Chương 29: Interlude: The Return

A week after the statue of Nikaede was stolen, five days since Leah got involved with the stolen statue—and four days and fifteen hours later than she thought the Metro Rangers would find the statue and send her off to clean up cow shit for the next year—the stolen work of art was finally cleaned and repainted back to its former glory. Leah frowned at the statue critically as Nora stood nearby, looking tired and proud and only a little bit annoyed she wasn't allowed to use real hair for the eyebrows.

Despite the sister's complaining, she had done a wonderful job repainting the statue after Leah had finally managed to get off all the accumulated staining on it. Sure, the skin was somewhere between realistic and looking like an anime skintone, but that was an intentional style choice, like the painted-in highlights on the dark-brown hair and the white shine in the eyes. The face was almost the same face she'd grown up seeing everywhere, aged to approximately thirteen years old, or possibly just a little before.

They had Nikaede's exact measurements, and she had been two centimeters shorter than Kaede, making her shorter than the Mass Production Models. Nikaede had been a prototype for a reason. The statue's expression was one of weary determination, standing determinedly with one foot forward as if she was about to start closing in on her foe. There was a scar along the statue's left jawline from an injury she'd sustained when she'd been impersonating Kaede, and the top of the right ear had been cut off.

Leah had thought that had been the result of environmental damage and neglect, until Glacial Maxima had confirmed that Nikaede had lost the top of her ear late into repelling the invasion, when the Outguard had started suspecting she was hiding something from them. Leah hadn't known that, but a check only confirmed that it was information that was publicly available.

The statue was clad in an abbreviated form of the traditional full Magical Girl regalia, likely to simplify the sculpture and keep it from having to be mixed media involving glass or transparent aluminum. There was no buddy depicted on her person. While there had been a prototype buddy built for Nikaede, according to Glacial Maxima that prototype had never gone beyond being an AI, as Nikaede had made some sort of agreement with Lyrica as part of selling the deception that the clone was Kaede.

It was how she had managed to completely fool people she was Stardancer. After all, if Lyrica said she was, why wouldn't she be?

"She looks… sad," Leah finally said." She often was," Glacial Maxima said." Girls hate lying, and she had to lie so much. Though I didn't realize this until much, much later. I was still mostly AI back then, and Kaede had underestimated how long our systems would need to be energized for us to develop."

"Huh… the legacy doesn't mention that part," Leah commented." Naturally not. The memory engram was made before she knew." Before Leah could answer, there was a knock on her door. Nora let out a yelp and dropped the face eyebrows she'd made and definitely wasn't going to try and glue on as a hand seemed to clench Leah's heart. Ping answered. Visitor identified, Hunter informed her through their link, their amusement well-hidden but strongly implied. Little sister Meiko and Oscar identified.

"Relax, it's just Meiko and Oscar," Leah said, trying to sound confident and not dreading the prospect of it being Metro Rangers, there to send her to clean cow shit for the next two years.

"I'll go get it." She still let out a sigh of relief as she saw that it was, in fact, Meiko and Oscar. The ten-year old came in with a bright smile and a picnic basket.

"Tadaima!" the little sister greeted.

"I brought lunch!" Leah took the basket.

"Thanks. Why don't you go to the garage and see how the statue has turned out?" The little one runs off with a "Thank you….!" as Leah head to her kitchen and dining room. Fortunately, the picnic basket was well-insulated, and the food inside was still warm. Menudo and rice. Nice. The cultured pork was a wagyu-like batch, from the striations of fat. Even nicer. The feel is just slightly off from the taste of 'real' pork that they remember through Kaede, but that's what cultured pork has always tasted like.

Apparently sisters of old had tried to clone pigs for meat once. After the prototype batch, they never did so again. Protein and lipid cultures might have taken more time and equipment, but at least they stayed still and didn't try to eat everything. She sighed as happy cheers began to emanate from her garage. She really hoped no one wondered what that was about. Stolen novel; please report. Thankfully, no one wondered what that was about.

After bouncing around in the garage and happily thanking them for 'making Nikaede-onee-sama look pretty again', they settled down to have lunch as the three buddies were set in charging cradles to be recharged.

"Thank you again for all your help," Meiko said as the three started to eat.

"Hmm, this is so delicious!"

"Again, you're welcome," Leah said.

"So, did you manage to come up with a plan to get the statue back where it belongs without getting caught?" She's not surprised when Meiko nods happily, her head going up and down like it was on a spring. It's not because the little sister had some kind of variant magic. Leah had asked, and Meiko had cheerfully supplied that she had normal Thaumaturgy, not even an elemental or phenomenal variant. She was just a perfectly ordinary girl, of the sort that could be found anywhere.

"Yes! Originally I was just going to sneak it back to the park, but with all the restoration work everyone is doing there now, I'll never be able to sneak in." She sounded happy about that. Well, given why she'd done this in the first place…

"I thought about just leaving it somewhere people will find it and have them bring it there for me, but…" She trailed off, shaking her head.

"That feels like giving up somehow. I've never heard of a Phantom Thief that just… left what they stole lying around." Leah and Nora both nodded.

"Anything a Phantom Thief leaves lying around is just a distraction for the real prize," Nora said with all the authority of a woman with the memories of girl who could do nothing but shake her fist impotently and scream "I'll get you next time Phantom Thief Adler!"

"Or it was just a step in the plan and had served its purpose," Leah added.

"That poor girl…" Nora shook her head in inherited memory.

"She didn't even get to go to that nice restaurant."

"I still don't understand why she had individually wrapped balloons in her purse." Meiko blinked in confusion.

"What?"" You'll understand when you're thirteen," Hunter and Glacial Maxima chorused.

"Oh, okay! So anyway, I decided that as long as I was doing this I might as well deal with another thing that I feel needs to get fixed."

"…which is?" Leah asked warily.

"Some of the more out of the way exhibits in the Old Earth Museum are dusty," Meiko said. The other two waited.

"Wait, that's it?" Nora said.

"It's important! All of that is stuff people left behind when our big sisters took the Frilly Pink Fortress of Friendship—" Nora and Leah exchanged the kind of look you exchanged when dealing with people who said the Fortress's full name unironically, "—and I'm sure some of it must have been very important to someone! The least we can do is take care of it for them!"

"It's mostly old underwear, clothes that need to be washed, and those finger-shaped massager things," Nora said.

"No, she's right," Leah said thoughtfully.

"We got the basic designs for karaoke machines from the three that were left on the station." Meiko and Nora exchanged the kind of look you exchanged when dealing with people who only have one thing on their mind.

"There's also books and things," Meiko added.

"We get a lot of clothing designs from the books there. And artwork too." Nora sniffed.

"Not enough pictures of interesting facial hair." Oscar, Glacial Maxima and Hunter exchanged the kinds of pings you exchanged when your girl was being cute and oblivious. Leah shook her head.

"Well, the museum is as safe a place as any to leave the statue. And we can probably use the same trick you used last time to sneak it in. Not a lot of people are in the museum at night except for maybe some of the people sleeping in the reproductions of rooms from the Fortress or camping out in the astronomy exhibit." Meiko blinked.

"Wait, we can do that?"

"Sure. You just need to let them know in advance. We did it when I was in school."

"Ooh, I need to ask big sis Lorelei if we can do that. It sounds like fun… oh, right, the plan! Thanks, Oscar. So, I was thinking…" Meiko told them. They listened.

"No," Leah said.

"No," Nora agreed.

"You'd get caught."

"That's right. You'd need to actually be in the museum while the Metro Rangers are in it to leave the statue, and whatever you claimed to steal in the museum would need to be there when the Metro Rangers arrived to safeguard it against you. That's how Phantom Thiefing works. You can only steal it before they get there if you leave a convincing fake behind, and there's nothing in the museum that won't take time to convincingly fake," Leah added. There was a pause." Actually…" one of the buddies began.

It was a perfectly ordinary day in Crashpoint City, the capital of Surcease, and by extension the rest of the Dancer system.

The Dancer was (most likely) shining behind the shroud of ever-present darkness, little sisters were getting out of school so they could have fun in the afternoon, Kaedekin were training at the local park to the sounds of weapons clashing, and dozens and dozens of people were working with paint, cleaning solutions, and abrasives to clean the statues in Hero Park and properly show respect to those who came before them. Then something exploded.

It was a small explosion, and caused a feeling déjà vu more than anything else. There was something kind of annoyingly familiar about the sound, but people couldn't quite put their finger on it. The Kaedekin closest to the blast were shocked and concerned that someone would set off explosives in the park, rushing towards the source of the sound. The sense of déjà vu got stronger as they noticed sparkles of confetti-like vennplate floating in the air.

The sparkles drew their gaze towards a conspicuous blank spot in the park where a statue should be but wasn't. it had been roped off, cleaned and trimmed as people discussed trying to get the statue back versus making a new one. Now occupying the blank spot was a sign. The sign read: Tonight, I shall steal an irreplaceable historical artifact from the Old Earth Museum! I challenge the Metro Rangers of Crashpoint City to stop me! It was signed, " Dark Magical Girl Phantom Thief Night Raider'. … Oh.

That's what the feeling of déjà vu was about.