"...I thought I wouldn't be found out. I was sure I'd hidden it well enough. I even fooled Shirou."
Aoko Aozaki, the Fifth Magician who had descended from the future and taken over her high school self's body, shrugged.
"Touko-nee-san, can I ask you something? Where exactly did you notice?
I tried to recreate how I acted and spoke when I was seventeen as closely as I could, but you still saw through me... That hurts a little."
While using Magecraft to heal the injuries she had taken from the earlier impact, Touko Aozaki curled her lips into a provocative smile.
"That high school uniform doesn't suit you at all... Even if the body is seventeen, you still give off middle-aged woman vibes."
Aoko's brows drew together slightly, and the corner of her mouth twitched. "Hey, isn't that a little too harsh?
I may look like this, but I'm only twenty-five this year.
If that makes me middle-aged, then you're twenty-one, Touko-nee-san. Doesn't that make you middle-aged too?"
Twenty-five... She jumped here from eight years in the future!?
Touko Aozaki narrowed her eyes.
So that was it... Aoko had traveled through time from the future to this era!
Before she could think any further, Aoko Aozaki suddenly charged toward Touko.
"I was just playing around earlier. Now I'll show you a bit of what I can really do, okay? Circuits, connect!"
With nothing more than a casual lift of her left arm, the amount of magical energy generated inside Aoko reached a level visible to the naked eye. No, it was so different that even the ears could hear it.
It was a crisp sound Touko had never heard before.
The speed at which she generated magical energy was overwhelming, faster than blood flow. Leaving aside the shockwaves caused by the Magecraft itself, the mere fact that she could produce an impact just by activating her Magic Circuits would be enough to shock the entire modern world of Magecraft.
To Touko Aozaki, the younger sister before her looked like the greatest fantasy of the Age of Gods.
A Dragonkind.
"..."
Touko, chilled to the bone, drew Rune characters in the air.
She spread a blessing of victory, deflecting any Magecraft Aoko might cast, and the enhanced power of her Crests became a barrier.
Aoko, however, did not care at all. She did not even bother to respond.
"Magic bullets, deploy!"
"Tch. You can deploy them without loading?"
Touko Aozaki shuddered again.
She could not even see the process of the Magecraft activating. With a single command, more than twenty magic bullets fired.
Like shooting stars, they melted through the Rune barrier that could have deflected even rockets, then pierced straight through Touko Aozaki's Mystic Code.
"...Tch!"
Realizing the enormous gap in strength between them, Touko Aozaki turned and fled without a moment's hesitation.
She ran toward her position as a Magus, the old school building.
Aoko Aozaki followed right behind her, confident she would not lose even if she entered her sister's territory, and chased that retreating figure.
Soon, the old school building was torn apart by the sisters' chase.
Touko had set up countless Rune traps inside the school building, while Aoko, relying on defensive formulas that automatically generated at high speed, stepped straight onto them.
The aged corridor floors and the walls that had weathered who knew how many years of wind and frost crumbled into splinters beneath Aoko's feet.
It was a tragedy in the most literal sense.
Touko's Rune characters were, in the end, only curses effective against people, while Aoko's attacks were a saturation barrage of magic bullets.
"Tch. Not a shred of elegance! Are you really my sister?"
Touko snapped while gasping for breath. "What a joke. Is this what you call Magic?"
Personal time travel.
Touko did not believe that was the true nature of the Aozaki family's Magic.
Aoko's transformation was, in the end, only a byproduct of Magic.
The true form of the Magic was like a land of abyss. Touko could not tell whether Aoko had truly reached that place, but the Magic before her was definitely not as simple as it looked.
If one traced the reason, it was because the concept of time travel had already been encompassed by the Second Magic.
Tampering with records and rewriting phenomena were part of the operation of parallel worlds. There was no reason to call that the Fifth Magic at this point.
But without a doubt, the entry point of the Aozaki family's Magic was "time travel."
...Wait.
Touko Aozaki suddenly felt a chill. She seemed to have understood something.
From the very beginning, she had misunderstood. Following the inertia of her own thoughts, she had taken it for granted that this was what it meant.
But, what if the important part of "time travel" was not "time," but "travel"?
Touko Aozaki glared furiously at the younger sister chasing behind her.
"Answer me, Aoko. Why did you come back to this era?"
"Just because I wanted to beat you up! Is that not allowed?"
"You would disrupt order for a reason like that..."
Faced with her younger sister's absurd answer, Touko Aozaki almost rolled her eyes.
Time travel required enormous energy.
"Creating something from nothing" required magical energy.
"Turning something into nothing" required even greater energy.
And where did the magical energy for the cooling process come from?
Adding here, subtracting there. Order itself was collapsing.
The distortions created by Magic would one day spread to the entire universe and every domain.
Unlimited expansion. Unrestrained consumption. At the end of infinite growth, what awaited was certainly not a future filled with hope.
Beyond what was opened up lay emptiness. One day, the universe would die of overheating.
"You're... You're an absolute idiot! Are you trying to dump the debt of destroying the universe hundreds of billions of years from now, forcing humanity to sit and wait for the end, onto someone else!?
That's no different from creating a meteorite over this planet's head! Are you planning to crush the planet under that burden!?"
"..."
Aoko was stunned, not because her sister's scolding had left her unable to answer, but because not long ago, in subjective time, she had questioned Shirou with those exact same words.
Humans could only remain objective when the matter did not concern them.
How ironic.
Then, if humans were such emotional and selfish creatures, why would the universe hand them a power capable of destroying the universe itself?
The answer was simple.
Because development was always necessary.
Humanity could not remain trapped on this planet forever, just as childhood would one day come to an end.
Yes.
The latest Magic, the Fifth Magic, had been born precisely to greet the day humanity stepped into the Milky Way and explored the universe.
"..."
Aoko gave a faint smile.
Touko frowned in displeasure. "What's so funny?"
"The debt incurred by using Magic... You don't need to worry about that, Touko-nee-san. There's someone who will bear that debt with me.
Whether it's the destruction of the universe, the collapse of order, or an even worse future for humanity...
That boy will share the responsibility with me and find a way to solve it together. Because we already made a promise."
If Aoko Aozaki had to shoulder a universe-scale burden alone, of course she would feel overwhelmed.
But that was in the past.
The Fifth Magician, Aoko Aozaki, was no longer alone.
On the canal that had broken free from time, space, and causality, a certain boy would walk alongside her.
Shirou, who possessed the greatest aptitude for time travel, would not stand by and watch Aoko be swallowed by her mission. He would surely step forward when Aoko ran into trouble.
Because that was the kind of person he was. Aoko knew that very well.
So there was nothing left to fear or worry about.
Aoko Aozaki poured the rotation of her magical energy into her thighs and closed a ten-meter distance in a single step.
The sisters began their final confrontation at close range.
Red Rune characters and streams of blue ether.
The magic bullets she fired became a roaring waterfall, shattering Touko Aozaki along with the Magic Crests floating behind her.
Amid the orange-haired Magus's piercing screams, the Aozaki sisters reached the end of their feud, and their fated duel finally came to an end.
In the shattered school building, moonlight pouring through the half-collapsed walls cast both their shadows onto the corridor, but only one shadow remained standing.
Touko Aozaki slid down against the wall and fell to the ground. Even gravely wounded, her gaze never left Aoko.
Internal bleeding, along with broken bones.
Her body could no longer move at all.
Aoko's leaping strike had shattered her Mystic Eyes from the inside, and they would no longer open.
This was the first time in her life she had been so badly battered. The only slight surprise was that her breathing had not grown ragged.
Before her eyes stood her younger sister, looking down at her without a scratch.
"...I thought I'd at least last until the roof."
Touko spoke a pure impression that was not self-mockery, and Aoko answered with an icy gaze.
Those blue eyes had not changed at all since earlier.
Cold and merciless, even cruel, yet hopelessly beautiful.
Aoko did not walk closer to Touko. Instead, from several steps away, she raised her right hand.
Like a marksman preparing to send off fallen prey.
The battle was over.
For a Magus who came to seize someone else's territory, there was only death as atonement.
"Anything else you want to say?"
Aoko suddenly spoke.
Touko patted her empty shirt pocket and gave a wry smile.
"...I was hoping for one last cigarette. Too bad I smoked them all while I was waiting for you. Japanese cigarettes are way too light."
Aoko only murmured her thoughts in response.
"The same last words as before? That's a little boring."
Touko Aozaki's brow twitched. "This is exactly why I hate people from the future and precognition.
Grant me one last wish, Aoko... let me hear what it felt like to touch The Root."
Aoko did not answer.
The origin point of Magic.
No knowledge or impressions related to the "Swirl of the Root" were allowed to be revealed.
But as her older sister's final request, surely sharing a few impressions should be fine. Besides, Aoko had never intended to obediently follow her grandfather's orders in the first place.
"...It was white, Sister."
Through the shattered glass of the old school building, Aoko turned her gaze toward the night sky outside.
"To be honest, I still don't understand any of it."
After stating her honest impression, she raised her right hand of execution without hesitation.
Sorry, Shirou...
I didn't jump to this era just to help you.
Next, I'm going to kill my sister, okay?
That's right. Kill her again.
Not for any particular reason, if I had to say.
It definitely isn't because I suddenly regretted sending you to 1989.
And it isn't because I thought it over and realized you tricked me. If all you wanted was to heal your old wounds, there were other ways besides having Touko make a vessel.
It's definitely not because of that, okay?
I came to this era simply because I wanted to witness it.
Shirou.
If you have the power to change the past, then try stopping me!
Of course, there's no way you can, right?
Alice and Touko. You can only choose one.
Since you chose Alice Kuonji, as far as I'm concerned, that means you willingly gave up on Touko-nee-san.
Regretfully, Aoko swung her hand down at the defenseless Puppet Master.
But her arm froze in midair, and no matter how much strength she put into it, it would not move an inch.
"What in the world..."
Aoko Aozaki sucked in a sharp breath.
Someone who absolutely should not have been there. Shirou was standing behind Aoko.
With the unconscious Alice Kuonji on his back, Shirou had reached out and caught the Magician's hand of execution just as it was about to fall.
A look of shock appeared on Touko Aozaki's weakened yet composed face as well. She was just as surprised by the boy's appearance.
The Puppet Master looked farther into the distance and saw a familiar massive golden figure. It was the large dog Touko kept at the old school building, the one that had gone missing since last night.
...I see. He rode Beo here!?
Timing-wise, if he had ridden Beo, who could run across land at subsonic speed, then he could have made it from the mansion to the old school building in time.
But that proud Beo actually let someone ride on his back?
Even if I wanted to ride him, he probably wouldn't allow it...
Looking more closely, she saw her own Golden Beast staring at Shirou's back with fear and unease in his eyes.
Looks like he was taught a harsh lesson. Touko Aozaki smiled wryly.
A conversation from the past surfaced in her mind.
"Shirou, deep down, you probably think you don't have the right, and that you're standing on neutral ground...
But the moment you said those words, your heart had already chosen a side, you know?"
"No. I won't let you kill Aoko, and I won't allow Aoko to kill you either."
And now, Shirou had truly come to keep his promise.
Touko Aozaki let out a soft sigh. Honestly... I'm completely beaten, Shirou.
"Looks like everything on Alice's side is settled."
Although Shirou's appearance had thrown Aoko off for a moment, she quickly regained her composure.
She only had to keep pretending to be the seventeen-year-old Aoko.
Shirou did not know she was "Aoko from the future," so she only needed to act like "Aoko, the high school student who used Magic to advance her body and experience by ten years."
Without turning around or even looking at the wrist he had caught, Aoko Aozaki spoke with an easy expression.
"Still, I'm surprised. I didn't expect you to get here so quickly.
Hehe... Were you that worried about me? I'm so happy~♡"
Shirou: "..."
"Say something, will you? Why aren't you saying anything? You're starting to scare me."
For some reason, Aoko felt a trace of irritation, though she did not know where that anxiety was coming from.
"If you're not going to say anything, then let go of my hand. Stop getting in my way...!"
After the chestnut-haired girl spoke those threatening words, Shirou released her wrist. But then...
He grabbed Aoko by the shoulders, turned her around, and made her face him.
His expression was so serious that it seemed as if he were about to make some important announcement.
The chestnut-haired girl frowned, looking displeased. "What are you trying to do? Stop messing around."
"Aoko, I really like the way you look in a uniform."
"What...?"
Aoko stared at him in disbelief, while Shirou said with a completely serious face:
"No matter how old you are, you really do look great in a high school uniform... You're honestly cute and beautiful."
"Wh-what are you talking about...!?"
A flicker of panic flashed in her blue eyes.
Wait, did Shirou realize from the start that I'm actually "Aoko from the future"...
Impossible. This morning, didn't he still kiss... Ngh!?
Before Aoko could react, Shirou stepped forward with Alice on his back and pressed his lips to hers.
Aoko: "!?!?!?!"
Touko: "...Well, now."
Alice: "...Zzzz."
This time, Shirou did not pass any medicine to her with his tongue or anything like that.
It was just a simple kiss.
With one hand, Shirou supported Alice's buttocks as she lay against his back. With the other, he held Aoko close.
He even closed his eyes, leaving Aoko as the only one staring wide-eyed in shock.
"..."
A few seconds later, when Shirou opened his eyes again, the Magician overflowing with killing intent was nowhere to be found.
All that remained was a cute high school girl (age 25), her cheeks and ears bright red, glaring at Shirou with the deepest resentment.
"...Idiot♡"