The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3 by Satoshi Wagahara Page A

ground.
    “Ahh!”
    The group around the mystery object gasped in unison, instinctively afraid of what kind of damage a jolt like that could do. Then they watched as the giant apple plaintively rolled across the ground.
    “Ah, ahhhh…!”
    Emi, caught right in the apple’s sights, sprinted off without skipping a beat.
    But the apple pressed on. Worryingly so. Maou hadn’t thrown it with
that
much momentum. And he didn’t curve it like a baseball so it’d follow Emi’s path, either.
    “Yeaaggghhhh! What, what,
stop
it!!”
    The apple merrily chased Emi around the apartment building’s front yard, flailing its arms like propellers.
    Maou and Suzuno, no new ideas coming to mind in response to this, simply watched.
    Finally, the apple settled down in the middle of the yard—finally out of juice, perhaps. Emi gasped for breath, cornered like a rat against the concrete fence.
    But the fruit refused to give. Pudgy little hands continued to grope toward Emi’s direction, even with the apple now firmly in stasis.
    “Hey, uh, Emi, you gotta admit, it’s got its eyes on you, or hands or whatever, man.”
    “
Huff
…
huff
… Wh-who does? Get it away from me!”
    Emi’s rage toward Maou was now dissipated, replaced with frantic confusion over this shocking turn of affairs. Her eyes darted pointlessly between the sword in her right hand and the arms extended her way.
    Those arms were strong enough to withstand the full brunt of a holy sword.
    Or, to be more exact, it felt like some kind of cushioning force stopped the blow, like when you slap your palm against the surface of water.
    Emi was beginning to get the impression that she had a lot more enemies impervious to the Better Half than expected. If this apple was one of them, that implied it was related to the heavens, or Sariel, both intent upon seizing her sword.
    It made sense in her mind, enough so that she opted to dispel the sword into her body for safety’s sake.
    That happened just in time for the next cataclysm.
    The moment Emi’s sword was gone, the groping hands instantly slumped to the side, as if exhausted of power.
    Watching them drop like a stringless puppet summoned another scream from Emi’s throat as she backed away.
    “Yaghh!
Now
what?!”
    The apple unpeeled itself, was what, the yellow skin unraveling like a tightly wrapped bandage.
    Underneath this shell, built like a reinforced shelter to protectits contents, the apple was hollow. And there, in front of everyone except Chiho, the giant arm-toting apple said:
    “…
Bipf!
”
    It was now a small girl, its stifled sneeze ringing across the dumbfounded Villa Rosa Sasazuka front yard.
    “……”
    “……”
    “……”
    “……”
    “……”
    Everyone was stunned at this latest metamorphosis.
    Not even able to gauge each other’s reaction, the group’s eyes fixated upon the baby that appeared from the apple.
    “…
Bipf!
”
    As if responding to her second sneeze, the yellow skin discarded around the girl once again floated in the air around her, leisurely changing shape until it transformed into a yellow dress that fit snugly over her, like she was wearing it the whole time.
    “Mm?”
    Maou was the only one to notice the emblem that appeared on the girl’s forehead the moment the dress took form. It was purple in color, shaped like a crescent moon. “Ooo!”
    And then it disappeared in another instant.
    The girl scratched her forehead a moment, right where the emblem had been. Then she looked around her surroundings, making the pudgy little hands that stopped Emi’s holy sword cold into fists, with which she lazily rubbed her eyebrows.
    After a moment of staring into space, she laid down on the ground…
    “…
snif
…”
    Then fell asleep.
    The Lord of All Demons, the half-angel Hero, the Great Demon General, the Reconciliation Panel cleric, and the fallen denizen of heaven looked on.
    All of them, each born from similarly outrageously unlikelycircumstances, found it equally