“Sora, Saki!”

Noticing that the fight was over, Mai came racing out of the walk-in cupboard to where Saki and I sat on the floor. Nao followed directly behind her.

Mai crouched down at my side, her focus on the leg that the magical girl had previously injured. The pain had almost entirely subsided after I felt that strange connection between myself and Saki, but as soon as the battle ended it came back to me. That single strike had hurt more than almost anything Yokoshima and Shiko had thrown at me the day before.

“Agh- son of a bitch…” Saki’s outburst told me that I wasn’t the only one suddenly feeling the pain. Blood was still oozing from the stab wound in her shoulder, an injury that render a normal person incapacitated with agony. Nao had grabbed a first aid bag from the cupboard before she rejoined us, and was bandaging the injury while not saying a single word. Despite not experiencing the battle herself, she appeared seriously shaken up.

“You girls saved our asses again. That’s two I owe you now, Sora.” Mai, however, only expressed happiness that we got out in one piece. Even for a cynic like myself, her optimism was pleasant after a gruelling ordeal.

“Let’s just call it payback for you guys taking me in as one of your own when I transferred and say it’s even. And besides, Saki did more work than me this time.”

That was the honest truth. Because I spent so much time nursing the searing pain in my leg, Saki had been forced to fight an armed opponent alone the very instant she gained power. Had it been anyone else, I doubt they’d have managed to keep up. She was truly exceptional.

“We watched through the little window on the door. You guys fought together like a well-oiled machine. How did you work so well together like that?”

I paused at Mai’s question. It was one I had asked myself. How did we work so well together? I had never fought with Saki, and I had barely even seen her practise martial arts before. Certainly not enough to predict her every move. And she did the same with me, which made even less sense considering I haven’t done any martial arts since joining the school.

Logically, we should have been completely unable to predict one another. And yet, we could. In fact, it was as if both of us always knew exactly what the other was thinking. I would instinctively feel that Saki was going to throw a specific strike, and not a tenth of a second later she would throw that exact strike.

“I thi- ow- think that might have something to do with my power.” Saki winced as Nao tightened the bandage, but continued with her thought. “In the instant after I injected myself, I heard a voice. Not one I recognised, or that I could even describe if I tried. But it told me it would lend me a power… 「Fearless Leader」, I think it called it.”

“That sounds just like when I first unlocked 「Illusionist」. So you think part of your “leader” power is to lead in battle by sharing and reading thoughts between yourself and your comrades?”

“Something like that, yeah. When you fought alongside me, it was like I always knew your intentions. Every move you made, I knew about first. I think I’m supposed to use this power to coordinate teamwork.” Her description matched what I had felt too, which cleared up a point of confusion.

“What about our injuries getting instantaneously better and our strength temporarily increasing? Think that’s one of yours too?”

“Think so. It’s a little hard to explain, but I could feel a sort of flow of power between you and me. But that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If we were borrowing power from each other, it’d just cancel it out.”

Saki and I sank into silence and thought at the peculiarities of the situation. The first to speak again, however, was Mai.

“Hmm… have you guys ever heard the old platitude, ‘a twig is easy to snap, but a bundle of sticks is unbreakable?’ Before it got co-opted by fascists, it was sort of a way of saying that we’re all individually weak but have a greater strength when banded together.”

“I’m sort of familiar with the phrase, but I’m not sure I follow,” I confessed.

“Let me put it this way. You and Saki were a pair of individual sticks, both damaged and easy to break. But with the awakening of Saki’s ability you were sort of combined to make a slightly stronger structure. You weren’t lending each other power, but instead combining the power you both already had to make both of you stronger at once. A symbiosis, in a way.”

Mai’s explanation made a lot of sense to me. Fighting alongside Saki made me feel stronger in a way that was hard to explain, but it wasn’t like borrowing power. It was like I was being reinforced in some way.

“Well, if Saki’s ability gets more power for each stick added to the bundle, the solution is obvious. Nao, whip us up two more syringes of superhero serum, stat!” Mai now seemed more pumped than ever at the idea of becoming a magical girl, with Saki’s safe transformation being the nail in the coffin. All she needed was Sunao’s help.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“N-no.”

“Huh?”

“No. N-no more. No more serum. No more magical girls. No more.”

Nao’s response caught all three of us by surprise.

“Nao, what are you saying? This is our chance to make a difference! To do something normal people could never do! To help our friends and save people!”

“And get killed in the process?” Nao never made eye contact with Mai, instead continuing to look at the wound on Saki’s arm. “It’s been less than a full day and Sora’s been attacked three times. Saki’s been stabbed. They’re lucky to be alive. I’m not letting you throw yourself into that position too.”

“That’s my choice to make, not yours.”

“Maybe so, but I won’t help you make it.”

Nao stood up, grabbed the bag with all formula that hadn’t been used and stormed out of the room without saying another word.

“Goddammit, Nao, w- argh, wait!” Momentarily forgetting her injury, Saki got to her feet and followed Nao out of the room. They must have left the building before Nao said another word because eventually their footsteps trailed off and Mai and I were left in silence.

The quiet continued to permeate the room as Mai sat there stewing in a silent anger.

“Damn busybody, who does she think she is…” after a while Mai began to mutter something like that to herself, and I knew I had to try to defuse the situation.

“It’s been a long and tiring day, we should get home. Maybe you and Nao can talk this out tomorrow.”

“…yeah. Okay.” It was clear that she was still harbouring some frustration and anger at Nao’s decision, but she was smart enough to not let it get the better of her.

“Wanna stay at my place tonight? Might be fun to have a sleepover with just the two of us this time. Not to mention it’s probably safer.”

“Okay, yeah. That sounds like fun.” This time Mai’s expression did brighten a bit, and I was glad to have improved her poor mood a little.

I knew we would have to have a serious talk about this soon, but tonight wasn’t the night.

I shot Genmitsu a text to let him know I was having a friend stay over, and the two of us made our way to the train station, neither of us knowing what to say.

***

“I’m home!”

“Sorry for intruding!”

It was late in the evening by the time Mai and I reached my house, but if it Genmitsu was angry about it he was hiding it well.

“Welcome back, Sora. And it’s a pleasure to meet you… Sugi-san, was it?”

“Just Mai is fine. You’re Sora’s guardian, right?”

“Indeed, my name is Genmitsu. Me and my wife Kandai adopted Sora a long time ago. Any friend of Sora’s is welcome here, so please, make yourself at home.”

I had grown good at putting up a facade of my own, but Genmitsu was a true professional in action. The persona he projected was just enough himself that it seemed real, but just different enough to his true self that it raised no suspicion.

I felt a pang of guilt, bringing Mai into this fabricated household and pretending it was real, but since the “Sora” she knew was built upon lies in the first place there was little I could do about it.

“Kandai cooking up dinner in the back right now?”

“Yep. Hope you girls are alright with ramen, we don’t have much else at the moment.”

Neither of us raised any objections, so without much further discussion we walked to the living room to take a seat.

“You’re limping…” there was a twinge of suspicion in Gen’s voice as he made that observation.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, when I took that bad fall yesterday I hurt my leg a little.” I tried to quickly lie my way out of the situation, though I suspected that Gen could see through it reasonably easily.

“You weren’t limping this morning, were you?”

“I just re-aggravated it during school. Ran about a bit too much, y’know?”

Gen eyed me suspiciously for a moment, but seemed to think better of calling it out as a lie.

“A broken nose yesterday, a hurt leg today, at this rate you’ll be in a wheelchair by the end of the week.” He tutted a little as he spoke, and though it felt somewhat condescending I could tell it was his way of expressing genuine concern.

“I’ll try to be more careful from now. Having my nose broken wasn’t exactly pleasant for me either.”

He rolled his eyes at my snarky comment but failed to completely hide his smirk, which I took to mean that he wouldn’t push the matter any further.

Not a full minute later, my other guardian emerged from the kitchen with food in hands and a smile on her face.

“I never get a chance to cook for anyone with a refined palate in this house, so Sugichan coming over is a nice excuse to make food that’s less bland than the stuff you two usually eat.” Kandai playfully abided me and Genmitsu as she laid out our food, causing the two of us to roll our eyes in sync. I heard Mai stifle a chortle next to me.

‘You eat even worse than I do!’ I said in my head, but I bit my tongue to not ruin the moment for Kandai.

The meal went by slowly, with Gen and Kandai asking Mai every possible question about herself that they could. And Mai, whose second favourite conversation topic was herself (behind magical girls), was happy to oblige.

I mostly ate in silence while Mai remained the focus of the conversation, but I was glad to see her mood improving. At this rate getting her to talk things over rationally with Nao might actually be on the cards. I just had to hope Saki was having the same luck with Nao.

Eventually everyone’s plate was cleared and the conversation ran out of topics, leading us all to leave the dinner table. Time was already getting on, so Mai and I pulled out the spare futon from a cupboard in the living room and moved it into my room (after I politely turned down her request to ‘be the little spoon’).

The rest of the evening was spent winding down from the stressful events of the day, with the two of us eventually deciding to shower and get to bed.

“Our relationship is already at the stage where I’m meeting your parents but you still won’t shower with me? You’re so cruel, Sora.”

It took several out-of-pocket comments like that before Mai actually took her shower, but eventually we were both ready for bed after a long and taxing day. I had even decided to sleep on another futon myself instead of my usual bed, as a compromise with Mai over use not sleeping in the same bed (and after several minutes of her teasing for me blushing at the suggestion).

“Hey, Sora?”

“Yeah?”

“…thanks. For today. I know if I had just gone home by myself I’d have just stewed in my own anger all night. Meeting your family has been a nice way to keep my mind off it all, so… thank you.”

I felt a smile creep onto my face at Mai’s genuine gratitude.

“You fool. What are friends for?”

***

Mark of Lucifer cloud thy judgement

Thirteen of his servants stand in thy way

Twenty of thy comrades fallen to his side already