‘We’re gonna move up and engage in this formation, but only as a feint. Shin, on my mark cloak yourself and Mai. Both of you target one of the twins each, try and get us an early lead.’

‘10-4, Saki.”

The three of us on the ground ran toward the centre of the arena, Saki in front with me and Mai close behind. Nao remained further back to control the air.

As we approached the centre, we observed Hana’s side in a similar formation. In the front was Hana herself, holding a shield and spear similar to those we saw in the Forge before. She looked as noble a leader as can be, her head covered by a Corinthian helmet and her body in shining bronze plate armour.

Her flanks were covered by the twins, each in outfits of their respective colour. Suzume’s battle attire was hardly different from her regular attire, cloaked in a full blue tracksuit and a jacket with a hood that hid her face. Suzume, however, wore a full set of red mail armour with shoulder plates burning with seemingly eternal fire. Her lower face was covered by a blood red bandana. Neither of them carried weapons.

Finally, we met in the middle with Saki and Hana making first contact. Hana planted her feet and lowered her body, her circular shield protecting everything but her armoured head. She thrust her mighty spear at Saki’s body, but Saki had the foresight to shift her approach and attack closer to Hana’s blindside, narrowly dodging the spear and connecting a powerful strike of her sword with the shield.

‘Now!’

I used 「Illusionist」to turn myself and Mai invisible, allowing us to run around the tightly bound formation and attack from the sides.

I had my eyes trained on Suzume, who had suddenly turned wary at my disappearance and was scanning the area for signs of me.

In unison, Mai and I picked up speed and ran headlong at our targets, preparing to gain a two-man advantage right from the beginning. Just as our strikes were about to connect, however, the twins disappeared right before our eyes. Mai and I nearly crashed into each other as our full-speed charges continued uninterrupted, forcing us to screech to a halt.

‘Dammit, need some help over here!’

Mai and I both snapped our gazes toward Saki, who was now suddenly surrounded by Hana, Suzume and Hikari.

The twins were right in front of us less than a second before… only one person could have moved them so quickly.

“A gallant attempt, my friends, but in vain. For none control the battlefield quite like myself, legendary mage Kyouma Houtsukai!”

There, in her long white wizard robes and pointy hat, holding a two-handed sword so long it dwarfed her body, was Kyouma. The reason we hadn’t spotted her before?

“She can fly?!” Blurted out Mai. Kyouma had been lying in wait at the roof of the building, as if completely unphased by gravity.

It wouldn’t have been entirely correct to say she was ‘flying,’ per se. When Nao flew, she used the air under her wings to generate an equal upward force to that experienced downward due to gravity. Kyouma, however, merely existed off the ground. She wasn’t fighting gravity. It simply did not affect her at all.

With our positions given away, I de-casted invisibility and tried to analyse the situation in it’s entirety.

Saki had managed to make a desperate retreat, aided by a barrier and arrow rain from Nao, but the two were now being approached rapidly by Saki and Suzume. Hikari had turned back to us and was now approaching, with Kyouma on the other side already preparing to engage.

It was a trap, one that we fell for, hook, line and sinker. Our team had lost it’s biggest advantage: team cohesion.

“Dammit, we should have seen this coming.” I said under my breath to Mai.

“There’s no use lamenting it now. I can keep Hikari distracted, try taking on Kyouma. She’s our biggest threat right now.”

“On it. Stay safe.”

“You too, now go. Do me proud.”

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Mai moved off to confront Hikari, leaving me to face down Kyouma alone.

“Thou have quite the wellspring of courage to face me alone, Sir Nomimoto,” said the crazy white wizard hovering above me. “Come, taste defeat at my hand.”

“Bring it on, Dumbledore.” I bent my knees and leaped with all my might toward her, my arms behind my head ready to swing my axes with all my weight. And…

She simply moved to the side and let me sail past, whiffing my attack completely. Hurriedly, I spun my entire body upside down and braced, bending my knees on contact with the ceiling and relaunching myself toward the ground, much faster than before.

This time I was too fast for her to dodge, so she instead met me head on in midair, our weapons colliding with immense force and splintering to pieces on impact. I struck Kyouma with such force that she plummeted toward the ground ahead of me at a speed that would render the average person a red puddle on the ground.

But the average person she was not. Mere metres before touching the ground, she deftly flew out of my trajectory and cancelled all of her downward momentum, as if she had never been hit at all.

I careened toward the ground, landing with a roll that broke my fall enough to not instantly shatter my knees, but not so much that it didn’t hurt like hell.

I threw down the shredded handles of the destroyed axes and prepared to re-engage my foe, though I doubted more and more every second whether I had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating her.

“Woah, did you see that?”

“Kyouma actually had to get serious for a second. That androgynous-looking girl must be super strong.”

“Who are these guys? How are they keeping up with Hana’s team?”

“Could they be ‘those four?’ The ones Hana talks about all the time?”

Just as I was about to start throwing aerial haymakers at the flying nuisance before me, I noticed chatter coming from the direction of the arena door. It seemed like the starter pistol had alerted a handful of people to the match, which had caused more and more people to steadily pile on. The stands were now half-filled with whispering spectators.

“Pay not attention to them, Illusionist. Thy foe is me, not the attention of the masses.”

Sounding vaguely annoyed that I had gotten distracted by the crowd, Kyouma called out to me, pointing at me with her splintered wooden sword.

‘Illusionist, huh?’ I thought to myself. ‘I’ll show you an illusion, Kyouma.’

With a clap of my hands, I multiplied my own body a dozen times. At least, from Kyouma’s point of view. The other eleven were mere shadow clones: visually identical, but will dissipate upon impact.

Myself and my 11 clones hurried to surround Kyouma from below, before leaping toward her in unison.

In one blistering swipe, she wiped six clones away with the remnants of her weapon. But that single distraction bought me every second I needed, allowing me to perform an aerial somersault axe kick to the top of Kyouma’s head.

As expected, she didn’t fall far before negating all of her motion, but it was enough to gain the advantage I had been looking for. I was now above Kyouma, both of us a few metres from the ground, and close enough that she couldn’t simply move and escape my attacks.

I hounded her with strikes as I fell, and she attempted to return in kind, but such was my plan. A missed stab with the splintered sword gave me a momentary platform to step on and deliver a backflip chin kick. A predicted kick allowed me a split second perch upon the hostile leg, a chance I converted into an aerial superman punch.

Kyouma continued to hold her altitude steady, and I continued to use her own attacks as a surface to remain above her. Her power was fearsome, but reliance on aerial superiority had made her a lazy martial artist. In other words, when the playing field was even, I could beat her.

Of course, the playing field is never truly even against a teleporter.

The eventuality that I failed to predict came without warning. As I aimed another falling kick at Kyouma’s head, she vanished before my very eyes.

“It’s over. Finishing move: Spatial Rend!”

As I fell toward the ground in a panic, I heard that voice above me and twisted my falling body to see it. Kyouma swung her destroyed sword in front of her, as if cutting the very air in front of her face.

A fierce rumbling rang throughout the arena, and the ground beneath me split wide open in a fissure large enough to swallow me whole.

That was it. I had lost. No amount of martial prowess or tactical thinking could bridge the immense gap in our power levels.

That was what I thought as I fell toward the ground, but mere milliseconds before I fell into the enormous crack in the ground, something caught me in midair and hoisted me from the brink of defeat.

“Nao?”

“Thank me later. We need to get back to Saki.”

Even holding my entire weight in her arms, Sunao soared through the sky at a speed much greater than Kyouma could achieve. Though her freedom of movement was greater, it seemed Kyouma couldn’t keep up with the airspeed velocity of a laden magical girl.

In no time flat, Nao had flown me back to our side of the arena, where Saki and Mai were desperately defending against an onslaught from Hana and the twins.

“Prepare for a rough landing!”

“Aye aye, captain!”

As we flew over the five fighting on the ground, Sunao dove at great speed and dropped me like an aerial bomber, directly above Hana.

“Hana! Above!”

Hikari’s shout came just fast enough for Hana to deflect my extremely fast falling kick with her shield, sending us both barrelling back in different directions and widening the gap between the front line of our team and hers.

“Thanks for dropping in, honey.”

“That joke was terrible. Nao save you too, Mai?”

“You could say that. Looks like we’re back to square one.”

Looking at the situation before me, I realised we were indeed practically in the same position as we began in.

There was just one major difference.

“That last attack on me ate a huge amount of Kyouma’s magic power. Looks like teleportation is off the menu for the rest of this match.”