Desperately Seeking Ranma

by PixelWriter1

Ranma and Kasumi are missing, everyone is annoyed about it. Nabiki is doing her best, Akane is going slowly crazy (or at least crazier) and the parents are still idiots. (Chapter 54 onwards has a form of Sailor Moon crossover, which sort of just happened ;O ) See the DSR Wiki for more details, including spoilers if that doesn't bother you, at sisterhood-of-doom dot wikia dot com

21. Chapter 21 - Embedded Side Story 1

The next couple of chapters wouldn't gel correctly, until they suddenly turned into a sort of side story. It seemed likely that it would just confuse people if on it's own, so presented here is 'Embedded Sidestory the First.' It also embiggened itself considerably as it developed. Hopefully this doesn't leave everyone scratching their heads. Normal service will resume after the break.

Thanks once more to everyone who has left such nice feedback. And one or two reviews that are frankly weird...

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"Ah, Sergeant, thank you for joining us. Could you close the door, please?" Sergeant Tetsuo Harada did as requested, looking at Captain Uehara, then glancing at the three other people in her office curiously. Two of them, a man and a woman, were obvious foreigners, the other was a Japanese man. "I believe you speak English fluently?"

"Yes, Ma'am, I spend several years in the US at university," he responded, wondering what was going on.

"Good." She switched to that language, turning to her visitors. "This is Sergeant Harada. He will be your liaison and guide while you're here. Sergeant, this is Agent Naito from the PSIA, Lieutenant Harrison from the LAPD in the US," she indicated the man, "and Inspector Deveraux from the RCMP, in Canada, obviously." The woman, a tall and pretty woman in her mid thirties with short dark hair nodded politely. Sergeant Harada greeted all of them, bowing slightly to the intelligence agent and shaking hands with the two police officers. "Lieutenant Harrison and Inspector Deveraux are here on a joint US-Canadian police intelligence operation, following a criminal gang they suspect has ties to an Aum Shinrikyo splinter group and also a small branch of the Yakuza. There have been some... unusual incidents... in both Los Angeles and Toronto, which bear some of the hallmarks of previous attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo group, but with aspects that are a little peculiar." She emphasised the last word, and Harada nodded understandingly.

"You mean magic." Lieutenant Harrison looked irritated and Inspector Deveraux sighed.

"Magic doesn't exist," the American stated flatly. The three Japanese people looked at him with slightly raised eyebrows.

"Hmm. Interesting." Agent Naito studied the man with a guarded expression, but said nothing more for the moment. The RCMP woman was less circumspect.

"Richard, I don't like it any more than you do, but all the evidence is..." He cut her off.

"I don't care. It's all some sort of technical trick, or something like that. I don't know how they did it, but it's not magic. Not real magic." She sighed again. "Laura, we've worked on this for a long time, but I still haven't seen anything that would make me believe in magic."

"How do explain the fact that five suspects vanished from a completely locked room surrounded by over a hundred SWAT men, with absolutely no exits, then?" she asked mildly. "We both looked over that place ourselves. We called in an expert on escapology, x-rayed the entire building, then took it apart. There was absolutely no way out of the place except through the front door, we know that for a fact. We also know they went inside. But when we got in, the only thing we found was a weird diagram on the floor. Where did they go?" He looked both very annoyed and very puzzled, shrugging after several seconds.

"Damned if I know. But we know they've been spotted in Tokyo, so obviously they got out somehow." She started to speak, and he raised a hand to cut her off. "But not by magic."

"Oh, for god's sake..." she mumbled, looking at the PSIA man, who quirked a smile at her for a moment.

"Anyway, Sergeant, we asked your Captain to assign you to us as you have a good relationship with the local, ah, special talent. We will probably need their help." Harada looked at the man with interest.

"I wasn't aware that the PSIA knew much about our girls." Agent Naito smiled.

"Oh, we keep tabs on the comings and goings of most of the specials in Minato. While some of them are a bit of a handful, on the whole we feel they're a valuable asset to the country as a whole. We know quite a lot about what they do, and how many times their help has been essential. A lot more than I suspect most of them realise." The police officer exchanged a glance with his superior, then looked back to the security agent.

"Yori might take exception to that, you know. I assume we are talking about Yori and Chou?" Agent Naito nodded.

"Yes, indeed we are. Of all of them they are by far the most professional, and the ones we have the least information on. They take their security extremely seriously and are exceptionally good at it. Better than our people, to be honest. We have had some dealings with them in the past, they've always come through for us, but we haven't been able to find out much about them. The one thing we do know is that they're very, very dangerous." Harada smiled a little.

"You have no idea, I suspect. Dangerous doesn't even begin to describe it. Most of that type are dangerous, it's basically the job description, they are absolutely lethal. Luckily, they also are some of the most responsible, reliable, and trustworthy people I've ever met." Harrison and Deveraux were looking at each other, wondering what on earth the other two were talking about. Captain Uehara noticed and explained.

"Here in Minato we have a peculiar phenomenon, that to the best of my knowledge is almost unique to us, with the possible exception of the ward of Nerima, and one or two other places in Japan. Have you heard of Magical Girls?" The two visiting police officers exchanged puzzled glances.

"Um, like in the comic books? A sort of Japanese superhero? Always female, dress in skimpy clothing, battle supernatural opponents?" Lieutenant Harrison looked at the three Japanese people with a sceptical and puzzled expression. "My daughter reads some comics like that. It always seemed like an excuse for the artists to draw pretty girls without much on, in my opinion." The Captain smiled.

"That's more or less it." She paused for a moment, then added, "We have rather a lot of them around here."

"Oh, come on! You're telling me that there are teenaged girls in miniskirts jumping around the rooftops battling demons in Tokyo, for real?" He laughed derisively. Inspector Deveraux smiled a little, then both of them noticed that all three of the others looked completely serious.

"Basically, yes." The PSIA agent looked evenly at the LAPD man. "I understand it's a bit odd, but essentially those comics are based on reality. I don't know why it happens here and nowhere else, but I assure you it's real."

"You have to be kidding me," Harrison said, sounding almost like he was pleading to be let in on the joke.

"Sorry, but I'm not. We have magical girls, real ones, and if anything they're even stranger than in your daughter's comic books. The Sergeant here can introduce you to a couple of them. He can certainly show you the results of some of their efforts on behalf of the community."

Inspector Deveraux smiled slightly at the weird expression on the face of her American colleague, quickly stifling it when he glanced at her as if to a bastion of common sense in this strange foreign land. "So, if you have magical girls, do you have demon attacks as well?" she asked with light interest. "That's traditionally what they fight, if I have my urban mythology straight." The three natives nodded. With a sudden shock she realised they were completely serious.

"You've got to be kidding," Harrison said again, almost under his breath. Ignoring him, the Captain addressed Sergeant Harada.

"Two of the suspects in the LA attack were spotted very close to here a week or so ago. The PSIA tracked them to an area of about half a square kilometre before the trail went cold. We suspect they have some magical method of concealment, or are in league with one of our extremely out of town visitors." He nodded, understanding what she meant. "There was talk about blanketing the area with our people, but it was felt that this would both alarm the residents unnecessarily and also probably tip off our little group of nasties. If they move on we could lose them for months, if not permanently. Someone suggested setting Yori loose on them, and while it was felt that would probably sort the problem out for good, we'd like to arrest them rather than just have another duck pond." Harada grinned, while the visitors looked puzzled.

"What we'd like you to do is contact her and Chou, and ask them, politely of course, if they'd mind helping us track this group down and provide support if it goes bad." Captain Uehara paused, looking at the two foreigners for a moment. "We can't afford to have our guests get involved too heavily, it would be a bit of a diplomatic nightmare. They're mainly here for intelligence support and as observers." Harrison and Deveraux both looked somewhat unhappy about this but said nothing. Harrison was still apparently trying to figure out where the joke was about the concept of magical girls, without a lot of luck. Sergeant Harada smiled.

"OK, I can do that. It may take a few hours, her security is pretty tight and she doesn't always respond immediately."

"That's fine. There's no massive hurry, we'll go when they're available. We have some people watching from a discreet distance just in case one of the suspects shows up, but based on what's happened so far I doubt it's going to be that easy, unfortunately."

"May I use your phone, Ma'am?" The captain pushed it across her desk to him. Picking it up the Sergeant dialled a memorised number while removing a small card from his shirt pocket, then as the others watched with interest read off a long sequence of numbers and letters from it. Inspector Deveraux realised after a moment, with some surprise, that she couldn't remember what they were. She turned to Agent Naito, who was watching her with a knowing expression.

"Weird, isn't it?"

"What's going on?" she asked, half-expecting the answer. He grinned.

"Magic, of course. That girl takes her privacy seriously and has some very cool toys." He waited as Harada left a message then hung up. "Sergeant, can you show the Inspector the card, please?" He looked puzzled, then suddenly understanding, handing it over. She took it and studied it curiously. The card was completely blank, just a small rectangle of white card stock.

"Um, what am I supposed to see?" He grinned at her.

"Nothing. That's the point. Only the owner of the particular card can read it." Taking it back from her he put it away. Noticing her sceptical expression he explained. "The card is magical, and keyed to a particular person. Anyone other than that person can only see a blank card, and even the person it's keyed to can't tell anyone what's on it. Each card has a different password so she knows that who has it." Agent Naito smiled, looking impressed.

"I wish we had security that good. I have no idea how she does it, but I know it works. Not many people rate having her contact details, she doesn't hand them out very often. It's quite a sign of trust." Harrison and Deveraux exchanged glances.

"You realise how insane that sounds? And difficult to prove, if no one really can see what's on the card, who's to say it isn't just a blank card." Harada laughed.

"Honestly, inspector, we're not playing some elaborate practical joke. You'll see, later." Moments later the phone rang. "Hmm. That was quick. She must be bored." With a glance at his superior, who nodded approval, he picked it up and answered in Japanese. "Hello, Yori. Yes, fine, thanks. How's Chou? Good. Look, we have a problem we need some special help for. Could you two meet us somewhere? There are some people here who I'd like you to meet. Yes. Yes, that would be fine. Ten minutes? Great. Thanks." Hanging up he smiled, switching back to English for the benefit of the visitors. "She's happy to help, and will meet us outside in about ten minutes. I'd better get a couple of cups of coffee, she and Chou drink a lot of it and like ours." Leaving the room he headed for the cafeteria.

Inside, the two visiting police officers looked at each other with bemusement, then turned to the captain. "Agent Naito will come with you. You've both been given special dispensation to carry your service weapons while on this assignment, but I must emphasise, especially to you, Lieutenant Harrison, that you must only use them as a matter of last resort. Here in Japan we take a very dim view of people discharging firearms at all, never mind in the street. This isn't LA. If you use your gun you better have a damn good reason for it, or you may find yourself staying a lot longer than you planned. Do I make myself clear?" He nodded. "Good. Make sure you carry the letters of authorisation you have been issued at all times, and do not let your weapons out of your sight. And one more thing. Do not, under any circumstances, point a weapon at the magical girls. If you do the police and security forces of Japan won't be held responsible for what happens next. It wouldn't have any effect except to make them angry in any case, and trust me, you don't want to make them angry. You really, really don't." The Canadian and American police officers looked at each other for a moment, then nodded again.

"Yes, Captain." Inspector Deveraux looked at the older woman curiously. "If they're that dangerous, why do you allow them to run around the street?" Captain Uehara glanced at Agent Naito, then turned back to the woman.

"Partly because we have no effective way of stopping them even if we wanted to, but mainly because they perform a service that no one else could. If they weren't around, well, let's just say that it would get very messy if past events are anything to go by." She smiled a little scarily. "If you stay here for very long you may well find out what I mean. Anyway, good luck, and remember, do not annoy the magical girls! And if a demon attacks, get out of the way and let them handle it." They left the office looking worried, going in the direction of the main entrance.

"Masao, please keep them out of trouble, hmm?" the captain said. "I really don't want an international incident here, we have enough to do as it is. And don't let Harrison piss Yori off too much. I know his type, he's likely to be somewhat disrespectful to a young woman, which might be a bad mistake. She doesn't suffer fools gladly from what I've heard." He grinned.

"Yes, I believe you're right. Don't worry, the PSIA doesn't want any trouble from either the Americans or the Canadians either. At least the Canadians are polite, the Americans can be... abrasive. I will keep in touch." He bowed slightly, then followed the two foreigners. The captain watched him leave, then sighed.

"Magical girls. Demons. How did it come to this? Life used to be so much simpler." With a shake of her head she got back to her paperwork.

Inspector Deveraux and Lieutenant Harrison stood outside the front door of the central police station, looking around the small park it fronted onto. The Inspector was quite impressed with the area, it had a lot of greenery and seemed quite affluent and up-market, but not in an in-your-face sort of way. Everything was surprisingly clean and well looked after, the locals were respectful and pleasant, and although it was beginning to get cooler as autumn drew in, it was still warmer than Toronto. Harrison was shivering a little, though.

"Damn, it's cold. LA is much warmer than this even at this time of year." She grinned.

"If you think this is bad you should visit Toronto in the winter. It hit minus thirty last winter where I live, and that's nothing compared to further north." He stared, doing the conversion from Centigrade to Fahrenheit in his head, then looked appalled.

"Fuck. That's horrible. No thanks, I'll stay where it's warm."

"Come on, it's warm here, it must be at least fifteen degrees." He looked at her with an annoyed expression, zipping his coat up.

"Which is half what it should be to make me feel comfortable." After a pause while she smiled, amused, he slowly asked, "Do you believe everything they said in there? Magical girls? Demons? Hell, magic in the first place?" Glancing at him she shrugged.

"It's pretty hard to believe, I admit, but they seem sincere enough to me." A hand reached past her shoulder holding a disposable cup of coffee.

"We are sincere, and yes, it's all true," Sergeant Harada said with a smile as she jumped a little, then accepted the cup. He handed one to the American as well, then to the PSIA man who came up silently. Placing two of the three he had left on the wall next to the entrance to the station, he leaned against it and took a sip of the remaining one. Harrison tried his and nodded in slightly surprised satisfaction.

"Hey, that's pretty good. Especially for police issue coffee." Harada laughed.

"We take our coffee seriously around these parts." Studying the two police officers he asked, "So, you seem to have trouble with the concept of magic." The looked at each other, then back at him.

"I'm more puzzled that you guys don't," Harrison said. "I mean, magical girls? Teen-aged mini-skirted magical superheroes running around the place beating up demons. Demons, even. It's insane. Even if it was true, why does no one outside Japan know about it?" Agent Naito smiled slightly.

"Oh, some do, trust me. The UK, for instance, has a very long history of this sort of thing, but in a different way. Europe in general is aware of it, as is China. We seem to have a lot more of it, I'll grant you that, and the magical girls seem to be unique to us, but it's all around you if you know what to look for. It always puzzles me that North Americans have so much trouble believing it, while at the same time so many of them believe they've been abducted by aliens. Which is just silly." He chuckled, while Deveraux burst out laughing. Even Harrison smiled at this.

Sergeant Harada looked off to one side, then said, "Well, if you want to ask about magical girls, you can ask them." He pointed, and the other three turned to look in the direction he was staring. The eyes of the two foreign police officers bugged out at the sight of two young women, dressed not in the mini-skirts of the comics but in fairly stylish silk clothing, leaping easily from building to building some five or six stories up, heading down the street in their direction. The one in the lead, dressed in black with her long blue-striped black hair in a braid that blew behind her with the speed she was moving, reached the edge of the last building and simply ran off it, somersaulting several times during the graceful arc she made to ground level. Landing on her feet as lightly as if she'd jumped off a chair she walked towards them, while behind her the somewhat taller short-haired blonde woman in grey clothes performed exactly the same manoeuvre.

"Holy fucking hell," Harrison whispered. "How..." He ran out of words. Deveraux didn't have any to start with. Both of them watched as the two women, who looked about nineteen or twenty, crossed the street towards them, stopping once or twice to greet various people, none of whom looked even slightly surprised at what they'd just done. Waving to a couple of police officers who were getting into a patrol car, they walked up to the little group and stopped, looking curiously at the two people gaping at them before turning to Harada.

"Hi, Sergeant," the shorter woman said, accepting the cup of coffee he handed her with a nod of thanks. He did the same to her blonde companion. "So, what's all this about?" She looked the three people she didn't know up and down intently. Her unusually tinted eyes almost glowed, making them feel a sense of considerable energy only barely contained. "An American, a Canadian I think, and someone from the PSIA." This last sentence was said in very good English for the benefit of the foreigners. Both the overseas cops were still staring, but Agent Naito smiled a little.

"How did you know I'm from the PSIA?" he asked.

"That's what your ID says," the blonde woman said, looking with interest at the contents of a wallet she was holding. He stared, patting his jacket with his hand, then sighed.

"Magical girls." Holding out his hand he asked politely, "Can I have it back, please?"

"Certainly." The blonde handed it over with a smile. He turned to the black haired girl to see her reading the contents of another wallet.

"Hmm. LAPD. A long way from home, Lieutenant." She flipped the ID shut and tossed it back to Harrison, who caught it reflexively looking stunned. Neither of them had come closer than a couple of metres to any of the people. Sergeant Harada was grinning.

"Stop showing off, Yori. These are guests." She laughed.

"Sorry. We get curious." The other girl handed Deveraux her own ID with an apologetic smile. The Canadian took it numbly, putting it back into the interior pocket it had mysteriously somehow disappeared from. "So. What can we do for the police today? Or is it a PSIA event again?" The girl smiled at Agent Naito, who grinned back.

"It's a joint operation with international links. Our overseas friends here are coming along as observers, although their respective forces have considerable interest in this case." Yori raised an eyebrow.

"It must be a significant one if you're allowing foreign police officers to carry their weapons on the street." Lieutenant Harrison looked at her, startled.

"Why do you think we're armed?" She glanced at her blonde friend, who smiled.

"You have a Glock 17 9mm pistol in a shoulder holster, with two spare magazines. Your Canadian colleague is carrying a Smith and Wesson 5906 9mm, which I believe is standard RCMP issue. She's only got one spare magazine, although she also has a number of rounds in her purse." Both police officers stared at the blonde, then at each other.

"Holy crap. How did you do that?" Harrison was astounded and quite worried. They shrugged.

"It's a martial arts thing," Yori answered. "Difficult to explain. Anyway, I'm Yori, as you've probably already gathered, this is Chou. Nice to meet you, Lieutenant Harrison." She held out her hand and after a moment he shook it. Rather unwisely he decided to try to assert his own masculinity, which was feeling slightly overwhelmed, squeezing harder than necessary. She smiled slightly at him, apparently not noticing. With a small frown he squeezed harder. "Do you really want to do this, Lieutenant?" He saw something in her sharp violet-blue eyes that made him back off. Her friend put a warning hand on her shoulder and she released his hand, stepping back.

"Sorry," he muttered. She waved it off, grinning a little which showed off her small fangs, a sight that made both North Americans glance at each other for a second.

"No bother." Naito, who had been watching their interactions with a certain amount of humour, stepped forward.

"OK, now that we've established how clever we all are, let me introduce everyone properly." He spared each magical girl a minor glare, making them look mildly embarrassed and also amused. Yori graciously gestured for him to continue. "Thank you. Right, this is Lieutenant Richard Harrison, LAPD, and Inspector Laura Deveraux, RCMP. I'm Masao Naito from the PSIA as you somehow worked out. We have a problem we hope you can help with, we asked Sergeant Harada to call you as he knows you. Would you like to come inside where we can explain?" The two young women exchanged a glance then nodded.

"Of course," Yori said. "Always happy to help. Lead on." With a chuckle he waved them inside the police station then followed, Sergeant Harada and the two visitors bringing up the rear. Harrison watched the girls walking in front of them with an expression of incredulity on his face, while Deveraux watched him. Harada watched both of them.

"Believe in magic yet?" the inspector asked her American colleague in a low voice, glancing at the two young women who were chatting with the PSIA man. He shrugged helplessly.

"I'm not sure, but I certainly believe something weird is going on. How the hell did they do that?"

"Which part? Jumping off a five story building like it was ten centimetres tall, or somehow getting our IDs out of our coats from two metres away. Or knowing exactly what our weapons are and how much ammo we're carrying from the same distance?"

He almost giggled. "Any of it. All of it. It's completely nuts. They're only about three years older than my daughter, for god's sake." Harada, bringing up the rear, laughed.

"Oh, some of the magical girls are much younger than that. Age doesn't seem to be a factor. That said, I suspect they're actually rather older than they look, they have a much more mature outlook on life than their appearance would suggest, odd sense of humour aside. Don't let what they look like fool you. Both of those ladies could take out a division of any army in the world without much difficulty, should they want too. Some of the things I've seen them do is... pretty damn impressive, even by magical girl standards. Remind me to show you the crater in the park. It's a good demonstration of what Yori can do if she feels it's necessary."

They looked at each other. "Crater?" asked Deveraux. He nodded.

"Yes. About twenty metres across, lined with glass. That's what happened when she got miffed with a particularly unpleasant demon."

"A twenty metre crater?" Harrison sounded both fascinated and horrified.

"Oh, it's a duck pond now, it was too much trouble to fill it in, but you can still see the glass slag lining. I've got no idea how much energy was needed to do that, but it was a hell of a lot. How she kept it from breaking every window in Minato is beyond me. The noise was pretty impressive even so, especially from only a hundred metres away. There wasn't anything at all left of the demon." He shook his head with a mildly amused smile while remembering, as the other two looked at each other, aghast. "I certainly wouldn't like to see her really go all out. You'd probably see the explosion from the moon."

"A crater?" Harrison mumbled again, trying to wrap his mind around the concept. Deveraux looked at him and sighed a little, he was going to have a lot of difficulty with this. She was having quite a lot herself and her mind was much more flexible.

Naito took over a small conference room, closing the door and pulling a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket. Spreading them across the table he explained the situation while both the silk-clad women listened intently, asking pertinent and insightful questions occasionally. Deveraux found her opinion of both of them going steadily up as it became more and more apparent that there were a couple of first-class minds there as well as the strange abilities. Both she and Harrison explained their respective forces' involvement in the case, while Harada sat and listened silently, watching all the participants with interest.

"So far, there have been at least forty-three deaths we know of associated with these people. We're not sure exactly what they are trying to do, or even if the deaths were deliberate or accidental. There were three separate cases in LA and the surrounding area, accounting for eighteen fatalities, and five cases in the greater Toronto area which produced the rest. The American and Canadian forces had been closing in on the suspects for nearly a year, and it all came to a head a few months ago when two of them were shot while apparently setting up to do... something. No one seems to have any real idea what. The other five who have so far been identified managed to barricade themselves into a locked basement room, but they were gone when the LAPD SWAT finally broke in over two hours later."

Agent Naito looked seriously at the two young women. "We do not like the idea of anything like that happening here in Japan, as you can imagine, so we want to stop them as soon as possible. Especially considering the provenance of the people apparently involved. But the PSIA, who ended up with responsibility for this case, knows when it's in over it's head on certain matters. Hence your involvement. You've been a great help in the past, I'm hoping you can be again."

Yori pulled out one photo from the pile that he had put on the table, looking at it again. She showed it to her colleague who nodded with a frown. "This is a one-shot teleport spell, a bit over-complicated but effective. As far as I can see the coordinates it was targeted to would be somewhere in Japan, but I can't make out a few of the symbols that would locate it more precisely than that. Someone has stepped on it and erased some critical parts." She glanced at the two visitors. "In future, if you come across something like this, try to get a clear photo of it without disturbing it." They nodded, still having trouble with the concept of teleportation.

"It's been drawn pretty amateurishly, to be honest. I doubt it was a trained mage, I think whoever made it was shown how to do this one spell and given something to power it as an escape method. Did you find anything like a glass ball, perhaps ten centimetres across?" Harrison looked up.

"Yes, actually. We thought it was the remains of a light bulb but none of them were missing. It was broken on the floor in the middle of that pattern." She nodded.

"OK, that was a sort of magical battery. It would have contained enough energy to run this spell once and transport, oh, perhaps six people at most. It probably broke when the spell activated. It wouldn't have told you much anyway, they're pretty anonymous. You can buy them by the case in some of the demon worlds." They all stared at her.

"Demon worlds?" Naito asked slowly. The black-haired woman grinned.

"Demons have to come from somewhere, right?" Harada snickered a little. He was perhaps the only one in the room who had some idea of what she was talking about, having met a number of the more peaceful otherworldly visitors, mainly through Yori. Even the PSIA man seemed slightly startled. "We get a lot of traffic through Minato, for some reason I still haven't worked out. I think that it might be a sort of gateway for demon portals, they are easier to make here than most other places. Anyway, some of the other worlds have a certain amount of trade with and through here, quite a lot of magic workers get supplies from them. These magical storage devices are a pretty common and cheap trade good in certain areas. They're quite useful for people who don't have a lot of magic themselves but need to work a spell. Not all spells can be adapted to use them, but quite a few useful ones can." Making a quick gesture with her hand she was suddenly holding a small transparent sphere that looked like it was made of glass. She rolled it across the table to Naito who picked it up and looked at it, while Harrison and Deveraux looked at each other wondering where it had come from.

"That's the sort of thing. Possibly not that exact model, there are quite a few of them."

"This is a magical battery?" Agent Naito asked curiously. She smiled.

"Yes. It can hold a fair amount of power for months, perhaps years if it's made properly." She produced another one from wherever such things came from, then held it up. It slowly began glowing, as if it was being filled with purple-blue mist. After a few seconds it was as bright as the lights in the ceiling. "That's about enough to run the spell that you found." They looked on in awe, the two foreign police officers gaping at the most direct evidence of magic they'd ever seen. Deveraux nudged her colleague.

"Still don't believe in magic?"

"I'm beginning to," he replied quietly. Yori heard him and with a smile rolled the ball in his direction. Stopping it with his hand he pulled it quickly away when he felt it tingle, like the ball was charged with static electricity.

"It's safe to touch," she said. Hesitantly he reached out and picked the ball up, looking at it in wonder, before handing it to Deveraux. Rubbing his fingertips together he remembered the odd sensation. After a moment the Canadian woman handed it back to the black-haired woman. Holding it in one hand she somehow made the strange energy go back to where it had come from, leaving the ball transparent once more, before making it disappear again. None of the watchers could figure out where it went. Naito rolled the first one back and she vanished that one as well.

"So, are you a magic worker, then?" Deveraux asked, feeling slightly foolish even as she spoke. Yori shook her head.

"Not in the way you're thinking. Our magic works differently. I can't work a spell like that, although I could easily power it. Our energy is compatible, the method isn't. It's complicated if you don't understand multidimensional visualisation techniques." They looked blank and she sighed a little, exchanging glances with Chou, who smiled. "It's complicated. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there are a few conclusions we can draw. Either your suspects have contacts with one of the otherworlds, or know someone who does. There is a mage involved, quite a good one, although they aren't mages. I would suspect some form of demon involvement as well, although I can't explain why I think that. It just feels like it. That cuts down the possible people to a few dozen, most of whom we know. I can ask around to see if we can figure out who is involved, which should let us work out where they are."

Agent Naito produced a map, which he spread out on the table, pushing the other documents to the side. "The PSIA tracked them to this general area, but it's quite large and difficult to search." He indicated a red line drawn around a roughly rectangular block of the locality approximately half a kilometre from corner to corner. Both Yori and Chou studied it.

"Close to the university over here, half the shopping district, some office buildings, and a couple of the student dorms as well. There are a lot of people in that area, it could get very nasty if something went bad." Chou looked at the map with concern.

Harada got up and leaned over Yori's shoulder, inspecting the map himself. "Can you locate them in all this?" he asked. The black-haired young woman looked thoughtful.

"They must be quite well shielded or I'd probably have spotted them already, we check out new magic users when they pop up on our patch. I'm pretty sure there's no portal there, those things stand out like a sore thumb for kilometres no matter how well you try to shield them and I haven't felt any for weeks around here, so they're probably still in this world. I'd guess they're hiding in a building somewhere in here, most likely underground, with the best wards they could manage around them. I'll have a poke around, but our best bet is to track them through their mage, I think. Mind you, we might get lucky."

Lieutenant Harrison shook his head in wonder. "I can't believe we're having a serious discussion about demons, portals to other worlds, and magic. With a pair of magical girls, to boot. No offence," he added hastily, looking at the two young women.

Yori grinned. "None taken, although I prefer to think of myself as a martial artist. But I can understand you might have some problems with all of this. I'm sorry, it's all real. You'll have to get used to that." He shrugged.

"I'm still not sure I believe it all, but I'm willing to go along with it for the moment."

"Fair enough." She studied him for a moment longer, then turned to Agent Naito. "I'll ask around. I'd prefer not to have people like this around here, we've gone to a lot of trouble to make this a safe place to live. It'll take a day or two to contact everyone we need to, but we'll make a swing through that area tonight and see if we can get any leads."

"Thanks. All of us will be here at the station most of the time, please call immediately if you do find anything." He handed her a business card with his name and a cell number on it. After looking at it for a second she made it literally disappear. He grinned. "That's a damn good trick." Laughing, she nodded.

"It has its uses. We'll be in touch." Standing, she looked at them for a moment, then added, "We don't want anything happening either, we happen to like this area a lot. You have our word we'll do everything we can to help you." Chou nodded with a smile, glancing at Sergeant Harada while opening the door, then to the shock of the Canadian and American police officers, both magical girls simply faded from view. Harrison stared in disbelief, sharing a wide-eyed glance with Deveraux. Sergeant Harada chuckled while Agent Naito sighed slightly with a shake of his head.

"Yori likes her little moments of drama, especially with new people," Harada said with a small grin. "She can be a bit of a show-off."

"I heard that," came a faint voice from somewhere, followed by a couple of giggles that faded away down the hallway. He grinned more widely.

"Case in point." Harrison was still staring at the empty doorway with a look of shock on his face. Deveraux finally poked him on the shoulder.

"Come on, Richard, let's get some lunch. You're never going to work it out, just go with it." He shook his head hard a couple of times like he'd been slapped, then looked at her wide-eyed.

"They... went invisible? Or something?" His voice sounded both shocked and almost affronted, as if what he'd seen was annoying him. She shrugged.

"Something, I guess. Believe in magic now, then?" After a long moment he nodded slowly.

"It's as good a description as anything, at this point." He turned to the two Japanese people who were watching them with amused expressions. "And there are more like those two?" Agent Naito smiled momentarily.

"Not exactly like them. Yori and Chou are in a class of their own. But yes, we have at least some information on approximately fifty-four magical girls in Minato ward alone, either individuals or groups. The largest group consists of about a dozen, most are three to five. They range in age from around eleven or so up to mid twenties, but that's only an estimate, most of them have one form or other of disguise method available. We know the, for want of a better word, civilian identity, of about half of them, the rest are still anonymous. Those two are the most anonymous of all. We know, at least officially, almost nothing about them." He looked thoughtful. "I'm pretty sure that someone in our government knows more about them, but isn't saying. It's way above my pay grade as you Americans would say. I do know that they've helped out on a few occasions with some very sensitive operations, and that as far as the government is concerned they have a remarkably high if off the books security rating. Someone a lot higher up than me seems to feel they're very trustworthy. I'd love to know more but I doubt I ever will." He shrugged.

"Anyway, that's your introduction to magical girls. Stay around Minato for long and you'll probably run into others, but I think you've just met the best ones."

They stood up, Sergeant Harada gesturing to the door. "If you'll come with me I know a nice restaurant down the street, or we can go to the cafeteria if you'd prefer." Between them they decided to go to the restaurant. Or rather three of them did, Harrison still seemed to be having trouble with life at the moment, he looked like he was trying to understand how everything had gotten so weird so suddenly. This whole case had been an exercise in the odd anyway, but the last hour or so was almost beyond belief.

Inspector Deveraux was watching the expressions going across the face of her American counterpart with considerable sympathy, she was feeling quite a lot of what he obviously was as well. The whole situation was surreal to put it mildly. "So they battle demons, and other magical threats? Do you really have so many attacks here that so many of them are necessary? Do they do anything else?" She was full of questions, most of which seemed even to her to be weird. Sergeant Harada nodded a little as they walked down the street.

"Unfortunately, in Minato as a whole, yes, we do seem to attract incursions of an unusual sort. Not so much in this immediate area any more, for which you can directly thank Yori and Chou. I've got no doubt about that. When they turned up about three years ago, this district had as many demon attacks as the rest of Minato, which is a lot more than seems likely. Most of them are fairly low level, sort of the supernatural equivalent of a mugging, but there have been a few that could have been extremely nasty. One or two of them have been. We've lost quite a few people over the years to... things. The various groups of girls have a pretty high success rate in stopping this sort of problem. Quite a few of these attacks probably couldn't have been stopped in any other way. The main problem historically has been that the collateral damage from the battles between the demons and the demon hunters has been pretty impressive, sometimes worse than if the demons had been left to their own business."

He smiled somewhat ruefully. "In fact, having talked to Yori about a number of these cases, that's certainly true. Most, if not all of the other magical girls tend to come down like the fist of god on anything even slightly outside the ordinary, which can be very hard on the surroundings. She's shown me that a lot of the time none of that was necessary. It turns out that like she said, there is a lot of otherworldly trade to and through Minato, for some reason, which is essentially peaceful and harmless. Right up to the point that some overenthusiastic magic-powered schoolgirl drops the hammer of doom on it and blows up half a street. Yori gets extremely annoyed about things like that, she seems to take it quite personally. The result has been that she's ended up fighting other magical girls nearly as often as weird demons, to get them to stop smashing the place up."

Agent Naito chuckled and both visitors turned to look at him. "Reading the various reports, I've formed the opinion that Yori and Chou are essentially the magical girl police in many ways. The two of them have done a lot to keep the other groups under control, and aren't above shutting them down hard if they think it's getting excessive. Yori is surprisingly pleasant to talk to, I was expecting someone much more abrasive from what I've read, but you don't want to get on her bad side." Harada started laughing, all three of the others looking at him.

"No, you certainly don't. That girl has a mouth on her you wouldn't believe, it's awe-inspiring. Chou can be pretty damn intimidating as well but is much quieter about it, which is almost worse. She makes you feel like you've let your mother down. Yori just makes you wish you were back in basic training again for the peace and quiet. They're both damn effective though. Since they've been around the collateral damage has dropped to almost nothing in the district and gone down a lot throughout Minato. They took steps to arrange reimbursement to people affected by magical girl and demon fights, they'll stomp on a demon hunter just as hard as a demon if they think it's getting out of hand, and they go out of their way to deal with any real danger in a way that minimises damage. It's all very impressive. Ah, here it is." He indicated the restaurant in question, a few metres down the street.

"You call a twenty-metre crater minimal damage?" Harrison asked, looking askance at the sergeant. The other man nodded seriously as they entered the restaurant.

"To be honest, under the circumstances, yes. The thing that was attacking was practically unstoppable. I can guarantee you that conventional force, if it worked at all, would have pretty much wrecked the entire neighbourhood. She lured it to a park away from any people, then vaporised it cleanly and efficiently. Oh, she admitted afterwards that she might have overdone it a little and was very embarrassed about it, but no one who was there holds that against her. The damn thing had already killed five people a few kilometres away in another district and the local magical girl group, who are very good themselves, couldn't stop it."

"How many of them were there in this other group?" Deveraux asked curiously.

"Four, as far as I know. I don't know them very well, but they're friends of Yori and Chou I believe. One of the few other groups she seems to feel are competent. I know she trains others she feels are worth the effort, but not many of them come up to her standards." He grinned a little. "She has very high standards. I don't know where she got her own training, but that girl knows more about martial arts than any ten grandmasters. There doesn't seem to be a discipline she doesn't have a working knowledge of, and in most cases to an incredibly high level. I know quite a bit myself, a lot of the police around here do, but she's so far beyond anything I've ever seen it's almost impossible. Anything from Tai Chi to Muai Thai to Krav Maga, you name it she knows it. Plus a lot I've never heard of before. I suspect quite a few she's come up with herself." The visitors looked both impressed and a little appalled.

"How could someone that young possibly learn so many different martial arts?" Harrison wondered. Sergeant Harada shrugged.

"No idea. But seeing her in action is absolutely awe-inspiring. Far more impressive than any Hollywood action movie. She makes the best efforts of Bruce Lee look like the work of a rank amateur. Chou isn't quite as experienced, I think, but she knows nearly as much. Yori is obviously training her and has been for years. They both have a raw talent for martial arts that goes beyond genius, leaving aside the magical powers or whatever they are." The waitress that met them seated them at a window table, greeting Harada by name with a smile. He ordered a round of soft drinks and coffee, which she quickly brought along with four menus. The visitors looked through them, the two Japanese natives translating where necessary. Eventually they had all ordered food and the conversation restarted where it had left off.

Agent Naito asked, "What's the relationship between Yori and Chou, do you think? I've read all the information we have on them, which isn't much, and it's obvious they come as a set, but does it go further than that?" Harada smiled slightly.

"I'm not completely sure, and to be honest it's none of my business, but I suspect they've lovers if nothing else. It probably goes deeper. I do know that if you threatened either one of them the other one would end you so fast you'd never see it coming." The PSIA man nodded thoughtfully.

"Probably best not to do that, then." He grinned. "Not that I have any intention of ever trying anything like that. As far as we're concerned they're an invaluable asset and I suspect my own head would be on the chopping block if I was foolish enough to do anything silly, from someone at a considerable political height." Harada studied him with interest.

"I've always thought she had friends in weird places. Well, I know for a fact she has friends in weird places, but I mean high places as well. On both sides of the law." Harrison glanced at Deveraux, who leaned forward.

"What do you mean by that, Sergeant?" Harada shrugged again.

"Just that there are a number of very high-level Yakuza who treat both of them with extreme respect. More so than just the threat they could pose if they wanted to would seem to warrant. I've got no doubt that if they got seriously pissed off the Yakuza would cease to exist in short order, but by and large they leave them alone, unless they do something stupid. In this case, stupid means getting involved in prostitution or drugs anywhere in the district, or violence against people who in some way don't warrant it. Or violence against women anywhere. God help you if you try anything like a sexual assault anywhere in Minato, because no one else will. Yori has absolutely no sense of humour at all about that sort of thing and she seems to have passed that on to most if not all of the magical girls and a hell of a lot of the Yakuza higher-ups." He laughed for a moment.

"Zero-tolerance doesn't even begin to describe it. We haven't had a rape here in two years, and the last perpetrator crawled into the station and begged to be arrested. He was in hospital for two months before he could be moved to jail." He didn't seem too upset about this.

The overseas officers looked somewhat taken aback. "And you let them get away with this, this, vigilantism?" Deveraux asked. Harada looked briefly at Agent Naito, who nodded a little, then answered honestly.

"We couldn't stop them if we wanted to, which we don't. One thing you should understand is that they're not really vigilantes. Unofficially, Yori and Chou, at least, have considerable backing from people who feel that they're doing a very good job. They don't charge for what they do, between them they've saved certainly hundreds of lives, if not thousands, both from demon attacks and more run of the mill crime or accidents. Plus when we ask for their help in unusual cases, they always give it without question. I suspect if we asked them to leave they probably would, they have a lot of respect for the authorities, more than some of them warrant in my opinion, but the result of that would undoubtedly be a disaster." Sergeant Harada paused for a moment, thinking about something, then continued.

"Leaving aside the fact that the community and most of the local police force would probably revolt on the spot anyway, those two are thought of extremely highly around here. People don't make much fuss about it, but they like and respect them. Between them they know practically every resident here, a lot of whom owe them thanks for something or other. Most of the magical girls are cut quite a bit of slack since they perform a very useful service that probably couldn't be done any other way, but that pair is genuinely respected to a remarkable level." He shook his head a little. "It's difficult to explain to someone from outside Japan. We run into a cultural problem. You see a vigilante, someone working outside the law, we see something else." Trying to think of the best way to get it across he paused again, while the visitors waited curiously.

"There's a long tradition in this country of the wandering martial artist, who protects the innocent. Add to that the even longer tradition of the Samurai, and a number of other things, you end up with a very high tolerance for someone like them. All the magical girls, really, even the more inept ones. They may at times act outside criminal law, but they act honourably, to protect the community from any threat, which is a very big deal to us. People respect that they help quietly and efficiently, often resolving trouble without involving official attention. When a matter does require police involvement they let us know and we take over, they never want any credit. It makes our job a lot safer if nothing else."

Lieutenant Harrison was listening with interest. "What does happen if someone pulls a weapon on them?" he asked curiously. "Your Captain was very insistent that it was something we should never ever try." Harada chuckled.

"I can imagine. Chou, particularly, isn't fond of firearms. She seems to know a lot about them, but doesn't like them being freely available. We tend to agree. Our laws on that sort of thing are very strict, especially to an American, or even a Canadian. But occasionally some low-level criminal gets his hand on a pistol or something along those lines, often as a result of an American serviceman deciding to supplement his pay." Harrison looked both annoyed and embarrassed.

"That shouldn't happen," he muttered. Agent Naito nodded.

"Agreed, but when we trace the serial numbers it's surprising how often they turn out to have been stolen from one of the military bases." After a moment, Sergeant Harada continued.

"Even the Yakuza tend to come down pretty hard on any of their people who do that nowadays, since the laws were made much more restrictive a few years ago, they've tended to think that guns draw too much attention. Anyway, using a gun on Yori or Chou would only make them very angry. The last time that happen some idiot from out of the area tried mugging Chou while waving a 9mm pistol in her face. That was a serious mistake. A bigger mistake was firing it at her."

Deveraux raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess, bullets bounce off them," she commented with mild sarcasm. He laughed.

"I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. But in this case she just caught it." He looked at their expressions, even Agent Naito's, and laughed again. "Honest. She caught the damn thing three feet from the barrel, then took the gun away from him. Then she made him swallow the bullet. Then she broke his arms." They all stared at him. "I'm not making it up. We recovered the round from the toilet a few hours later, matched it to the gun which had his fingerprints on it, and that was that. The fact that he had a visit from someone who was allegedly his lawyer, after which he confessed to every crime he'd ever committed, was a nice bonus. I don't know who the lawyer was but he scared the man shitless."

"She caught the bullet..." Harrison repeated slowly. Harada nodded, looking highly amused.

"Yes. I couldn't believe it myself so she demonstrated. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen."

"Good god." Deveraux and Harrison looked at each other. "What else can they do, for god's sake?" Naito looked at them, then smiled.

"Well, I'm pretty sure I don't have a complete list, they seem to pull new tricks out of the woodwork quite often, but let's see. They can turn invisible, you've seen that. They can run at some ridiculous speed, at least a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, jump six stories off a building without effort, more impressively jump back again, reportedly are strong enough to pick up a car..." Harada nodded.

"I've seen that myself. It was a large van, in fact."

"...pick up a van, have insane martial arts skills, some form of healing ability we don't have much information on, and can manipulate energy to form projectiles, beams, cutting implements, not to mention all the other magic stuff that's less identifiable."

There was silence for some time. Eventually Deveraux asked quietly, "Are all the magical girls like that?"

"No, like I said those two are in a class of their own. Most of the others don't have anything even approaching that level of martial arts or combat ability, while some of them are possibly considerably more powerful in raw magical output. I'd put Yori and Chou up against any of them, though, the mix of ability, talent, and experience they have is so far unbeatable. They have in fact gone up against a lot of the others at one point or another, either just for fun or to stop them causing a mess. They've won every time to date, often within seconds. We have reports that a lot of the more difficult groups are terrified of them now, they stay well away from here. Which is presumably the point."

"Wow."

There was silence for a while as their food arrived and they began eating. Harrison chewed absent-mindedly, still thinking about everything he'd been hit with in the last couple of hours, trying to fit it into his world-view, which was having to be severely bent to make this work. After several minutes he put his fork down and stared out the window, making Deveraux look at him with some concern. Harada and Naito exchanged glances. "This is all insane," he muttered, swallowing his last bite. The others all looked at him, waiting for him to go on. After a long pause he did so. "How can you all be so blasé about it? Doesn't it bother you? School-girls with the power of a division of armour running around the place, with no controls on them? Why doesn't the whole world know about all this?" He looked like he was staring down the barrel of a gun. He felt that staring down the barrel of a gun would be an improvement, it was at least something familiar and understandable. The two Japanese men exchanged glances again, then Naito spoke.

"You get used to it." At the expression on the face of the American, he raised a hand. "No, I'm not being flippant. You do get used to it. We've been getting used to it for several decades now, one way or another. The last twenty years or so, things changed, got more intense, and I don't know why. I don't think anyone does. These girls, and I'd love to know why, at least here, it's always girls, despite everything are more of a solution than a problem. Yes, in a rational world, they probably wouldn't exist, neither would the demons, magic, all that sort of thing, but we don't live in a rational world. All of that provably exists. As long as the threat exists, it's good that we have an effective defence. From what I've been told over the years, this sort of thing has been going on all over the world for a very long time indeed, but for some reason, here and now, it's much more visible." Harrison didn't look much happier.

"Why the whole world doesn't know about it I have no idea. To be fair, it's not that the world doesn't know, we haven't gone to any great effort to keep it secret, it's more like the world doesn't notice, or perhaps care. My own theory is that it's all tied up with the magic in general. Unless you're personally involved in it somehow, even in as simple a way as living next to it, you basically don't notice. Whether that's true I don't know, but it makes a weird sort of sense. Like I said earlier, it seems to mainly be North Americans, and people from the US specifically, that have so much trouble accepting it. A lot of the world has similar things going on although in different ways. We do seem to be the leaders in this sort of odd occurrence here in Minato, though." He shrugged. "I don't have any real answers for you. All I can advise is that you accept it's real, learn to live with it, and move on. It doesn't fundamentally change the job we all have. Just think of Yori, Chou, and all the other magical girls as people who do much the same job you do, keep order in the face of an insane world, but have rather different methods and skills."

"But they don't have the training, the authority, anything!" Lieutenant Harrison had his head in his hands looking very depressed and almost angry. Harada smiled a little.

"I think you're wrong. Yori and Chou, at least, have more training under their belts than entire combat squads. Unconventional training to be sure, but effective and I have no doubt the result of an extraordinary amount of work and practice. Many years of it. The magic, where that comes from I have no idea, but even there I would think it's also the result of a vast amount of training. As far as the authority goes, they have that as well. Unofficially they're given a lot of leeway, but to their credit don't take unfair advantage of it. When police involvement is required or possible we get notified and take over. When they deal with something themselves, either they didn't need us, or we couldn't have done anything anyway. The community supports them, the government supports them although very quietly, and to date none of the magical girls have let us down. The only downside, the collateral damage, seems to be resolving itself as a direct result of our two young friends."

Naito grinned. "You have SWAT in LA? Special weapons and tactics. From what I can remember, the LAPD practically invented it. If it helps, think of our special talent as something like that." Deveraux laughed delightedly.

"SMAT? Special magic and talismans?" Sergeant Harada looked very amused.

"Perhaps MGAW? Magical girls and weapons?" The two of them spent the next few minutes coming up with increasingly unlikely acronyms for magical girl support teams, while Harrison watched and listened with irritated disbelief. Eventually he picked up his fork and resumed eating.

"You're all crazy," he growled, prompting Agent Naito to smile again.

"Probably. But it comes with the job. At least it's not as bad as Nerima." Deveraux looked at him curiously.

"What's Nerima?" Harada took a drink of coffee then signalled to the waitress for a refill.

"It's another ward of Tokyo, perhaps thirty kilometres to the north-west. They don't get demon attacks, as far as I know, but they have a bad infestation of martial artists. It's kind of a tradition there. They're even worse than the magical girls, some of them are nearly as powerful from what I've heard, but even less predictable. They seem to spend most of their time beating each other up, which is very hard on the scenery. I've heard things about that place that make me glad to be living here in Minato where life is fairly normal." Both overseas police stared at him as if he was mad.

"Martial artists?" Harrison echoed. "Like Karate, Judo, that sort of thing?" Harada nodded.

"More or less. But in a lot of cases taken to ridiculous extremes. A lot less magic, although I believe they're not unfamiliar with it, but the abilities of some of that group rival some of our girls. I've heard things about a few of them that might even exceed them. There was one martial artist, who vanished some years ago, that had some incredible stories... surrounding..." He trailed off, looking puzzled, with a growing expression of deep thought. The others looked at him for a moment, but when he didn't resume talking, turned to Naito questioningly. The agent shrugged. He had no idea what Harada was thinking about.

"He's right, though. The file on Nerima is even larger than on Minato, and that file is huge. It's a very weird place. The damage isn't on the same scale, on a per-incident basis at least, but there were a hell of a lot of incidents. It's calmed down quite a bit in the last few years for some reason, but it's still very strange."

"Japan is nuts," Harrison said morosely. Naito smiled, unoffended.

"So I'm told."

When the meal was finished they ordered desserts, Harada rousing himself from his introspection long enough to make a quick selection from the menu before resuming silent thought. Eventually he shook his head a little, muttered something to himself that none of them could make out, and rejoined the world at large. "So, what are you plans for the rest of the day? Until Yori and Chou get back to us there isn't a lot we can do on your case." Deveraux finished her third cup of coffee and put the empty cup back down with a clunk.

"I haven't got anything particular planned. Richard?" Harrison shook his head, still trying to get to grips with the curve balls life seemed to be throwing him at the moment. His Canadian colleague shot him a sympathetic glance, then looked back to Sergeant Harada. "What would you suggest?"

"Well, you could do the usual tourist things, see the sights, all that sort of thing, or I could show you around the district. As long as I'm assigned to this case I'm off duty as far as normal work is concerned, and it's probably better to be out walking around that sitting back at the station. It's a nice day, after all." The two visitors glanced at each other then nodded.

"That's fine as far as I'm concerned. Lead on, Sergeant." She smiled at him. Waving the waitress over, Agent Naito settled the bill, then stood.

"I have to get back and report. I'll be around when our magical friends call. You have my cell number if you need me before them. Enjoy your stay, and please stay out of the way if a demon attacks." He grinned at their expressions then left, whistling to himself, apparently in quite a good mood.

"Demons. Magical girls. This place is insane." Harrison grumbled to himself as they left the restaurant. Deveraux sighed a little.

"So you keep saying, but it won't change the facts. Just go with the flow, Richard, you'll probably be a lot happier." He didn't look convinced but shrugged.

The sergeant spent the next couple of hours showing his guests around the district, including the university, the main shopping area, and the entertainment zones and parks. They ended up in one large park, next to a perfectly circular pond with a number of ducks happily swimming around in it. Sitting on a bench overlooking it Harada waved at the pond. "There you are." The other two looked puzzled for a moment, before Harrison's eyes widened.

"Holy crap. You don't mean..." Harada nodded with a smile crossing his face.

"Yes. The duck pond option, courtesy of Yori." Deveraux walked closer to the edge and looked at the inner surface of the depression in the ground. It was seamless glass like obsidian. Kneeling down and running a fingertip over it, she looked impressed.

"That's remarkable. The amount of heat it would take to fuse the soil like this is... unbelievable." Standing she rejoined her colleagues. "And one smallish woman did this all by herself?" Harada leaned back comfortably on the bench.

"Oh, yes. With no real effort from what I could see. I strongly suspect she could do a much bigger one if necessary. Hopefully, it never will be."

"Christ," Harrison muttered, staring at the pond filling the crater. Harada grinned at him.

"It is fairly impressive. She was very apologetic about the damage to the park, but the park authorities were pretty relaxed about it. Apparently they were thinking about making another pond anyway and this was easy to convert. It certainly doesn't leak, the slag lining is about ten centimetres thick." He laughed. "It would have cost a fortune to make something like this deliberately. They grumbled a bit about it being in the wrong place, but I think they were secretly quite pleased that they'd saved hundreds of thousands of yen. The thing was full of water with benches around it almost before it had time to cool down."

"That's a very pragmatic attitude," Deveraux commented with amusement. Harada nodded.

"We tend to be around here. Goes with the territory." After a while Harrison stopped staring at the hole, shook his head in worried wonder, then looked towards a small crowd near the middle of the park from which music could be heard coming.

"What's going on over there?" he asked curiously. Harada looked in that direction as well, then shrugged.

"I'm not sure. We have a number of bands and individuals who perform in the park on an impromptu basis, I'd guess that's where the music is coming from. Let's go and have a look." The three law enforcement officers made their way over to the crowd to find a small group of musicians of the electronic persuasion playing a number of fast, high energy techno sets with a couple of synthesisers, some guitars, and an electronic drum machine. A fair number of younger people were dancing to the music and there was an overall air of conviviality that was quite refreshing. Several enterprising food vendors had parked their carts around the crowd and were doing a brisk business in food and water. The late afternoon sun was brightly lighting the scene, which was one of people making the most out of one of the last nice days before it started to get cold.

Even though the music as decidedly modern and very fast, there were quite a lot of older people who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it. A few of them greeted Sergeant Harada as he and the two visitors joined the crowd. Exchanging greetings with them he smiled happily. "This is what I like about living and working here, in this district, you see," he explained. "People are generally friendly and open, much more so than in some places. It's an affluent area, but not snobbish like some places of this nature can be. Even the university students are surprisingly well behaved for the most part, although they can certainly enjoy themselves." He looked around the scene with a contented expression. "I put quite a lot of that down to a positive influence from two specific young women. Just by fixing a number of small things, the knock on effects are impressive. And of course, every now and then, they deal with something very big."

"Thank you, Sergeant, that's very nice of you, but I don't think we can take that much credit for it," said an amused voice from immediately behind him. He jumped a little, turning his head to see Chou smiling at him serenely. He grinned back while Harrison and Deveraux stared slightly, they'd had no warning at all the woman was approaching.

"Hello, Chou. Where's Yori?" The blonde women nodded towards the edge of the park.

"She's coming in a moment, she was checking up on something we detected earlier. We've contacted most of the people we needed to, there are still a few that we have to track down. So far no luck but we're expecting several responses over the next few hours to a day." Looking at the two foreigners, she asked, "Have you had a nice time so far?" Deveraux smiled back.

"Yes, thank you. This is a very interesting place, there seems to be quite a lot going on." Chou looked pleased.

"There often is. It starts to quieten down at this time of year, it's beginning to get a bit cold for playing in the park, for example, but it can get very exuberant during the summer. We had a particularly nice one this year." Turning to look at the musicians she listened for a moment. "This group is very good. I rather like the electronic music genre, although not everyone does. They're very talented, they can play classical music as well as this fast dance stuff extremely well." Harrison studied her for a moment.

"Do you live in this area, Miss Chou?" She smiled.

"Just Chou. And yes, Yori and I are both residents of the district. You'll understand if I don't say anything more about it." He nodded thoughtfully.

"Secret identities, I suppose?" She grinned.

"Something like that." He shook his head in a certain amount of wonder.

"I still can't believe I'm somewhere where there are honest-to-god superheroes." Chou laughed.

"Oh, it's not like that, not really. We just happen to have some specific skills and abilities that are a good match for the slightly odd problems that Minato suffers from. We do what we can to help." The Lieutenant inspected her some more, then nodded.

"OK. We may have slightly different definitions at work, but I can accept that." She grinned at him.

"It's a lot to take in if you haven't come across it before, I do understand that. Even people from outside this ward tend to look askance at it and they come from the same culture. I'm not surprised you're having difficulty, but you'll get used to it." The woman glanced off to the side. "Ah, Yori is here." They all looked in time to see the smaller young woman with the long braided hair take a huge running jump off the roof of the nearest building, some four stories high, clearing an impossible twenty metres horizontally to land neatly in the middle of the open space that suddenly developed in the crowd as many of the bystanders also noticed her approach. Deveraux and Harrison gaped at the incredible leap as Chou giggled. "She likes to make an entrance when she's in a good mood. Even more so when she isn't."

The young woman approached them through the crowd, smiling and greeting at least as many of them as the sergeant had. The expressions of the bystanders showed considerable affection for the remarkable person walking through them, without the kind of awe that the two North Americans would somehow have expected. It was more a sort of easy and respectful familiarity than anything else. Deveraux found it very interesting. Yori stopped close to them and grinned. "Hi, guys. How's your afternoon been so far?" Deveraux grinned back. There was something about the young woman that inspired a considerable amount of trust, she found, now that the incredulity of their first encounter was slightly diminished. She was a very likeable person once you got past the magical powers and all the associated impossibilities.

"It's been very nice. The sergeant here has taken us to a very good restaurant, then shown us all sorts of interesting things in the area. How has your search gone? Chou told us you had detected something?" Harrison and Harada listened with interest. Yori shook her head, looking momentarily slightly disappointed.

"A portal opened up very near here so I checked it out just in case. It was only some friends of ours on a shopping trip again." She glanced at Chou with a wry smile. "Uthryyl is going to clean the wholesalers out at this rate." Chou laughed. The other three looked puzzled, which the black-haired woman noticed. "Uthryyl is a trader from one of the more interesting demon worlds, who has a nice little business going importing chocolate and coffee, amongst other things, to his home. He and his crew turn up a few times a year and buy up tons of the stuff, then ship it back. He must be raking it in, this is about the fourth time in the last eight months." Deveraux and Harrison exchanged wide-eyed glances.

"Are you telling me that there are some demons who are walking into shops and buying chocolate?" Harrison asked incredulously. Yori nodded, grinning.

"Yep."

"What the hell do they pay with?" he demanded, looking stunned.

"Mostly gold and silver ingots. Almost pure. They have an arrangement with several local wholesalers who are more than happy to sell them anything they want." Yori seemed very amused by the expressions he and Deveraux were wearing.

"Do these traders know who they're dealing with?" Chou smiled.

"Oh, yes, definitely. They don't mind. A customer is a customer, even if they do have tails." Deveraux shook her head slowly while Harrison closed his eyes for a moment.

"This is a very strange place," he mumbled. Yori chuckled.

"Oh, it is that, but it's a lot of fun most of the time." Growing more serious, she added, "I told him about our little problem as well. He doesn't know anything but he's going to check around. That deals with pretty much every avenue I can think of to find our targets, now we just have to wait for everyone to get back to us."

"Can this... well, 'demon', I suppose, can he be trusted?" Harrison asked. Yori nodded with a sparkle in her eyes.

"Certainly. He may look different but he's a decent person. I trust him a lot, I've know him for quite some time." A voice calling her name attracted her attention and she turned. A small group of young men and women were approaching, apparently students from the university.

"Um, Yori? Hi?" one of the young women hesitantly said. At the black-haired woman's nod she looked slightly braver. "Um, we were wondering, um, if you and Chou could do a demonstration for us? Please?" Her voice wavered a little and she glanced at her companions, who urged her on. Yori shot Chou a look, the blonde woman nodding slightly with a small smile. Harrison looked at Deveraux for a moment, not knowing what the woman had said as she'd spoken in Japanese.

"Of course. We'd be happy to." Turning to the three police officers she smiled. "This happens every now and then. It's good practice." Both martial artist magical girls followed the group of students to a position a few metres closer to the band, who noticed and nudged each other. Sergeant Harada grinned at his overseas colleagues.

"This should be good. Watch carefully, you won't see anything like this anywhere else I suspect." Harrison and Deveraux exchanged looks, wondering what was going to happen. The crowd was whispering to itself, people pulling out cameras and camcorders, moving back and creating a circle some twenty-five metres across with Yori and Chou in the middle and the band at one side. Harada and the others were almost directly opposite. Stepping back a couple of metres from each other, Yori and Chou locked eyes, bowing formally to each other without shifting their gazes. The band kept playing but their sound engineer slowly lowered the volume to a nice background level. Returning to an upright position, a brief grin flickered across Yori's face to be met with an answering smile from Chou.

There was a pregnant pause during which only the music could be heard, the crowd having gone completely silent, before Yori made the first move. Too quickly to be seen as anything other than a blur her right foot suddenly moved from the ground to a position a centimetre from her partners shoulder, where it stopped dead. Maintaining this unlikely stance for a second, Yori then returned the foot to the ground as quickly. Chou hadn't so much as blinked. Harrison sucked in his breath, the speed of the move was unbelievable. "Holy shit..." he muttered quietly.

A slight pause, then Chou responded, stepping forward gracefully with her left hand shooting forward to just touch Yori's forehead, again so fast that it basically disappeared from her side and reappeared, completely still, in it's end position. Once more there was a slight pause before she reset to her start position. Both women smiled very slightly at each other. "And we begin..." Yori said, with a quick glance directly at Harrison and Deveraux, who took a few seconds to note that she'd spoken English presumably for their benefit.

Then they began.

"Oh, holy mother of..." Harrison stared in complete disbelief. Deveraux couldn't even manage that much. Both women were suddenly trading blows so fast they could barely be seen, blocking with loud cracks of flesh against flesh, jumping, rolling, flipping over each other in a way that was completely implausible. It looked like some particularly good movie special effect fighting sped up by several times, except it was really happening. The sheer speed was breathtaking, while the appalling power behind the blows became apparent when Chou buried her fist to the elbow into the hard packed ground when one punch was deflected, with a sound like a hammer hitting a steak, then pulled it out again effortlessly in a shower of earth. Deveraux watched open-mouthed, glancing at her colleague to see he was doing the same.

Yori performed a standing backflip that took her over three metres straight up to land lightly on one foot on her partners head, who looked around quizzically as if wondering where she'd gone. The crowd, which had been watching engrossed, laughed delightedly. Rolling her eyes upwards Chou mock-sighed, then shot sideways a couple of paces fast enough that the other woman hung in the air for a fraction of a second before dropping to the ground. Landing lightly she smiled at the blonde, before bowing slightly. Harrison and Deveraux noticed with wonder that neither of them seemed to even be breathing hard. Again they began exchanging blows, this time with an obviously completely different style although at least as fast as before.

Once more they broke apart, grinning at each other, before taking up a pose like a pair of fencers, only without any foils. Deveraux gasped out loud when they were suddenly holding what looked for all the world like a pair of light sabres straight from the movies, about a metre long and glowing brightly, Yori's a pretty purple colour and Chou's a beautiful golden-white shade. The crowd clapped happily. The young woman whose request had prompted the bout stepped forward holding a piece of branch she had picked off the ground, looking at Yori questioningly. The martial artist nodded with a smile, and the student tossed the metre long five centimetre thick branch directly at her. Waiting until it was almost close enough to touch, the black-haired woman became a blur of movement and flashing purple arcs as her energy sword flashed into action with a throbbing hum, only to stop less than half a second later in a completely still pose with the glowing blade held upright in front of her. The branch continued it's flight past her apparently unaffected, until it hit the ground and burst into dozens of neatly cut slices, each apparently identical in thickness to the others, all of them smoking slightly. Once more the crowd applauded.

Harrison looked at Deveraux who stared back, unable to think of anything to say. They looked back as the two combatants resumed their fencing stance, then began sparring with the energy blades. Once more it was like a particularly good scene from a movie, only this time a science fiction one, as the blades roared past each other, clashing together with showers of light and a screeching sound. The crowd watched in awe as the pair fought, beginning to leap and roll as well. Within seconds they were jumping around as fast as before, slashing at each other from unlikely positions, including while one of them was flipping through the air above the other. When, half-way through the match, they each produced a second energy blade in their free hand and began using them as well, the crowd roared approval, really getting into the spirit of it. Harrison was mumbling to himself while Deveraux half-listened, her eyes fixed on the impossible sight in front of her.

After a few minutes, both the magical girls slowed then halted, once more back in their start positions. Both the energy blades disappeared. They bowed slightly to each other, then paused, before Chou grinned and bent down to pick up a number of the segments of sliced branch, each roughly three centimetres long. Yori nodded, then the blonde turned slightly to face into the park, away from the buildings. Leaning back a little Chou bounced one of the slices in her right hand for a moment, gauging it's weight, before throwing it straight up at a speed that made Deveraux blink. She almost expected to hear a sonic boom. The bit of wood travelled less than fifty metres before Yori had whipped her hand out, targeted it, and fired some sort of energy beam from her palm that intercepted the projectile with perfect accuracy. It disappeared with a flash of purple light and a sharp crack. Once more the crowd clapped, while the two visiting police officers stared. Chou threw another piece of wood and the same thing happened. Yori grinned and motioned with her other hand. The blonde laughed a little then blurred into action throwing the remainder of her ammunition so fast that no one else could see the individual motions. Yori waited for half a second or so until all the pieces were on their way before going into action herself, firing off a number of beams so quickly it looked like they were simultaneous, each one intercepting a piece of branch before any of them had travelled more than a hundred metres. Several reports sounded so close together that there was just a ripple of sound. Chou laughed again.

"You missed one," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear her. Yori shook her head with a smile.

"No, I let it get away. It should be on it's way back down around... now, and it will be... right... there!" She raised her hand over her shoulder and fired a final beam without looking, scoring a direct hit on the piece of wood which was dropping out of the sky a few metres above her head. Chou bowed mockingly.

"Well done." Yori returned the bow.

"Thank you." The crowd laughed, amused and impressed. Even Deveraux giggled, although it was more in shock than anything else.

The two women stepped forward and shook hands, smiling, then stepped back. This time they began slowly, not touching each other, running through a stylised set of moves which both visitors recognised as a training exercise or kata. Mirroring each other the two women flowed from position to position with incredible grace and precision, speeding up until they were moving faster than most people could manage for more than a few seconds, with no sign of effort. Both were smiling, obviously enjoying themselves. The crowd watched silently, almost everyone lost in the beauty and grace of the motion. After half a minutes or so the band, which had been playing quietly the whole time, stopped and huddled together, talking quickly until they reached a consensus. Moving back to their instruments they began another set, a fast electronic dance tune that matched the movements of the two martial artists remarkably well. The sound man turned the volume up, making Yori quickly glance at him for a moment, then nod with an approving smile. Looking back to her partner, they exchanged glances and understanding, before subtly altering the pace of their movements to sync with the music.

The kata flowed into a different style, speeding up slightly. The band increased their tempo a little to match. Yori and Chou both grinned to each other, changing styles and speeds again. Yet again, the musicians adapted to keep the beat in sync, all of them grinning as well. The crowd watched, fascinated, while the martial arts demo got set to music. After a few more changes of style and tempo Yori nodded slightly and everyone stared as the two martial artists' hands began to glow in their signature colours, trails of diffuse light following their movements, slowly fading. The crowd clapped wildly, several younger people beginning to dance around the area in the middle where the magical girls were practising their Art.

The dance music changed suddenly to a much quicker beat, becoming harder and much more electronic in nature. Yori laughed out loud, both of them flowing into a completely different style without missing a beat. The trails of light from their fingertips formed spirals around them as they moved in sync, truly dancing now as much as practising. Chou actually had her eyes closed, Deveraux noticed, a beautiful contented smile on her face. Yori looked at her in a way that left no doubt just how she felt about the other woman, unconcerned who saw it.

The impromptu martial arts dance sequence lasted for nearly fifteen minutes, speeding up and slowing down, going through so many different styles of martial arts that everyone lost count. When they wound down the band slowed, the volume dropping, until they came to a halt, completely still and facing each other. After a pause in complete silence they bowed to each other, then turned to each face in different directions, bowing to the crowd. There was a moment's more silence, then tumultuous applause. Startled at the sheer noise Deveraux and Harrison both looked around to see that the circle of people had swollen in size by several times, there must have been over a thousand people standing there by now. Grinning happily Yori and Chou glanced at each other then slowly returned to the three police officers, being stopped and thanked by person after person.

When they finally reached the others Deveraux raised an eyebrow when she noticed that they still looked completely unaffected by the enormous exertion of the last half hour or more, neither sweating nor breathing hard. 'Their stamina must be absolutely inhuman,' she thought. Out loud she said, "That was the most incredible thing I've ever seen." Harada, slightly behind her, laughed.

"I told you."

"That you did, Sergeant."

Yori grinned. "Glad you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. We didn't expect that last part with the music, but it worked really well. We'll have to try it again some time." Chou smiled.

"We don't often show off like that, but every now and then people ask, and it only seems polite to agree. It's fun, as Yori says, and good practice as well. We'd be doing it anyway in private. This way people get some enjoyment as well, which is nice."

"Good public relations as well, I would imagine," commented Harrison absently, staring at the pair of them as if he was having trouble believing what he was seeing. Glancing sharply at him Yori nodded after a moment.

"I suppose so, Lieutenant, although I wouldn't put it like that. We don't need, I hope, demonstrations like that to have good relations with the community. That was just because someone asked politely." Looking at her he nodded, understanding what she meant.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you or Chou." The martial artist grinned again.

"Don't worry, you didn't, we take a lot of insulting. I know what you meant, trust me. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. We certainly did." She glanced at her companion for a moment. "We need to be going now, lots to do. We'll be in touch soon, hopefully. Have fun exploring until then." She waved to them, nodded politely to Harada who smiled back, then ran off, leaping back onto the building she'd descended from in the first place. Chou smiled briefly at them all then followed her. The three officers watched them disappear over the rooftops before Deveraux broke the silence.

"Good grief." Harada nodded.

"I know what you mean. It affected me that way the first time I saw them, and they've only become better since then. They were pretty incredible to start with." Harrison was still staring after the two women. Deveraux nudged him.

"You in there, Richard?" Shaking his head slightly, he turned to look at her.

"I'm really not sure any more. Did the last forty minutes actually happen?" She nodded with a slight smile. He shrugged. "Well, I guess I'm really here. I was beginning to wonder." Casting a glance at Harada who was watching him with interest he sighed. "And that's the sort of people you have around these parts?" Sergeant Harada nodded again, grinning.

"Pretty much. Like I said, those two are impressive even by magical girl standards, but yes, basically that's the sort of thing that goes on a lot in Minato. Not always just for public entertainment, although they do that extremely well." He laughed. "Even the demon attacks get rated around here. People take bets on them, how long they'll last, how the demon will get dealt with, which other magical girls will get involved, how they'll get dealt with, and so on. It's kind of a spectator sport." Shaking his head slowly Harrison glanced one last time in the direction the two women had disappeared in before looking back to the Japanese officer.

"Have I said that Japan is nuts?"

"Repeatedly."

"Good. Just checking."

They exchanged a look, then smiled a little. Deveraux watched with a feeling of mild disbelief herself, the demonstration by the two women had been so far beyond anything she could have expected, even with the knowledge of what they were, that she was still stunned. "How much of that do you think was for our benefit," she asked slowly as a thought struck her. Harada glanced at her and shrugged.

"I'm not sure, but I suspect some of it was aimed at you, certainly. I think she wanted you to understand what they were capable of, and short of a demon attack which no one wants, this was the best way." He paused for a moment, thinking, then added, "One thing you should realise, though, is that what you saw is only part of it. I know for a fact that they can both move a lot faster than that if they want for example, they never show off more than the necessary amount of power. It's a sound tactical move, not to let a potential enemy know everything about yourself." Deveraux and Harrison both nodded in understanding. As the crowd dispersed, the band going back to a dance track and more students turning up while the older people wandered off, the three resumed slowly strolling across the park. The sky was beginning to darken as early evening came closer.

"I'm still having trouble with the concept of demons, especially ones that wander around buying chocolate and coffee, for heaven's sake." Harrison shook his head in disbelief. Sergeant Harada smiled at this.

"I can understand that. It was a surprise to me as well when Yori mentioned it the first time. I haven't met this Uthryyl, but I have met a few other 'visitors' she's introduced me to over the years. Unusual people to be sure, but generally polite and easy to deal with." He laughed. "Once you get past the odd appearance of some of them they're just people." Harrison seemed slightly unsure, Deveraux noticed, but said nothing.

Eventually they went back to the police station. "You two may as well go back to your hotels, I suppose," Harada said. "I have your cell numbers and I'll call you and Agent Naito immediately if Yori contacts me." Deveraux nodded.

Harrison asked, "What are you going to do now, Sergeant?"

"I should check in with the Captain, then I need to get home to my wife. Unless anything turns up I'll see you in the morning, Lieutenant, Inspector." He shook hands with both of them. "Oh, if you want to go out tonight, Roppongi is a short ride on the Metro from here. There are all sorts of entertainment possibilities there and some decent restaurants as well." He took a sheet of paper off a nearby desk and quickly wrote down some names, in both Kanji and English. "Here. These places are pretty good, these two are nightclubs and the rest are restaurants, except for this one which is a bar."

"Thanks, Sergeant." Deveraux accepted the paper, glancing at it before folding it and placing in into her pocket. "See you tomorrow." They left, while he headed for the Captain's office.

"Ah, Sergeant. How did it go today?" Captain Uehara looked up as he knocked on her open door. Entering the office he stood in front of the desk while she leaned back in her chair and watched him.

"Well, I think. Their introduction to our special talent was quite amusing, but Inspector Deveraux at least seemed to take it more or less in stride. I'm not so sure about Lieutenant Harrison, he seems to have more difficulty accepting it. Americans can be quite rigid in their denial of magic, in my experience." She nodded, understanding.

"Yes, I can imagine. You have quite a lot of experience with them, I understand."

"Oh, yes," he replied, smiling slightly. "My time in the US was a lot of fun and very educational, but I learned very early on to keep quiet about some of the more unusual aspects of life here. By and large they're very nice people, but some of their attitudes to life are... interesting, I suppose you could say. For a country with such a multicultural background it's odd that they seem to know so little about much of the rest of the world." He shrugged. "Not my place to criticise, I guess. Anyway, I think the Lieutenant will come around. Yori and Chou put on a demo in the park at the request of some university students, which was as spectacular as ever. Good timing as well. It drove home some of what they're going to have to accept." The captain smiled.

"I wish I'd seen it. I've heard some impressive things about their public demonstrations."

"The stories probably don't do it justice. Those two have a real flair for entertainment, as well as all the fighting." Harada laughed. "They could make an absolute fortune on TV or in the movies."

"I can well imagine. Good work, Sergeant. Keep me updated, please." He nodded at the implied dismissal, saluted, and left. The captain went back to her paperwork, a slight smile still on her lips.

Late that night Harrison was sitting in a bar just off the main entertainment district in Roppongi, near a restaurant that was on the list Sergeant Harada had given them. Idly stirring his half-drunk rum and coke with a straw he'd pulled from a dispenser of them on the counter he looked around, while Deveraux got the next round in. When she came back carrying two glasses he nodded his appreciation. "Thanks."

Sitting down next to him she glanced at his face. "You still look worried, Richard." He shrugged slightly, slowly stirring his drink.

"I guess I am. This whole experience is surreal. The case has been weird from the beginning, but I was always able to pass off the stranger aspects, at least to myself, as simply some sort of technology or trick I wasn't aware of. But now..." Trailing off he sighed, sticking the wet end of the straw in his mouth and licking the coke and alcohol from it before dropping it back in his glass. "I don't know. It's all a bit much, you know?" He looked a little lost. Laura Deveraux put her hand on his for a moment, then sipped her own gin and tonic.

"I know. I also know how much you've been resisting the possibility of magic. I've been open to it from much earlier on, but even so, having it rubbed in your face like that, like it's just a normal everyday part of life, is pretty weird." Waving a hand at the mass of people noisily enjoying themselves in the bar, she added, "I don't know how many of them know about all this, I'd assume quite a lot if not all, but no-one seems too upset. It's like Agent Naito said, you get used to it."

Slowly nodding, still concentrating on his drink, Harrison eventually replied, "I suppose. Doesn't make it any easier when you're dropped right in it." One corner of his mouth went up a little. "I was expecting a certain amount of culture shock, but..." She laughed gently.

"I know, Richard, I know."

They were silent for a while, drinking slowly and watching the night life of Roppongi go past. The crowd was a mix of obvious tourists, from many countries, locals, and Japanese people from other parts of the country. Various languages could be heard all around if you listened closely, English, German, Dutch, and many others standing out. Pretty much every person present seemed to be having a good time, some of them very loudly. The two of them had walked through an area close by which was an obvious red light district, and even there people seemed polite and pleasant. Deveraux turned to her colleague. "I wonder if the reason there seems to be so little trouble is due to the Japanese culture, or the magical girls?" He looked interested.

"I don't know. It's certainly less dangerous-feeling than an equivalent area back home, but at least as chaotic. If I visit a place like this in LA I always feel I should have one hand on my weapon." She smirked, sipping her drink.

"I know what you mean. Most of the US makes me feel that way."

"Very funny. You Canadians and your lack of arms are weird as well." He smiled at her without animosity, as she snorted into her glass.

"Americans."

Settling into a companionable silence the pair of them nursed their drinks while busy with their own thoughts. A particularly beautiful young girl, perhaps mid twenties, sidled up to Harrison and made polite enquiries as to whether he would like to partake of her services, in which, she assured him, she was both extremely skilled and reasonably priced. Ignoring Deveraux, who was giggling quietly to herself at this point, he turned the girl down as gently as possible. Not at all disappointed, she bowed slightly to him, thanked him for his time, and left, targeting another obvious foreigner across the room. Watching her go he smiled a little. "Even the prostitutes are polite. This is a very strange place." His companion was still giggling. "Oh, grow up, Laura. How old are you?" She grinned at him.

"She was very pretty, and quite affordable." Laughing, he turned away from watching the girl, who seemed to have had more luck with her next potential customer.

"Yes to both, but I'm not interested." She teased him about it for some time, until she was approached in a similar manner by a very good looking young man, the male counterpart of the girl. Harrison snickered. Having some difficulty turning him down as he was somewhat more persistent Deveraux finally managed to push him off on to another woman at the next table, who seemed rather irritated about it. Looking at her friend she wryly smiled.

"OK, you can stop laughing now."

When they left the bar a while later, just after midnight, both were pleasantly tipsy although not really drunk. Looking at a map Deveraux had bought they decided to walk back to their hotel, it was only about five kilometres and they both felt the night air would clear their heads. About half-way they were passing through a less-travelled area that seemed to mainly be light commercial and industrial properties, when Harrison stopped. "Hey. What's that?" His companion also stopped, looking at him.

"What?"

"That sound. Can't you hear it? It sounds like a fight." She listened, and sure enough there were noises of several people making the sounds one, especially if one had a background in law enforcement, would think indicated some sort of physical altercation. Not much talking, although there were intermittent sounds of at least three people grunting and swearing, but quite a lot of meaty smacking noises and the occasional crunch. They exchanged glances, police instincts finally winning out over common sense.

"You realise we're in a foreign country and about as far out of our respective jurisdictions as we could possibly get," Deveraux said quietly, abruptly feeling completely sober as she watched Harrison pull out his weapon and check it before putting his hand in his pocket, still holding the gun. He nodded.

"I do, but that sounds nasty. I can't let it go, can you?" She paused for a moment, then sighing, did the same.

"No." Looking around they headed towards the alley the sounds seemed to be coming from. "We're going to get into trouble for this."

"Probably." They cautiously peered around the corner of the alley, allowing their eyes to adjust to the darker environment, seeing nothing but more clearly hearing the sounds. They were definitely coming from down there somewhere. The alley ran back alongside a large low warehouse for some fifty metres, going around a corner, presumably to the rear of the building. With a glance at his compatriot, Harrison took the lead, sidling carefully along the wall with Deveraux following him, glancing behind herself every now and then to make sure no-one snuck up on them. Once or twice she also looked upwards to check the roof-line. As they approached the end of the alley and the turn, the noises became louder and clearer. There were at least three female voices, and another one that intermittently sounded, much deeper and somehow worrying. Stopping a couple of metres from the corner Harrison looked back at Deveraux.

"Ready?" he whispered. She nodded silently, removing her weapon from concealment and holding it pointing up in both hands, according to the best practices of the RCMP. A flick of one finger released the safety. Nodding back at her he did the same, then slowly approached the corner, sticking his head just far enough past the corner for one eye to see what was going on. Deveraux watched his back stiffen slightly as he froze for several seconds, then as slowly retreated until he was back behind the protection of the wall again. "Fuck me," he said very very quietly, not really to her. She looked at his face in the dim lighting cast by the street lamp at the other end of the alley.

"What is it?" After a moment he looked at her, wide-eyed.

"I can't really do it justice. Have a look." Staring at him for a moment, she then slid past him and repeated the same exercise he'd just finished, with almost identical results. When she was back against the wall they looked at each other.

"Is that...?" she began.

"A demon? I think so."

"And those must be..."

"More magical girls, yes." She nodded absently, then slowly had another look.

There were three young women, somewhere around their late teens or so, surrounding a... thing. A fourth girl, dressed like the other three, in a remarkably immodest outfit that a professional stripper might be embarrassed to be seen in public wearing, was slumped apparently unconscious against the wall just around the corner, mere metres from them. There was a large dent in the brick wall which seemed to conform to the shape of her body unpleasantly well, implying that she'd hit it with enough force to pulp a normal human. The three other girls all bore evidence of having been in a serious fight, one of them limping a bit and all quite bloody. They were holding a series of weapons, ranging from some sort of sword to a pole-arm of a type neither officer was familiar with, all of which were glowing in various pastel hues.

Their opponent was very clearly not human in the slightest. The enormous fangs were proof enough of that, never mind the dark scabrous skin, a colour they couldn't make out under the bad lighting, covering it from head to foot. The three legs and the tentacles were just icing on the cake. The tentacles, which were a couple of metres long, were tipped in ten-centimetre talons which seemed to be wet, one with what was clearly blood, the others something much worse and probably toxic. It had started with at least six of them but two were now writhing on the ground near it, like damaged worms. As she watched, one of the girls made a feint at the thing with her sword, while the one with the pole-arm dived forward, rolling across the ground and coming up inside the creature's defences, lopping off another tentacle before being batted away like she weighed nothing as the thing let out a screeching roar then swore in a guttural language unlike anything the inspector had ever heard.

All three conscious girls looked exhausted, while the demon, although injured, seemed to have an unpleasant amount of life left in it. Pulling her head back around the corner before any of the combatants noticed her, Inspector Laura Deveraux, RCMP, said with feeling, "Fucking Christ on a crutch." Harrison nodded silently.

"What do we do?" she asked after a few seconds.

"I don't know." He looked speculatively at his firearm. She shook her head.

"Do you think that will do anything other than annoy it?" Harrison shrugged.

"I don't know. Perhaps we could distract it, get it's attention, and they could take it out?"

"While it reduces us to hamburger, pissed off about being shot at?" she asked furiously. Looking at her, he shrugged again.

"Possibly. But if we just leave them it might end badly, they look like they're not coming out on top."

Deveraux sighed. "Fuck."

"Yep."

"We can't just open fire on it, it might distract them as well, which could be even worse." They thought for a moment, then Deveraux risked another look. The sounds from the fight were getting louder, but the girls seemed to be having trouble. One of them pulled some sort of device from her belt and pointed it at the demon, letting off a bright ball of energy that smacked into it's torso with a sizzling noise. As it stiffened in pain the swords-woman shot forwards and hacked at it's middle leg, carving a chunk out of it before being forced to retreat as it recovered. "Damn. It's not going their way," she said, glancing behind her at her companion. A sudden thought struck her. Pulling her ID out of her pocket she opened it so the badge in it was visible, then cautiously stuck her head around the corner yet again. Waiting until one of the girls, the shortest one, happened to look in her direction, she waved quickly, then held up her ID as the young woman paused and stared. Holding up her handgun she flipped the ID shut, pointed to the gun then the demon. The girl shook her head, alternating keeping an eye on the thing and looking at her.

Deveraux mimed shooting a gun, pointed at the demon, then made a little twirling motion with her finger to indicate it turning around. Pointing at the three girls she then tapped herself on the back of the head, then once more pointed at the demon, desperately hoping that the woman understood. Apparently she did, because she looked interested, then thoughtful. Covertly waving back to the officer she made a clearly recognisable 'hold on' gesture, before jumping backwards out of range of one of the thing's remaining tentacles which took her momentary inattention as an open invitation. Rolling her eyes for a moment she slashed at it with one of her blades, she was holding something that looked like a pair of highly stylised hand scythes, a weapon that Deveraux vaguely recognised from martial arts films but couldn't put a name to. The tentacle pulled back quickly and the girl whispered something quickly to her colleague, the swords-woman.

The taller girl looked startled and shot a glance at Deveraux, her eyebrows going up. After a moment she nodded, moving to cover the short girl as she dashed over and talked to the one with the pole-arm. This girl also glanced in the direction of the officer, nodding after a moment. "What's going on?" Harrison asked in a hoarse whisper.

"I think I've got them understanding that we can cause a distraction. They seem to be setting up for it. Hang on." All three girls were slowly manoeuvring around in a semicircle to put the demon between them and the corner of the alley. "Yep, they're getting into position. Get ready, and for god's sake don't miss, they're right on the other side of it." Harrison nodded, checking his weapon again out of habit. "OK... now!" The short girl waved urgently to her, and she dropped to one knee, taking careful aim at the top of the thing's back which was clearly exposed ten metres away. Harrison dived around the corner and did the same next to her. Both officers fired several rapid shots, most of the rounds hitting the demon, which emitted a horrendous roar, staggered, then spun around far faster than they were expecting something with that many holes in it to move. "Shit." Deveraux emptied her weapon into the creature's chest. Harrison stood, took careful aim, suddenly icy calm, and shot it twice in the face.

Unfortunately this only seemed to make it absolutely furious, all it's remaining tentacles shooting towards them far too fast to avoid. Just as both officers thought they were for it, the thing suddenly froze. Opening the eye which had involuntarily squeezed itself shut as the tentacle on the left had approached her face, Deveraux scrambled backwards as it slowly toppled forwards, it's cleanly severed head bouncing off the tarmac a metre to the side. The tall brunette with the pole-arm looked tiredly satisfied as she lowered her weapon. "Oh, holy god that was close," Harrison mumbled, slumping against the wall of the alley. Deveraux stood carefully as she watched the three girls walk over to the corpse and have a discussion in Japanese, their tiredness coming through clearly despite the foreign language. Nodding, the short girl put her weapons away then pulled out some sort of artefact, which she pointed at the body. Concentrating on it the device began to give off a lambent blue glow, while the corpse slowly crumbled away into dust. Within thirty seconds nothing was left. Deveraux and Harrison stared in amazement.

Putting the short metallic rod away somewhere, the girl sighed. Glancing at the two officers she nodded thanks, before suddenly catching sight of her injured colleague, gasping as she saw how injured the girl was. Swearing in Japanese she ran over, quickly checking her, the other two following only slightly more slowly. The foreigners watched with concern as she checked the young woman's vitals, sighing in relief when she found the girl was alive. Squatting back on her heels she looked up at Deveraux and said something. "Sorry, I don't speak Japanese," the woman said.

"Oh, right, you're not local. American?" the girl asked, switching to good if accented English. Deveraux shook her head.

"No, Canadian. RCMP." She pulled out her ID again and showed it to the girl. "My friend here is American. We're here on a case, luckily we have permission to carry our service weapons." She looked at the gun still in her right hand, then groaned. "But I don't know how we're going to explain this. Captain Uehara made it very clear indeed that we were only to use them as an absolutely last resort action." The girl stood, holding out her hand. She shook it.

"Don't worry, I'll explain it to her. I know some of her men, and she's in the district a couple of my friends work in. I don't think there will be any trouble. Thanks, by the way, that was getting nasty. I'm Aiko. This is Tamiko and Misaki, and on the ground is Fumiko." Deveraux nodded.

"Your friends? Would that be Yori and Chou, by chance?" Aiko stared, then nodded herself.

"That's them. You know them?"

"We're actually working with them. It's a complicated story, a case from North America that ended up here with some magical help. Sergeant Harada introduced us." Aiko looked interested.

"Ah, the good sergeant. I like him a lot. Hmm, I'd like to hear more about that case at some point, but we have to get Fumiko some help. That damn thing was vicious, and it's two friends were worse."

"There are more of them?" Harrison asked, looking around with a worried expression. Tamiko snickered nastily.

"Not any more." Aiko looked at her friend, smiling a little, then produced a cell-phone. Hitting a speed-dial number she waited for it to be answered then spoke rapidly into it. Listening for a moment she nodded to herself, then replied at length, looking at Harrison and Deveraux while she did. The latter was sure she heard her and her friend's name come up. Nodding again the young woman listened for a moment, then hung up after a couple more words.

"OK, we're going to meet Yori and Chou at a safe-house. Would you like to come as well? Apparently it's quite close to your hotel." Glancing at Deveraux, Harrison smiled uncertainly.

"Well, it's kind of you to offer, but is your friend all right to be carried all that way? Perhaps we should call for an ambulance." Aiko laughed.

"Sorry, I forgot, you're not familiar with all this. Yori explained. No, we're going to teleport. I can manage all of us." Harrison stared at her with wide eyes.

"Teleport?"

"Oh, yes. It's the best way to travel." She grinned at him. Looking at Inspector Deveraux, he shrugged. She returned the shrug.

"Um, OK, I guess. Why not?" Aiko smiled.

"Great. One thing, the first time will probably make you really dizzy for a few seconds, so be ready for it. It's safe otherwise, though." Misaki knelt and carefully picked up the other young woman, who both visitors noticed bore a strong resemblance to the brunette. She noticed them noticing.

"She's my sister," the brunette girl said shortly. Deveraux nodded understanding.

"OK, stand here, please," Aiko said, indicating a spot in front of her. With a glance at his colleague Harrison followed the instructions, as did the other officer. Satisfied, Aiko checked her colleagues, then did something. The world flickered, and both police officers staggered.

"Oh, hell!" Deveraux moaned, stumbling. Someone steadied her, guiding her to a chair, which she dropped into with gratitude, leaning back and feeling the world spin around her for a short time. She could vaguely hear Harrison making noises that indicated he was trying not to vomit. When her equilibrium settled to the point she could open her eyes without feeling like she was going to puke, she cautiously looked around. Surprisingly the nausea had subsided nearly as rapidly as it had come on, leaving her slightly dizzy but no worse than a couple of drinks. Which, she suddenly remembered, she had had. 'Ah,' she thought to herself ruefully.

She and Harrison were in a biggish room, which had a window through which she could see a street a couple of floors below. In the distance she saw the lights of several large buildings. She was sitting in a chair with Harrison beside her in another one, still looking slightly pale. Aiko stood next to them, watching them carefully. "It hits almost everyone like that the first time, sometimes worse. Chou was puking for five minutes. Yori, of course, didn't even notice." She grinned. "Feel OK now?"

"More or less. That was a very strange experience." The petite brunette looked amused.

"You get used to it." Looking past her, Deveraux saw a fold-out sofa bed which had Fumiko lying on it, with Yori, Chou, and the remainder of Aiko's team standing around it. Chou was carefully going over the unconscious young woman, speaking quietly to Yori while the black-haired girl nodded. Pushing herself to her feet the inspector walked over, followed by Aiko.

"How is she?" she asked. Chou glanced up.

"Six broken ribs, two crushed vertebrae, ruptured spleen, punctures to her liver and one kidney, broken collarbone, and a broken ankle. Not to mention a slow-acting poison of some sort. Nothing too serious." Deveraux gaped at her, horrified.

"Nothing too serious! Are you mad? She'll be lucky to live, never mind ever walk again with injuries like that." Chou smiled gently.

"Don't worry, Inspector. We're quite good at this." She looked at her partner. "You want to do the organs while I do the bones?" Yori nodded. Kneeling down, one on each side of the injured girl, the pair stretched out their hands, placing them on specific parts of her body. Deveraux gasped in shock as a glow appeared between their hands and the girl's body. She twitched a little, Chou quickly placing one glowing hand on her forehead for a second. The young woman suddenly relaxed completely and the blonde nodded, satisfied, returning her hand to the operation in progress. Looking to the side as she felt someone come up beside her, Deveraux nodded to Harrison, then followed his amazed gaze back to the scene on the bed.

After a few seconds Chou looked pleased. "Good, the ribs are done. Misaki, can you hold her leg still, please? Aiko, hold her foot. Yes, like that. Right, don't move." Once more she touched the girl and the glow returned. Thirty seconds passed until she smiled. "Done. It will ache for a day or two, I think, but it's fixed." She turned her attention to the young woman's upper torso. This time the glow lasted nearly a minute. When she had finished Yori was still slowly moving her hands across Fumiko's lower torso, concentrating. "How's it going?"

"Her spleen was a mess, I practically had to rebuild it from scratch. I'm doing the liver now," the black-haired woman said absently. Harrison glanced at Deveraux, shock and awe in his eyes. She nodded a little knowing exactly what he was feeling. In many ways this was by far the most impressive and startling thing she'd seen in a day of incredibly startling and impressive things. Chou passed the time until Yori was finished by erasing a number of cuts and scrapes on Fumiko's chest and arms. Deveraux gaped as her glowing hand passed slowly along the bleeding skin, leaving no marks behind at all.

"Holy crap," she mumbled. Chou looked at her for a moment with a smile.

"I prefer this to killing things, I have to admit. It's more worthwhile, but sometimes we have to do things we don't like." The officer nodded slowly, understanding.

"Do you have medical training other than this... whatever the hell it is that you're doing?" Chou looked back to her work.

"Yes. Quite a lot of it. This would be much more difficult otherwise. You have to know how things are meant to work to be able to put them back together. That said, Yori invented this technique years ago before she learned medicine and did pretty well." Her partner shot her a quick smile. A few seconds later she sat back.

"Right. All done. Just the spinal stuff now. We need to roll her over, very carefully. Excuse me." She stood and politely elbowed the observing people out of the way, Chou matching her position on the other side of the bed. "OK. Careful." They slowly and gently rolled the girl over onto her stomach. Harrison looked away, nauseated. "Ick. That's pretty unpleasant." This was a mild description, the young woman's back looked like someone had tried to scrape it raw with a concrete block, which was more or less accurate. Bone showed through in a couple of places and there was a lot of raw flesh and blood. The two magical girls looked at each other, sighed simultaneously, and got to work.

Ten minutes later Deveraux was genuinely stunned. She had just seen injuries that by rights should have been rapidly fatal anywhere outside a major trauma centre, and probably permanently life-altering under even the best prognosis, healed to the point that there was no evidence of them at all. Fumiko was now lying on her back on a bed that had had it's bloody coverings replaced by Chou once they had finished, apparently sleeping comfortably, with no sign of what she'd gone through except for her rather tattered uniform. She stared for a while until Yori handed her a cup. Startled, she looked at it, then took it from the smiling young woman. "It can be a bit of a shock. For some reason, healing impresses people in a way that nothing else does." Sipping the steaming liquid, which turned out to be some sort of tea, Deveraux nodded slowly.

"That's got to be the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And you worked out how to do that yourself?" The girl nodded, looking slightly annoyed about something.

"I kind of had to. A very long story, one I don't like to think about. Anyway, between us Chou and I improved the technique, we're pretty good at it now. Unfortunately like a lot of our more unusual abilities teaching it to others seems very difficult, we do things in a very weird way according to other magic workers. It's a pity, I'd really like to see that method in wide use. We simply can't use it as much as we'd like. At least we can help the people who are most likely to require it."

"So, you're the medical go-to squad as well?" Harrison smiled at the girl, who raised an eyebrow then grinned back.

"Pretty much. Some of the magical girl teams have healing powers at least as good, although I don't think many if any of them have much real medical knowledge. But most don't. We made it clear to even the ones we have... issues... with, that if they had a medical emergency they should contact us. Many of them have at one point or another. As have a number of the local police, a few others we know well, and a fair number of our special visitors." She laughed. "We've even been for what I suppose you'd call a couple of house calls for some of those visitors." Harrison looked at her oddly but shrugged after a moment, sipping his own tea.

Fumiko made a mumbling noise and put her hand to her head, wincing. Everyone looked at her, Misaki rapidly moving to sit beside her, holding her other hand. The girl on the bed opened her eyes and muttered something in Japanese, making her sister smile. After a moment her eyes focussed and she looked around, staring briefly at the two people she didn't recognise with a furrowed brow, before looking at her sister. The two began talking quietly. Chou motioned them all to the other side of the room, where they sat.

"Let them have some time alone. Sisters need to talk after something like that." She looked momentarily sad, then smiled. "So, Lieutenant, Inspector, what did you think of your first run in with a demon?" Harrison stared at her.

"I think I'd like it to be my last run in with a demon, to be honest." Aiko and Yori burst out laughing while Tamiko giggled. Chou nodded understandingly.

"Yes, I can see why you'd think that."

"Thank you for helping, Lieutenant," Aiko said, grinning at him. "You too, Inspector. That was a brave thing to do under the circumstances. I wouldn't recommend shooting something like that normally, as you saw all it mostly does is make them really angry, but this time it was just what was called for." She laughed. "If you do want to shoot a demon you're going to need a much bigger gun. And, ideally, be a very long way away."

"Something like a six inch naval gun would probably be about right," Harrison said with considerable vigour. Yori produced an amused expression.

"For a little one like that, yes." Harrison stared at her, unsure whether she was joking. She was smiling but there was something in her eyes which made him shiver. Glancing at Deveraux he saw she was also worried. The martial artist turned to the leader of the other team. "Three of them? That's unusual, you normally only see one at a time of that lot. I wonder why three?" Aiko shrugged.

"No idea. It wasn't very communicative. I did ask, but you know that bunch, they tend to lie at the best of times." Everyone other than the two police officers nodded thoughtfully. "Then it tried to rip our heads off. We didn't spend much time chatting after that."

"Fair enough." Yori turned as Fumiko and Misaki stopped talking, the former slowly sitting up, then standing. "How do you feel?" she called across the room, still speaking English.

"Like I got thrown through a brick wall," Fumiko said, grimacing. Misaki looked darkly amused, while Tamiko snickered.

"You didn't go all the way through." Fumiko grunted.

"That fucking thing can't have been trying very hard then. Last time, I did."

"It was a very thick wall, to be fair," Aiko said with a smile. Fumiko shrugged, then winced, touching her collarbone gently.

"If I'd had time to get my shield up this wouldn't hurt so much." She seemed irritated, more with herself than anyone else. Yori smirked a little.

"I keep telling you guys you need more combat practice." Tamiko shot her a glance.

"Yes, and then you beat the crap out of us worse than that thing did. You've broken my arm three times this year so far." The black haired girl leaned back comfortably in her chair.

"Ah, I love my work, sometimes." She grinned. Chou sighed gently, casting a fond yet mildly disapproving glance at her partner.

Harrison and Deveraux listened to the banter with a weird feeling. There was an underlying seriousness to it which belied the levity of the words. Everyone was clearly aware that it could have been much worse. It reminded them both very strongly of the sort of gallows humour that law enforcement officers the world over tended to, making them realise that these young women were very like them in many ways. If nothing else they could respect some fellow professionals, even if the profession was one they still had difficulty believing existed.

Deveraux was looking at the four girls, then away, frowning slightly to herself. Yori noticed, smiling slightly. "It's a protection spell," she said. The woman looked at her.

"Pardon?"

"You just noticed that when you aren't looking at them you can't remember details of what they look like, right?" Harrison raised his eyebrows as Deveraux nodded with an odd expression.

"Yes. It's very strange. I can remember their names, but draw a complete blank on their faces and general appearance. But when I look back at them everything comes back." Aiko looked amused, as did the other three.

"Like I said, it's a spell, for identity protection. It makes it basically impossible to identify them when they're in, well, street clothes. Not these," she gestured at the skimpy uniforms the girls were wearing, "pervert's dream clothes." Tamiko looked down at herself, then grinned. The other three looked somewhat embarrassed. Deveraux and Harrison looked at each other, eyebrows up. "That's pretty impressive. How on earth does something like that work?" Harrison started experimenting, not having noticed up until now. Yori sighed a little.

"It's kind of complicated to explain, even if you had a background in magic. I've heard it called a perceptual filter which is a reasonable description even if a bit simplistic. But that glosses over a very complex spell." Deveraux nodded.

"OK. I guess it's not something I'd understand anyway." She thought for a moment, then mused, "I wonder why I didn't notice until now?"

"It breaks down a little during very intense emotions. Still works, just slows down the forgetting bit by a few seconds," Aiko explained. "So, since you kept looking back at us, essentially it was being reset before it fully worked. Now that everyone is safe it's working to design. I don't know whether that part of it is deliberate or not."

"Magic is very strange," Harrison commented. Everyone else nodded.

"You're not the first one to have noticed that." Chou smiled at him warmly.

Yori looked around at them. "I guess we'd better get these two back to their hotel. Fumiko, you feel OK to go home, or do you want to come back with us?" The tall girl poked her collarbone again.

"I'm fine. Thanks, guys."

Aiko glanced at the two police officers. "I told Yori what happened with your firearms. She'll explain it to the captain. If needed, I'll come and give her a report as well. There shouldn't be any trouble." She smiled at them. "You did help in a genuine and nasty demon attack, after all." Harrison looked grateful, while Deveraux smiled back.

"Thank you."

"No problem. I'll go back and pick up all your brass as well, in case you need it for your report. The captain will almost certainly want this in writing. If there are any bullets in the walls I'll get them as well, but I think you hit with nearly every shot. Good work, by the way."

"Can you drop them off at the hotel, Aiko?" Yori asked. The short brunette nodded.

"Sure. Can you spare a bit of power, I'm getting a bit low after teleporting so many people." Yori grinned at her.

"Again? I'm just a battery to you, aren't I?" Aiko laughed and held out an odd looking necklace, the other woman touching it with glowing fingers for a few seconds. "There you go, that should be full."

"Thanks, Yori. See you in a moment." She turned to the two visitors who had watched this with interest. "Right. Stand over here, and I'll jump you right to the front door." Once more the world twitched and Deveraux staggered a little. It was nothing like as disorientating this time, she found, just a quick burst of dizziness that left almost instantly. She looked up to see their hotel lobby door mere metres away.

"Thank you, Aiko." The girl grinned.

"You're welcome. See you around, I expect, if you're here for a while. Take care, and try to stay away from the demons. Oh, when I teleport out it produces a very bright flash, so don't look right at me unless you want to be blinded for a while, OK?" Both officers exchanged a glance, then turned around. Behind them they heard Aiko giggle, then the street was briefly lit as if an enormous flashbulb had gone off. When they looked back the girl was gone.

"Well. That was... interesting." Harrison looked at his colleague with his eyebrows raised.

"That's one way of putting it. Frankly, terrifying would be a better description as far as I'm concerned." Both of them laughed a little, entering their hotel.

---

When they entered the police station the next day, Sergeant Harada was sitting at his desk, looking at a sealed transparent plastic bag. Glancing up as they approached he showed it to them. "This was dropped off last night for me with a note to give it to you. Something you'd like to tell me?" Deveraux and Harrison looked at each other, then back at the bag, which contained nearly two dozen expended 9mm casings and three rather squashed bullets.

"Um, we had an interesting time on the way back from a bar last night?" Harrison tried, looking guilty. Harada gazed evenly at him.

"I just bet you did." He suddenly grinned. "OK, tell me. The captain would like to see you, but I want to hear this first." They looked at each other again, then Deveraux shrugged a little, motioning to Harrison. Sitting down he explained the events of the previous night, which felt slightly unreal in the cold light of day. When he finished Harada stared at him for a while. "Hmm. You did have an interesting time. You seem to have been dropped into the deep end with magical girls, that's for sure." He shook his head in wonder. "I don't know anyone who's shot at a demon of that type and got away with it. Normally the best response is to run like a bastard."

"I can see why," Harrison said, thinking about the thing they'd seen. "About sixteen rounds in it, two in the head, and it just got angrier. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it." Deveraux laughed slightly.

"Hey, do you believe in magic now?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. I do indeed believe in magic now. After what I saw..." Harada grinned at him.

"It's a pretty effective way to find out the truth, but it is a little harsh. OK, let's go and see the captain. I don't think there will be too much trouble, but she may shout at you for a while. Let her get it out of her system, it's the best thing in the long run." Swallowing slightly, they both got up and went with him to their doom.

The captain did indeed shout. Quite a lot. In the end, though, she calmed down and listened carefully as they went over the story once more. At the end she sighed. "All right, I accept you didn't have any real choice once you got involved. I'm slightly sorry you did get involved in the first place, but from the way you described it that may have been for the best. I'd like a written report of this from both of you, please, by the end of the day. Sergeant, can you ask Yori to submit one as well, and Aiko if you can get hold of her?" He nodded. "Thank you. Put the casings and the bullets with the report, please. It's unlikely to go any higher, but if it does I want everything in order." She looked at the two foreign police officers. "If at all possible please try not to get involved in anything like that again."

Both nodded fervently. "I certainly have no intention of deliberately going up against a demon, Ma'am," Harrison said. She smiled very slightly.

"That's good." Turning to the sergeant she thought for a moment. "Issue them replacement ammunition and log that in the report as well."

"Yes, Captain," he replied, turning and waving his colleagues out of the office. When they were safe out of earshot, he smiled. "I think she must like you guys. That was pretty easy." Harrison stared at him.

"Easy? She made me feel like a rookie again." Harada snickered.

"She has a way with words. Believe me, if she was really angry you'd be on a plane home by now, probably in handcuffs. No, the captain was in quite a good mood all things considered. If it hadn't been Yori and Aiko's team matters might have been different, but she has a lot of respect for those girls." He showed them to a couple of computers. "Let me set these up for English and you can get your reports typed up. Best to get them out of the way sooner than later." Retrieving a pair of US keyboards from a cupboard he replaced the Japanese ones with them, then fiddled with both machines for a moment. "There we go. It should be reasonably recognisable. Let me know if you have any problems, I'll be at my desk." Both foreigners sat and began typing, a very common exercise with very uncommon contents.

A couple of hours later they had just about finished when a pair of familiar figures sat down next to them. "Hi, guys. How's it going?" Yori asked, looking curiously at the screen of Harrison's computer. He sighed slightly, leaning back in his chair.

"About as well as you could expect. I never thought I'd be writing a report to a Japanese police captain about how I and a Canadian colleague got involved in a firefight with a demon and some magical girls." She snickered.

"It could have been worse." He stared at her.

"How?"

"There was only one demon..." Harrison put his head in his hands.

"Oh, god. This is insane." Patting him comfortingly on the shoulder, she grinned.

"You'll get used to it."

"That's what everyone keeps telling me. When will this happy state start? Because, I can tell you now, I'm nowhere near used to it yet." Both she and Chou laughed, even Deveraux snickering a little.

Sergeant Harada came over, greeting the two girls with a smile. "Hello, Yori, Chou. The captain asked if you'd mind having a word with her when you have a moment." They glanced at each other then nodded.

"Yes, no problem, Sergeant. If I can use one of your computers I can write up a report of last night first, though." He waved her over to his desk. Sitting at it she altered a couple of settings on the machine, then started typing at an absolutely insane speed. The continuous buzzing noise of the keyboard made everyone in the open-plan office stare until they saw who it was. Deveraux and Harrison gaped. Chou grinned at them.

"We have extremely fast reactions," she said, "the biggest problem is having to go slowly enough to allow the computer to keep up, keyboards aren't meant to work that fast." In under five minutes Yori had typed some twelve pages of text, formatted it neatly, and sent it to the printer. Pushing her chair back she got up, retrieved the papers and stapled them together. Quickly shooting the two officers a smile she and Chou headed for the captain's office.

Deveraux shook her head in wonder. "Every time I think they can't possibly surprise me again, something like that happens."

"They are something special, that's for sure." Harrison turned back to his work, finishing it a few minutes later and printing it. "Done." Deveraux printed her report shortly afterwards. "Here you go, Sergeant." Harada took both reports, looked them over, and nodded in satisfaction.

"Thank you. I'll get these to the captain." He walked off, returning a few minutes later with the magical girls, all three of them laughing about something. "The captain sends her thanks. Here, this should be enough for you." He handed Harrison a box of 9mm cartridges. Both officers took out their weapons and began reloading them. Harada also produced a cleaning kit, which Deveraux accepted with thanks. Dismantling her weapon she carefully cleaned it, then lubricated and reassembled it, handing the swabs and fluid to Harrison who did the same. Yori and Chou watched with interest.

"You obviously know your way around a handgun," Yori observed. Harrison nodded, intent on his task.

"It's drilled into you in training. On more than one occasion this thing has saved my life, LA is a bit gun-happy even by US standards." Chou sighed a little.

"I've heard a lot about the US and your love affair with firearms. To us it seems, well, rather irresponsible, to let practically anyone have lethal weaponry." She paused for a moment. "I've heard all the arguments on both sides of it, and I do understand it's not the weapon itself that's dangerous but the person holding it, but even so, it seems to me that less guns inevitably leads to less people being shot with them. The number of simple accidents involving firearms in the US is remarkable, never mind the number of deliberate actions." He nodded thoughtfully, reassembling his weapon carefully.

"I know what you mean. Even though I come from that culture, one in which firearms are deeply embedded, in my line of work I see a lot of the downsides of it. I'm no gun nut, I carry one but I'm not entirely in favour of random citizens walking around armed to the hilt, if only because it makes my own job much more dangerous. But it's a part of the culture, much like you and your friends are here." She indicated understanding. He shrugged, sliding the magazine back into the weapon and making sure the safety was engaged before putting it away. "Nothing I can do about it one way or the other, I just have to work with what we have." Handing the depleted box of ammunition back to Harada, who locked it away in his desk, he looked around at the various people.

"So, what next? Have you heard anything yet?" Yori nodded.

"We've been contacted by about half the people we got in touch with. So far, pretty much everything came back negative. We did get one report about a mage that apparently wanted some slightly unusual information a few months back, which might be something connected to this case. I've asked for more details, which will take a few hours. No one seems to have heard anything specific, though. That said, the information I gave out has several people rather worried. We'll certainly hear back if these people are found, I have no doubt about that."

A few minutes later, while they were discussing life in the US, which neither of the martial artists had been to, a faint buzzing sounded. Yori looked at Chou, who produced a cell-phone from somewhere and glanced at it. Her eyebrows went up. "It's Uthryyl." Yori also looked slightly surprised. Chou answered the phone, in a language that wasn't either Japanese or English. After a brief conversation she handed the phone to Yori, who spoke at length in the same language. Eventually she hung up, handing it back to Chou with a nod of thanks. Harrison and Deveraux were looking at both girls oddly. The language they had used was very strange sounding. She noticed the look and correctly determined the reason.

"It's a common trade language used through a number of demon worlds. We both learned it over the last few years, it's useful when you visit them. Uthryyl speaks Japanese very well, but we tend to use the other one when we talk, mainly to keep in practice." Deveraux nodded while Harrison listened, fascinated. "Right. What that was all about is a pretty solid lead." They all sat up, listening intently. "Uthryyl made some enquiries of his own, he went back to his home, then to a couple of trade worlds. It seems that there is a mage from this general area who has been buying up a lot of materials recently, ones that are used in the creation of a specific type of portal. Normal portals are produced through one or other spell, they're very complicated and difficult to do. Quite a lot of power is needed and often more than one mage to keep them stable. They're essentially impossible to automate, they need one or more actual mages. That's a normal, two way, stable portal." She stopped, trying to think of the best way to continue.

After a moment, she went on, "It's possible to make a much simpler one, which has some severe limitations. It only goes one way, it can't be kept open for more than a few seconds, perhaps half a minute, and it eats power like you wouldn't believe, they're horribly inefficient. But they can be automated. By that, I mean the spell can be prepared and applied to something a little like the storage sphere I showed you yesterday. In fact it uses one of them to hold the power to run it. The spell can be triggered by anyone who knows the process, it runs entirely on the stored power, and this sort of thing is often carried as an emergency escape method by interworld travellers who think ahead. You can keep it in your pocket or whatever, and if you really get stuck, activate it and jump through, you understand?" The three officers nodded.

"OK, good. Now, the thing about this is that the mage involved isn't someone anyone has ever heard of being involved in making these things, which is something of a specialist art. And he's been acquiring enough materials to make hundreds of them, which is very strange. It's an expensive process, normally even a specialist might only get ten or twenty orders a year. Hundreds?" She shook her head. "No, there's something funny going on there." Stopping as a thought struck her, she suddenly looked appalled. "Oh, crap." Swearing softly in Japanese in a way that made Harada both amused and impressed at the same time, she produced another phone and dialled a number. Impatiently tapping the fingers of her free hand on the desk, she immediately began talking very fast when it was answered. The response she got didn't make her look any happier. Hanging up she thought for a moment, then dialled another number. This one took longer to be answered, but the conversation was shorter. Again, she looked annoyed, and a little worried. "Damn it." she muttered in English.

"Do you have that blue haired girl's number, what's her name, Ami?" she asked Chou. The blonde thought for a moment, then nodded.

"I think so. Hang on." Pulling out her phone again she looked through the contact list, before showing it to Yori. The black haired girl dialled the number and waited. Again there was a conversation, which went on for some time. In the end she went quiet for a moment, then apparently thanked whoever was on the other end and hung up.

"This isn't good," she said after a few seconds, looking up at the others. "I thought there was something weird about the portal that last demon came through," she said to Chou, who nodded slowly.

"It did feel a bit strange, I remember you said the same at the time, but we were rather busy after that." Yori scowled.

"I should have followed up on it. Stupid. I called a few other groups who have dealt with particularly nasty demons recently, and they all said the same thing. When they were close enough to get a good reading on the portal the things came through, it was a weird one that came and went much faster than normal. Aiko told me the same was true about the three that came through last night." The young woman stared at the floor in anger for a moment. "It is an attack, damn it. I couldn't figure out what the point was, but that is the point. There isn't one. It's just random destruction." Looking up at the officers who were listening and wondering where she was going with this, she sighed.

"The demons we've had to deal with recently, like the one that led to the new duck pond, are different. Most visitors from other worlds are either basically peaceful, or even if not have a very specific goal. These things are simply destructive, they seem to exist only to kill anything that moves. They're damn difficult to kill unless you both know the trick and have special abilities. We did find out which world they're coming from a couple of weeks ago, which is a horrible one no one with a brain goes anywhere near, but no one could figure out how they were getting here or why." She indicated Chou with her thumb. "Her sister actually asked me nearly a month ago whether I thought they could be the result of a deliberate attack, and I said I couldn't see any reason for it, not using those things. But I missed something. What if the entire point isn't a specific goal, just general death and destruction? Chaos, in a word."

Harada looked worried, asking, "But who, and more to the point, why?" She sighed again.

"Normal terrorists, even the more extreme ones, usually have a goal in mind. Political, religious, whatever, at least by their own standards there's some sort of sense to it and something at the end of it. Not usually something that a sane person would come up with, but it's internally self-consistent. Now, these guys you're tracking are some sort of offshoot of Aum Shinriko, who were nuts even by the standards of loopy cults. And these idiots are crazy enough that they were kicked out of a group like that? One that would try random nerve gas attacks on a major city basically just to see what happened?" Harrison, Harada, and Deveraux exchanged worried looks. The concept wasn't comfortable.

"I have a horrible feeling that your case and the problems we've been dealing with recently are connected, and that the end game isn't anything other than mass destruction simply for it's own sake. Proper end of the world stuff. The original group, from what I can remember about it, were trying to bring about an Armageddon, so they could rule what was left, or something along those lines. What worries me is that these lunatics may be trying the same thing but with considerably more lethal methods. If even one of the demons we've dealt with appeared in, for example, the middle of a crowded mall, it would be a bloodbath. The fucking things have already killed nearly a dozen people in Minato, even though they get jumped and vaporised within minutes around here. If it happened in LA? Or Toronto? Or London? What would, or even could, the local authorities do then?"

"Oh, fuck." Deveraux looked sick. Yori nodded while Chou put her hand on her partners arm.

"You see what I mean. Trust me, the thing you helped Aiko and her team take down last night is nothing compared to what these other ones are like. You could shoot one of those point-blank with an anti-tank gun and it would be back together and pulling your head off in seconds. Oh, sure, your military could deal with it in the end, but the damage would be horrific. And if there were dozens of them all over a large city..." Harrison had gone white, while Harada was calling Agent Naito.

"Are you sure?" Deveraux asked the girl in a low voice. She shook her head.

"Completely sure, no. But it fits, much better than I like. These local ones may have been a test run. You never did find out quite how the fatalities in your original cases happened, but I'm willing to bet that they were an early test of some sort of lethal magic. It may be that they settled on bringing in demons as a simpler method, death magic is difficult and touchy, while portals are pretty predictable. Minato is the global hotspot of portal and demon activity so perhaps they came here for information." She shrugged a little. "I don't know, this is at least half guesswork, but it kind of hangs together. I wish to hell it didn't."

"Agent Naito will be here in twenty minutes." Sergeant Harada hung up and turned back to them. "He didn't sound happy with your theory, mainly because I think he believes it." Yori nodded glumly.

"I wish I didn't." Pulling out her phone she dialled a number and began speaking the trade language to whoever was on the other end. After a moment she nodded, then spoke briefly to Chou, who pulled out her own phone and called someone else. By the time Naito turned up they had had a dozen conversations in both Japanese and the trade language, and one in English. Chou was still on the phone when Naito walked in, looking around then heading for them.

"OK, tell me in detail what you've found, please," he said, pulling a chair over and turning on a small camcorder, placing it on the desk facing them. Yori went back over everything while Chou murmured on the phone in the background. A few minutes in she tapped on Yori's shoulder and motioned for her phone, dialling another number on it and having two conversations at once. As Yori finished her explanation for the second time, Agent Naito looked as sick as Deveraux had done the first time around. "Oh, god damn it. That's far too plausible to be anything other than correct. What the hell are we going to do? How do we stop them, we don't even know where they are." Chou hung up both phones and handed Yori's back, putting her own away.

"Yes, we do. I think," she said quietly. Everyone looked at her. "With the information from Uthryyl I was able to find someone who had recently dealt with this mystery mage and some associates of his. The trader got curious about the man, he said there was just something that made his feathers itch." Most of those present looked at her with weird expressions and she shrugged, "That's what he said, yes, he does have feathers, anyway, he thought there was something weird going on so he arranged to have the mage followed. To cut a long story short, through a chain of people the mage was traced to an address in the middle of the area your men are watching, Agent Naito. Apparently it's a second-level basement in an industrial building, which has, and I quote, "The strongest wards I've ever seen anywhere except for that building next to the university, which is simply insane.'" She looked slightly embarrassed. "We know about the building, it's not involved. Just some very private and extremely strong magic users."

Agent Naito nodded thoughtfully. "So, we have a possible location. What can we do about it?" Yori glanced at Chou, who looked back with a small shrug.

"Well, there's always the duck pond option." Naito winced.

"Um, let's leave that as a last resort, OK?" She looked slightly amused.

"I'd think the first thing we need to do is find out whether they're actually there in the first place. That's where they were, but we don't know if it's where they are. We need to get all of them at once, if one gets away they could start all over again and we might not know until it's too late." The PSIA agent seemed to agree.

"Fine. How do we do that? If they have magic on their side I don't think my men can sneak up on them." The two magical girls exchanged glances.

"That's what we're here for." Chou smiled at him. "We'll go and check the building out. Once we're sure they're in there, we'll let you know."

Harrison looked worried. "But then what? What if they teleport away like they did last time?"

"If the building is warded like that they won't be able to without lowering the wards at least a little, which will give us some warning. In fact..." Yori suddenly looked thoughtful, then maliciously amused. "I wonder... if their mage isn't a portal expert, perhaps he isn't a ward expert either." Harada looked puzzled.

"Even if that's the case, what does that mean?" She grinned.

"Well, Chou and I are experts on wards, as it happens. We've had a lot of practice. We were taught by the best. And I just got an interesting idea. If he isn't an expert, if he bought in the spell for the wards, there's a possibility that we can turn that around on him." They looked puzzled. "It's just possible, if you know what you're doing and have enough power, to flip a ward. Turn the direction of shielding around. It takes a hell of a lot of energy, but it can be done. So, if his wards aren't quite done right..."

Naito suddenly got the idea.

"You could take them over and turn them around? Trapping them inside, rather than trapping everyone else outside?" She nodded with a grin.

"Basically. I'm not guaranteeing anything, I need to have a close up look at them, but if we can do that, they're sitting ducks. They can't get out, at least via magical methods, and we can get in. The only downside is that someone could then open an inbound portal and bring in reinforcements, which otherwise they couldn't do. Hopefully we can shut them down before they can call out, assuming there is anyone on the outside anyway."

"I can get all the phone service, including cell coverage, shut down for the entire area. We can also jam other radio communications." Naito made some notes. Yori looked pleased.

"Great. OK, I think we may have a basic plan then. Chou and I will go and check the building out and see if we can determine how many people are inside. You set up whatever it is that you need to arrange. We need to hurry, no telling how soon this could happen, it might be months away or any minute now." Both martial artists stood and ran out of the room.

Deveraux and Harrison looked at each other, then simultaneously checked their side-arms. Harada did the same. Naito watched them, picked up the phone, and began making calls.

It was nearly two hours later when the two young woman reappeared. Yori slumped down, looking slightly tired for the first time that Deveraux could recall. Chou sat beside her, pulling a bottle of water from thin air and draining it. "Well, their wards are pretty strong, that much is true. Luckily, I was right. It's a preset spell, or rather half a dozen of them, with a lot of power behind it and not much experience. We can flip it. I've already taken over the control function and locked it so they can't change it, hopefully they won't notice until it's too late." Agent Naito looked pleased.

"Well, that's one good thing. Are they in there, though?" She nodded.

"Yes. The mage is, definitely, and there are six other people. Five of them are the ones you and the Inspector have been looking for, Lieutenant," she said, looking at Harrison. "The sixth one isn't on your list, but I know him, or at least know about him. He's Yakuza, or was. Not a pleasant person at all. He disappeared a while ago, just before Chou was going to have some serious words with him about the way he was behaving to certain women in the district. The Oyabun has had a large price on his head for over a year. I thought he'd left the country, to be honest." Chou looked quite annoyed, which Harrison thought wasn't an expression that she normally wore, the woman seemed very even-tempered, almost serene, most of the time, but now she looked genuinely dangerous.

"I would very much like to talk to him," she said in a quiet voice that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "A couple of people I know quite well were not treated properly by him." Yori smirked a little.

"With a little luck you may yet have that talk." Chou smiled in a way that made it look like she was thinking about going for someone's throat. Everyone else but Yori eased slightly away from her.

"Ah, right. Good. So they're in there." Agent Naito looked warily at the blonde woman, who smiled back, looking quite safe once more. "So what next? This is more in your field of expertise than mine at the moment."

"We need to wait, I think. The building above it is a light industrial one with several businesses in it. If we evacuate them it might tip these people off, so it's probably best to wait for them to close up and go home normally. You should arrange to have all the other buildings surrounding them to be evacuated, though, if that can be done discreetly." He nodded, picking up the phone. Issuing a few commands, he put it down again.

"In progress. They should all be out within an hour." Yori checked the clock on the wall.

"Good. The businesses involved should all close up in about an hour and a half. We can make a sweep through and make sure everyone is out. As soon as we're sure, you cut all the communications and we'll flip the wards. Get your men to cover all the exits in case they make a run for it the normal way, while we go in and deal with them." Naito looked at Harada, then back to Yori.

"Deal with them how?" he asked slowly. She looked evenly at him.

"Appropriately." He was the first to look away.

"All right. As I said, this is more your field of expertise." She nodded, pulling out her phone.

"I'm going to ask Aiko and her team to come and help, from the outside, just in case some magical threat turns up. They're the only ones I can get on short notice I trust to do it right."

"Fine." Naito was still watching her with a mildly upset expression. She grinned suddenly.

"Don't look so worried, Agent. I promise we won't simply slaughter them, we'll give them every chance to surrender. We're not murderers. But we can't let them get away, thousands of lives could be at risk." He didn't look completely happy.

"And the duck pond option?" She shrugged.

"Is still an option. So keep your distance."

"Oh, fuck it all, this is going to be bad, I can just feel it," he moaned. She patted him on the knee.

"Don't be like that. Think happy thoughts." Dialling, she spoke for a while, before hanging up. "Aiko and crew will be here very soon." There was a flash outside the building, visible through the windows. "About now, in fact."

The other magical girls soon entered the police station, greeting various other officers on the way. No one seemed overly surprised to see them, although there were a number of discreet appreciative glances sent their way. Harrison was struck by the thought that at home it was very unlikely that large quantities of young women with little on would be able to casually wander in and out of a police station like that. He grinned slightly. Aiko spotted him and waved. "Hello, Lieutenant, Inspector. Feeling less confused after last night?" She smiled.

"Well, we're OK with that part now," Deveraux said, "but recent developments seem to be going quite fast." Aiko and the others sat or leaned on desks while Yori and Chou explained for the third time, adding some background to the case. They looked suitably appalled and very angry. Fumiko swore viciously.

"Those fuckers. So that's why I nearly got killed last night?" Yori nodded.

"And Tamiko when that first one showed up months ago." Both girls scowled.

"What do you need us to do?" Aiko asked, looking at her team-mates for a moment. They all seemed eager to help.

"Mainly provide backup and magical security for the police and PSAI teams outside. We'll go in after these guys, but if anyone or anything either gets past us or comes in from outside, we might need some help."

"OK. When are we going?" Yori checked the clock again.

"I'd think a bit over an hour. Does that fit with you, Agent?" Naito also looked at the clock then nodded.

"Yes. My men are almost in position, everything will be set up by then." He glanced at Harada. "I'd better go and tell Captain Uehara what's going on. She'll pop a gasket if this goes off without her knowledge." Harada grinned.

"That she would." The agent left, the remaining people sitting quietly for a moment busy with their own thoughts. Deveraux looked over at Harrison, watching him think. He was rolling a pen between his fingers, staring at the clock. Feeling her eyes on him he turned his head towards her.

"What?" he asked curiously after a moment. She shrugged a little.

"Not sure. What do you think about this?"

"It's kind of sudden," he admitted, frowning slightly. "I'm used to operations like this being planned for weeks in advance." Yori snorted, making them both look at her.

"And how often does everything go exactly to plan?" she asked.

With a smile he admitted, "Not all that often." The girl nodded.

"'No plan survives contact with the enemy'" she quoted. "That's as true now as it was when Field Marshal Von Moltke said it nearly a hundred years ago, and for the thousands of years before that when it was known by every person who ever went into battle. The more detailed your plans, the more likely something is to go wrong. I've always felt you need a decent set of guidelines, an objective, then enough flexibility to change things on the fly." She shrugged. "It's worked so far." Everyone was looking at her with varying expressions. "Hey, I took history in school. I learned things." Aiko grinned.

"You come out with the weirdest things sometimes, Yori." The black haired young woman looked amused.

"I do my best." Glancing at the two overseas visitors, she added, "You guys should stay back with Naito and his men." Harrison sighed slightly.

"I know. We will, but it feels wrong, somehow, letting a bunch of teenaged girls go in where a SWAT team wouldn't. No offence." She laughed delightedly.

"None taken, at all. Thank you for thinking of our safety. Don't worry, we'll be fine. If we run into something we can't handle, well, there's nothing you and the entire Tokyo police force could have done anyway." He groaned as Deveraux smiled and most of the magical girls nodded knowingly.

"Oh, that makes me feel much better, thanks."

Naito came back with Captain Uehara, who looked at the six magical girls with some irritation. "This is supposed to be a police station not a clubhouse for teenagers with too little on." She inspected Aiko, who smiled at her with glee. With a sigh, she shook her head then turned to her sergeant. "Agent Naito has filled me in on this. I'd like you to go along to make sure this madhouse doesn't wreck the district, please." He nodded. "I'd send more officers with you, but from what I hear it probably wouldn't help anyway, and it's not like we're a huge station here. This is only a district station." She shook her head again. "God, magic is a pain sometimes. Magical terrorists are even worse." Glancing around at them all, she sighed once more. "Try not to get killed, or blow up the entire town. Please? For me?" Yori grinned. Chou looked confident and relaxed, while Aiko and her girls seemed ready for anything. Shaking her head the captain wandered off muttering to herself.

"She seems perturbed," Chou said with a small smile. Naito looked at her, then grinned.

"She's having a little trouble with the entire day, I think." Glancing at the clock he looked back at Yori, who nodded.

"I think it's time. Are your people ready?"

"Yes. Everyone is in place at a safe distance, the entire area has been cordoned off out of sight of the building. There's no one we know of within three hundred metres." Pulling out his phone he issued some quick orders, then hung up again. "Communications are ready to be cut as soon as you give the word."

"Right. Let's get over there. Aiko?" The petite brunette nodded, pulling out her amulet.

"Aim for the north side of Sakura park."

"OK. Everyone stand close." She looked around, then activated the teleport. The officers left in the room swore as they blinked.

"Gah." Agent Naito nearly fell over, only managing to stay upright when a slender but incredibly strong hand held onto his shoulder. "Thank you," he mumbled, his head spinning. In a few seconds he could see clearly enough that he realised that Chou was supporting him.

"Are you all right, Agent?" she asked politely.

"Yes, I think so. That was unexpected." The blonde smiled. "It only hits you like that the first time." She glanced over at Harada who was swaying back and forth with his eyes closed, Tamiko holding onto him. The auburn-haired girl nodded to her. Shortly both men had recovered enough to listen to Yori.

"OK. The building is about two hundred and fifty metres over in that direction. We'll get into position, then signal you. Cut the comms immediately, we'll flip the wards then go in. If anyone other than us comes out before we do, shoot to kill." She looked seriously at Naito. "I mean it. If they get away with any of those one-shot portals it will get extremely nasty." Reluctantly he nodded, pulling out a radio handset and issuing some orders. Looking at it, he handed it to the black haired girl.

"Here. This is about the only communication method that won't get jammed." She accepted it with a nod of thanks.

"Right. You guys make sure these guys don't get jumped from behind. You know what to do." She looked at each of Aiko's team in turn, they all nodded soberly, suddenly completely professional and battle-ready. Harrison was astounded by the abrupt air of no-nonsense imminent danger they were giving off. He found it difficult to believe that these were a lot of young women in their late teens, they suddenly seemed more dangerous that a squad of experienced soldiers. Glancing at Deveraux he saw she had noticed the change as well. She looked back at him seriously, pulling out her weapon and flicking off the safety. He did the same and saw that Harada and Naito had done likewise.

The four girls produced their own weapons from wherever they kept them, something Harrison still hadn't worked out, Yori and Chou touching each one in turn with glowing hands, pumping them full of whatever energy they had so much of. Yori did the recharging trick with Aiko's amulet again, and also a number of smaller artefacts the girls produced from about their persons. With one final check, the pair of them smiled at their friends then faded from view. "Let's get over to the command post," Naito said after a moment's silence. Everyone followed him. As soon as he got to the group of heavily armed and armoured men in the van parked up a side street out of view of the target building he plucked a radio from the hand of another agent, waving the man's protestations away peevishly. "We're in place, Yori," he said into it. A few seconds later the response came back.

"So are we. Cut the communications." He waved to a man in the open back of the van, who nodded then typed on a keyboard. Seconds later he gave a thumbs up.

"Comms down."

"Wards inverted. We're going in." The voice came from the handset he was holding and he sighed.

"Be careful," he said quietly, but didn't key up the transmitter. Aiko stepped up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"They know what they're doing. Yori better than anyone, I think." Looking down at the short girl he smiled slightly.

"I know. I've read her file." His smile widened a little. "And yours. I couldn't ask for better help." She looked pleased.

After the first ten minutes had passed with nothing but silence, everyone settled in for the long haul. Another twenty minutes crept past. Abruptly, Harada looked up, as did Tamiko and Misaki. "What was that?" A faint vibration came and went, followed a few seconds later by a slightly more intense one. There was a distant rumble. Everyone froze, then looked around the corner at the building two hundred metres away. Nothing seemed different.

"We ran into some resistance," Yori's voice crackled from the radio, interference making it difficult to understand. "It's not resisting any more." Aiko snickered.

"I'll bet it isn't. Whatever it was is probably a glowing glass hole in the ground now." Harrison looked at Naito who was looking worried.

"Please don't make another duck pond," he muttered in Japanese, Tamiko helpfully translating for the benefit of the visitors. Naito glared at her, while she shrugged with a smile. "Thank you," he grated.

"You're welcome," she chirped brightly. He sighed and leaned against the wall.

"Bloody magical girls." She giggled at his mumbling, while Harada grinned behind him. Several of his men chuckled until he turned his glare on them, at which point they became very interested in the details of their armour. "Any signs of movement?" he called to one of his agents, who talked quietly into a headset before shaking his head.

"No, the observers on the roof haven't seen anything." Naito sighed.

"I hate waiting like this."

Another ten minutes or so slowly passed. The radio finally came to life again. "We've got them," Chou's voice came. In the background there was the sound of a small explosion. "Oops. We had them." There was a larger explosion, which they felt through the ground, making Naito wince again. "Got them again. Most of them anyway. The mage isn't an issue any longer." Harada snickered while Aiko and her team laughed. Harrison looked at Deveraux, understanding the likely meaning of that. "You can bring your men in, Agent. Bring Aiko and the girls as well, we still have a problem we need their help for." The radio went silent again. Everyone looked speculatively at each other. Raising the radio to his mouth, Naito keyed it up and answered, then waved to his men. Eight of the armoured agents jogged past heading for the building, the others following behind.

Harrison, Deveraux, and Harada tagged along, Naito glancing at them but saying nothing. As they approached the building Chou came out with six men in front of her, holding both her energy swords ready. None of the men looked like they were likely to try anything, they had a number of wounds and one or two of them were being supported by their comrades. At least one had a very obviously broken leg. "Here you go, Agent. Be careful, they're a sneaky bunch." She glared at the one with the broken leg. "Try that again and I'll break the other one. Or just cut it off." She made a suggestive gesture with one energy blade. He shied away from her, trying to put one of the other men between them, unsuccessfully as his colleague was no keener to be near her than he was.

Naito motioned to his men, who quickly and efficiently took charge of the prisoners, stripping them down to their underwear and relieving them of anything that could conceivably be a weapon, before handcuffing them and making them lie face down on the ground. "Misaki, check them for magic, will you, please?" Chou requested. "Yori and I both did, but better to be safe." The tall brunette nodded wordlessly, pulling out a small glowing device and running it over each man in turn. She gave Chou a thumbs up when she was done. "Good."

The blonde relaxed a little, dismissing her energy blades. Naito walked a little closer, he'd been staying well back while she had them out having read about what she could do with them. "Where's Yori?" he asked, looking past her into the doorway of the building behind her.

"That's the problem." She sighed. "They had six of those demons down there, in some sort of stasis spell. The mage released the spell when we got past the last door to delay us. When they realised their teleport spell didn't work they panicked. He nearly tried it anyway, which wouldn't have worked out well, they'd all have died. Luckily for them he changed his mind. Unluckily for him, he attempted to blow us up. It didn't work. Yori got annoyed." Harada nodded with a smile.

"That must have been the second explosion." She looked resigned.

"Correct. He wasn't nearly as good as he thought he was. At least it was quick."

"What was the first set of explosions, near the beginning?" Deveraux asked.

"That was one of the demons. We managed to move part of the wards and trap most of them in a couple of rooms in the sub-basement, but one got past before we could block it. It was headed out, so I had to deal with it while Yori was holding the others back. I tried to keep the damage to a minimum but there's quite a large hole down there now." Naito muttered something, making her look at him with a raised eyebrow. He apologised, slightly embarrassed.

'God, it's like my mother is disappointed in me. How does she do that?' he wondered to himself. Mollified the blonde smiled at him.

"We found quite a lot of paperwork down there, I took everything I could see, as well as some CDROMs and other media." The young woman pulled a large box out of thin air, making most of the people present stare at her. Naito motioned to one of his men when he got over his surprise, who came over and took it from her. "Here you go. This should help your case. I had a very quick look through it and as far as I could see this is probably all of them. We think we've accounted for all the portal devices as well. The plan seems to have been to use them more or less as bombs. Somehow the mage figured out a way to target demons from this end, then open a portal to one when it was moving fast. It would fall right through the open portal, find itself here, and probably in a very bad mood. They were going to scatter the things all over several major cities around the world on timers, then leave. Anything up to a few months later one or more would activate, more or less randomly dropping a demon into a crowd."

Harrison shuddered. "Jesus. That would have been..." He couldn't finish. Chou nodded soberly.

"Not good at all. Anyway, we found about three hundred of them, along with enough materials to make maybe another hundred and fifty. That matches their records. The only problem is that we don't know for a fact how many they made in the initial test batch. We've accounted for six so far, including the one that Aiko's team and our visitors here dealt with the aftermath of, but there could be more. Probably not many, but the only one who could tell us for sure is dead. These men might know, I suppose." She turned to look at the prisoners with interest. They all went white. "I could ask. They'd tell me, I'm sure."

One of the prisoners shouted, "He made a dozen of them." Chou walked slowly towards him, suddenly radiating lethal intent to a degree that made the experienced SWAT team back off nervously.

Squatting down next to the man, she asked politely, "A dozen? Are you completely sure?" He nodded frantically.

"Yes. I'm sure."

"Are they inside? Or did you put them somewhere?" Her voice had dropped a little in pitch and every person listening, with the exception of the other magical girls, felt a shiver go through them. Even Aiko and her team looked slightly worried.

"I don't know! Honest, god help me, I don't know!" The man was lying in a growing puddle. She reached out with a softly glowing hand, placing it lightly on his shoulder.

"You wouldn't lie to me would you?" she asked gently, leaning close so only he could see her face. He whimpered, then screamed in fright.

"No. no, no, no. I'm telling the truth. He took them all, I don't know what he did with them." She looked at him for a few seconds longer, everyone feeling like the afternoon had darkened a little, before suddenly bouncing to her feet.

"Thank you. Your cooperation is much appreciated." Turning she walked back to the others while behind her one of the SWAT team had to sit down. Naito and Harada stared at her in mild horror while Deveraux looked at Harrison, both of them shaking a little. Neither had understood her words, as she'd been speaking Japanese, but her tone carried over the language barrier perfectly.

"Fucking hell," Harrison whispered. Deveraux nodded. Aiko leaned in.

"The thing to get really worried about is that Yori is the scary one." She looked subdued. They stared at her, then each other.

"Fucking hell," Harrison said again, looking at the blonde girl who had a satisfied expression on her face.

"He was telling the truth, I could feel it. He really doesn't know where the other devices are. So best case, we've got them all, worst case, there may be up to half a dozen still out there somewhere. That's not ideal, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. You should probably check where he's been in the last year, we might get some idea of where he might have put them if we can't account for them here. The paperwork has enough information to let you identify him." She looked at Aiko. "Yori is still down there making sure the wards hold. We still have five of those demons to deal with. She thinks the safest way is to force the wards as close as possible then, well, 'duck pond' them." Agent Naito looked worried.

"Um...," he started. She smiled serenely at him.

"Don't worry, Agent. We can reinforce the wards enough to contain the energy release. It will make a mess of that end of the basement but the damage shouldn't be too extensive. It won't affect the building structurally." He looked dubious. She shrugged. "It's the best way."

"Damn. OK, do what you need to." The blonde smiled at him, then turned to the other magical girl team.

"She wants all of us down there to focus the power and force the wards inwards. We'll feed you the energy, you just have to push it in the right direction. Then we zap them all at once." Aiko glanced at her team, who all nodded.

"OK." All four of them headed for the entrance.

"What about the other portal devices?" Agent Naito asked. She glanced back as she was about to enter the building behind the other girls.

"We'll destroy them. It's the safest thing to do. Most of them have already been targeted and armed, it would be a nightmare if they got out." He looked slightly worried but nodded. "Keep everyone back. You'll know when we're done." Following her friends the blonde disappeared inside the building. Naito slumped slightly as the tension left him.

"God almighty, that woman is terrifying." Harada looked at him and slowly nodded.

"You tend to forget just how dangerous those two are, they're very playful and friendly most of the time. But when they go into full blown combat mode..." He shivered a little. "I don't see that side of them very often, and I'm damn glad about it."

"I was asked to get a sample of that device, the PSIA would like to study it, but I'm not going to argue with that."

"I certainly wouldn't. Not about something she knew about and I didn't."

About five minutes later there was what felt like a minor earthquake, accompanied by a sort of mental fizzing effect. Everyone winced, the sensation was very odd although not painful. A rumble came from somewhere underground. All six magical girls emerged shortly afterwards, looking pleased. "Right, that's hopefully the end of that," Yori said, walking up to Agent Naito. "All the portal devices are slag, the demons are as well, and the sub-basement is clear. Your men can go in and look for any more evidence you may need. Three rooms are still a little warm and melty, but they'll cool down soon enough. I don't think there was anything particularly useful in them in the first place, they just seemed to be storage areas."

Agent Naito nodded to his men, waving to the building. Four of them entered, while the other four pulled the prisoners to their feet, starting them walking towards the command post. "Thank you, ladies," Naito said, looking around at his unconventional help. They all looked pleased. "You've been a great help once again. We owe you all yet another favour." Yori grinned.

"I'm keeping track." He grinned back.

"I bet you are." Shaking hands, they turned to follow the SWAT team which was fifty or sixty metres away. A sudden shout caught their attention and they all looked ahead to see one of the prisoners struggling with two of the SWAT men. He managed to knee one of them in the crotch, making him stagger slightly, bumping into his colleague, who lost control of the prisoner. Before the others could react he'd somehow managed to wrest control of the first man's pistol from him, jumping to the side and firing three quick shots at the group behind. It all happened so fast that none of the police or PSIA men could react in time.

There was a blur of motion from all the magical girls, which had started the instant the shout came. By the time the third shot rang out, Chou was just slowing from an impossibly fast sprint next to the man, her hand reaching out and tapping him on the head, making him drop like he'd been shot, while her other hand had removed the pistol from his so quickly it had broken three fingers. Yori had her right hand in a fist steady in front of Naito's face, while Tamiko had pulled her sword from somewhere and placed the flat across Deveraux's chest. The tableaux held for a moment, then Yori opened her hand to reveal a 9mm bullet. Naito stared in disbelief while Harada nodded wisely. Tamiko bent down and picked a flattened bullet off the ground, handing it to Deveraux, who accepted it numbly. "Holy crap," Harrison muttered softly, looking at the round in her fingers.

"Thanks," the Canadian managed in a soft voice. Tamiko smiled at her, making her sword go away.

"You're welcome."

Harada looked at Yori. "I heard three shots. Where did the third one go?" She looked annoyed, poking at a hole in her shirt.

"Right here, damn it. I like this shirt." He stared at her, then looked at the ground. There was another bullet lying there as flattened as the one in Deveraux's hand. Meeting his look with a raised eyebrow she shrugged slightly. He smiled.

"I thought so." Nodding back to him, she gave the bullet in her hand to Naito, then walked over to her partner, who was glaring at the man in her hands. The agent watched her, shaking slightly.

"Fuck me." Harada clapped him on the shoulder.

"I told you they could catch bullets." The other man slowly turned to look at him.

"I'd much prefer that demonstration not be with one headed right at my face." Sergeant Harada shrugged.

"She caught it. No problems." Naito glared at him. Grinning, the sergeant bent down and retrieved the third bullet from the ground, looking at it curiously. "It looks like it hit a steel plate," he said wonderingly. Glancing at Yori, who was talking to Chou, he laughed. "I'll bet there isn't even a bruise. Those girls are..." Harrison, Naito, and Deveraux all nodded. They knew what he meant.

Walking closer to the SWAT team member and their prisoners, they listened as Chou and Yori had a mild argument. The blonde was holding the man who had grabbed the gun by the scruff of the neck, the others noticing after a moment his feet were nearly clear of the ground. That explained the funny colour he was going. She was showing no sign of effort at all. "I need to talk with him. You said I could." Chou sounded irritated. Yori sighed a little.

"Oh, all right. Don't damage him too badly, it doesn't look good when he's already our prisoner." She smiled toothily.

"Oh, I'm only going to talk. I'll even heal his hand. That's nice of me, isn't it?" she asked the man, who rolled his eyes as he was unable to do anything else. Taking this as assent, she walked off towards a nearby alley holding the man at arms length, talking softly to him. Yori watched her go, then turned to the others. Everyone was looking at her.

"He'll live. Probably." She glanced over her shoulder. "I think." After a moment she swore mildly. "Damn. I'll be back in a minute." Hurrying after her partner she disappeared into the alley. Slight whimpering noises began to come out of it and everyone looked away, wincing one or twice as they got louder.

"Um, so, thanks again, all of you," Agent Naito said, looking nervously over his shoulder at one particularly loud squeak of distress. There was a distinct feeling of something unpleasant radiating from the alley. The SWAT men looked at each other then turned to inspect their prisoners, all of whom had their eyes shut. Aiko smiled uncertainly, her eyes twitching towards the alley every now and then, as did those of the other magical girls. They seemed to be reacting to something none of the others felt. She winced slightly then looked a little awed.

"Good grief," she muttered. Glancing at her team-mates, she shrugged a little. "You're welcome. It was fun." Something made her wince again. Quickly looking towards the alley she seemed to listen, then deliberately stop herself. "If you have any similar problems in the future, Sergeant Harada has our contact details." Harrison and Deveraux glanced at each other as the whimpers abruptly stopped, dead silence coming from the alley. Suddenly there was a faint scream, all the more worrying due to it's low volume. Everyone jumped, even the magical girls. Silence came back, broken after a while by footsteps accompanied by voices.

"Look, all I did was explain it wasn't nice to do what he did."

"It wasn't what you said, dear, it was more how you said it." The voices got closer. The various people outside the alley listened intently.

"It's not my fault if he had a weak constitution. Big bad Yakuza man like that, having a heart attack in the middle of a nice talk. That's just rude. Anyway, I restarted it for him. He'll be fine. I even fixed his hand like I said I would." They all exchanged glances. There was a resigned sigh.

"The fangs and tentacles were possibly a little much." Everyone stared.

"Says the one who dangles muggers by one foot from thirty metres up when lecturing them."

"I only did that once."

"That was enough." The two women emerged from the alley, Yori carrying the man over her shoulder as easily as if he was a rolled up blanket. He was as limp as one, certainly. She looked at the wide-eyed expressions pointed at them and smiled a little guiltily.

"Um. He had a bit of an accident. He's all better now, just a little fainted." Lowering the man carefully to the ground she slapped his face once or twice. "Come on, wake up. You have jail to look forward to." He moaned, his eyelids flickering, then he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Chou looking at him impassively over Yori's shoulder. Opening his mouth he made a choked little squeak of terror, sounding like someone had just stepped on a kitten, before screaming loudly and fainting again. Yori sighed irritably. "Oh, for god's sake." Poking him in a couple of places on his chest she looked satisfied as he jolted awake again. "Look at me. No, at me, not her. Listen. You're going to get up and go quietly with these nice men, OK? And if you plead guilty and tell them everything they want to know, I'll make sure you'll never see her again. Understand?" He nodded convulsively, his eyes fixed on hers. She smiled in a way that made everyone watching go cold.

"Don't let me down." He shook his head rapidly, unable to speak, staring at her like a mouse looking at a hawk. Satisfied she stood, glancing around at the various people staring at her with one eyebrow up. "What?"

After a long moment, the SWAT men collected the now-whimpering former Yakuza man from the ground, placing him with the other prisoners and rapidly leaving the vicinity of the terrifying young women. All of them felt much happier the further away they got. Aiko looked at Deveraux and Harrison. "Told you," she mouthed, both of them nodding. Chou was bad enough. For a moment, though, Yori had been the most horrifying thing they'd ever seen. That smile was one that Harrison would see in his nightmares for years.

Naito watched her for a moment more, then shook himself a little. "Um. Right. Anyway, I was just telling Aiko and her team how much we appreciated their help. That goes for you two as well. If it's not too much trouble, could you possibly submit some sort of report on this from your point of view, along with any conclusions and insights you might have? Please?" He sounded slightly worried. She nodded with a smile.

"Of course. We'll drop something in to the station tomorrow." The PSIA man relaxed a bit.

"Thank you. We still need to work out if those six devices are accounted for or still in play." Yori glanced at Chou, both of them looking upset and annoyed.

"That's very true. I'd like to think that we got them all, but the way life works, I somehow doubt it. I have a nasty feeling that they're going to turn up sooner or later, I just hope it's not with a lot of dead people as well." Naito didn't look happy about this prospect, nor did the others. Yori looked at Deveraux and Harrison, who jumped a little at the sudden attention. "So, how long are you guys sticking around for?" They glanced at each other, then Harrison answered.

"I'm not sure. You seem to have closed this part of the case, although how the hell we're going to explain it to the people back home I have no idea." Naito laughed.

"I can help you with that. We have a certain amount of experience framing this sort of thing in terms that your people will accept." Harrison looked grateful.

"Thanks. So, I guess we need to write up our reports, get them to the captain and our superiors, then we're off home." Yori looked at Aiko, who nodded slightly.

"See if you can get a few days holiday, as long as you're here you might as well enjoy it. No demon attacks or anything. If you would like, Aiko can teleport you home afterwards, it beats a fifteen hour flight." Harrison looked startled, staring at the other magical girl who grinned at him, then his colleague. Deveraux shrugged.

"Why not? I don't like flying at the best of times anyway." Harrison looked back at the black haired girl.

"OK. But that's going to be even harder to explain." She looked amused.

"No, just tell them that someone has offered private transportation. Free of charge. They'll probably love that."

"True."

Aiko smiled at him. "I can take you to an airport or somewhere else you can go through with your passport to make everything nice and legal. Or to your house if you don't care about that." He looked interested, then nodded.

"Probably best to do it more or less legitimately. We are cops after all." She laughed.

"Fair enough." Glancing at her team-mates, she looked back at them. "Yori will call me when you need to leave. We have to get going now. Nice working with you." The four of them waved to Yori and Chou, smiled at the rest, then moved away a short distance. Deveraux and Harrison remembered just in time to look away as the flash came. Harada and Naito weren't as lucky.

"Damn, that was bright." Naito scrubbed at his streaming eyes. Yori snickered.

"Sorry, she was off so fast I didn't have time to warn you." Turning to Harrison and Deveraux she and Chou both held out their hands. "Like Aiko said, it's been fun. We'll see you tomorrow, I think." The visitors shook hands with both young women, who then waved to Naito and Harada, ran towards the nearest building, and jumped five stories straight up onto the roof. Within seconds they were gone. The four people left on the street looked up with a mix of expressions, mostly on the theme of awe.

"That was... very strange." Deveraux looked back at the others, who nodded.

"Most definitely." Naito shook his head in bemusement. "I've met some interesting people in this job, but those two are something else. Come on, I need something to eat. And drink. Definitely drink." The group of law enforcement people wandered off down the road.

---

Four days later Deveraux sat down next to Sergeant Harada at his desk, putting her bag on the floor and pushing it under the chair with her foot. He looked at her with a grin. "You have the tired eyes of someone who had a good night." She laughed.

"As far as I can remember." Leaning back in his chair, he dropped his pen on his desk and put his hands behind his head.

"It's been interesting and fun having you two here, Laura. Keep in touch." She nodded, smiling.

"I will, Tetsuo. There's no way I'm going to forget about all this. No matter how much I try." They were still laughing when Harrison stumbled in, looking pale and wan. Slumping in the other chair he stared blearily at them.

"How much did I drink last night?" he asked. Deveraux shook her head.

"No idea. You were still going when I passed out. I know I had far too much, if that helps." He groaned.

"Not really." Looking at Harada he asked, "Do you have any aspirin?" The sergeant opened his desk and pulled out a small bottle, tossing it to the American. "Thanks." Swallowing three of them he handed the bottle back, then put his head on the desk. "Argh. I'll never drink again."

Deveraux snickered. "You always say that."

"I mean it," he mumbled into his arms.

"You always say that as well." Sighing heavily he didn't reply.

Yori and Chou entered a few minutes later, the former sitting on the edge of Harada's desk while the latter stood next to her. Both of them looked at Harrison with amusement. "Had a bit too much to drink, Lieutenant?" He nodded painfully. Chou glanced at Yori, who shrugged unsympathetically. "This is why I don't drink." The blonde woman sighed.

"Here." She reached out and placed her hand on Harrison's shoulder. A faint glow surrounded it for a few seconds. Removing it she asked, "How do you feel?" He blinked, surprised despite himself.

"Better, actually. A lot better. Thanks." She smiled.

"Try to drink less next time. Or at least drink a lot more water, your liver was having a hard time." He nodded. Deveraux had watched with renewed amazement, shaking her head.

"Where were you two when I was going through college?" she asked with bemusement. Chou grinned at her.

"So, have you enjoyed visiting Japan?" she asked. Deveraux exchanged a glance with her companion.

"Aside from the magical terrorists, getting in involved in a demon attack, and being scared shitless on a number of occasions, yes, it's been a real laugh," she replied, making Yori chuckle.

"Oh, come on, Inspector, it's not that bad." The older woman smiled.

"No, it's not, Yori. On the whole, yes, it's been very interesting. I've certainly made a number of friends." They grinned at each other. After a moment Yori produced two cards. Handing one to each of them, she said, "You might need these one day." Harrison looked at his with interest, realising what it was quickly. Deveraux did likewise. After a moment they exchanged cards, looking amazed as they saw that they were blank. Swapping them back the could read them again. "Wow. That's, well, that's kind of freaky." The Canadian looked at Yori, who seemed pleased.

"If you need the sort of help we can provide, call. Now that you know what to look for you might find it's more apparent. Or not. I don't know much about your homes. Just in case, though, hang on to those." She scowled for a moment. "I'm pretty sure there are still six of those damn portal bombs kicking around out there somewhere. I hope I'm wrong, but..." Harrison nodded slowly, exchanging a glance with his colleague.

"I understand. If something turns up, I'll call." Deveraux said much the same.

"Good. OK, if you're ready to go, I'll call Aiko." Harrison glanced at her.

"Can you give me five minutes? I'd like to say good-by to the captain." Yori nodded.

"Sure. We're in no hurry." Both visiting officers headed to Captain Uehara's office, Harrison knocking politely on the door-frame. She looked up, waving them in with a small smile.

"Hello, Lieutenant, Inspector. I assume you'll be leaving us soon?" Both of them nodded. She put her pen down and leaned back, looking at them carefully, before smiling again. "It's been an interesting time, certainly. Thank you for helping."

"Thank you, Ma'am, for allowing us to," Deveraux replied. Captain Uehara waved a hand.

"It's no real trouble. Compared to magical girls you two are pretty easy to deal with." She grinned at them. "Even if you do have the questionable judgement to take pot-shots at demons." Harrison laughed while Deveraux looked amused.

"I can assure you, Captain, that I have no intention of doing that again in a hurry. Preferably ever." She nodded at Harrison.

"Probably a good idea. Take care, and if you come back this way, please stop in and say hello." They nodded, reaching over the desk to shake her hand. Leaving the office they headed back to Harada's desk, where they found Agent Naito talking to the two martial artists and the sergeant.

"Ah, our visitors." He shook their hands. "I wanted to say good-bye, and also let you know the current condition of our mutual case. We've collated all the documents Chou passed on, along with other information we dug up, and we're almost certain we got everyone involved. There were never more than about ten of them in total, and you accounted for at least two of those back in LA. We have the rest, except for the mage, who our friends here dealt with. The bad news is that we are also almost certain that those six possibly missing portal devices are actually missing." He frowned. "The records we have show that the damn mage visited at least a dozen cities all over the world in the last year or so, as far as we can tell. That's just via normal air travel. Once you bring possible teleportation into it he could have gone to dozens more. Those things could be almost anywhere." He looked seriously at them. "Including LA and Toronto, we know he went to both places." Deveraux sighed heavily while Harrison looked worried.

"I was afraid you were going to say that." Naito shrugged.

"Sorry. We don't have any way, as far as we know, to track them. Yori here thinks it might be possible, but even if it is you'd have to be quite close to one to detect it." The black-haired young woman nodded.

"They're shielded quite well, so even under ideal circumstances you'd have to be within about three or four hundred metres. If they're underground, it might be half that." Chou looked at them.

"The bigger problem is that if they are out there somewhere, active, they're going to go off within less than eight months at the outside. That's the maximum timer delay." She didn't look happy. "Hopefully they're all in Minato, where we can deal with them quickly. I'm not looking forward to that, but it's the best possible scenario. If they're somewhere else..." She trailed off, while the others all looked worried.

"We'll sweep the district, the entire ward if we have to, but to be honest I'm not expecting to find them here, at least not all of them. So keep your eyes open." Yori looked at each of them. "If you hear about anything that might be one, call us. We'll come and deal with it." Harrison nodded soberly, looking at the card she had given him again, before putting it carefully away in his wallet. Chou handed him one as well, giving one to the RCMP officer too.

"Just in case." She smiled at them. After a moment, Yori cracked her knuckles, making everybody jump.

"Right. Ready?" They both nodded. Pulling out her phone she placed a quick call. Seconds later Aiko appeared in the middle of the room, making a number of officers jump and one spill his coffee.

"Oops. Sorry," she said with a smile. He looked slightly annoyed but smiled back, wiping his desk. Walking over to Yori she greeted her, then turned to the two North Americans. "Hi. Which one first, and where to?" They looked at each other. Deveraux raised her hand.

"Can you do Toronto International?"

"Yep, been there a couple of times. Airside, I guess, so you go through passport control?" Deveraux nodded. Aiko glanced at Harrison.

"I expect you want LAX?" He nodded as well. "No problem." Waving them to a clear area, she waved to Yori and Chou. "See you guys in a bit."

Harrison and Deveraux waved to the people they had come to know as friends, then disappeared in a bright flash. Naito swore. Harada grinned, opening his eyes.

"You forgot, didn't you?"

"Yes, damn it. Bloody magical girls." Yori snickered while Chou sighed gently.