Magical Girl Retreat

The landing was rough. As soon as my feet touched down on the roof, I lost my balance completely, sending the four of us sprawling in every different direction.

“Son of a… you girls alright?” The first to her feet was Saki, who had rolled away to the right the second we landed safely on the roof. As the most athletic of us (superpowers notwithstanding), she had taken the fall the best out of the four of us, only lightly scraping her arms and legs.

“I-I’m okay…” said Sunao, who had been on my back when we jumped. She had lost her grip upon landing and flipped of my head, but it seemed like she had managed to break her fall well enough to not take serious damage.

“Argh, my fuckin’ leg…” Amai, however, had not been so lucky. Unlike Saki, she didn’t roll away in time upon landing, causing her and myself to collide. She landed poorly, and it had left a nasty cut on her right leg. Not debilitating, but far from enviable.

I, of course, was in an immense amount of pain.

Sunao took off her school blazer and tied it around Mai’s leg to slow the bleeding, while Saki helped me sit up so my face wasn’t on the ground.

“Looked like you took the brunt of the fall there, Sora. You still with us?” She looked into my eyes as she spoke, though my vision wasn’t staying in a fixed place long enough for me to really make out the features of her face.

“I’m… still awake…” it was still difficult for me to string sentences together, my already dazed state not exactly helped by the haphazard landing on the roof, but I still had just enough of my wits about me to process the situation happening around me.

Though I was likely to be left with a mountain of bruises and a nasty concussion, I would heal in time. Mai’s leg, however, had to be cleaned and bandaged properly, lest it fall victim to infection. Not to mention the fact that the two super powered individuals I just knocked out would likely soon regain consciousness and sound the alarm on us. In other words, we had to get somewhere safe.

“My house is the closest, and if we get moving now we should just about make the 7pm train. Nao, take Sora’s right side. I’ll hold up Sora’s left and Mai’s right side. Mai, you can still walk on your left, right?”

“Yeah, should be fine just- ngh- gotta keep the weight off my right.”

“Good. Sora’s gonna need both me and Nao so you’ll have to be content with just me. We’ll all head to my place for now. We can talk through everything that happened once we’ve seen to Mai’s cut and made sure Sora’s head is. Everyone on board?” Saki took charge quickly, her natural knack for leadership proving a big asset for the rest of us.

“Aye aye, cap.” Replied Amai, slowly getting to her feet (well, foot technically).

“O-okay, I’ll get right on it.” Sunao said, as she made her way over and looped her arm around my shoulder from my right.

I didn’t say anything, but nodded my assent so Saki knew I was on board too. Now that the adrenaline had subsided completely, I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to string together words anymore. My head was in complete agony, so much so that I had my eyes closed because even light made my head throb.

With Saki taking the lead, our four-man-wide party slowly but surely made our way down the building’s fire escape and made for the train station. It was quite the walk at the best of times, but with one person limping and another barely able to stand it was a nightmare. Thankfully, despite catching the tail of rush hour, this part of the city was surprisingly quiet, and we made the excruciatingly long journey with a few minutes to spare. I’m sure we looked like one hell of a group, with one of us barely conscious and another with a blood-soaked blazer tied around her leg, but I wasn’t cognisant enough to care at the time. Finally, we stepped into an empty train carriage and sat down for a moment's reprieve.

“How’s the leg, Mai?” asked Saki. At some point Mai had started walking on her own, but that didn’t mean the wound wasn’t still bad, just that the pain wasn't quite as serious.

“Still stings like a bitch, and I can’t wait to borrow your shower to clean it out, but it doesn’t seem to be bleeding like it was before.”

“That’s good to hear. With Sora practically out of commission, we couldn’t afford you fainting from blood loss too.”

With those words, the carriage sank into silence. I’m sure there was a lot the girls wanted to say, but they were all aware that it was neither the time nor place to say it. So, the rest of the train journey passed without a word spoken from any of us.

Luckily, my head had started to clear up over time, so as we stepped off the train and made for Saki’s house I managed to properly find my footing and walk unsupported. I considered that maybe magical girl powers also came with faster healing, but the bruises swelling up all over my body didn’t seem to agree.

The walk from the station to Saki’s house was mercifully short, and before long I was sat in Saki’s room with her and Sunao while Mai stepped into the shower to clean out her wound. Even though it had cleared up quite a bit, my head still throbbed, so I sat with my back against Saki’s bed and my eyes half-closed. Had I not been here before, I doubt I’d have taken in a single detail about the room.

With my limited vision, I recognised the shelf with Saki’s plethora of track and field trophies. Though I had the greatest physical strength of the four of us, Saki had me beat in every other category. Her speed, her fitness and her accuracy were beyond incredible.

Honestly, if anyone should have gotten these powers, it’s her.

“Hey, Nao? What’s in the bag?” Saki addressed Sunao, asking something I myself had been wondering about. I didn’t recall her having a bag when we left school, so when exactly did she get hold of that?

“Umm… I think it’s best I wait for Mai to get back. Everyone should see at the same time…” Sunao’s cryptic response made me want to know even more, but I had neither the energy nor the headspace to push her on it, so I contented myself with waiting.

Once again, the silence grew thick. We were finding excuses to put off talking about it, the current convenient reason being that Mai was absent. But once she returned, we were gonna have to talk about it. The subject everyone wanted to avoid.

“Hey girls, I keep you waiting long?”

It was just a few minutes later that Amai walked came in and sat down next to me, a towel still around her head and dressed in an outfit haphazardly thrown together from Saki’s spare clothes. They were at least a size too big for her, which I’m sure I’d have found cute if I wasn’t experiencing Herculean levels of pain and muscle ache.

We all stayed silent for an uncomfortably long time. Everyone knew what we had to say, but no one wanted to say it.

Eventually, it was Saki that broke the ice.

“So… I guess we were wrong about them.” The three of us murmured our assent, and Saki continued on. “To think the people we idolised were a group of slaving bastards. Makes me sick.”

Saki voiced her true feelings on the matter, while the rest of us silently agreed, but hesitated to speak our own mind.

“W-we should just be happy we made it out alive. Sora really saved our skin.” Sunao was the next to speak up, shooting me a weak smile, which I returned.

“Guess we know what happened to those Toukyouto girls now. How awful.” While Saki’s had sounded bitter and Sunao had tried to sound optimistic, Amai’s voice was filled with a deep sadness. Though, who could blame her after she just found that the “heroes” she loved and revered, the one thing she was truly passionate about, turned out to be truly terrible people.

“We can’t let this stand.” Finally, it was my turn to speak. Though my headache hadn’t subsided, I was no longer slurring my words. “We need to do something about this. Take direct action. Save whoever else they’ve tried to sell off as slaves.” My voice was full of conviction, though my inability to see straight may have inhibited me a little.

“Like what? Go to the police?” Amai’s suggestion may seemed like common sense, however…

“No, that won’t work, Mai. They would expect us to do that, we’d likely get ambushed the second we got close to the police koban. Besides, what would we even tell them? ‘We found a secret magical base flying in the sky so they tried to drug us to keep us quiet?’ Even with the knowledge that magical girls exist, there’s no way they’d believe us.” Saki shot down the idea before I even had a chance.

“Well then, what are you suggesting? Just send Sora in there, guns blazing, and hope she makes it out alive?” When Mai asks the question, Saki and I meet eyes momentarily, before looking away. “…oh my god, you actually wanna send Sora into their hideout alone, don’t you?”

“It’s our best option, Mai.” Though her question was posed at Saki, I cut in to answer it. “If I master invisibility, I should be able to scope the place out. That’ll give us information we don’t currently have. And besides, it’s not like I could bring you three with me. I’m the only one with magical power.”

“A-actually, I might be able to help with that.” As the meek Sunao cut into the conversation, she produced something from the bag she was carrying.

It was a handful of syringes, all filled with liquid the same yellow colour as the one injected into my arm.