“So, you’ve come to visit again. I’m starting to wonder if you’re growing fond of me.”
“Stow the shit, Director. You know why I’m here. The Hot Gates. Talk.”
“That again? I’ve told you you’ll know soon enough.”
“And I’m telling you to eat shit. Don’t forget that I can strip you of your senses again if I have to. You wouldn’t want to relive that again, would you?”
“Torture? I thought better of you, Shin.”
The director saw straight through my bluff. In all honesty, even if I wanted to torture him like that, I hadn’t used 「Sensory Deprivation」since I first beat him a month ago. I wasn’t sure I could use it on command even if I wanted to. I was hoping the threat would be enough, but it’s never that easy.
“Fine, then tell me more about hell. Those demon things you summoned, what were they?”
“Demons, of course.”
“Okay, smartass, let me rephrase. What are they capable of. How strong are they. How do we beat them?”
“You truly think I would give such information about my allies out to my enemy?”
“Allies? You failed them and they abandoned you. It’s been a month and they’ve not come to help. They couldn’t care less about you. While they leave you for dead, humanity actually has enough mercy left to not kill you on the spot. So unless you want that mercy to run out really fucking quickly, I suggest you start talking.”
His loyalty to a cause that knows no loyalty angered me more than anything else. How could a flesh and blood human being be so enamoured with these vile creatures and their obsession with eradicating all ideas of the collective from this world.
“In here? What would you even do to me? Lay a finger on me and you’ll be hounded by guards before you can step one foot out the door.” His smugness irritated me, but I had a trump card.
“Oh, Director. I thought you would know better than anyone what I’m capable of.” As I spoke, I changed my look and voice to resemble that of the scariest foe I had come into contact with.
“K-Kagami? How?! I thought you joined hell?”
“Plans changed, old man. Now spill.”
I couldn’t say I was happy using Kagami’s likeness, but I had little choice. The director wasn’t listening to Shin Nomimoto, but Kagami could get him talking.
Then again, her likeness was just my likeness in a different outfit. I had still never seen her real face.
“Look, I know what you want to hear, but there’s really no point asking me, okay? In truth, everything is gonna come out tomorrow, but it has to be exactly on time. If it’s early it won’t work, so please wait, I swear you’ll know tomorrow, please.”
“Wow, she really does turn you into a snivelling coward. She’s a high school girl, you lowlife, how does she terrify you so much?” I said, immediately shedding the disguise I had been maintaining.
“Sh-shin? You learned shape shifting?”
“I just tricked your senses into thinking you saw and heard her. Now this thing tomorrow. Talk.” I reached my arms through the gap in the bars and grabbed his shirt, pulling him up against the metal. “Do you really think I couldn’t escape after killing you?”
“Killing me would achieve nothing,” he said in a strained voice, “if I die before tomorrow you’ll never know what’s coming. My survival is beneficial to you.”
I considered decking him one, but it would have achieved nothing except getting me in trouble. I begrudgingly let him go, letting myself calm down before I spoke again.
“I’ll be back the same time tomorrow. If I find that you’re lying, I’ll inflict a pain on you you’ve never even felt before.”
“I’ll look forward to your visit. Your day soon will come, Shin Nomimoto. I’ll enjoy seeing how you deal with it.”
I had no more words to say to the bastard, so I opened the door and left without speaking. The entire way home, my mind was occupied with that “promise” the director had made.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Tomorrow… what was so special about tomorrow? I couldn’t say. There seemed to be nothing particularly notable about it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.
I could do nothing but wait.
***
“Welcome home, honey. Would you like a warm bath? Or a hot dinner? Or perhaps, do you want m-“
“How many times do you plan to reuse this bit, Mai?”
“Until you choose the third option.”
“What exactly compels you to do stuff like this all the time?”
“A healthy adolescent sex drive.”
I closed the front door behind me and strolled into the living room with Mai in tow. My small home had become more of a place of comfort for me since I stopped assuming the “Sora” identity 24/7.
“By the fact that you’re comfortably talking about your libido in the middle of the hallway, I’m guessing Gen and Kandai are still out?”
“They left to go food shopping an hour or so ago. You guys run out of cup ramen really quick, by the way.”
“Well we’ve recently had a recurring visitor who likes to help herself to them any time she feels like it.”
“Hey, this is hard work, y’know. I gotta keep myself energised or whatever. Especially considering I have to keep lying to your guardians about it.”
“Y-yeah… sorry about that…”
While Saki and I had been focusing intently on improving our physical capabilities, Mai and Nao had been spending a lot of time on the technical side of things. That involved making heavy modifications to both the software and hardware of our personal computers to allow us to access citywide CCTV, siphon classified information from government and police departments, and even use facial recognition to track down targets. In other words, the two had created an enormous spynet to aid in our search for the fugitive Flame Of Time members, as well as monitoring state knowledge on the existence and mechanics of magical girls.
The process meant that Mai had been in my room a lot lately, often times even when I’ve been out. Gen and Kandai both seemed to adore her, but it’s also their job to be suspicious, so we had spun a big web of lies about my PC needing repairs and upgrades that Mai was undertaking by hand. Considering the two had done so much for me all these years, I didn’t feel right hiding so much from them, and Mai seemed to agree.
“We’ll have to tell them soon. About us being magical girls and all the business with Flame. We can’t go on like this.”
“I know Mai, I know. It’s just… how do you bring something like that up? ‘Hey, people who’ve been protecting me from danger for half my life, just so you know I’m actually a superhero and have had numerous near death experiences these last two months alone! Hope that doesn’t complicate things.’”
“I get it, it’s not an easy thing to talk about. I can be there to help if you need it.”
“Thanks, but I think it’s something I need to do alone. I’ll tell them soon, I promise.”
“I know you will.”
She laid her head on my shoulder, speaking in a sort of melancholy tone. When this business all started, my only concern was staying alive and protecting my friends, but everything is bigger now. We’ve decided to take on the burden of protecting the entire human race, but those close to me still don’t even know my circumstances. It was wrong of me to keep them in the dark for so long.
“By the way, how’d the prison go?”
“Mostly same as normal, he gave me nothing but empty words. But when I tricked him into thinking I was Kagami, he let something slip. Something about tomorrow. Something big. Whatever it is, he told me we’ll learn the truth tomorrow, and I strangely believe he’s not lying.”
“Your tone tells me that that’s not inherently good news.”
“New information is always welcomed, but I can feel in my gut that something big is about to go down. I think our lives will fundamentally change tomorrow. And I don’t think they’ll change for the better.”
Logically, I felt that I should just be glad to finally be on track to get some answers. But that deep feeling of dread was something I hadn’t felt since the day Yokoshima and Shiko attacked us in the magical girl base. Something bad was gonna happen. And I wasn’t sure we had the power to stop it.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time we were threatened by something we don’t understand.” Mai moved her head from my shoulder to my lap so she could look up at my eyes. “And it also wouldn’t be the first time we came out on top. We beat the director just days after unlocking our powers. We’ve trained day in and day out for more than a month since then, and we have Hana’s forces to fall back on if we’re not enough. The reason we beat the magical girls and the director is because we stood side by side and fought as a team. So long as we have that, we’re unstoppable.”
I returned Mai’s bright smile and stroked her hair. Even though I was still worried about what was to come, something about Mai always put me at ease. I really did feel like I could face down any enemy with her at my side.
“You really are too good for me, y’know.”
“I know. But as your magnanimous Queen I’ve decided to overlook that fact and stick with you anyway.”
“Oh, how grateful I am, my generous royal pain in the ass.”
We fell back to our silly status quo of banter like that. It seemed ridiculous, considering the circumstances we had been thrust into, but these little meaningless conversations were enough to keep me going. If training and fighting and risking my life meant I could continue to live my life talking to her, cuddling with her, loving her so deeply, I would fight to the ends of the Earth and back.
I loved this woman so much that looking into her eyes almost rendered me speechless.
“If you’re so worried about that bad feeling you’ve got, we could always replace it with a good one,” she said, with all the subtlety of an atomic bomb in a major population centre.
“You know they’re gonna be back soon, we don’t have enough time.”
“We can be quick. You certainly haven’t found that to be difficult in the past.”
“Alright, that’s it.” I scooped one arm under knees and used the other to lift her upper body, pulling her into a bridal carry as I got to my feet.
“My, did I wound your pride, by sweet Prince?”
“Nope, you just gave me something to prove, that’s all.”
By the time Genmitsu and Kandai noticed we were in the house, I had managed to make her retract that statement.