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The End of the Circus: A Tale of the Yizibajohei
Omake: The Daring Escape of Quarz and Flipper
by Regina Magia
Including characters and situations from Mai, created by Kudō Kazuya and Ikegami Ryōichi.
Schloss Dietram (twenty kilometres south of München), the third Wednesday of November in 2012, two hours before midnight (Tōkyō time: Thursday morning, just before dawn)...
"I'm scared, Sigrid..."
Sigrid Wille pulled her friend Axel Webber close, hugging the pre-teen native of the borough of Bogenhausen, one of the districts of Bavaria's largest city located to the east of the River Isar beyond the borders of the famous Englischer Garten. "I know, Axel," the young teen from Berg am Laim south of Bogenhausen whispered in reassurance. "I'm scared, too. We're going to get out of this..."
After giving the younger boy a reassuring squeeze of her arms, the blonde, blue-eyed daughter of a senior executive in BMW stood and walked over to the window of the old nobleman's hunting mansion located in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, overlooking the glittering sea of the Munich night sky. Sigrid and Axel — the latter was the son of the Christlich-Soziale Union representative for the federal electoral district of München-Ost — had both been kidnapped when they were playing in the Garten. Personnel of the Bundespolizei that had been assigned to watch over the paid had been effectively knocked out by the masked kidnappers using stun grenades before any of the policemen could get off warning shots. Despite the fact that the group that had dragged the two children to Schloss Dietram had been quite kind in dealing with the children, neither knew what this was about.
Looking down at her hands, Sigrid then smiled as the silvery glow indicating that the mesonium recently injected into her veins was now once more linking to the Seeker's Forge hundreds of light-years away. She had encountered a local-born rekrutierungsagent of the Children of the Forge a week ago. Said woman was one who gained her own Gift thanks to Tariko Katabarbe six years ago; these days, Annalise Garten of Leipzig was the current incarnation of the Silent Killer of the Mind, Dum Gamdam ("Seelenkugel"). During that time, the automotive executive's daughter got the chance to try a local variant of Tariko's "pre-Gifting" black forest cake. In the days that followed, Sigrid's mind had been exposed to memories preserved by dozens of possible Gifts spanning several power set categories. Each time, Sigrid didn't find the right thing that would chime right with her innermost heart. And now...
Now...
Another Gift was starting to flood her mind with memories...
...and this one might be the trick they needed to...!
"Sigrid! Why are we glowing?!"
Gasping, Sigrid spun around to stare at her wide-eyed — and yes, brightly glowing — younger friend. She then gulped as a voice echoed around her...
Tene lomher'buo, Sigrid Wille...
"Axel! Go over there!" she then bade, pointing to one corner of the room. As the bewildered dietman's son — who had been there at the Garten when Sigrid had met Annalise, thus got a chance to sample the Leipziger's cake — moved to stand in the corner, she then reached for her shirt. "Cover your eyes!"
Nodding rapidly, he slapped his eyes closed as she pulled off her blouse...
Nesu...RITEIE!
Hearing that booming voice echo all around them, the former soldiers — they had been playing cards as they waited for their employers to decide what to finally do with the two children they had just retrieved from the Englischer Garten some hours before — all looked around in confusion. The leader of the group then looked over. "Olaf! Go check on those kids!" he barked out.
One of the people standing guard by the door to the reception hall nodded before he raced out of the room and down a hallway to the guest quarters where Sigrid Wille and Axel Webber had been secured. Before he could snap open the door to let him look inside, a slender hand sheathed in glittering diamond-like crystal slammed into his chest, sending the poor mercenary flying across the hall to collide back-first into a brick stanchion, knocking him out.
Tene lomher'buo, Axel Webber...!
Stepping out of the room, a glittering human-shaped entity looked around before the crystalline "skin" melted away back into Sigrid's normal tones, she now covered in a pale purple jumpsuit topped with silver belt and boots, a silver cut diamond insignia over her teenage cleavage. "Axel!" she called into the room. "Stay there until you feel the Gift take you! Remember what I said about your clothes!"
She turned as Olaf wheeled back to his feet, snap-drawing his pistol. Just as he took aim and fired, her body transformed again, guaranteeing that whatever shells that would have either blown her brains out or destroyed her shoulders smashed into a surface harder than diamond, the warped cases of copper-jacketed lead dropping to the floor. Before the mercenary could move to back clear of her, the automotive executive's daughter snared his weapon by the hand, crushing it with ease.
"Now, what's going on...?!" she began...
...before the door to the reception room opened, allowing two other mercenaries to gaze out before they stopped, eyes popping out of their heads on seeing an honest-to-goodness metahuman standing there now confronting their friend. "SCHIEßE!" Sigrid barked out as one spun to run back into the room...
Nesu...GAMDO!
Hearing that announcement from the Conservator, the current incarnation of the Glittering Knight, Riteie ("Quarz"), grinned as she recalled that one of her past selves had spent time with a past incarnation of the Unstoppable Bouncer, Gamdo ("Flipper"). From what Sigrid could recall, Flipper had the ability to create a kinetic field around his body that would allow him to bounce off objects at the same speed he struck it, plus repel any form of physical attack — fists, blades, bullets and the like — without harm. He could also extend this field to those he was in contact with; this made him a popular partner with other metahumans whenever they needed such protection during hectic fight scenes.
"INCOMING!"
The new incarnation of the Glittering Knight deftly moved aside as her friend literally bounced off a wall after vaulting himself out of the room, rebounding off various hard surfaces along the hallway walls to bowl into the mercenaries that had been facing Sigrid down. One of them was quick to recover and moved to flee, but the automotive executive's daughter was just as quick in lunging over and snaring him, using her strength to slam him against a wall while cocking her free hand back.
"Who hired you to kidnap us?!" Sigrid demanded.
The mercenary was trying not to soil his pants. "It was just you!" he cried out. "We only took your friend because we didn't want him telling the authorities!"
"WHO?!"
A diamond-hard fist slammed into the wall beside him, leaving beside a very large hole in the brick and mortar. Seeing that, the mercenary gulped...
Berg am Laim in München, the Wille residence, Thursday, after lunch...
"...in other news, local entrepreneur Fritz Wikstrom has been arrested. Police informed BF News that Wikstrom was attempting to wrest control of the company he worked as vice president for..."
As the local broadcast of the Bayerisches Fernsehen played in the background, Sigrid Willie's father Tomas shook his head. "All these years, I trusted that man!" the executive hissed. "To think he would go so far as to kidnap my child, never mind abducting Axel just because he was in the wrong place...!"
Trying not to blush at his father's rant, the new incarnation of the Glittering Knight then winced as his mother Elisabet embraced her. "I'm so glad you're alright, mein Schatz...!" the part-time nurse sobbed.
"Mutti!" the younger girl moaned, trying not to give into the urge to push her clueless mother away from her because she was treating her as a mere baby. "I'm alright! Calm down!"
Watching this from nearby, Axel tried not to grin. "Can we go play basketball?"
Hearing that made his friend smirk. Despite getting the chance to get some exercise hours earlier, it was clearly obvious that the politician's son still needed to work off some Post-Gifting Shock.
"Sure..."
Fin...
WRITER'S NOTES
Translation list from German: Schloss — Unfortified castle/nobleman's home; Englischer Garten — English Garden, one of Munich's popular city parks; Christlich-Soziale Union — Christian Socialist Union, Bavaria's conservative Christian democratic party, the Free State's internal version of the national Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands ("Christian Democratic Union of Germany"); München-Ost — East Munich; Bundespolizei — Federal Police Service, Germany's national law enforcement agency; Seelenkugel — Soul Bullet; Schieße! — Shit!; Quarz — Quartz; Flipper — Pinball; Bayerisches Fernsehen — Bavarian Television, local equivalent of PBS in the United States; Mein Schatz — My Dearest (term of endearment from a mother to a child); Mutti — Mummy
Annalise Garten (Seelenkugel) is a character from the manga series Mai (AKA Mai the Psychic Girl), one of the first series translated by Viz Media to be distributed among North American audiences. In that series, Annalise is known as "Turm Garten", but since the given name is the German word for "tower", Fred gave this character a more proper lady's name.
