Chapter One
For Sayuri Kanetaka, as it did for so many others, it all started when she stumbled across an advert for a new smartphone game called Magical Girl Raising Project.
She had played smartphone games before, RPGs for the most part, but they always seemed to end up requiring the player to spend real money. Sure, you might get a few basic starter items for free and there was usually some form of virtual currency you could use to upgrade your equipment, but, sooner or later, you would have to start dipping into your bank account if you wanted to progress. An exclusive item that couldn't be purchased through any other means. A subscription fee which you had to pay if you wanted to carry on playing after a specified period of time had elapsed. But Magical Girl Raising Project was different; the intro page included the claim that it was:
Completely free to play! No purchase required - ever!
When she saw this, Sayuri's heart leapt with excitement. A completely free smartphone game and one themed around magical girls as well! Magical girls. Young heroines dressed in elaborate costumes, wielding all sorts of awesome powers. Sayuri's DVD collection included several examples of the genre, but she had never before come across a game in which the player character was a magical girl. Choosing to play as a female character in a fantasy game was about as close as you usually got and they always seemed to get a raw deal compared to the males when it came to costumes and equipment. Everything was either ridiculously skimpy or completely impractical for combat. Which made Sayuri suspect that those games were geared more towards guys who wanted to ogle scantily clad women, or at least their virtual forms.
But maybe this game would be different. It certainly seemed to be targeted at a female audience, so maybe whoever had come up with it had designed some items that weren't essentially swimwear masquerading as armour. That, plus the claim that it was "completely free", was what prompted Sayuri to click on the button marked Begin Game.
A small creature appeared on the screen against a backdrop showing a lake. It did not look like any animal Sayuri had seen, real or imaginary. In fact, it did not look like an animal at all. It was spherical, one half being white with a black eye, while the other was black with a red eye. A single wing sprouted from its white half, scattering scales as it flapped. And its mouth looked as though it was permanently set to the same expression, a simple emoji-like smile.
"Greetings, pon!" the creature said in a high-pitched voice. "I am Fav, your guide in the Magical Kingdom, pon. Please create your character and your adventures can begin, pon!"
With that, the creature, Fav, disappeared and a girl dressed in bra and panties appeared, along with various options for customising her hair, her eyes, her outfit. There were thousands of items to choose from, ranging from traditional magical girl outfits such as stylised versions of Japanese school uniforms or dresses trimmed with lace and ribbons to stuff that was about as far removed from most people's idea of what a magical girl would wear as it was possible to get. There were even some items that revealed a little too much flesh, exactly the sort of thing Sayuri did not want her character to wear. Still, there was plenty of stuff to choose from and it was all completely free. New players in this game clearly weren't restricted to dressing like peasants until they could afford something better; they could create a cool outfit right away. And that was what Sayuri now set out to do.
After several minutes of trying on various combinations of items, Sayuri's magical girl alter ego was ready to begin her adventures.
Her name was Lupina. Sayuri had opted to make her a cute wolf girl, adding matching ears to her navy blue shoulder length hair and a tail (also navy blue) which stuck out of the back of her dress. The dress itself could best be described as fantasy with a modern twist, black with silver trimming, the ends of the sleeves hanging down, the skirt short and flared with a scalloped edge. Below this, Lupina wore white knee-high boots. A silver necklace round her neck and tiara in her hair completed the outfit. She looked at Sayuri out of large brown eyes which seemed to say she couldn't wait to get started.
"Do you wish to play as this character, pon?" asked Fav.
Sayuri wondered why Fav kept ending sentences with the word "pon", which wasn't even a word, but quickly dismissed it as something which had been programmed by the game's designers, whoever they were. She selected Yes and Lupina was swiftly transported to the Magical Kingdom.
Lupina wasn't able to explore the Magical Kingdom right away; like any new player, Sayuri had to play through the game's various tutorials before her character was allowed to venture beyond the starting point. Following instructions from Fav, she learned how to move Lupina around, how to use magic, how to check her store of magical candies, the latter being the reward players received for completing quests and defeating enemies. Sayuri's store was empty at first, but, after only a few hours of playing time, she completed her first quest and earned her first candies. A simple quest designed for beginners which involved battling and defeating a rat-like creature which had been stealing food from a village. In response to the buttons Sayuri pressed on her smartphone, Lupina, having tracked the rat-creature down, attacked it repeatedly until it died, at which point Fav appeared.
"Congratulations, pon! You have earned five magical candies!"
Five magical candies. And, as Sayuri progressed through the game, fitting her playing sessions around school and helping out in her dad's sushi restaurant, her store of candies steadily increased. She played the game in story mode for the most part, but she and her two best friends from school, Keiko Ueda and Hanako Inada, sometimes got together for multi-player sessions. Keiko had a steampunk-themed character called Tick-tock whose costume included an oversized pocket watch. Hanako's character, Princess Hanako, wore a peach dress that looked like a cross between a kimono and a school uniform with a green obi and slippers, both of which looked as though they were made out of leaves; she also carried a wand which had leaves growing out of it and wore a flower which matched her dress in her hair. And, as the weeks passed, they began to come across rumours that there was something different about Magical Girl Raising Project, something which meant it was more than just another smartphone game.
"Hey, check this out!"
Sayuri, with Keiko and Hanako beside her, was browsing Magical Girl Raising Project fansites when she stumbled upon a site dedicated to "real-life magical girl encounters". It was filled with reports from people claiming to have been helped by mysterious girls, all of whom had two things in common. They were, according to the people who said they had seen them, "too beautiful to be human" and their outfits resembled those which could be created using items available in the game. And, from what the alleged eyewitnesses were saying, this wasn't just a case of people cosplaying as their Magical Girl Raising Project characters. It seemed some of the game's players had somehow become their characters and were using their powers to help others. And several of the sightings were within a ten-kilometre radius of Sayuri, Keiko and Hanako's hometown of K City. One involved a woman who had been saved from molestation in a back alley by a girl dressed like a Viking. In another, a gang of thieves had been stopped by two girls flying gliders, who had then returned all the stolen items to their rightful owners . . .
"Could it be true?" Hanako wondered out loud, voicing what the three friends were all thinking. It was fun to watch anime shows about magical girls and to play at being one in a smartphone game, but they all knew such things belonged in the realms of fantasy. Magical girls didn't really exist, did they?
"It would be great if it was," said Keiko, closing her eyes as she imagined herself, Sayuri and Hanako, transformed into their respective characters, doing their bit to make K City a better place. But the logical part of her mind told her these stories were just online rumours, the products of overactive imaginations or possibly some bizarre publicity stunt. Perhaps the company behind the game were paying people to claim they had encountered magical girls in the hope that it would attract more players. People driven by idle curiosity. Kids drawn in by the possibility, no matter how unlikely, of becoming real-life versions of fictional heroines with magical powers.
"I wonder what you'd have to do to become a magical girl. If they were real, I mean," Sayuri clarified as she realised she was letting her imagination run away with her. She had grown quite attached to Lupina in the weeks since she first started the game, but the girl with the wolf-like ears and tail was a fictional character, a piece of data which she herself had generated. Which meant the closest Sayuri was likely to get to actually being Lupina was if she ran up a cosplay. On the other hand, there was something about these stories that made her wonder if there might be some truth to them; it would be so cool if she really could turn into Lupina and do all the stuff her character could do in the game.
She shook her head, telling herself there was no way that was going to happen. Magical Girl Raising Project was just a game and Lupina was just a character in that game. The rumours that people were transforming into real-life magical girls as a result of playing the game were just that. Rumours.
A few days later, however, Sayuri had just completed another quest in the Magical Kingdom when Fav suddenly appeared. "Congratulation, pon!" he said. Since starting the game, Sayuri had learned that Fav, despite having a gender neutral appearance and name, was a male of whatever species he was supposed to be. "You've been selected to become a true magical girl, pon!" Thinking this meant she'd reached a point in the game where she'd unlocked content that wasn't available to less advanced players, Sayuri skipped over the rest of Fav's spiel without paying attention to what he was saying. The next thing she knew, a bright light suddenly emerged from her phone and enveloped her.
As soon as the light had faded, Sayuri looked down at herself - and gasped at what she saw. Literally seconds ago, she had been wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt with a pink star on the front, but that had suddenly disappeared, replaced by a black dress trimmed with silver and a pair of knee-high white boots. Exactly the same outfit Lupina wore in the game. And, when she looked in her full length mirror, she saw Lupina looking back at her, navy blue hair, wolf ears and all. She even had a tail the same colour as her hair sticking out of a slit in the back of her dress. What was going on? Why did she suddenly look like a character she had created for a smartphone game? She remembered the rumours about real magical girls, but she'd never taken them seriously, much less expected to be one of those who transformed. Now, however . . .
"Is this for real?" Even her voice sounded different, she noted, sweeter and more melodic, the kind of voice magical girls had in anime. "Or am I dreaming?"
"No, you are not dreaming, pon," Fav said from her phone. "Magical Girl Raising Project is different from other games, pon. It was created by someone who wished to find those who were worthy of becoming true magical girls, pon. And you have been chosen, pon. You are now Lupina, pon."
Sayuri, or rather Lupina, studied her reflection, noting how completely flawless her appearance had become, her skin free from any kind of blemish, her features perfectly proportioned, her arms and legs elegant and shapely. Even the fact that she had a tail felt perfectly natural, as though it had always been there. And she could feel energy coursing through her like she had never known before, energy which far exceeded that of a normal human. As Sayuri, she was her school's athletics champion and had broken several records, but she needed no-one to tell her that Lupina wouldn't just break those records; she would shatter them. Not to mention that, being a magical girl, Lupina had the ability to use magic, something Sayuri could only dream of. There was just one question.
"What kind of magic can I use?" she asked. In the game, there were many kinds of magic available, some more useful than others, but players could use whatever magic they liked at any time, provided they had met the right criteria. But she had a feeling things weren't going to work like that in the real world.
"Why don't you check your magical phone, pon?"
In response to Fav's suggestion, she looked to find a phone on her desk which had not been there a few minutes ago. The moment she picked it up, she sensed it was not like her normal phone, that it could only be used by someone who, like her, had been chosen. And, seconds later, Fav appeared on its heart-shaped screen. "These devices are issued to all new magical girls, pon. It will allow you to keep in touch with others like yourself, pon. And you can use it to look up your stats, pon."
She did so and the screen was immediately filled with information on her true identity, her vital statistics as Lupina, how long she had been playing when she was chosen . . . Her personality was described as "fiercely loyal to her friends", her magic as "can transform any inanimate object into any kind of weapon". Fav explained that everyone who was chosen was given one magical ability which reflected their character and that there was no way to change this ability. Not that Lupina minded; being able to turn things into weapons sounded cool, but how did her new powers work? She put this question to Fav, who flapped his single wing, scattering scales across the screen.
"Just pick up an object and think about what kind of weapon you want it to be, pon. The object you're holding will then transform into that weapon, pon. To change it back, all you have to do is put it down and avoid touching it for sixty seconds, pon. Why don't you give it a try, pon?"
Lupina looked around for something she could use to test her powers, finally settling on her hairbrush. She picked it up and closed her eyes, visualising it transforming into a dagger, the first weapon which popped into her head, feeling it vibrating in her hand as it changed its form. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the hand which had been holding a brush moments before, but was now holding a shining dagger with a steel blade roughly six inches long and a handle shaped like a wolf's head. And, though she had never handled any kind of weapon before, it felt natural in her hand, like an extension of her arm. That had to be part of her magic; after all, it wouldn't be much use having the ability to turn objects into weapons if you couldn't wield those weapons in combat. She put the dagger down and waited for it to turn back into a brush.
"So can I turn anything I pick up into a weapon?" she asked next.
"Yes, pon. Provided it's inanimate and provided it isn't another magical girl's special item, pon. Apart from that, whatever you pick up as Lupina will become a weapon if you concentrate hard enough, pon."
Fav had a lot more to say about what it meant to be a magical girl. Just like in the game, their duty was to collect magical candies, though, since the real world didn't have monsters to fight, the best way to do this was to help those in need. "But you won't be allowed to work alone just yet, pon," Fav added. "You'll need to learn from a mentor, pon."
"A mentor?"
"Another magical girl, pon. You'll meet the others based in K City if you attend this week's chat, pon. It takes place tomorrow evening, pon. Fav hopes to see you there, pon. Oh, and one more thing, pon. When you turn back into your normal form, you must not tell anyone that you are a magical girl, pon. If you do, you will forfeit your powers immediately, pon."
Before Lupina could ask Fav any follow-up questions, she heard someone tapping on her bedroom door, followed by her mum's voice telling her (or rather Sayuri) dinner was ready. Knowing she could not let her parents see her like this, she quickly closed her eyes and willed herself to turn back into Sayuri. When she looked in the mirror again, there was no sign of Lupina, just the reflection of an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl looking back at her.
Sayuri spent the next day in a state of nervous excitement, knowing she now had a secret identity which she could never reveal to anyone, not even Keiko and Hanako. If she did, she would lose her new powers before she'd had a chance to really test them and she didn't want that, especially so soon after she had been given those powers. Hers was a rare privilege and the last thing she wanted was to have it rescinded because she had broken the conditions under which it had been granted. So she kept quiet and tried to act casual, though she had an uneasy feeling that people were looking at her as though they sensed there was something different about her. But, as long as she didn't say out loud that she could now transform into a magical girl, her secret would be safe. All the same, she could hardly wait until evening when she would get to make contact with others like herself for the first time.
The weekly chat took place in a virtual room which was modelled after a conference centre, with each player entering as a stylised version of their avatar. The function was only available on magical phones, which meant no-one could take part unless they were a true magical girl and even they had to be transformed in real life before they could enter. So, that evening, Sayuri made sure she was alone, then transformed into Lupina and logged into the chat room. As soon as her virtual self appeared on the screen, she was greeted by six other magical girls, each of whom was dressed in a distinct style. One was modelled after a Viking maiden complete with winged helmet and flaxen braids. Another wore a white dress and lavender boots with a silver halo hovering over her teal hair. A third looked as though her dress was made from spiders' webs. A pink-haired girl whose outfit was a mix of red-and-black velvet trimmed with gold. A girl who looked as though she had stepped straight out of the jungle. A girl whose costume included an artist's beret and oversized paint brush. There was, Lupina noted, an eighth magical girl in the room, whose outfit was draped in red roses, but it didn't seem like she was about to greet her any time soon. This girl sat in a corner, playing a violin, seemingly oblivious to the others.
Fav appeared in a flurry of spores. "Good evening, pon. Fav is happy to see so many of you in attendance, pon. And Fav is especially happy to see Lupina, who is joining us for the first time, pon. Please give her a big Magical Kingdom welcome, pon!"