The Wonder, is an ability that magical girls grasp once they reach the bud stage.
As a true manifestation of the ability of Soul Will, it has an intricate relationship with magic attire.
In Sparrow's imagination, as a magical girl who had once bloomed to reach the bud stage, Cornflower was undoubtedly supposed to possess this ability.
And since she had demonstrated the ability to suppress Cornflower without using The Wonder, there was no reason for Cornflower not to unfold her own Wonder.
This undoubtedly confirmed a rumor she had once heard: during the "Garden" defense battle, Cornflower had overexerted her powers, causing damage to her Heart's Gem, and after persisting in battle for another year, she chose to retire in secrecy. The place of her retirement was the city she once protected—Fangting City.
Such rumors at first didn't seem credible: damage to the Heart's Gem should be nearly crippling for a magical girl, and if the source of magic power sustained severe damage, it could even lead to becoming mentally impaired. How could she retire intact?
But if one thought about it logically, the rumor seemed to make sense.
Because everyone knew that Cornflower's teammate, also a lifetime magical girl and known as "the strongest flower card" Magical Girl Sakura, was still active in Fangting City. If Cornflower were certainly residing somewhere in the material world, Fangting City was undoubtedly the place with the greatest likelihood.
Now, every detail of the rumors Sparrow knew was gradually being confirmed, which made her start to believe: perhaps that last bit, that Cornflower's Heart's Gem was damaged, was also true!
Sparrow's original purpose for coming to Fangting City was to collect some information, as well as to make a deal with those madmen who called themselves Black Ash Dawn.
That's because she had learned before coming that a squad from Black Ash Dawn, akin to palace guards, had arrived in Fangting City and planned to stay for a while.
Black Ash Dawn was a strange organization that began operating in the material world about ten years ago, mostly comprised of human magicians from the material world, with a minority of outlanders who had defected from the Magic Kingdom or the inter-realm. Gathering together, they refuse to acknowledge the rule of the current Magic Kingdom court and research the power of the Remnant Beasts in secrecy.
To fulfill their goal of rebelling against the court, their deeds were downright unconscionable: from slaughtering and torturing civilians to terrorist attacks on public facilities and even city governments, not to mention the clandestine trafficking of various prohibited items—they were committing every conceivable misdeed.
Such brazen behavior naturally attracted the aggressive suppression by the Investigative Bureau, but they were like rats that couldn't be exterminated—remove one batch and another appears, sprouting all over the world and committing crimes.
As a magical girl with roots that she prided in being pure and strong, she had always disapproved of this bunch of freaks, but had to admit that they held the most magical materials in the material world besides those magical girls still in service.
If it had been earlier when she was still in office, she naturally wouldn't need to seek materials through such gray channels. But after defecting from the Magic Kingdom for many years and having joined Claw Mark, she had to seriously consider the expenses for her daily research.
After arriving in Fangting City and collecting some local intelligence, she suddenly remembered another rumor she had heard.
This city was where "Cornflower" had retired.
Two years ago, Sakura, the strongest flower card magical girl of the Magic Kingdom, died under unknown circumstances. This event caused a massive shock among many magical girls on the magic side, and even a handful of people—Sakura's fans—went to Fangting City to investigate.
These visitors turned Fangting City upside down, killing all the Remnant Beasts in the vicinity, and even approached Sakura's teammates and husband to inquire about the situation but didn't obtain any useful information.
Among them, some had believed the rumor, convinced that Cornflower was residing in Fangting City and wanted to hold her accountable for Sakura's death.
But no matter how hard they searched, no one found where Cornflower was.
It was as though the rumor was indeed just a rumor, an impractical fantasy of some people.
And when Sparrow arrived in the city, that fervor had already faded, with both Sakura's teammates and her fans unanimously believing that the murderer had fled elsewhere and were chasing the fugitive in other cities. With the loss of several elite magical girls all at once, Fangting City seemed to have entered a gap period in magic side forces, and the magical girl squad stationed there was showing signs of a generation gap.
In such circumstances, Sparrow made contact with the local Black Ash Dawn squad.
She didn't know why these lunatics chose to stay in Fangting City or where they got their information, but regarding the trade with Sparrow, they made a request: that she, on a particular day, take care of Fangting City's current magical girl squad.
If she could kill those magical girls, good; if not, she must at least hold them off, and the primary target was a magical girl wearing dark blue clothes with blue long hair.
As they explained, this magical girl had shown the ability to use Spell Techniques, at least of the leaf level, far beyond the other two rookies, and it was crucial not to let her disrupt their plans.