Ch 13: A Bittersweet End
I'm shocked, but more than that, I'm completely and utterly happy, but it isn't time for celebration yet since we have a strong enemy ahead of us, although she is stupid, she has a strong battle intelligence.
"I won't let you go away!!" I shout at Magda.
"Then bring it on you stupid bruiser!!" she shouts back.
[I've been degraded from magical girl to bruiser, good].
"Fleet Footwork".
We begin running towards each other again, this time I'm completely focused on her as to not commit the same mistake, I throw my arm back to punch, Magda begins blocking with her hands, so I switch up to kick at the stomach, she is fast enough to block with her knee before getting hit.
"You're not bad for an idiot," she says sarcastically.
[Can you stop mocking me!!].
She pulls out more lit dynamite, freezes the explosion at the size of a marble.
"Roundhouse kick".
I kick at her but she imitates me, we clash our legs into each other and take the knockback, we are matched in strength, she tries to throw one of her explosions.
"That won't work anymore"
I concentrate and raise a rock wall like before, The explosion detonates but this time I came unscathed, successfully blocking the explosion with my newfound magic, Magda didn't take it too well, she resumes running at me, I'm still trying to come up with a plan, but she already at arms distance.
"Brigit's Will".
"AHHHHH" one of Vera's Javelins hit Magda, A Burst of flames comes from her back making her stumble forwards.
[Thank you very much VERA!!].
At lightning speed, I put arms my arms forwards and grab both of Magda's twin tails, gripping them as hard as I can.
"What the-" before she can finish I do the only thing that I can think of.
"SILVER GLOCK".
I push Magda's head down and raise my aether coated knee as strongly as humanly possible, It smashes into Magda's chin, the force of the impact sends her body flying.
"Eat that!!" I can't contain my emotion as seeing her body roll onto the pavement, she quickly gets up on her feet again, she is dazzled but is still capable of fighting, although it was quick, she had enough time to coat her head in aether.
"You think you're so slick right!!! for your information that is the only direct hit you'll ever get" she is enraged at the last combined attack not only hit her it also really damaged her.
"Rocket Jump" she flys over me, I try to grab her but miss, we're now at the same positions we started, Me and Vera on one side of the road and Magda on another, Vera eventually catches up to me, we make a fight stance.
"Bring it on idiots, I'm ready to take anything you can dish out!!!" she is shouting and provoking to attack her, she is pulling more dynamite from her jacket and starts to light it up.
"The only thing you're gonna take is your leave Mag" Another female voice, sounds like a kid but is somehow frightening and imposing, we look at the origin of the sound.
From an alleyway beside the store, A small teenager show herself, she is wearing a Dark blue military outfit with red and yellow highlights, it has many pockets on her shirt but more notably, many small medals covering the left side of her chest, the hat she swearing hides a lot of her silver hair, she also possess 2 light blue eyes resembling the sky.
Her lower half looks normal, no camo or anything out of the ordinary for a military outfit, but the black coat that is hanging from her shoulders is extremely big, it almost reaches the floor so it makes it hard to see her body shape, but it is thin, it looks like her body could be snapped in half if it was punched hard enough, also she was shorter than me, I guessed around 5 feet tall.
"You sure we need to leave now? I could get this idiot ou-".
"We already have what we came here for, no need to waste more time than necessary, they don't pay me by the hour" I look at the silver-haired girl, she has an extremely intimidating gaze.
[She is way smaller than me but she manages to look down at me].
"Fine geez, no fun with you" Magda responds to the silver-haired girl.
"Hey we won't let you escape that easily" Vera snapped at them, she shoots multiple fireballs, but Magda just throws one of her explosions to dissipate all of the fireballs.
"You should thank me for stopping Magda from murdering you" She remains calm but her eyes scream 'aggressive' in all senses of the word.
"Khronos finger".
A big circular black hole opens in the middle of the street behind Magda and the Silver hair-girl, on closer inspection, it looks like a poorly lit room, the silhouette of teddy bears of various sizes can be seen from the outside, the edges of the 'portal' are fuming with purple smoke that move in strange patterns.
"Fleet Footwork".
I begin closing the gap between them, they don't show a hint of hesitation, Magda begins to enter the portal.
"Sayonara Idiots!!! Hope we don't ever encounter again!!" Magda travels through the portal.
I'm near the portal, I leap towards the Silver-haired girl to punch her, I'm traveling at top speed, but she slowly looks at me in the eyes, with an extremely dissatisfied look.
"Naive".
She does a circular motion with her index finger, a new smaller portal appears in front of her facing me, I look at the portal to see what is inside, it gradually exits the portal and I see the object, It's a bright blue Sniper rifle pointing at my head.
[Wait why is a snip-].
"Testfire".
I try to block but it's useless, The sniper shoots a bright green projectile and lands on my forehead, it immediately knocks far into the air, I hit a nearby wall and fall to the ground.
[It hurts, It hurts, It hurts, It hurts, It hurts].
It's extremely painful, I try to touch the area of impact and feel a liquid, I see my hand, which is covered in a bit of blood.
"AMY!!!!" Vera runs near me and grabs my head she inspects it.
"I told you you shouldn't be reckless".
She is right, I've done it again, but it seems the military girl is way stronger than expected, she is looking at me as I was trash, she turns around and begins entering the big portal.
"HEY, what's your name??" I shout at her.
"Come and find it for yourself" she enters the portal, I just see her silhouette moving away from it, and it closes completely.
[It's over, that was not ideal at all].
"I'm sorry Vera, I let them escape".
"That's not what's important, you need some treatment right now, wait for a minute, kerosene combustion".
Vera Takes off on her broom and flies in a random direction, she comes back with a first aid kit.
"Here let me see your injury" I let my head lose and offer no resistance to vera handling.
"Geez, you should not be so reckless, I almost thought you died there" she is washing my wound.
"I'm sorry, but I got a decent reason for it, think?".
"There's no decent reason for your death moron, take more care of yourself!!" Those words hit kinda hard since they are similar to what I say to Mary.
[If Mary is dumb, then I'm a complete idiot for knowing the advice and not practicing it].
"Vera, I promise to take care of yourself".
"GOOD, I wasn't gonna let you go anyway until you promised it" I chuckle a bit, she is reprimanding me but somehow it feels right.
[This isn't so bad].
After a few minutes, we get up.
"Thank you Vera for taking care of me" I'm ashamed of being useless in this fight.
"Mhh I gotta take care of my kouhai to the best of my abilities" she says cheerfully.
[Well she is not wrong, she told me she was a magical girl for some weeks already, so technically she is my senpai, wait.. how does she know that terminology].
We finished by cleaning up the fight scene, It was not good, but it could have been worse, there are visible gaps and crevices on the ground, so it was difficult but we managed to do it in a mere 10 minutes, I'm rewinding the events that transpired, my childish and impatient nature just got me almost killed, I was just useless, but I least got something from it.
"Thank you for saving me Vera, I will never forget your bravery".
"Very well, as long as you remember this loss you should be able to judge situations better" She is smiling, she genuinely cares for me even though we're just acquaintances.
"I will, I definitely will try to become strong, or at least be of help" I flash a smile at Vera, She leaves using her broom in another direction.
[What a nice person, but I kinda don't deserve to be treated this kindly after that disaster].
I got back to school, the little bandage in my forehead was also disguised while in my untransformed state, which was helpful, it seems that most things that happen in my transformed state stay in my transformed state, I glance at the clock on one of the halls, it between the battle and coming back 1 hour has passed, so I also skipped math class.
[Good, now I'm skipping extra classes, it's like they're important].
We have this day and 2 weeks of school before summer vacations, so these classes are more 'filler' than anything else, still skipping classes is not something I like to do, but it was my fault so I accept reality, I see that Mary is coming from the hallway.
"Hey Mary, you also skipping class?".
"Well I'm trying, but I'm trapped in an unlucky streak" she seems a bit puzzled.
It sounds like an interesting story so I ask, "oh~, why do you say that?".
"I tried skipping 3 classes this week!!!, and all of those I bumped into the president of the disciplinary committee, can you believe it?".
"Someone probably cursed you if that indeed happened" With that explanation, I understand her weird problem.
In our school, they are some famous faces and personalities that rose above the rest of us mortals, We have our Class representative with her 'perfect' grades and curious personality, the girl that is undefeated on kendo but trash at everything else, the girl who made jet fuel on the school lab with nothing but detergent, but the most renown one would be the president of the disciplinary committee, Douglass Lark.
he's essentially an urban legend even among other schools, Our school used to be plagued by constant fighting among all students and even teachers because of the poorly written rules making it easier to get out of trouble if your parents didn't care enough for you, but then Lark entered school 3 years ago.
He immediately enlisted in the disciplinary committee as soon as he could, got approved and got a seat in that classroom, and started patrolling the school grounds, in only 3 months he stopped all aggressions between students and teachers, he did by entering fights among students and beating everyone up, including spectators, to a bloody pulp, and because he is an orphan, he could get away with it, it got to the point that he supposedly beat some perv teachers into quitting.
So Lark is now feared throughout all of the school, and now he is not even assisting classes anymore, apparently, he willingly skips classes to not graduate and continues being the president, which is cool and terrifying since it means he either likes having power or has undying loyalty to this stupid school.
[Even then he still is just a single person, that Mary bumped multiple times into him is just crazy, what can I say to her?].
"Well then just try harder... I guess?" I say, really don't have any advice.
"That's not very good advice you know," she remarks.
"Well what do you want me to say? develop a sixth sense to know Lark's location at all times?".
"That would make me feel a bit better".
"Yeah, I bet".
"You're so mean!!" she is putting a bit.
"True enough, let's go kill the remaining time" I say to defuse the dum situation.
"Okayyy~" she follows me to the cafeteria.
Mary and I go goofing around school, we skipped the rest of math class and now we are in our final class, which is 'tutorship' class, it doesn't even make sense it's just the students in the classroom with no teacher, I think is for some other teacher to use if they want 'extra classes' of their subject but it never gets used so we just use it as 'spare time' class.
We get to the classroom, which is half empty since some of the students just left by jumping the fence while we remain since were 'decent' students.
[I already jumped that fence 4 times this week, I'm simply sneaky about it].
"You, Amy".
"Yes, I'm Amy" I reply to the voice.
The girl that called me out while I was sitting in my chair is Akari, our class representative, one of the famous people in the school, and one of the people I actually talk to, she is correctly wearing her school uniform, she has amber eyes with dark purple hair, her face does not show any emotion besides curiosity.
"You have been skipping many classes this week" she says as she looks at me.
"4 is not a lot, and I always skip literature in the third partial sooo~" I respond, I'm known for skipping literature since I already have enough credits to pass.
"But you would never skip math" she is not changing her monotonous tone, but I learned to guess, so she is a bit worried... I think.
"But I just did" I deny with an obvious fact.
"That's true, but I still think you should do that stop skipping classes" My dumb response somehow works, but it no longer surprises me coming from her.
This is how most conversations with Akari go, she is extremely curious but not self-aware, so she tends to end up asking weird questions that make people go away from her, so she stops doing that with everyone except me, which is kinda annoying but cute at the same time, still, I'm only friends with her because of her emotionless face makes it easy for me to talk.
"Take it easy Class rep, why do you need to make a fuss out of that?" I questioned Akari to see what she wanted in the first place.
"It's very suspicious that you are skipping classes" she said without missing a beat, but I have no idea why only me is suspicious.
"What? If I'm a suspect then Mary is a death-row criminal by this point" Mary had tried to skip 4 classes, it is only fair.
"Don't throw me under the bus Amy" Mary says in a 'sad' tone.
I turn to Mary and whisper to her, "Don't worry, the bus doesn't weigh a lot".
I chuckle a bit while Mary sulks and looks away from me.
[This is refreshing after that beatdown, I hope it goes on for a while].
"Maria is a lost cause, but you're a different story" Akari said with complete confidence.
"I see that you are still brutally honest Akari, don't you see that I'm trying my best?" Mary said in a sweet tone, but it sounds like mockery to me.
"Didn't you just skip 2 classes back to back?" Akari questions Mary.
Mary freezes for a second, "I will neither deny nor confirm that information" she sounds like a robot while saying that.
"Amy told me being indecisive is bad for one's mental health" Akari replies, I did say that but it was for a different context.
I turn to Akari and say, "Class rep just leave us alone, you got no business with us at all right?" to try to make Añari stop asking questions since her personality will not let her do that naturally.
[At this point I think Akari is just innocent but has some parental issue, I feel kinda bad]
"I do have business with Maria, I was gonna ask her about the football tournament since we got some news about it" Akari explained.
"Really?" Mary's mood improved substantially.
"Should have started with that Akari" I talk back at Akari.
"I needed to see why Amy was suspicious, so I asked that first" Akari said, I brush it off remembering that I am her 'rival' according to her.
Akari and Mary talk about the tournament, I don't care about it since it takes place on the weekends, and coming to school on the weekends is depressing in my opinion.
[I mean if it was a big tournament, then I would come to see mary, but it only is a bunch of friendly matches disguised as a tournament].
Once they are done talking, I ask Mary about how they organized it, Akari is occupied tomorrow so they decided to push the tournament to Sunday, that just shows how much power Akari holds in this school, but that's exactly why Akari sees me as her rival.
"You should think about improving your grades and holding more responsibilities, Amy" Akari said, still no emotion in her voice.
"Thanks, won't do~" I'm completely disinterested.
"You should know that I'm only the class representative because you don't put effort, right?" This time, Akari sounds convinced and sad.
"Yeah, but it doesn't matter to me, and you seemed happy to have that, it was like your dream right?" I kindly reply to Akari.
"I know that effort makes me a 10/10, but that's because teachers are lenient with my imperfect test scores, but you get perfect scores in almost all test scores" She said with a hint of sadness on her face, she believes that I wanted the position for some reason and that I'm being considerate.
But Akari is not lying, my test score often beat hers, not by a lot, but the difference is that I don't study for those while she barely gets a wink of sleep from staying up studying, she beats me overall with the effort she places on everything else she does in school, while I only do the bare minimum, so she feels like she didn't earn her position, so she wants me to go 'all out' on studying, but I sort of don't care at all.
[Well power does imply responsibility, and I don't need more responsibilities now that I'm a magical girl].
"I know, but I would not dare to crush the dreams of my friend when I know how much more effort she puts into the position" I say in a kind and understanding tone while looking at Akari's eyes, it is clearly a lie since I don't care about the position and letting her have it isn't a 'problem', but Akari fully believes it
[Welp, gotta train harder and be more intelligent, I'm still dumb in many areas so some improvements are necesary].
While looking at her eyes I see them light up, "I see, I'll try my best to not let you down" Akari says and starts heading back to her chair.
"I know you won't let me down" I say in a comforting tone.
"You really know how to handle her" Mary remarks teasingly.
"I didn't technically lie, so it was easy, and both benefit so even better" I reply confidently.
[Can't let me down if I don't have expectations in the first place].
The rest of the class goes on with no incidents, I see mary off at the exit since she has her club activities today and a tournament on Sunday, so she couldn't skip that, I walk home normally and reach my home.
I lay down on the bed, I'm exhausted, I'm grateful to Akari and Mary for improving my mood by talking to me since the last fight honestly made a hole in my confidence, still, I feel like I need some answers so I talk to Sauriel.
"Sauriel you there?" I say to the air, Sauriel materializes beside me and sits on the bed.
"Yes, Amy?" he asked.
"You're supposed to be the angel of guidance right? shouldn't you help me in battle" I say, I try not to sound too aggressive but is difficult.
"I can see that the last fight did not leave you with a good state of mind" Sauriel gets near me and puts his head on top of my arm, using it as a pillow, "I can assist in a battle, like planning, but only against devils".
"Why is that?" I reproach, it seems like he could be of help, but is just being picky on helping me.
"We can't interfere directly with magical girls, is written on the contract?" He said in a monotonous tone.
"I don't get it, how is that supposed to relate to this?" I don't get it at all, Sauriel tones don't give the impression they should.
"That Magda girl, she is a magical girl signed written contract," He said.
"WHAT?" I scream as I quickly look at Sauriel.
"The contract establishes that conflicts among yourselves should be resolved without our help, but i could of help you against the devils, you just didn't ask" Sauriel is surprised by my reaction.
"Rewind a bit, the Magda girl is a magical girl?" I'm in disbelief.
"That is what I said" Sauriel is serious.
"She doesn't look like one though?" I rebuke.
"You're one to talk, for some reason your generation doesn't like the first one at all" Sauriel sounds somewhat annoyed with my response.
"Can you elaborate on that??" I asked him, I needed answers now if I was gonna continue with this.
Sauriel proceeded to explain, "The first generation of magical girl resembled a lot more closely as the media depicts them, homogeneous and with staff or wands as weapons, but the second started to change into a more mystical type, like witches, illusionist, and wizard, but your generation is all over the place".
I look at my clothes, "So I look like that because of that?".
Sauriel looked away from me, he was a bit conflicted before saying, "I'm not sure about that, your clothes are a 'perfect fit' physically and mentally so the passing of time should not affect them, so the cause is another thing but even my superiors have no idea of what could cause that".
Sauriel doesn't lie, he tricks me sometimes but did wasn't one of those occasions, "I see, so I undoubtedly lost that fight...." I look down at my legs, the one that was caught.
"If you want to know something, the only real error was kicking the Ted, everything else was somewhat impressive for a magical girl without a weapon or her magic," Sauriel said in a tranquilizing tone.
"Oh yeah I forgot, I discovered my magic" I said without much of a thought.
"Indeed, we are gonna train tomorrow with that magic so be ready to learn and improve" He said confidently, trying to reassure me that everything is fine.
"Yes Sauriel, I will" I say, defeated, I only was thinking about something.
[I no longer know if magic will help].
This encounter will mark Amy's entire adventure through the magical world, she didn't notice in the spur of the moment, but Amy's actions and spur of the moment growth made her a strong ally that will help her in mosts situations, although she will never admit that she is helping her due to her fiery personality.