The Main Event

For a moment, I sat and watched as she toyed with her victims. It was horrifying. I had thought Kawari’s cruelty to be excessive, but while her aim had been fear and intimidation, it was clear the magical girl in the theatre was enjoying every second. She could have killed the last few a dozen times over, but decided to torture them for her own sick pleasure.

What an awful fucker. And someone far too dangerous to engage with in this state.

Judging that there was nothing I could do, I decided to leave the poor cops to their fate and make my exit while I could. I felt a tad guilty, but it was hardly my problem even if I was in a state to face her down.

I turned back to the window, intending to drop from my perch.

Brace!

My precognition kicked in a fraction of a second before disaster. Something heavy hit me with immense force, sending me soaring across the theatre and crash-landing hard on the stage. Or, through the stage, technically.

“W! Quit playing with your food! We’ve got a very special guest tonight! Haha!”

My head was spinning worse than it ever had, and I could barely put a single thought together, but that voice alone was disturbing enough to kick me back into gear. It was shrill and grating, and the piercing cackle was enough to set my every nerve on edge.

Y’know. As if being batted away like a damn baseball wasn’t enough already.

Fighting the pain in every bone and the ache in every muscle, I dragged myself to my feet and clambered onto the stage. A spotlight beamed down on me, almost blinding my human eye for a second. Once it adjusted, and my head finally stopped spinning, I saw something that made my stomach drop.

The last surviving company of MPs and cybercops lay skewered in a circle on the floor. And in the centre of their bodies, there didn’t stand one magical girl.

No. There were two of the bastards.

“Look what we got ourselves, W!” called out one of the magical girls, strutting forward with aggravating confidence and throwing her arms out wide. “The legendary Ronin has come to join us! Looks like we’re getting ourselves a nice big bonus today!”

Among the magical girls I had met, none had ever looked as ridiculous as her. She was wearing a frilly pink skirt that barely even covered her upper thighs, a metal chain wrapped around the waist like a belt.

Her top half was covered by a black button-up shirt that was tucked into the waistband of her skirt, with an enormous white bowtie over her chest. Her long hair was white on one side and black on the other, and her neck was adorned with a red choker covered in spikes.

Somehow still spikier were the teeth in that wretched grin, made even more horrible to look at by the poorly applied geisha makeup that made her bright lips and wide eyes almost appear dripping with blood.

Sat on her back was a near-comically large hammer, one that she seemed to be carrying effortlessly despite its immense weight. Guess that explains why it felt like I’d been hit by a freight train.

One look was enough to tell me she was a few screws short of a toolbox.

“Hmm… so, this is the girl who’s been nipping at our heels these past few months?” Said the girl next to her, her voice far more smooth and cold. “Don’t kill this one too quickly, Z. Such a rare dish needs to be savoured.”

The second girl, whose name was apparently W, was no less offputting than her partner. Though her head was adorned with a chef’s hat, it would be more accurate to call her an underdressed butcher.

She wore a black apron, so stained with blood that it was hard to tell that its original colour wasn’t red. Underneath was a white top that didn’t reach her shoulders and only covered the tops of her arms, exposing a lot of skin that was itself dripping with blood. None of it likely hers. Her legs were similarly exposed, seemingly only being covered by the apron and a pair of white shorts.

Her mouth and nose were covered by a black bandana, but her red eyes were all too visible as she stared daggers through me. The reddest part of her, however, was her hands, covered in leather gloves that once were likely black, but were so heavily stained by blood they could only possibly be seen as several shades of red.

In those bloody gloved hands sat two weapons. Her left, the enormous cleaver she had used to split a man in two before my eyes. Her right, the skewer she’d used to pierce every non-vital point in those poor bastard’s bodies.

What a fucking pair I’d run into. Just my absolute fucking luck.

“But W,” whined the walking landmine, “the show’s gonna start any moment! We can’t let her ruin the stage any more than she already has!”

“What’s a musical without visuals? We can keep her away from the stage while we… enjoy her, can’t we?”

“Oh, W, you are a sick twisted little bastard. I love you.”

“I don’t feel the same. Now do your job and clear the stage.”

“Ah! The beautiful sting of rejection! It’s like you’re trying to invigorate me so I’ll fight harder!”

Z started slowly making her way towards me, the nasty grin on her face growing even wider as she took her hammer into her hands.

“Toki! Stop standing around! You need to get out of there ASAP!” yelled Time through the earpiece.

“You don’t think I know that, cat?” I hissed back. “I can hardly move, let alone run away.”

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

“I have no idea, but I’d have a much easier time thinking without you panicking in my ear!”

I didn’t have the strength left to feel guilty for snapping at her. Every thought I could muster in my throbbing head was looking for a way to make it out of this alive. And honestly? I was drawing a blank. An aggravating, agonising blank.

She was too close. Immediate escape was impossible. I’d have to fight to some degree. I didn’t even have my sword.

I planted my legs in a combat stance, hoping they wouldn’t crumble underneath me the second I decided to move. I raised my hands. The hammer was too big to parry, but a clean dodge could open up a counter. I concentrated, with every ounce of consciousness I still had. I waited.

She took less than a tenth of a second to close the distance. So fast even I was caught off guard. But the hammer was large, the windup to her swing long. I just needed to step wide enough for it to pass me by and I’d have my window.

My feet shifted. My body moved clear of the path of the hammer as it sailed past me.

And so did she. It was a feint. She had never intended to hit me, but to get behind me. I had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.

All I could muster from my body was to turn around and watch the enormous hammer swing towards me. The only thought on my mind: is this where it ends? Here? Now? How disappointing.

“Sorry to arrive so fashionably late, dear girl.”

Despite all odds, I drew my next breath. And I drew it in the arms of a cloaked woman I had never expected to come to my rescue.

“Kawari?”

“Please, dear, I just saved you from certain death. Are we not at least on a first name basis?”

“...Ryou. How good of a condition are you in?” I asked, getting to my own two feet.

“Not good enough to fight, that’s for certain,” she replied as she helped me up.

“Then it sounds like it’s time for us to leave.”

“It’s as if you read my mind, dear Tokiko.”

“You ever teleported two people before?”

“There’s a first for everything.”

“You gambling with our lives?”

“Does that put you off?”

“Not at all. I’m a gambling girl. Get us out of h-”

“Ahaha! The Ronin brought along a friend!” called the piercing shriek of Z’s voice. “And just in time for the main event, no less!”

‘Main event?’ I thought. ‘The hell else could they have planned?’

I wish I hadn’t asked.

In a moment so sudden I barely noticed it happening, the weight of my body seemed to increase tenfold. The legs that had just barely held me up before crumpled like paper beneath me. It was as if a van had been dropped on my back, and every time I tried to shift it it only pushed down harder.

Judging by the agonised cries beside me, Ryou was feeling the very same thing.

The pain was blinding. My senses were taken up entirely by agony and screams. I wasn’t sure which belonged to Ryou and which came from Time over the earpiece. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that my entire body was being crushed by seemingly nothing.

Then, all other noises were drowned out by the last thing I’d have expected.

Singing.

From the stage came a powerful singing voice, haunting in its beauty. No other sound existed in the world. Just that piercing, beautiful song. It filled my head so thoroughly that I almost forgot the pain, and my sight began to return to me.

There she was, up on the stage. A tall, gorgeous woman in a long green dress, singing her heart out for a crowd of four. No microphone. No music. Just a lone woman and the tragic voice of a falling angel.

I didn’t even understand the words, yet I was enraptured by it.

So enraptured, in fact, that when the music left my ears and I found myself falling from the sky outside the opera house, it took me several seconds to realise what happened. There was no longer any force crushing my very bones. Just myself, the steadily approaching ground, and the unconscious girl who had risked everything on one final gamble. Ryou had snatched us from the jaws of certain death.