!
...I thought I'd heard something strange from the direction of the waiting room, but I ignored it.
Where did they all even go watch this washed-up magical girl, only to come back calling themselves fans?
No, wait. I probably don't appear on TV or in the mass media even six times a year, so how does anyone become a fan from that?
Do they have some kind of hobby of enjoying something precisely because it's so scarce?
Even though I went out of my way to avoid cameras as much as possible, even a recent new recruit was claiming to be a fan.
As someone who wanted to become so obscure that most people wouldn't even recognize the name Alice, I couldn't help getting a headache.
"Then shall we take a look at Miss Berte? Miss Berte specializes in using elemental magic to keep her opponents in check..."