Loop Two - Chapter Thirty-Three - Directly Towards the Fan

Having a couple of minutes early warning was worth a ton. It meant that all seven magicals had time to transform before they took off running towards the bus stop.

Yuri whipped her phone out and was calling their missing teammate, Amaranth, before they were even halfway to the bus. “Ams! Problem! The school might be under attack or something! Tell people!” Yuri said.

Not ten seconds later, all of their phones started to beep and buzz.

ALERT!!!
ALL MAGICALS ARE TO RETURN TO THE ACADEMY IMMEDIATELY.
ALERT LEVEL 3!
PREPARE FOR COMBAT.
ALERT!!!

The same warning as before, but this time they were just a little bit closer to being ready. Or the others were, Amber felt like she’d just used up a surprising chunk of her magic. It would come back, she knew, and the price was worth it for delivering an early warning. But still.

They made it to the bus stop before most of the other magicals still in the area had even registered that something was going on. Most of those who had their phones out were just staring at them, though Amber noticed some of the upperclassmen already transforming.

“Where?” Morgan asked her.

Amber scanned the area, then pointed. “Him!”

The man was moving out from an alleyway nearby, dressed in dark robes, but moving at a very human pace that had made him so easy to dismiss as a bystander last time. “Wendy, yeet me!” Lily said.

Amber didn’t have time to ask what that meant before Wendy grabbed Lily by the hips, tossed her into the air, then caught Lily’s feet. Lily bent her knees and jumped just as Wendy hurled her forwards. The result of a magical jumping while being thrown was a magical that moved very fast.

The man was pulling out a familiar bottle from his robes when Lily reached him. Her foot struck out, smashing into the bottle and sending its contents spraying behind him.

He screamed, and Amber winced at the crooked angle his hand was bent into. That strike had touched more than just the bottle, then. Lily landed in a pirouette to bleed off momentum, then she whipped out a foil from thin air, a whippy blade that looked a little like Morgan’s own rapier, though less... substantial. “Surrender,” she demanded, blade at the man’s throat.

The others arrived a moment later and Wendy walked up to the stranger and manhandled him to the ground despite his protests. “Alright, buddy, you’ve got some explaining to do,” she said.

“I don’t have to explain nothing, you off-world filth!” He struggled, but Wendy casually pinned both of his arms to his back in a way that looked incredibly uncomfortable. “Let go of me!” he screamed.

“You were about to throw a firebomb at a bus, I don’t think we’ll be letting go of you anytime soon,” Lily said.

“We need to organise,” Yuri said. “Lily, get these four up to the Academy with anyone else that wants to go. I’m going to talk to a few of the girls I know here. We can keep one group nearby and fetch all of the other first-years that came to the city.”

“Alright,” Lily said. “Wendy, you’re coming with me?”

“Uh... uh, yeah, I guess so. I’ll stay with my kids,” Wendy said.

The man she was holding onto didn’t stop struggling. He was kicking back with one leg, hard, ramming his booted heel into Wendy’s shin with all of the force an adult male could muster. It wasn’t doing anything to her.

Yuri reached over to Wendy and pecked her on the cheek. “See you later!” she said with a wink before skipping off. In moments she had the attention of a few disparate groups of magicals and was rallying them together. Some started making their way over, and a magical boy came over and touched the black-robed man on the side of the head. He went limp.

“We’ll take this guy. I can question him here, see what he knows,” he said.

Lily whistled, high-pitched and strident, and then she pointed up the cliffside to where the school was. “Alright, everyone who wants to get to the Academy quick, with me. We’re going up as a single group.”

She paused, and Amber tilted her head pack. There were gunshots out above. Was the army shooting someone? Or were they being shot. The fire picked up, an echoing rattle joined by more a moment later.

“That can’t be good,” Morgan said. “What kind of monster could be attacking the school that has the army responding?”

“You’re assuming it’s just a monster,” Amber said.

She wasn’t sure what to think when the gunfire suddenly died down.

“Alright,” Lily said after talking to a magical for a moment. “We have a speed buffer here. We’re going to jog all the way to the top. I don’t trust the bus and nor should any of you. Priority one for second-year students is keeping the firsties safe. Third years, we’re going to find out what’s causing all this trouble and we’re going to teach it a lesson about ruining date night. Let’s move!”

Amber was caught a little flat-footed as the group moved. They had about half the students that had come down in the bus with them, which meant nearly twenty magicals all jogging up the switchback towards Norumbega.

It should have taken a long time to make it to the school, but Amber found that her strides were carrying her further than usual, it was almost dizzying, and it was certainly confusing for the first couple of dozen metres, but she got used to it. The cause was obviously this one second-year girl holding onto a glowing orb that flicked out little beads of light that would zip to their feet before every step.

It didn’t take long for them to run along the cliffside. Some wanted to jump ahead, and others, like Cassy, could fly, but Lily nixed the idea even as they ran. “There’s safety in numbers, and we have to keep an eye out for the newer students.”

They reached the academy with the older students forming a colourful cordon between Amber’s team and the school itself.

She gasped. There was smoke rising from multiple places in the academy. The army base looked like it had been hit by multiple explosions as well. Amber placed a hand over her mouth as she noticed bodies strewn about on the part of the base nearest them. More soldiers were running around, and some were hurriedly setting up guns and defences pointing towards the school.

“That’s not a monster attack,” Morgan said.

“What?” Cassy asked. “Then what caused this?”

Morgan pointed, and Amber picked out a detail she’d missed early. A few bodies halfway between the base and the school. One of them was a magical, bent over wrong, with a long spear left in the ground next to them. They were wearing a black cloak over their magical costume.

“Magi,” Amber said.

There was another explosion within the school.

“Okay, third years, second years, with me,” Lily said. “First years, go help the soldiers. It should be relatively safe.”

Amber wanted to protest, though she wasn’t sure in what way, but then the second and third years took off running towards the school. That left team Svalinn, another team in their year that she recognized from class but didn’t know, and two more students that seemed to have come down to Norumbega together.

“I can heal,” one of them said.

That galvanised the rest, and they rushed towards the base.

They were met with immediate suspicion. Adults in fatigues watched them warily while reaching for guns, but none of them tried anything.

Morgan took the lead, flagging down a harried-looking officer and demanding an explanation. “We were in the city,” she said. “What happened?”

“Don’t know yet,” the man said. He had captain’s pips on his uniform. “We heard some commotion in the school, then there was a big fireball. One of the dorms was destroyed, I think. Then we got attacked here. Three, maybe four magicals in black cloaks. A few came from the school to help, fought them back.”

“Where can we help?” Morgan asked.

“Outer perimeter is FUBAR. We’re getting reports of lots of weaker monsters heading this way,” he said.

Morgan nodded, then she directed the healer girl and her team towards the medical facilities of the base where a number of tents were being set up for triage already.

Amber chewed on her lip. The school had magical healers. But if they weren’t here helping, that might mean that they were busy already, which didn’t bode well for anything.

They rushed through the base and to its far side, the part of it that opened up onto a small airstrip, past the base's administration buildings and hangars.

It was a ruin.

Two of the army’s blackhawks were tipped onto their sides. One was still on fire, even with crews hosing it down with extinguishers. The roof of one hangar looked like it had been punched by a giant and Amber saw several squads of soldiers sprinting across the landing strip to get to the guard buildings on the other side.

Most of the school and the base around it was built atop a plateau. That meant that anything coming to the school had to come from this one direction unless it climbed the cliffside facing Norumbega.

This area was relatively large and somewhat flat, with a winding road heading out into a nearby forest and avoiding several rocky outcrops on the way.

They rushed over to one of the guardhouses along the perimeter and found a man shouting orders while half-dressed. It looked as if he had been caught out on leave and had rushed back and was still in the process of getting into his gear when things had gone south.

He caught sight of them and brightened. “Are you our reinforcements?” he asked.

Amber shook her head. “No, we’re just first years, but we’re here to help. What’s going on?”

“Damn,” he said. “We have a small horde heading this way. Lots of boogiemen, lots of scamps and chupacabra and a few other problems besides. Maybe three, four hundred boogies. We lost one of our forward outposts ten minutes ago. Infra’s going nuts with signatures rushing this way.”

“Oh no,” Morgan said.

Amber turned to her. “What?”

“An attack on the school, a coordinated one, would mean having enemy magicals hit it at about the same time as those monsters arrive, for maximum chaos. So either the enemy was slow about it, mistimed things, or...”

“Or shit hasn’t finished hitting the fan yet,” Cassy finished.

***