“This ain’t what happened before. Hell’s wrong with her?” I was just about able to parse what Yokoshima was saying as I writhed in pain, my every nerve on fire.
“Not a clue. Bad reaction to the drug I guess?”
“Just perfect. The disappearances are already raising eyebrows from the public, we’re gonna be in some serious hot water with the old man if a dead body turns up.”
“We’ll just have to dispose of her quietly. Guess we should hold off on injecting these three for a while, get the doses checked for contamination.”
My assailants continued to nonchalantly discuss my death as agony consumed my mind. My friends, frozen in fear and huddled in a corner, remained in complete silence.
As I just barely clung to consciousness, however, the pain seemed to alleviate. So quickly, in fact, that I wondered if my entire nervous system was shot. In a matter of just a few seconds, I went from agonising pain incomparable to any I had felt before, to feeling absolutely no pain at all.
In fact, I felt good.
Really good.
Better than I ever had.
My body felt like it was in peak condition, my every muscle ready to be pushed further than they ever had been.
I felt… light. Lighter than I thought was possible. So light that I wondered if jumping hard enough would cause me to simply keep going up and never return to Earth.
Had I died and shed my weak mortal body?
No… it wasn’t a spiritual feeling. It was a physical one. In mere moments, it felt like my body underwent a decade of intensive training, and I had just now reaped the benefits.
“She stopped squirming. She dead?” Shiko’s bored voice reminded me of the situation at hand, but I continued to lay dead still.
“Let me see. Boss ain’t gonna be happy about this one…”
As Yokoshima reached down to grab my shoulder and roll me over, I seized my chance. I grabbed her wrist and spun my entire body about it like a gyroscope, slamming my heel into the back of her head. The force was enough to launch her into the hard metal door behind her, and she slumped to the ground as I got back to stable footing.
It took me a moment to even realise what I had done. I had almost no fighting experience to speak of, certainly not enough to pull out a move like that. In fact, it wasn’t even a conscious action. The moment I decided to fight back, it was as if a guiding hand pushed me forth, leading me to the optimal path.
“You bitch…” her eyes momentarily flitting to her incapacitated comrade behind me, Shiko fixed her gaze on me, an anger in her eyes I hadn’t expected from a girl who had displayed little emotion at all until now.
A momentary flash of light shone from her body, and the very next second she was draped in a new outfit. An outfit that we were familiar with.
“Flame…” croaked the voice of Mai, still cowering in the corner with Saki and Sunao.
I recognised it too. It was the uniform of Flame Of Time, arguably the most famous and prolific group among the magical girls. If ever I needed undeniable proof that the “heroes” we were supposed to revere had betrayed us, it was standing there in front of me.
Anger coursing through my veins, I raised my hands to a boxer’s guard and prepared to engage the enemy. In that moment, I noticed that my clothes had changed too, my sleeves seeming to belong to a black leather bomber jacket. Not only that, but something black had fallen in front of my face too. A… veil?
“I’ll teach you to stay down when you’re supposed to.” Those words of malice from my adversary reminded me that I was in a fight, not a fashion show.
With blistering speed, she closed the distance between us and threw a straight right at my face. At least, I assumed it was blistering speed.
For some reason, it no longer seemed that way to me. In fact, it almost looked slow.
I took a quick step right, avoiding the strike with as little movement as possible. As she followed up with a snappy turning kick, I blocked with my elbow and used her momentary poor balance to counter with a quick jab to the chin.
It really was like my body was moving on its own. It didn’t feel like my own instincts taking over, but like a foreign entity was influencing my movement.
The connecting jab made Shiko hurry to block her face as she stumbled back, allowing me to slam her core with two swift body punches. Now firmly on the back foot, Shiko desperately began dodging backwards.
I threw two more jabs at her face, the first connecting cleanly and the second being partially blocked at the very last second.
I got cocky.
Failing to realise that my second punch hadn’t connected, I attempted to follow the jabs with a straight to the chin, a combo that would daze even the most durable of fighters. But I overcommitted to that predictable punch, allowing Shiko to perform a beautiful dodge by leaning her entire body weight back and until her hands were on the ground behind her head. Before I ever had the chance to notice I had missed, she launched herself into a backward handspring, her feet connecting with my chin on the way.
I stumbled back until I hit the wall on the other side of the dingy little room, my head spinning from the unexpected impact. One mistake had completely turned the tables against me, and the return of an unwanted voice told me that things weren’t about to her better any time soon.
“So the brat really awakened?”
“Kyoko. Sorry for starting the party without you.”
“I don’t mind you softening her up for me. Let’s finish this how we always do.”
Yokoshima had already risen back to her feet and joined her accomplice. The average person would have been out for hours from a kick like that. Whatever’s in these superhuman formulae must give incredible recoverability.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
In other words, this slugfest was gonna get ugly before a deciding blow occurred. And as it stood, I was likely to be on the receiving end.
I returned to my feet to size up my two opponents, but my chances of victory dropped from low to zero with their next move.
Shiko raised her right arm out in front of her. Yokoshima, her left. And on the palm of both of their hands appeared a sand timer, a purple glow emitting from around them.
Flame Of Time’s signature move.
“Time dilation!” The two yelled in unison.
Before I had a chance to react, their speed increased tenfold. No, it would be more correct to say that they were moving the same speed as they always had been. Their inertial reference frame was simply accelerated through time. To them, it likely looked like everything else was moving in slow motion.
I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with strikes from both sides. By the time I had felt one, another had already landed somewhere else. They attacked with surgical precision, striking every point they knew could cause the most pain. A knee to the liver, a punch to the throat, an elbow to the head, all performed with such blistering speed that I was unsure what order they had even connected in.
The hail of strikes showed no signs of stopping. In fact, the intensity seemed to increase with each passing millisecond. They weren’t just looking to incapacitate me, but to break me completely.
If their mind-control drug wouldn’t work, they would simply beat me into obedience instead. And it was working.
I had good endurance, but no amount of gritting my teeth could get me through this. It was unlikely that my consciousness would last much longer at this rate.
I began to think my only means of survival was to disappear entirely. And as if fate itself was listening to my thoughts…
“Looks like that’s her out for the count this time.”
The relentless strikes battering my body came to an abrupt end, and I stumbled back once again, my back pressed against the wall. But what I saw made no sense at all.
I was lying in front of myself. My body was unconscious on the ground in front of me, Yokoshima seemingly stopping to check my pulse.
“Nothing. Think we killed her?”
“Would her heart really stop that fast if we had beaten her to death?”
“Man, I have no idea, I ain’t a biologist. She has no pulse and she’s lying unconscious on the ground, so either her stand is holding her heart still, or she’s dead.”
“Well that’s just wonderful. A death by bad reaction was something we could shift the blame for, but I doubt there’s any excuse the Director is gonna buy for us beating the life out of her.”
I was dead? I didn’t feel dead. At least I assumed so. If being dead hurt that much, it was gonna be a really shitty afterlife.
Trying to process the situation through my searing headache, I put my hand to my head. Which was when I noticed something: I couldn’t see my body. I could still feel where every part was, and I seemed to “see” myself through some sixth sense, but my body was reflecting no light whatsoever. I was completely invisible.
Deciding that the mechanics of such a convenience were a problem for my clearer-headed future self to worry about, I silently moved away from the wall and began considering my options.
The clone on the ground and my invisibility gave me the element of surprise, but I would lose it the moment I acted. Were I alone, I’d have booked it that very moment, but the girls were still in danger. Even in my injured state, I had no choice but to fight.
Judging Shiko to be the stronger of the two, I decided to put her down first. I silently crept up next to her and waited for my chance. As she leaned over to get a better look at “my corpse,” I seized the opportunity to punch down onto the back of her head, her face slamming in to the ground below her. Without giving her a moment to collect herself, I launched her across the room with a kick, causing her to slam the opposite wall. In the time between her hitting the wall and falling to the ground, I dashed forward and shin-kicked her in the head, leaving a red smear on the wall as she fell to the floor.
A normal person would be dead without a shadow of a doubt, but considering how tough magical girls seemed to be, I assumed it wouldn’t be the last I’d see of her.
“Ayacchi?! Fuck!” The clone in front of Yokoshima disappeared into thin air, and she began scanning the entire room with her eyes to figure out what had hit her partner. “I knew you were sharp, Sorachan, but I didn’t know you were a fucking coward too.”
Not willing to waste the opportunity, I closed the distance and launched two fast body shots into Yokoshima’s liver. She grunted in pain and violently swung her fist at where I had just been, but I had already taken a quick side step. Positioning myself behind her, I launched two more body punches into her spine, then ducked as I correctly predicted a spinning backfist.
Her guard now down and myself crouched in front of her, Yokoshima was completely open to take the uppercut I aimed straight at her chin.
The very moment I moved to throw my punch, however, I noticed something detrimental: I could see myself again.
My movement was too fast for her to block and our bodies were too close for her to easily dodge, which left her a single option: a counter.
Our punches connected in the same instant.
My uppercut cleanly struck her chin, launching her high enough to crash into the ceiling above before falling back to the ground with a dull thud.
She had put all of her body weight into punching down at me, connecting with my nose and breaking it instantly. If it had been a clean punch unhampered by my uppercut, it might have killed me dead. Instead, I crumbled to the floor, covered in my own blood but just barely clinging to life.
“Sora!”
As I lay motionless on the ground, a girl’s voice rang out in my ears, though I was hardly cognisant enough to know whose it was.
“She awake?”
“I’m not sure. Hey, Sora? You hear me?” I felt a hand lightly wipe the blood from my eyelids, allowing me to open my eyes and just about make out the face of Mai standing above me. “Oh thank god. Looks like she’s awake.”
“Awake or no, we need to get the hell out of here.” I just about recognised the second voice as Saki’s, a sound which was followed by foot steps and a couple of grunts which sounded like someone trying in vain to move something. “This damn door won’t budge a millimetre. Can you get Sora to her feet?”
“I think so. Up we go.” Mai slung my arm around her shoulder and wrapped her own around my side, dragging me to my feet.
“Good, I think she’s the only one of us who could open it. And Nao, stop standing around and help us, dammit!”
“S-sorry!” I looked toward the source of the rattled voice to see Sunao standing in the corner with a bag slung over her back. I couldn’t remember whether she brought it in with her or not, but she didn’t seem willing to part with it. She ran over to support my other shoulder, allowing me and Mai to get to the door.
Barely able to coordinate my own arms, I reached out and grabbed the door, before pulling with all the might I had left.
I almost fell backwards as the door shifted, but Saki supported me from the back while the other two re-took my shoulders.
Getting out of the door didn’t remove us from the danger zone. We had to get out of the building, ASAP. Which proved challenging when one of us could barely walk and we had to be constantly wary of being spotted.
We slowly moved along the hall and descended the stairs, thankful to find the place deserted. Saki scouted ahead to confirm that the downstairs was clear too, allowing the four of us to make our move to the front door. Which then provided the biggest challenge yet.
“Oh shit. How do we get down?” Saki vocalised what we were all thinking.
“Sora, can you fly like the other magical girls?”
“If… I can… I don’t… know how.” I barely managed to get my words out through my slipping consciousness and immense pain. I also doubted I’d be able to carry the other three in my current state anyway.
“…what about a jump?” After a moment of tense silence, Mai spoke up again
“A…what?” I asked, still barely able to speak.
“One jump, carrying all three of us, to that roof opposite us.”
She pointed straight ahead to a roof some twenty metres away. Alone and in better condition, such a jump would be child’s play with my new strength. Under these circumstances, however…
“I… can’t… make… any… guaran… tees.”
It was a complete coin flip. There was no way to know if it would work or not.
“Well what other choice do we have?” Saki seemed on board, and Nao gave a silent signal off affirmation too.
They were right. It was our only choice.
“Hold… tight.”
Nao climbed onto my back, while Mai and Saki took one arm each.
With the very last of my strength, I held my breath, made one big step forward, and took a gruelling leap of faith.