"Mai?"
"Yeah?"
"I expected nothing and yet you still disappoint me."
"We just got here!"
"Got where? There's nothing here!"
After our hour long walk, complete with creepy guys hitting on us and Amai stopping for an unplanned snack break at an 11-7, we found our way to the location on the map to find… an empty lot. A rather large area without so much as flooring, let alone an entire hideout.
Immediately, I concluded that either we had gone to the wrong place or some magical force was hiding it from us. Either way, it meant the trip was a bust.
"C'mon, we can't quit already, we have to look around for secret entrances and stuff!"
"And how exactly do you plan to do that?"
"Hm? How am I supposed to know? You're the smart one here, Sora."
I sigh, realising that I probably should have expected this. As the holder of the sole communal brain cell among the four of us, I was always forced to do the thinking when the other three wanted something done.
The sunk-cost fallacy guiding my every move, I begrudgingly tried to think of ways a hideout could possibly be hidden in an empty open area like this.
"Underground, maybe? But there's pipes and electrical wires all around here… magically invisible, perhaps? But then they'd run the risk of people accidentally walking into it… where else could it…"
My voice trailed off as I heard a flock of pigeons flying overhead. As I absentmindedly watched them, a thought occurred.
They're not flying in a straight line… like they're dodging something?
"Saki, you've got a good throwing arm, right?"
"A good throwing arm? I've won the regional discus championship two years in a ro-"
"Not important. Reckon you could put those skills to the test for me?" I picked up a stone from the roadside and lightly threw it to Saki, who caught it effortlessly. "Your target is around 20 metres above us. Reckon you could hit it?"
"Uhh… sure?" She looked at me confusedly, likely having absolutely no idea where my seemingly arbitrary request came from, but all the same she took a couple steps back, wound up her throw and launched the stone with all her might. Sure enough…
"Whoa…" Said Amai
"What the heck…" Said Saki
"I see…" Said Sunao
"I knew it!" Said I
As the stone reached roughly the same height as the birds that flew past, it made a loud thud and suddenly stopped in its tracks, before plummeting back to the ground. In other words, it hit something. Something we couldn't see.
"If their base of operations was at ground level, they would run the risk of someone walking into it. And if it was underground, it'd run the risk of destroying power cables or sewage pipes. Which means…"
"The only place that works is in the sky! Sora, you're a genius!" Mai once again dive-hugged me, though I was prepared enough to catch her this time.
I object to the term "genius" since it only took basic deductive reasoning, but it's nice to feel appreciated.
The celebration, however, was interrupted by a loud clanging sound above us, followed by the emergence of a laser pointed straight at my head.
Uh oh.
"Book it, you three!" came the voice of Saki, the most athletic of the three of us, who had already practically left us in the dust. The rest of us didn't hesitate to get out of dodge as fast as possible too, rounding a corner at the next building along and just about getting out of the sight of the laser.
Idiot. How did I not consider the possibility of automated defences?
As the four of us caught our breath, and I screamed vulgarities at myself in my internal monologue, a new voice came from round the corner that made us all freeze up.
"Something tripped the laser thing. You see what it was, Aya?"
"Probably just a bird again. Thought those idiot pigeons had figured out where this place was by now."
"Well 'birdbrain' isn't an insult for no reason, those things are pretty stupid."
Without making a sound, all four of us slowly peeked around the corner, looking straight up at the place where the stone had previously hit. There, we saw the source of the two voices we had heard previously. Two highschool-age girls floating some 20 metres in the air, casually talking as if the situation was completely normal.
What's more is that…
"That's our school uniform!" Mai whispered excitedly from beside me.
Yes, though these were undoubtedly the elusive magical girls we had been looking for, they weren't sporting the same bombastic costumes they usually do. They were both dressed in the uniform of Tokyo Academy For Gifted Girls.
Amai was right.
There were magical girls attending our school.