Magical Girl: Human Rebellion

I finally had her on the back foot, my superior upper body strength providing too much of a threat for her to ignore.

I continued hounding her with punches, forcing her to dodge backwards and slowly approach the wall. She was running out of space.

I got even more aggressive, continuing to push the attack with everything I had as we got closer and closer to that boundary. I realised all too late, however, that that’s exactly what she was hoping for.

She dodged my punch once again, grabbing my arm as I overcommitted and locking it in a vice grip. In a move so fast I barely saw it happen, she moved behind me while still holding my arm and slammed me forward into the wall. With my arm locked and my range of motion heavily limited, it was clearly my loss.

“Ouch. I yield, I yield, let me go already dammit.” She let go of my arm and I turned back to her, waiting for her assessment.

“You’ve improved a lot. If we added our unique powers into the mix, I doubt I’d have stood a chance.”

“But?”

“But you still have these moments where you push your luck and get punished for it. It’s like you see any opportunity to finish the fight quickly and jump at it aggressively, regardless of how likely it is to succeed. You already had the front foot. In that situation, think things through and proceed without panicking. Physically your condition is great, you’re just getting in your own head too much.”

“Yeah, I figured that was it.” I picked my water bottle up off the ground, and Saki seemed to take it as a sign to take 5. She sat down against the wall and started chugging her own water, before addressing me again.

“How are things going with him?”

“As bad as they could be. I’m weaselling little bits of information out of him when I can, but for the most part he just taunts me when I show up.”

“You can’t let him get in your head. He knows he has something to hold over you, so he’ll do what he can to hurt you.”

“Actually, it’s not that. He keeps taking vaguely about some event, ‘the opening of the Hot Gates.” Whenever I try to ask what he’s talking about, he just grins and says ‘you’ll know soon enough.’”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You and me both, sister.”

“You going back there after today’s session?”

“Yeah, we don’t really have time to waste considering the threat we’re dealing with. Come on, let’s go another round.”

“Already? We’ve been at it almost the whole day, are you not tired yet?”

“Are you?”

“I’m trained and conditioned for marathons. You, not so much.”

“I can keep going. We can’t afford to be unprepared when we face down our enemies.”

“I hear ya, I hear ya.” Saki got to her feet and we returned to the centre of the gymnasium. “One more round. Lets fight.”

***

I put my hand to my back as I got off the train, the muscles still sore from the suplex Saki had unleashed on me in our last round of sparring. That girl really didn’t know how to hold back.

A short walk from the train station, I reach my destination. It’s an ugly building to look at, but considering who they keep here, the aesthetics were the least of my worries.

“Ms Goto. I take it you’re here to see him again?”

“Yes. Visiting hours are still in, right?”

“They end in thirty minutes. Is that enough time?”

“Plenty. Thanks.”

“In that case, please make your way to maximum security. I’ll have one of the members of staff escort you there.”

The place I was going to was in the deepest part of the building, where they hold those that are considered too dangerous to be kept anywhere else. It was a surprisingly long walk, which the prison guard and I spent in silence. Eventually, we reached the last cell in the prison, isolated from all others. Atop the door was a lone name tag, though the person in here carried no true name, so it was instead printed with a title.

“You’ve 25 minutes. I’ll knock when your time is up.”

“Thanks. I doubt it’ll be that long.”

The guard opened the metal door and let me through. The room was surprisingly large, but had been split down the middle by thick reinforced metal bars. Despite that, I didn’t doubt that the man kept behind them could escape if he truly wanted to.

“Shin, you’re back again. To what do I owe the pleasure.”

“I’ve told you already, only my friends get to call me that. To you, Director, it’s Sora.”