Magical Girl: Human Rebellion

When we awoke the next morning, the awkward atmosphere of the night before had mostly subsided. Our most important port of call was to figure out how to proceed with school.

That being said, I was somewhat distracted. Something seemed to play on my mind.

“You alright, Sora? You seem a little out of it.” Mai seemed to pick up on my troubled expression

“Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry. I think I had a weird dream last night but I just can’t remember what it was.”

“Well you did get injected with a superhero serum only a few hours before. If anything it’d be weirder if you were having normal dreams.”

“Hehe. Guess you’re right.”

Though I brushed the subject off like that, I felt deep down that there was something more to it. Whatever that dream was, there was something ethereal about it. Something completely different to any other dream I had had before.

I feigned a smile and pushed it to the back of my mind. Nothing I could do about it if I couldn’t even remember what that dream was.

“So, we’re really going to school despite the senpai who tried to kidnap us yesterday also attending the same place?” I turned my attention to Saki, who we had decided to let call the shots.

“If the four of us all started going absent at once, it’d raise a lot of suspicion. I live alone so I’d likely get away fine, but you three have guardians. We don’t wanna worry them.”

“Not to mention the fact that school is a public place with loads of people milling around,” added Mai. “Somewhere like that is the safest place to be. They wouldn’t try anything in full view of other people.”

The reasoning was sound, and I didn’t exactly disagree. Still, the idea of being just a few classrooms away from someone who tried to enslave me less than 24 hours ago put me on edge.

“I-I also get free use of the school’s chemistry equipment if I make a request.” The quiet Sunao was the next to speak, though she was even less energetic than normal in the early hours of the morning. “If we stay after school, I might be able to identify the drug they use to enslave people. It might be something I can neutralise.”

“I think that settles it, then.” I was the last person to give my input, my mind made up. “We’ll continue going to school as normal. Let’s show those girls we’re not scared of them.”

Up and cautiously optimistic for the day ahead, the four of us made our way to the train station together. We discussed other things like staying together for strength in numbers and keeping heightened awareness over the possibility of our being followed, but eventually we got tired of such serious subjects and went back to our usual asinine discussions.

It was as we were arriving at the station that I recalled something I had wanted to ask yesterday.

“Hey, girls, when I was fighting Yokoshima and Shiko yesterday my clothes magically changed on my body, right?”

“Hmm? Yeah, pretty much. It was so fast it took me a second to even realise what had happened,” Mai replied.

“So then, how did those clothes look?”

The three of them all shared a look without saying a word. Damn, was it that bad?

“Well, you were in an all black outfit, and I think you were wearing leggings, a skirt and a leather bomber jacket. Then there was this thing on your head. I think it was like a…”

“Like a widow’s veil?”

“Yeah, that.”

Mai confirmed what I had thought yesterday. A veil? Why on Earth was I wearing a veil? Everything else was within the range of expectations, but that threw me for a loop.

“Did… did it at least look cool?”

“Well, black definitely suits you…” Mai gave the most noncommittal affirmation possible.

“I was a little jealous of how cool you looked.” Saki let her chuuni side show once more.

“I-I don’t think my opinion on it matters all that much…” Nao blatantly tried to avoid hurting my feelings.

I sighed to myself, silently cursing my luck for being saddled with an outfit I didn’t choose.

“Wait… an outfit I didn’t choose… then how do all the magical girls coordinate their outfits?” It was a discrepancy I hadn’t thought of until now. My outfit was entirely out of my control, but each of the roving magical girl groups had a coordinated uniform.

Was there something different about the way they received their powers?

“We don’t know anything about the mechanics of these powers. Maybe they’ve just got a better handle on it than you?” Mai put her hand to her chin as she added her thoughts.

Now that she brought it up, it hit me just how confusing these powers truly were. They seemed to defy every known physical law in some way or another, and the mechanics behind such violations were a complete mystery.

A miracle drug that massively boosts physical prowess? I could maybe buy that. But time dilation, invisibility and clothes that appear and disappear into thin air? Something supernatural had to be at play. My theory that magical girls were simply skilled illusionists had been shattered. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that “magic” in some form or another was real.

I continued contemplating these questions silently until the train arrived, dragging my mind back to reality. The four of us boarded and found a booth in an empty carriage. We knew discussing this sort of thing with people around was practically suicide, so we double-checked the entire carriage before continuing our prior conversation.

“So, those uniforms we saw yesterday…” after an uncomfortable silence, Mai broached a subject I had awkwardly tried to avoid since yesterday. “Those missing Toukyouto girls… they were probably kidnapped the same was as us, right?”

“We can’t say for certain, but yes, it would seem that way.” I bit my lip, the words were hard to get out. The idea of so many girls our age being kidnapped and enslaved by superpowered megalomaniacs wasn’t a happy one to acknowledge, let alone for the four of us who nearly went through the same ordeal.

“What I wanna know is what these assholes want with a bunch of enslaved teenage girls anyway. Are they selling them off to some rich perverts or something?” Saki voiced a possibility so grim it made me shudder, but Mai was quick to shut it down.

“I doubt that’s the case. Remember that the mind-control drug is administered alongside the magical girl drug. If they were selling the girls off for that reason, there’d be no reason to also make them incredibly strong.”

It was a solid counter argument, but it only served to raise more questions. Why would these magical girls want to enslave a bunch of superpowered teenagers?

“Maybe they’re using them for manual labour? A magical slave can probably do the same job as ten paid workers at practically no cost, and I wouldn’t put it past corpos to invest in that sort of thing under the counter.” That was the only explanation that came to my mind, but there was far from enough evidence to support it.

“A lot of less-than-reputable people could find a lot of less-than-ethical uses for a slave with superpowers. Someone could be using them to build a new workforce, or hell, even an entire army. With enough manpower there’d be no way to stop them.” Saki’s tone boiled over with anger. She was naturally protective of the weak and powerless, so the situation seemed to infuriate her more than anything I had ever seen.

I couldn’t say I felt much different.

Mai, however, seemed to be slowly coming to a painful realisation.

“Hey… you guys don’t think that c-“

Her words were cut off by the sound of shattering glass resounding through the carriage. Not half a second later, a shuriken skimmed past Nao’s nose at extreme speed, missing her by millimetres.

Someone had come to silence us.