Sit back and watch

I held on as tight as I could to my two companions as we plummeted from the seventy-third floor. Shattered glass fell around us, and the streets packed with PMC convoys rapidly approached.

“Arghhh!”

Fujiko’s non-dislocated arm reached over her head, and we began to slowly decelerate. She was using magnetism to slow us down, but she couldn’t bring us to a stop without tearing her arm off.

Fifty floors.

We had barely slowed down.

Thirty floors.

We’d just barely survive the impact

Twenty floors.

The PMC tanks on the street would flatten us.

Ten floors.

We crashed through another broken window. Our skin was burned away by friction as we hit the deck with immense speed, but eventually we rolled to a stop. We were on one of the lower floors of the empty office building opposite Kurogaisha HQ. Ryou had teleported all three of us at the last second. A moment later, we’d have been paste.

“Jesus… fuck…!” I writhed in pain for a few seconds, every nerve in my body on fire. As if the explosion hadn’t done enough damage, the harsh landing was agonising.

Judging by the pained cries of my allies, theirs could hardly have been more pleasant.

After squirming in agony until I could hardly squirm any more, I laid flat on my back and breathed the deepest, heaviest breaths I had ever breathed. My magically enhanced resistance kept me alive and just about moving, but that didn’t mean my injuries weren’t absolutely killing me with pain.

“Never… the fuck… again…” said Fujiko, a few metres away from.

“As if… that was… on purpose…” I replied, still catching my breath.

“My dears… you should probably see this.”

Ryou had crawled her way past the shards of glass and over to the broken window. Fujiko and I just about dragged ourselves close enough to join her.

I almost wished I hadn’t.

“No… god, no…”

“There’s nothing we can do, my dear…”

“No, no, no, no, fuck! This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!”

The explosion on the 73rd floor had lit the top floors on fire. The structural integrity of the building had begun to fail. It was collapsing on itself.

There was a residential district at its feet.

“We need to- argh!”

I had tried to stand, but my legs gave out in pain beneath me.

“Stop it, Toki!” Fujiko grabbed me by the cloak and pulled me back to her. “You can’t save anyone in this state. You’ll just end up dead with them.”

“But… the people…”

“Are beyond our help.” Ryou put a firm hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was to reassure me, or hold me in place. “I’m sorry, dear girl, but in this state, we cannot stop it. They will escape on their own, or they will die. That much is out of our control.”

“But…”

I couldn’t stand up. I could barely move. I was powerless.

People that I had sworn to protect were about to be crushed, and I was powerless to stop it.

I, someone blessed with magical powers, could do nothing at all to help.

All I could do was sit back and watch.