Loop Two - Chapter Thirty-Five - Start Making Sense

Amber wished that things could start making sense soon, but things weren’t working out that well.

Nonetheless, she wasn’t given time to think. The monsters were at the walls, and the walls were very potent.

She flung a trio of knives to one side, pinning a scamp in mid-air and throwing the little monster aside even as she unhooked her chakram from her lower back and sliced through the air with it, bisecting a boogieman’s head from its shoulders.

Her knives snapped back into her hand and she spun, already looking for targets even as her arm was swinging around, building up momentum for a throw.

It wasn’t hard to find more targets. The fence had collapsed entirely, and there were enough bodies piled on the razor wire that it wasn’t stopping anyone anymore.

She flicked her arm out and her knives whistled through the air, meeting three targets. Not perfect hits. She was aiming to actually hit the monsters, even if that meant that the individual hits might not necessarily be immediately lethal.

A chupacabra leapt at her, snarling, with eyes blazing and claws outstretched.

She ducked to the side, chakram slicing up and into the monster’s stomach and along its side before it flopped behind her.

Amber recalled her knives, flung them back into the chupacabra to ensure that it was dead, then called them back into her hand.

She was sweaty, her magic was... not running low, but it was certainly not replenishing as quickly as she was spending it, even if she was being conservative with her magic use, mostly relying on her recall skill to keep bringing her knives back, which was much cheaper than resummoning them.

“Need a break?” Morgan asked. She casually flicked her sword ahead of her, cutting the hand off a boogieman in such a way that the blood spray from the missing limb didn’t splash against her. Then she stabbed it between the ribs in a motion so quick that Amber could barely see it.

The small hole in the monster’s chest and the way it collapsed were the only proof that Morgan had acted. That, and the faint blood staining her sword red.

Morgan is probably enough to keep this entire stretch defended, Amber thought. Still glad she’s here.

She flung her knives out again, and ignored the twinge in her arms from overused muscles.

The training they’d been going through was helping now, but it was also clearly far from enough to really make this kind of all-out battle easy.

The rapport of gunfire continued across the line, and Amber stepped forwards as an armoured truck drove out of the fog, a soldier manning the gun atop it clearly looking for monsters to shoot.

Most of those around Amber and Morgan were dead or dying, so the truck moved on. “Looks like we have reinforcements, I guess,” Amber said.

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “I don’t like this.”

“What part?” Amber asked.

“This attack. This is a lot of monsters to throw at the camp. A lot to handle while the school’s busy. But this isn’t enough to overwhelm the soldiers here.”

“It’s a diversion?” Amber asked.

It was certainly keeping the soldiers busy. Their stretch of the line, where the fence had collapsed, was barely guarded by soldiers anymore. Just a couple on the outer edges who were mostly on double-tap duty.

Amber’s conversation was cut off as she and Morgan worked in tandem to take out a group of chupacabra and the scamps riding them. Morgan was practically an impassable barrier to the monsters. If they came within her rather long reach, they died.

Some, however, tried to make it past, and that’s where Amber came in, nailing them with thrown knives and preventing any from flanking.

The monsters died, and Amber found her heart racing while she took in the scene. There was a lot of blood. A shocking amount. And the smell... she shook her head. She could freak out about it all later.

“It’s either a diversion,” Morgan continued as if they hadn’t been interrupted. She was wiping the end of her sword against the back of a dead chupacabra. “Or they miscalculated really badly. Or, and this is the option I like the least, this is the cannon fodder before the big players come in.”

“Why would they do that?” Amber asked.

“Because these monsters will distract or hurt the soldiers and weaker magicals. We might be tough, as a rule, but even an experienced magical will be killed if enough guns are pointed their way. We’re not immortal.”

Amber nodded along. She was about to ask what they could do about it when a form came rushing out of the fog from above. She almost threw her knives when it resolved into Cassy and Jade, both still riding on Cassy’s broom.

“Are you out of grenades?” Amber asked.

Cassy shook her head. “No. Jade’s been dropping them all over. Killed... a lot of baddies.”

“Maybe,” Jade said. “We can barely see the ground from up there. And there’s mortar fire hitting the field all over.”

Cassy grinned. “One flew right between us. I swear I felt it passing.”

Jade shivered. She was clearly not as enthusiastic about that as Cassy was, and Amber couldn’t blame her.

“Anyway, we helped, I’m sure. The mortars are just hitting wherever. We’re actually able to drop grenades right at their feet. It’s taking out a ton of them,” Cassy said. “But when we rose up, I saw that the fog’s funnel shaped.”

“Funnel shaped?” Amber repeated. “You mean it’s coming from one place?”

“It’s not quite like that,” Jade said. “The fog is thickest near the back. We can make out the part where it’s coming from. I think.”

Amber glanced at Morgan.

“It’s dangerous,” Morgan said.

“But we should try,” Amber replied. “If we take out the fog, then the guns we have will suddenly be a lot better. We’ll have a ranged advantage again.”

Morgan hesitated, then nodded. “Fine. but I don’t want to be hit by a stray shell.”

Amber nodded. “Can you clear us a path through? With the army, I mean? Cassy, Jade and I will hold the line.”

Morgan snapped a quick salute, then took off like a bullet into the fog behind them.

“She’s having fun,” Cassy said. She eyed all the bodies piled up and winced. “Damn.”

“We probably killed just as many,” Jade said, though she didn’t sound proud of the fact. If anything she sounded a little distressed.

Amber rubbed her back, but snapped around as a boogieman started to climb over the gap of the trench.

The fighting was back on, and this time Amber found herself doing the bulk of the work. Jade didn’t have any immediate offensive weapons and Cassy had her broom, and while a two-handed, magical girl-empowered broom to the face did a lot to stagger the average monster, it wasn’t exactly lethal.

A knife to the throat was.

Jade pulled out that rifle she’d grabbed and took careful shots at the monsters. Amber was pretty sure her gun could fire full-auto, but Jade was plinking away one shot at a time. Her accuracy was a bit dicey at first, but it improved rapidly enough.

Amber was mostly happy that they had magical healing available after all of this, because all the noise was making her ears ring and she was pretty sure that was unhealthy in the long run.

“I’m back,” Morgan said as she returned and casually lunged forwards and skewered a scamp hiding in the bodies. “We need to move now. We only have a few minutes of reduced fire along the central corridor from here to the woods.”

“They’ll know not to shoot at us on the way back?” Amber asked.

Morgan nodded. “Officers were informed. And I was given this.” She raised her free hand, revealing a bulky-looking radio before she tucked it back into a belt that looked out of place on her costume. “We need to move fast.”

“Morgan, take the lead, Jade, Cassy, stay ahead. Cassy, you know where the fog was coming from still?”

“Got a good sense of direction, even with this fog, don’t worry,” Cassy said.

Amber gave her a thumbs up. “Good. I’ll take the rear. Our goal is to get to whoever’s making this fog, not to kill every monster on the way. But don’t hesitate if it doesn’t slow you down.”

“A dead monster’s a good monster,” Cassy agreed with a grin.

And then they were off.

It was far too easy to jump over the remains of the fence and leap past the trench. Neither obstacle was enough to even deter a magical girl, even with reduced visibility.

Once on the other side, Amber let her friends rush ahead of her. The group naturally forming a line as they moved. Amber switched her off-hand chakram for more knives as she moved, then she started throwing them.

She was going to have to work on her aim, she realised as she worked to keep up with the pace Morgan was setting. Amber was hitting nearly every monster she saw ahead of them, while Morgan herself cut through those in their direct path with impunity. Some of Amber’s throws went wide, or just missed outright.

She needed more practice. A lot more.

Still, they continued, running at a quick pace across the field. The booming explosions of mortar fire sounded much closer than they had been earlier to both their left and right, and Amber was worried that the entire team might, with no warning, disappear in a misaimed blast.

“Right!” Cassy shouted. “About, uh, thirty degrees.”

Morgan took the order in stride, trusting in Cassy’s sense of direction. And just like that, the sloped hillside turned from a rocky slanted space with treacherous footing, to a forest.

They slowed down, Morgan raising a hand over her head before looking to Cassy for directions.

Cassy looked around, then pointed ahead and slightly to the left. “Not far,” she said, voice kept relatively low. The fog and forest was doing a good job of muffling the nearby explosions and gunfire. “Thirty-ish metres.”

“Same formation. Aim to incapacitate. Just like with Seafoam,” Morgan said.

They nodded, and then were off.

It didn’t take thirty metres before they shot through a slightly thicker fogbank and found themselves face-to-face with a magical leaning on the ground, clutching onto a large warhorn and enveloped in a dark cloak.

“Ah, I was found!” They said far too cheerfully.

***