Magical Girl: Human Rebellion

“I counted two ogres, somewhere near 120 imps, and one of those humanoid type ones.”

The other six had hung back while Saki and I moved alone to recon the encampment. It was swarming with demons. Too many for seven tired magical girls to beat head-on.

“Th-that’s a lot of enemies… should we turn away?” Nao seemed scared at the prospect of fighting so many foes, and I understood why. But a frontal assault wasn’t the only way to deal with this sort of problem.

“There’s a way we can still win this. It’s not honourable, nor is it safe, but those humanoid demons seem to be the only ones intelligent enough to communicate with. We need to get him one-on-one, so the course of action is obvious.”

Assassination.

We would need to take out all of his allies one by one and get him on his own. It would have to be fast enough to not raise suspicion, but slow enough to not reveal ourselves. A quiet infiltration.

“May your plans be dark and impenetrable as night. And when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” Mai looked off into the distance as she spoke, seemingly thinking the whole situation over.

“Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. It basically means you should leave no sign as to what you’re planning, and you should overwhelm them with speed when you execute. If we’re gonna do this, we need to be fast and lethal. No mistakes. No second chances.”

We all gave a grim look. It was a rough situation. If we walked away, we’d lose our best chance of getting out. If we went through with it, everything could end here.

“I at least wanna try.” Hikari broke the silence first, seemingly having recovered somewhat from her exhaustion. “The longer we spend in here, the more likely we are to get cornered or picked off. We need to take action fast.”

“I agree with Hikari.” Saki, unsurprisingly, was all in. “I’m not gonna ask you guys to follow me if you don’t want to, but I can’t just live on the run until we die. We don’t know when we’ll next get a chance like this, I can’t sit here and let it pass.”

Whether I was okay with it or not, they were right. We had little other choice.

“I’m in. I don’t know how much magic I have left, but it should be enough to keep everyone concealed if we don’t take too long.”

“Then it’s settled. We infiltrate together, pick ‘em off one by one and corner the boss guy. An objections?”

Saki’s question was met with silence. Though everyone clearly had their reservations, they kept them to themselves. We all knew this was our only choice.

I concealed us all once again, and we made our way into the encampment.

It seemed to be a temporary affair, primarily made up of tattered tents and more old ruins.

The first order of business would be to pick off the patrols. Our entry to hell must have already been communicated back to them, as several pairs of imps were patrolling the outskirts of the encampment, though their awareness seemed lacking to say the least.

“If we wanna avoid raising any alarms, we’ll have to take out each pair simultaneously. I’m splitting the six of you into three pairs and taking the fourth by myself.”

Saki directed us to take up certain spots on the patrol routes that would let us take out all four pairs of imps simultaneously. I was impressed at how quickly she was able to figure out the timing of the patrol routes, considering how short our recon period was, but there was little time to marvel at her exceptional tactical awareness. We had to keep our heads in the game.

Mai and I remained at the closest spot to our entry point, while the twins took the spot to our left and Saki went right. Nao and Kyouma silently flew to the far side.

After a couple minutes of lying in wait, my heart beating out of my chest, I finally spotted our marks approaching. My left hand tightly gripped my axe, and I took some slow deep breaths to steady my ever-mounting nerves. I heard Mai quietly do the same at my side, both our bodies cloaked but still aware of one another’s presence.

They continued to draw closer and closer, until they were practically a hair’s breadth away. I wanted to just get it over and done with, but I kept my cool and waited. Sweat dripped down my forehead as the pair came close, so close to passing us by, until…

Now!

Mai and I simultaneously grabbed our targets by the back of the head. I held my breath and sliced with my axe hand, before breathing a sigh of relief as my axe head glided cleanly through my enemy’s neck. A quick look to my left told me that Mai’s rapier found similar success.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The body’s fell limply in front of us, and we fell into silence as we waited for them to burst into flames.

To our immense relief, they did no such thing. In a place as dark as hell, it would have given away our position in an instant.

“The rest of us have confirmed quiet kills, how are things going for you guys?”

“Same here, Saki. Two kills, quick and silent.”

“Copy that, Shin. We’ll reconvene on your location shortly. Now comes the hard part.”

I once again looked down at the bodies in front of me. It was the first time I had personally taken a life, and it was with such a slimy method.

Lamenting that our hands had been forced toward such measures, I silently hoped this war would come to a swift end. Too much blood had been shed already.