"She'll live, but her body is completely exhausted."
I heaved a heavy sigh of relief as Nao confirmed Mai's survival. Mai had rushed to my aid while the others were occupied, but as someone without magical girl powers she had sustained serious body damage. Had she not awakened to her power during the fight, her death would have been a serious possibility.
At the moment, her head was in my lap, and Sunao was pushing her 「Guardian Angel」to its limits to treat her wounds. 'Survival' and 'recovery' were two very different things: just because she was no longer dying, it did not mean she was healed.
"I think that's the best I can do. Her ribs are repaired and the internal bleeding is stopped, but I can't replace the blood she's already lost. She'll need time to recover properly."
"Thank you, Nao. So much. I don't know what I'd have done with myself if she had gotten permanently injured, or worse, trying to protect me."
"You don't have to thank me. I would never leave Mai to just bleed out. This is my role in the team, after all."
Just as she was with biochemistry, Nao seemed to skyrocket in confidence when it came to using her power and healing wounds. Her knowledge of the human body was incredibly intimate, and her 「Guardian Angel」seemed to exacerbate that.
I was incredibly thankful to have someone like her around.
"Between the shock and the amount of blood she lost to internal bleeding, a normal person would be unconscious for hours at least. Whether she wakes up sooner or later depends on how much of a strain a magical girl awakening puts on the body, and how well she's adapted to it."
"I suppose all of us were pretty exhausted after our awakenings, but we all awakened in such stressful situations in the first place."
"My thoughts exactly. Either way, Mai is a trooper. Whether she wakes up in minutes or hours, she'll bounce back like nothing hurt her."
Sunao smiled at Mai's unconscious face. Though she had just been through an incredibly traumatic ordeal, Mai's expression was peaceful. Anyone would think she had just fallen asleep and was having a nice dream.
'Saki here. If you and Nao are done, meet me on the first floor where you found the fridge before. There's a lot to talk about."
Wondering why Saki felt the need to confirm her identity despite being the only person on the planet who talks directly into my brain, I held Mai's head up as I slowly got to my feet. With Nao's assistance, I propped Mai up on my back to carry her, and we hobbled down the stairs towards where Saki was.
Nao had put everything she had into healing Mai, so the rest of us had to just let our injuries heal naturally. In other words, my muscles hurt like a bastard. Not to mention the killer headache from one too many TKD kicks.
Between my own injuries and a few that Nao herself was sporting, it took us a while to get to the fridge room, but eventually we made it to see Saki and Hana sat on the floor, and the three 'cult members' laid down next to them, now returned to their original form as regular Toukyouto highschool students.
"Good, you guys are here. And Mai…"
"She's out cold, but she'll be okay." I sat down opposite Saki, gently laying Mai down and moving her head back into my lap. Sunao then came and sat next to me.
"I had hoped that she'd be awake for this but we'll have to bring her up to speed later. Same with these three." She pointed to the three unconscious Toukyouto girls. Considering the minor injuries sported by Saki and Hana, as well as some worse ones visible on Nao, it was clear that they had put up quite the fight. "I'd like us to have an in-depth debriefing on everything that happened. Starting with whatever was going on with you on that top floor, Sora."
"Right, that's a good idea. We need to make sure we're all on the same page." I recounted the events of my confrontation and fight with the mysterious magical girl, up to and including Mai's awakening. At the details of that last part, Nao put her hand to her chin as if deep in thought. After a moments silence, she spoke up.
"I-I think I understand how awakenings work a little better now."
"Hmm? What do you mean?" I asked
"I-I don't think that just taking the serum is the only prerequisite. If you think about the situations we were all in when we awakened, there's something else that ties them together."
"Riiiight, I was just thinking that myself," piped up Saki, "how we were all in life-or-death situations when we got our powers, right?"
Now that it was brought to my attention, I realised just how tight that connection was. Mai was the only one whose awakening was delayed, and it finally kicked in when her life was in danger.
"A-actually, I think it's a little more specific than that. I think the trigger is some sort of strong desire. Not just to live, but something else. Think about what the voice we all heard said when awakened." Nao added.
"'The power to protect those you care about.' So it awakened because we had the desire to save people?" Saki asked.
"That would make a lot of sense, actually," I said, coming to a realisation. "Mai seemed to awaken when I was completely overwhelmed in battle. It might have been her desire to protect me that made her awaken."
Certainly, it seemed like all the empirical evidence fit into place. The mysterious voice we all heard was still unexplainable, but it certainly helped tie the threads together. All except…
"Wait, what about the magical girls we're fighting then? Surely they didn't awaken because they wanted to protect someone. They only use their powers nefariously." Saki pointed out the logical inconsistency in the hypothesis, which reminded me of another point of confusion I had thought of recently.
"Actually, have you guys realised how different we are from them?" I asked, causing my companions to look at me with some confusion. "The magical girl teams all have unified powers and outfits, but ours are completely random. It's like they were able to pick and choose their own magic powers."
Saki and Nao both wore the same expression of realisation, the inconsistency seemingly striking them as odd too.
"Do we think that they have some special method of awakening or something, then?" Saki asked, to no one in particular.
"H-hana, do you remember the magical girls talking about their awakenings at all?"
We all turned our gaze towards our newest comrade, but she shook her head with a look of disappointment
"Sorry, girls, but my memory of that time is really fuzzy. I'm recalling more and more as time goes on, but trying to pull specific memories feels like trying to catch one specific fish in a giant fuzzy ocean. I wish I could be of more help, but I can't say I have any idea."
That shot down our only hope of correcting that discrepancy for now, but we had only been fighting the magical girls for a few days at this point. We all sighed, realising that uncovering these mysteries would take a lot more time.
"Come to think of it, do you guys reckon there's some sort of theme to our powers?" Saki asked suddenly.
"A theme? What do you mean?"
"Like, they represent us in some way? Before she passed out, I read from Mai's thoughts that her power had something to do with prediction. It got me thinking, she's always been really good at predicting stuff by analysing information or whatever, so maybe her power is that way because it's natural for her? Then I thought about me and Nao too. I'm always the one taking charge and giving people orders, what with being captain of the track and field club and all. And Nao's whole field of study is about medicine and people's health or whatever. Though, I guess it falls apart when I think about you, Sora. I don't get how illusion has any sort of relation to you. So maybe it's all just coincidence."
"Well I did really like magic tricks back in middle school, heheh…" I tried to laugh it off, but Saki's deductions seemed to be right on the money. After all, what power would suit me better than one that lets me deceive people?
I thought I saw Nao shuffle uncomfortably in her seat for a second, but no one else seemed to catch on to it.
"Well, I think that's all there is to talk about with Sora and Mai's side of things. We should go over everything else too."
Glad of a change of subject, I listened intently as the other three recounted their series of events too. A notable discovery was that the three girls being held here were all close friends of Hana, and were kidnapped at the same time as her. That likely meant that the "teams" of cult members were groups of girls kidnapped together, and that the top floor was probably where Hana herself had been held before.
"So if we save one girl, she'll probably be able to lead us to the rest of her group…" I said aloud to myself.
"Yes, but every time we do, they'll be expecting us. We got lucky this time, but we might not have such good fortune in the future. Especially if that 「Shapeshifter」girl shows up again."
I winced at the thought. The high risk of running into powerful foes like her wasn't one I was happy to take. But the high reward of saving an entire group of kidnapped girls at once… if we played our cards right, it would be worth it.
Nao and Saki's fights had no real details of note, but it was what came after that Saki seemed particularly eager to talk about.
"Now, for the reason I summoned you all here specifically. Observe."
She rose from her feet and walked to the small fridge in the corner. From, it she produced several racks of a clear-ish cloudy liquid. One that we had seen before.
"The mind control drug…" I murmured to myself.
"It seems like they keep a lot of these on hand at once. Nao, how long does one dose last?"
"I-It depends on the dose, but it shouldn't be any more than 24 hours."
Saki grinned, and I felt like I immediately understood what she was thinking, even without her ability to transmit thoughts.
"They can't control people if we cut off their supply."
"Bingo! Saving a few girls and winning a few battles here and there is all well and good, but we have no idea how big of a threat we're really dealing with. If we wanna do some damage, we've gotta think bigger."
Disrupting their supply would deal a crushing blow to our adversaries. Though there were only a couple dozen girls missing from Toukyouto, there had been a spike of young women from across the city disappearing in the last six months or so. It was possible that they were controlling hundreds of people. If they were to suddenly lose access to the drug they were using to control them… it could be cataclysmic for them.
There was one thing I was hung up on though.
"Nao… how much does it cost to make this stuff?"
"C-cost? Umm… between the ingredients and the energy needed to produce the compound… 2000円 per dose?"
At 2,000 per dose, assuming at least a hundred doses a day, for half a year…
"They must have spent about 180 million yen! Where the hell are they getting all this money from?" A group of high school aged girls shouldn't exactly be rolling in money. That was one hell of a sum.
"Well, that brings me onto my second point, dear Sora." Putting the drug back in the fridge, she then took something off the table next to it and walked back over to us, throwing it on the ground in front of us. A folder full of documents? "It looks like our enemies have themselves a backer. A big one."
The folder was stamped with the name of a company. Akuyaku Industries.