“You took those with you?!” Saki’s outburst at Sunao’s reveal was so loud that it made my head momentarily throb even worse than it already did.
“Well, I kinda thought we’d be able to get use out of them…”
“Are you insane?! You heard what Shiko said! They basically turn you into slaves!”
“I think I can fix that, though.” The normally stuttering Sunao spoke with a surprising amount of confidence. Though I certainly agreed with Saki, Sunao’s proclamation had me intrigued. “If they actually changed the chemical composition of the formula, it wouldn't have had the same effect as it normally does. That means that it’s fundamentally the same drug that the other magical girls used to get their powers, with an extra agent added to make someone more susceptible to suggestion. If I can identify and extract that extra agent, it should be entirely safe to use.”
Technically speaking, Sunao was correct. If the harmful agent was removed, the drug should be entirely safe. That being said…
“It’s too dangerous! You want the three of us to take an unidentified drug that we know has a dangerous element, purely on the idea that you can theoretically remove it? The risks are just too high!” Saki took the words right out of my mouth. The possibility of something going wrong was just way too high for this to be safe. The idea of the three people dearest to me putting their lives on the line like that wasn’t one I could commend in good conscience.
“…I wanna try it.” The one to rebut Saki, however, was Amai. “I know it’s dangerous, and I know it’s probably be stupid, but I wanna try it.”
“Mai…”
“Saki, I know you’re trying to look out for us, but you and Sora both agreed that we need to take direct action. I’m tired of being useless and purposeless. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines while Sora risks her life. I want to be useful, and the best way I can do that is by fighting alongside her.”
Her words were reckless, but the resolve in Mai’s voice was firm. Something told me that there was no way she was gonna back down.
Now, the only person had yet to voice their opinion was me.
“…Nao, are you absolutely certain you can make these drugs safe, beyond any reasonable doubt?”
“I’ve no reason to assume not. It may be an exceptional one, but it’s still an organic chemical. These things are governed by rules, if I follow those rules there should be no significant risk.”
Despite the certainty in her words, I couldn’t help but harbour doubts. Sure, if this were just a case of de-lacing medication or illicit drugs I’d have had no doubt whatsoever that Sunao could do it. But these powers… there was certainly nothing logical about them. They seemed to defy the very laws of nature. There were still so many things that could go wrong. Then again…
“If there’s anyone who can do it, it’s Nao-chan, right?” Mai shot Sunao a bright smile, causing her to somewhat bashfully look away.
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Yes, it was true. There was no one in the world that I would trust with this job more than her.
Our school’s name wasn’t just for show. Every person there was admitted because they were truly extraordinary in some way or another. My own circumstances notwithstanding, the girls all got in because of something they excelled in to a very high level. For Saki, it was her incredible athletic ability. Sunao, however, got in for her brains.
More specifically, she got in because she was already an accomplished biochemist. In 2028, when she was just 14 years old, she became the first person to synthesise a particular new protein that was then used in fertilisers to fight an aggressive invasive species of weed without damaging the local flora. To put it frankly, she was practically a genius in her field.
There are few people on the planet with knowledge of organic chemistry as intimate as Sunao’s. While I still had my reservations, it was certainly a fact that if anyone in the world could accomplish this, it was her.
“...if this is what you two want, I won’t get in your way. But I want you both to think long and hard about this before you make your decision. This isn’t just a matter of ‘what if it goes wrong?’ Even if it goes perfectly fine, you have to know what you’re getting yourselves into. Fighting for justice is all well and good, but it’s not a responsibility you should take on lightly. I wasn’t given a choice, but you two are.” While I couldn’t say I approved of the decision myself, I also couldn’t bring myself to trample on their will. If Nao and Mai want to take this responsibility on, that’s their decision to make.
We all went silent for a moment, with Saki still clearly not on board with the idea, and the other two hopefully reflecting on what I said. Then, as if trying to cut the tension in the room down, Saki clapped her hands together once and started speaking again.
“Well, none of us need to make any life-altering decisions today anyway. Instead, let’s talk about how we’re gonna proceed with our daily lives first.”
Right, I hadn’t even really thought about it too much. The girls who attacked us are our senpai at school. Just by showing up, we’ll be putting ourselves in danger of a second assault. But at the same time…
“We can’t just stop showing up to school,” I said, as the other three turned to look at me. “If we risk rousing suspicion from the school or our guardians, we’ll be putting ourselves in an unnecessarily difficult situation. Yokoshima and Shiko wouldn’t dare to attack us somewhere so public, so as long as we avoid isolating ourselves the safest thing for us to do is to carry on as normal for now.”
“Yeah, I’m with Sora. It’d be way too suspicious if the four of us all stopped showing up at once, so we should do everything in our power to live as we normally do for now.” I was glad to hear Amai agree with me, especially as she’s generally the least motivated of us all as far as school goes.
“While that is true, certain times like the journey to school have blindspots where we could still be open to attack. I think we should all meet at the station every morning, that way we have strength in numbers. We can all get there without going out of the public eye, so as long as we’re careful they shouldn’t be able to catch us off guard.” Saki raised a good point, there were certainly weak points they could exploit. Making sure I’m around to protect the girls as often as possible will be of vital importance, especially while I’m the only one of us with magical girl powers.
“I-I get free use of the labs at school too. So long as we’re careful about not being found out, I should be able to use their equipment to distil the magical girl serum.”
“Then it’s settled. We’ll keep attending school as normal, making sure we stay as a group and in the public eye when possible. Nao will analyse the contents of the syringes, and we’ll decide where we’ll go from there. Everyone on board?”
“I’m down with this.”
“Works for me.”
“I-I’ll do my best.”
As we all gave our assent to Saki, we knew that this would be the start of a brand new chapter of our lives.
The “heroes” we were supposed to believe in were frauds. We narrowly escaped an awful fate. And we were now enemies of a power that we didn’t yet know the scale of. Our peaceful school life had come to an end.
Our world would be changed forever.