“Mai?”

“Yeah?”

“I expected nothing and yet you still disappoint me.”

“We just got here!”

“Got where? There’s nothing here!”

After an exhausting walk across Shibuya, interrupted numerous times by Mai’s snack breaks, Saki stopping for a piss, and random men of questionable ages hitting on us, we finally reached the spot on Mai’s map to find…

“An empty lot? Are you sure this is the place, Mai?” Saki was the first to say what was on all of our minds.

“I’m positive. It’s the exact spot that every line seems to dodge.”

“Is it possible that they did that on purpose to make a red herring?” I asked, peering over Mai’s shoulder at the map

“I dunno, that seems kinda far-fetched right? That they would pick some random spot in Shibuya to blacklist just so people looking for them hit a dead end?”

I had to admit, I doubted the explanation myself despite being the one to offer it up. Meticulous though they were about hiding their location, few people would even consider Mai’s method of finding them, let alone use such an odd countermeasure.

The evidence pointed to this being the right place. Which begged the question:

“Then where the hell is it?”

The lot didn’t even have proper flooring, let alone a base of operations. Unless it was somehow being magically hidden, there was nothing here.

“I mean, they have magical powers, right? The entrance is probably invisible or something. We just have to find it.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Hmm? How should I know? You’re the smart one here, Sora.”

Mai grinned at me as she said this. Considering she went through the trouble of charting hundreds of flight paths, I had assumed she’d also have some idea of how to actually find the place when we got here, but I guess I was expecting too much. After all, any time Mai didn’t want to do something herself her go-to approach was normally “get Sora to do it.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to looking at the empty lot. The sunk cost fallacy told me that I should at least try my hand at figuring this mystery out, even though I had no idea where to start.

I walked right up to the lot and stuck out my hand, being met by nothing but air. Of course, having it just be an invisible building right there on the street would have made little sense. All it would take is one kid kicking a football and having it bounce off thin air for their cover to be blown.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I guess it could be underground…” looking down at the concrete beneath my feet, I tossed up the possibility in my head, but realised the flaw almost immediately. “No, this area has pipes and power power cables running under it. At best a hideout would get in the way of the sewage system…”

I stopped to think of other possibilities. Maybe even further underground than that? It’d be pretty difficult to hollow out a large area beneath the sewers, and someone would surely have noticed.

The sewers themselves, maybe? No, that’s a stupid suggestion. None of them have half shells.

As I tossed up a few ideas in my head, my attention was drawn by the squawking of a flock of pigeons flying overhead. As I absentmindedly watched them fly past us, I realised something odd.

The flock was seemingly split in two.

For whatever reason, they looked like they were avoiding something…

“Hmm… hey Saki, you’ve got a good throwing arm, right?”

“A good throwing arm? I’ve won the regional discus championship two years in a ro-“

“Not important. Reckon you could put those skills to the test for me?” I picked up a stone from the roadside and lightly threw it to Saki, who caught it effortlessly. “Your target is around 20 metres above us. Reckon you could hit it?”

“Uhh… sure?” She looked at me confusedly, likely having absolutely no idea where my seemingly arbitrary request came from, but all the same she took a couple steps back, wound up her throw and launched the stone with all her might. Sure enough…

“Woah…” Saki and Sunao said in unison, as the stone seemingly bounced off thin air.

“Neither above-ground nor underground would work, since a ground-level building would run the risk of people accidentally touching it, and an underground one would could pose a problem to electrical wires, plumbing or sewage. In other words…”

“The only place that works is the sky! You’re a genius!” Mai once again flung herself at me and embraced me in a hug, though I was aware enough to catch her this time.

Her reaction confused me a little, as her initial smile when I told Saki to throw the stone had made me think she had already figured it out herself. I was more than likely just imagining it though.

Plus it was nice to feel appreciated.

The celebration, however, was interrupted by a loud clanging sound above us, followed by the emergence of a laser pointed straight at my head.

Uh oh.

“Book it, you three!” came the voice of Saki, the most athletic of the three of us, who had already practically left us in the dust. The rest of us didn’t hesitate to get out of dodge as fast as possible too, rounding a corner at the next building along and just about getting out of the sight of the laser.

Idiot. How did I not consider the possibility of automated defences?

As the four of us caught our breath, and I screamed vulgarities at myself in my internal monologue, a new voice came from round the corner that made us all freeze up.

“Something tripped the laser thing. You see what it was, Aya?”

“Probably just a bird again. Thought those idiot pigeons had figured out where this place was by now.”

“Well ‘birdbrain’ isn’t an insult for no reason, those things are pretty stupid.”

Without making a sound, all four of us slowly peeked around the corner, looking straight up at the place where the stone had previously hit. There, we saw the source of the two voices we had heard previously. Two highschool-age girls floating some 20 metres in the air, casually talking as if the situation was completely normal.

What’s more is that…

“That’s our school uniform!” Mai whispered excitedly from beside me.

Yes, though these were undoubtedly the elusive magical girls we had been looking for, they weren’t sporting the same bombastic costumes they usually do. They were both dressed in the uniform of Tokyo Academy For Gifted Girls.

Amai was right.

There were magical girls attending our school.