Burned, bleeding, beaten

“That was quite the dodge. Even most magical girls would have lost their head there. You must have some very well-trained instincts,” the girl in the suit said smugly.

“Oh, believe me. I can do a lot more than dodge. Perhaps you’d like a demonstration.” I held my katana to my head height, ready to cut her to ribbons if she moved so much as an inch.

“Oh? So quick to violence, even though I dealt with those MPs for you?”

“As if you didn’t just try to kill me. Twice.” God, that grin was aggravating. “Besides, ‘dealt with?’ You butchered them like cattle.”

“This from the girl who split a man in twain on the public stage?”

“At least I didn’t make such a damn mess.”

“That’s the part you’re worried about?” interjected Time. I ignored her.

Wordlessly, the suited magical girl raised her own sword in front of her, pointing it towards me. It appeared to be a thin western longsword, as black as night and razor sharp even to the eye. For a normal human being, it would almost certainly require two hands, but she effortlessly moved it with a single arm. Only the hand of that arm was visible, but its metallic sheen was unmistakable. It was cybernetic.

“Well then. If you believe yourself on my level, I invite you to prove it. Show me what the legendary Ronin can do.”

“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this.”

“Toki, wait!”

With all the force my legs could muster, I leapt forward across the gap between carriages and sliced across the girl's body. I cleanly cut through the air, but struck nothing solid. Where a moment before she had stood, there was now nothing left but a short flash of light. A fraction of a second later, I felt the hilt of her sword slam into my back.

She could have killed me then and there. She was toying with me.

“A teleporter…” I muttered, turning around and raising my guard again.

“I suppose that’s about right. Now you know my secret, it’s only fair you tell me yours, no?”

“You think I’m stupid? Not a chance.”

“Worth a shot, I suppose.” She shrugged casually, before taking a quick step forward and cutting diagonally towards me. I stepped back, getting dangerously close to the edge of the carriage, and countered with my own upward slice.

A regular opponent would have undoubtedly been split wide open, but once again a small flash of light was all that remained of her when I attacked.

I turned and blocked the otherwise-fatal stab, pushing her sword down with my own as we reached towards each other over the gap between carriages. I tried to use the lowering of her guard as an opportunity to cut at her legs, but she jumped backwards before I had the chance.

She was fast. Dangerously fast. Not quite my speed, but fast enough to keep up with my movements. Adding that sort of speed onto an already incredible power made her a nightmare of a foe.

But she wasn’t flawless.

“Toki, did you notice that?”

“Yeah. Instead of teleporting and attacking again, she physically backed off. She must have some sort of limit.”

“Maybe teleportation uses a lot of magical energy? Try keeping the pressure up, see if you can wear her down.”

“It’s like you read my mind.”

Raising my sword once again, I jumped across the gap between carriages and charged towards her. Her stance looked full of openings, but I knew exactly why. The moment I swung towards her, she disappeared into a flash of light.

I went with the momentum and spun all the way around to cut behind me where she now stood. She blocked my sword with her own, but the hit was powerful enough to make her stagger for a moment.

I seized the opportunity and took my right hand off my blade, aiming a punch directly for her jaw. A flash of light later, she had disappeared again. I stabbed behind myself with the hand still sat on the sword, but met only air. I turned fast enough to just barely dodge the stab at my face. The sword nicked my cheek and drew a little bit of blood.

She predicted my approach and outspaced me. I hated to admit it, but she was clever.

It didn’t matter. I had to keep the pace up.

I cut low, aiming for the legs. This seemed to catch her momentarily off guard, as she jumped to pass over the blade before teleporting. Even though I didn’t know exactly where she would stop, her being off the ground made her movement predictable.

I threw a side kick before even turning to look, and felt my foot connect with her chin. I brought my sword over my head and cut straight down. It connected with nothing as she disappeared once again.

I spun on the spot once more, but she wasn’t behind me.

Precognition kicked in at the most dire moment. I just barely stepped back and avoided her falling stab, her blade sinking into the carriage roof instead. She had teleported above me.

My dodge had come just in time to not get skewered, but not fast enough to re-establish my guard. She seized the opportunity. Both hands left her sword. Her left caught my defenceless face with a blindingly fast backfist, disorienting me enough to allow the followup, an uppercut to my chin that launched me into the air.

I barely had time to process what happened. She jumped and caught me in midair with a falling kick, sending me flying towards the next carriage. I crashed through the metal sheeting that made up its back wall and bounced through the whole carriage, my back connecting with the far side as I finally came to a stop.

“Toki?! Toki, are you okay?”

“Shitting… fucking… Christ, she hits hard.”

“Can you still fight?”

“To be honest, Time,” I said, clambering to my feet, “I don’t think there’s much of a choice.”

My head and back were in agony, but there wasn’t a moment of rest.

The suited girl dropped down through the me-shaped crater, standing at the opposite end of the carriage. The place was filled with hazards, boxes of military grade equipment that had been strewn around when my sudden stop shook the carriage. And worst of all, I couldn’t see a damn thing out of my left eye.

“Toki? What’s wrong?”

“I think all the flashes of light aren’t doing my human eye any good. Can barely see anything. Gonna have to keep it closed.”

“Keep it closed? Then…”

“Yeah. I’m gonna be fighting a dangerous magical girl with no depth perception.”

“Dammit, Toki, get out of there, you can’t win this.”

“Run away? In this condition? Not a chance. She’ll catch me in no time flat.”

“Then what the hell are you gonna do?!”

“Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

I put my back just a few feet from the wall and raised the sword I had miraculously held onto. But unlike last time, I didn’t make the first move.

“Hmm? You’re not going to charge like an agitated bull this time?”

“Not on your life. You wanna fight? You make the first move.”

This was my only win condition. If I kept my back close enough to the wall, she couldn’t teleport behind me. The ceiling of the carriage was low enough that teleporting above also wasn’t an option. I could effectively neutralise her strongest weapon. Only problem was, I had to glue myself to this spot. It was less than ideal, but it was the best I had.

“Haaaah…” she sighed dramatically, slowly walking towards me, her sword at her side, “I had hoped to end this quickly, but if you will insist on drawing it out…”

She approached slowly, finally bringing her guard up as she got close to cutting range. There was a moment where neither of us dared move an inch, waiting for the other to make the first mistake.

It was her who broke the stalemate.

She stabbed towards my gut, an effective tactic when I had little space to move. I turned my body and let the stab just pass me by, barely grazing the front of my cloak as it passed.I slammed her sword down with my own and smacked her with the pommel, causing her to stumble back slightly.

I swept upwards as I repositioned my sword in my hands. It narrowly missed her chin as she scrambled to dodge. I attempted to follow up with a downward stroke, but a panicked kick to my shin made the slash fall astray, and she was able to retreat backwards.

“That’s odd, why didn’t she…”

“Time?”

“...just muttering to myself. Keep your eyes on the prize.”

“Uh… okay…” that was unlike her, but I had more important things to worry about. Every strike she hit wore down my stamina more and more. Even if I won that exchange in theory, she would almost certainly come out on top in a battle of attrition considering the damage I had already taken.

I needed to take decisive action.

Before re-engaging, I quickly had a scan of the surrounding area, looking for anything I could use from the mil-spec stuff littered all over the floor.

Tasers? No, too slow. Arm implants? Not exactly the time or place for replacing body parts. Wait, is that-

My thoughts were cut off by my opponent making the incredibly bold move of throwing her sword at me. Under usual circumstances, it would have been suicide, but she was banking on my guard being down and my eyesight being poor. A gamble that she won, as I was forced to dodge dramatically in order to not get skewered.

A flash of light later, and she had caught the sword before it embedded itself in the back wall, using all of her rotational momentum to cut straight for my neck. If not for yet another lucky precognitive vision, she’d have cleaved my head from shoulders like cutting through silk.

I ducked just in the nick of time, but she had closed my space so tightly I had no room to swing my katana. I resorted to a shoulder barge to put some room between us.

Her back slammed into the wall, and a moment later my blade pierced the metal sheeting where her head had just been. Her dodge was panicked, and she started to lose her footing.

I kept the pressure, cutting cleanly through the carriage wall and just barely falling short of her body, not giving her a moment to find her feet. I cut again, and again she barely stepped back far enough, her own sword arm frantically swinging for a counter.

I ducked it, swinging one more time with my own and finally forcing a more dramatic retreat. She leapt back through the hole, her back contacting the wall of the next carriage.

Seeing my relentless pursuit, she desperately raised her sword to block my oncoming attack. But the cut wasn’t meant for her. Instead, it went straight down, severing the coupling between my carriage and hers.

She confusedly looked down and took her eyes off me just long enough to allow a flying kick to her ribs, sending her flying through the cheap metal sheeting and launching myself backwards in the process.

As the distance between the carriages widened, I scrambled to grab the weapon I had spotted on the ground moments before. I loaded the hand-mounted grenade launcher with as much speed as I could muster and fired into the opposite carriage.

No magical girl alive could have survived the resulting inferno. There was simply no way. She’d have been reduced to ash and cinders.

“Guess that car must have had military gear too. No grenade launcher makes an explosion like that unless there’s something else to ignite.”

“Yeah. I was hoping not to make such a mess.”

“Well, what’s done is done. If the slaughter of those MPs wasn’t gonna make the news, a whole train car being blown to bits will.”

“Yeah. And a magical girl with it.”

“Don’t speak too soon. There’s still a chance she survived.”

“Survived that? Please, she’d have to be the strongest woman alive t-”

I was cut off violently, a knee connecting with my ribs seemingly out of absolutely nowhere. I didn’t even have time to reel before the follow up. An uppercut to my gut sent me flying through the roof of the car. I landed hard, almost rolling off the edge as I scrambled to stop myself and get to my feet. There she appeared in front of me. Burned, bleeding, beaten, but breathing. The suited girl had survived.