“Hey, sleeping beauty. Good to see you’re finally back to us. Any longer and I’d have to wake you with true love’s first kiss.”

I woke up to a splitting headache and an annoying girl hitting on me, which for a moment made me think I fell asleep in class again. But the memories of the day’s events slowly came back to me, causing me to sit up and address the girl in front of me.

“We got out… Is everybody…?”

“Safe? Yes. In good condition? Not exactly.” Mai finished my question for me, and her answer didn’t ease my nerves. “The landing on the roof was pretty rough, that’s likely what knocked you out. Me and Saki got out alright, but Nao was thrown off your back and busted her ankle up pretty bad. Saki’s in the bathroom with her now, putting an ice pack on it and checking for breaks. With any luck it’s just a sprain, but either way she can hardly walk.”

I felt a pang of guilt. Logically, there was nothing I could have reasonably done to prevent such a thing from happening in my state. But one of my friends was still hurt due to my actions, so I couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible.

“So, if Nao can’t walk and I’ve been unconscious this whole time, how did we end up here?” I asked, looking round at the room. It took me a moment because of the headache, but eventually I recognised it as Saki’s room.

“With difficulty, my friend. I had to support Nao all the way as she limped, and Saki carried you on her back. Took us well over an hour to get to the train station. We’ve been back a couple minutes at most.”

“Over an hour…. Oh shit.”

The mention of the time made a cold sweat wash over me, and I quickly pulled my smartphone out of my pocket.

Gen:

Missed call

Missed call

Text message: “pick up ASAP”

Missed call

Thankfully it hadn’t been too long since his first call, but if I didn’t let him know I was okay quickly he’d probably flip his lid.

“Sry for worrying you. Took a bad fall, broke my nose. Saki’s house was closest so I came here to fix it up.”

I shot him that text, then took a selfie with myself and Mai to show him that I was safe and wasn’t lying about the broken nose. At some point while I was asleep one of the girls had bandaged it for me, thought it was a bit of a hack job.

A moment later, I heard a familiar ping, and saw a new message.

Gen

“Glad you’re okay. Don’t scare us like that. It’s dangerous to be out this late, so are you staying with your friend tonight?”

I breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t completely pissed off. Had I been out much longer he’d have probably panicked and called the police.

“Hey Mai, reckon Saki would let us stay the night? Since it’s kinda dangerous to be wandering the streets right now ‘n all?”

“Actually she gave me instructions on that front. Something along the lines of ‘if that reckless idiot tries to go home, thump her one.’”

“Tactful as ever. Still, I’ll have to thank her when she’s done with Nao’s leg.”

I shot Genmitsu a quick “I’m staying here” text just before hearing the door to the bathroom open.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Look who’s returned to the land of the living. How’s that head of yours feeling?”

“Agonising.”

“And everything else?”

“Even worse.”

Saki shot me a smile as she emerged from the doorway. She was uninjured like Mai, but looked utterly exhausted.

“Thanks for carrying me all the way, by the way. And letting me stay the night.”

“What are friends for, eh? Besides, if it wasn’t for you, the rest of us would be a bunch of mindless drones right now.”

I shuddered at the thought. We weren’t there long enough to figure out what the magical girls were doing with their superpowered slaves, but whatever it was had to be horrifying. We had a close shave with a gruesome fate.

Hobbling behind Saki was Sunao, her right ankle swollen badly. It would likely have to be casted up.

“I’m jus- ow- glad we all got out safely.” Just touching the ground with her foot seemed to cause her pain. Saki supported her over to where Mai and I sat, but each step had her wincing.

Now that the four of us were all sat together, it was difficult to talk. There was a Goliath of an elephant in the room, and none of us quite knew how to address it.

The silence was deafening, but any break in it was difficult to make. One look at my friends’ faces told me we were all thinking of the same thing.

“…this is all my fault.” The first to speak was Mai, who was uncharacteristically solemn. She looked at the ground in front of her as she spoke, as if eye contact was too much for her at that moment. “If I hadn’t let my obsession get the better of me, I’d have never dragged you all along like that. I put us all in danger.”

Though it pained me to see her so down, I couldn’t entirely refute what she said. I had let myself get swept up in her momentum, and when the tide came we were an inch from drowning. We survived by dumb luck alone.

“We were all irresponsible. We let the opportunity blind us to the danger. We’re all at fault here.” Saki, an expert at raising people’s spirits, was the first to reply to Mai’s self-deprecation.

“I should have blown the whistle as soon as my instincts told me something was wrong. If I had, none of us would have been in peril. It’s as much my fault as it is yours, Mai.” I added. Blame and fault didn’t matter to me at all, I just hated seeing Mai’s smile disappear like that.

“W-what matters is that we’re alive and safe. B-blame isn’t important right now…” chimed in Nao, who had looked uncomfortable the moment the conversation had turned to taking blame.

A small smile returned to Mai’s face, but I knew her well enough to know that smile meant “thanks for trying to make me feel better,” not “you’re right.”

“Besides,” said Saki, raising her voice slightly, “if anyone’s to blame it’s those bastards that attacked us. ‘Allies of justice.’ ‘Protectors of the people.’ What a bunch of frauds.” There was an anger in her voice I had only heard a handful of times. Airhead though she may be, Saki was fiercely protective of her friends, and any threat towards them seemed to bring out a great deal of hatred in her.

“What do we do about all this? I mean, our ‘heroes’ a bunch of evil slavers, right? We can’t just let that stand.” Mai, who had revered the magical girls more than anyone else, practically spat as she talked. “Not to mention the missing people. I’ll bet those Toukyouto girls met the same fate as us. We have to help somehow, right?”

The rest of us hesitated to answer. She was right, it wasn’t a situation we could just let stand. But actually interfering would be a tall task.

“Going to the authorities isn’t really an option. At best they’ll think we’re a bunch of attention seeking wackjobs, and at worst they’re already in league with the magical girls. We’d likely be walking straight into a trap.” I quickly ruled out the most obvious option.

“They’re likely in the pockets of the media, too. Considering how wide coverage of their actions has been these last couple of months, there’s definitely some symbiosis there. If we tried to publicise this, no one would bite. We’d likely just draw unwanted attention and get ourselves killed.” Saki shot down the second option too.

“So then, what? We just pretend this never happened? Go on with our lives?” Mai sounded livid at the idea, glaring at the two of us as if our words were venomous.

“No, that’s not an option either,” I said. “Shiko and Yokoshima know who we are, that means there’s a target on our back. We’re involved in this now, whether we like it or not. Turning a blind eye isn’t an option.”

“So then what? We just send you in alone, guns blazing, hoping to take them out before they get to you first?” Mai asked incredulously. Saki and I looked at each other silently without saying a word. “…oh my god, you actually want to send Sora in alone, don’t you?”

“There’s no other option. Waiting around for them to attack us would make us sitting ducks. With my ability, I can take the initiative and pick them off one-by-one.”

“And it’s not like any of us can go with her. We don’t have powers. We’d be a liability at best.”

Saki and I had ended up on the same page without reading it aloud. This was simply the only course of action that could keep my friends safe.

“A-actually, I might be able to help with that…”

Sunao, who had been silent for quite a while, quietly spoke up as she fiddled with the bag she was carrying. From within it, she produced a number of vials of a cloudy yellow liquid.

The same one that had been injected into my arm just a couple hours prior.