Of all the times he could have chosen to spill the secret that I had kept hidden since the beginning, he chose now.
No, that's exactly why he chose now. To break my spirit at this crucial moment. To force me to relive that day from eight years ago, as he slowly throttled the woman I loved in front of me.
And I was helpless to stop it. Of course I was. I was always helpless. I was helpless eight years before, and I was helpless in that moment too.
My life had come to an end. Not only had I been completely outmanoeuvred, but the friends I cherished now knew I had been hiding this from them the whole time.
I was sure my betrayal would never be forgiven, and it crushed me.
'Don't panic. I have a plan.'
As if reading my very mind (which I realised was definitely a possibility), Saki snapped me out of my broken state. She calmly and concisely explained her idea, exactly as she would normally. In fact, it almost seemed she hadn't heard what the Director had said at all.
Rising to my feet, I wiped the hapless look off of my face and stared down the man whose very purpose was to ruin my life.
"You're right. I'm the same useless, helpless coward I was eight years ago. I can't do a damn thing on my own. But now? I'm not on my own."
With the grace of a falcon and the force of an eagle, Nao descended from the heavens and snatched Mai from the Director's hands. She had used his gloating as an opportunity to take flight once again, and that came round to bite him in the ass.
"Sora, now!" As Nao flew Mai to safety, she gave me my cue to attack without relent.
Scrambling to recover from the shock of Amai's rescue, the Director threw a hasty magic spear at me, our bodies just metres apart. Usually, I'd have been killed on the spot, but the spear shattered to a fine mist on contact with Nao's protective barrier.
This was was checkmate.
From this range there was nothing he could do to protect himself from the brutal left hook connecting with his jaw. Followed swiftly by a right hook of near equal power. I landed strike after strike with no reprieve, rolling my body like Jack Dempsey as I battered his face with all the righteous fury my fists could deliver.
After sustaining a dozen strikes in a row, he desperately put distance between us and attempted to summon one final magic spear as a last ditch defence.
I focused everything I had on him. Every neuron in my brain dedicated to my will to defeat this man here and now.
And, as if by a miracle of God, something happened.
As he prepared to fire off his last attack, the Director seemed to panic. To lose all coordination. In fact, his eyes even seemed to glaze over.
He was blind.
The perfect opportunity presented itself. And I closed out the fight with a left straight punch that made the ground tremble beneath our feet.
The Director was sent flying across our makeshift arena, landing on his back some twenty metres away. It would have killed a regular man.
Though I had never seen it happen before, I instantaneously realised the event that had taken place. 「The Illusionist」manifested a new power in my time of greatest need. It didn't just trick his senses. It momentarily stripped him of them entirely.
Thank God it had worked, too. There wasn't an ounce of magic left in my body after using it.
As I trudged my exhausted body over to where the Director lay, the friends I had fought so desperately to protect joined me at my side.
"Your game is over, Director. You're gonna answer for your crimes."
The four of us stood over the somehow still conscious man, who looked up at us with… reverence?
"So, this is the real deal. The true strength of divine power."
"True strength? What are you muttering about?"
Despite having just received the beating of a lifetime, the director's usually unemotive face had broken out into glee.
"You four… you're unlike those pale imitations. You have the ability to grow and evolve, while they remain stuck in a static state. Truly, I feel blessed to have seen it with my own eyes."
His ramblings seemed like utter nonsense, but considering we had thought that before when he monologued about heaven and hell, I wasn't about to write it off as meaningless.
"Pale imitations… You're talking about the magical girls, aren't you?"
"Precisely, Miss Sugi. Their neutered power could never stand up to the real thing."
"Neutered? What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, is it not obvious? Their power, it's incomplete."
Incomplete? Considering one of them alone had almost killed two of us before, I would say their power felt pretty complete to me.
"Talk. What do you mean incomplete?" Saki grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and practically spat her question at him. It seemed like all four of us had had enough of his shit.
"I was the one who discovered the wonderful liquid that allows one to manifest magical power. After I found out about the divine, I discovered that there was a way to synthesise the source of their power. However, for my purposes, it had a great downside: a direct connection between the user and God."
A direct connection…
"So that's why we heard that voice when we awakened?" I asked
"Precisely, Mr Nomimoto. God is the source of all divine power, and for a human to wield it, they had to establish a connection with Him. So I set out to sever that connection." The look in his eyes was almost nostalgic. "I discovered two methods. The first did not sever the connection, but interrupted it. In doing so, it also hijacked the user's higher brain function."
"Hijacked their brain… the kidnapped girls?! The ones you were turning into slave soldiers?"
"Indeed, Mr Nomimoto. So long as that drug remained in their system, they would be unable to formulate a link with God." Thinking back on it, Hana seemed to grow significantly stronger than when she was a cult member. "However, an army cannot be run by slaves alone. I required ringleaders. A group of exceptional people for the public and the soldiers to rally behind. So I fell back to my other option. To sever their link with God entirely."
"The magical girls… so that's why you had them parade around as heroes."
"You are correct, Miss Tachibana. I came to them with an offer. Fame, power, and a place in the annals of history, if they simply followed me lead. They took it blindly. And with their connection to God severed, they were even given the freedom to choose their own power, unrestricted by his meddling. Unfortunately, however, this caused their growth to stagnate. Unlike you, who carry near infinite potential as apostles of God, they are limited by their own humanity."
The things he was saying seemed absurd, but they fit too well with what we knew. I was forced to believe they were telling the truth.
"So this second method… this severing of the connection to God… how did you achieve it?" Saki asked, though it didn't sound like she truly wanted the answer.
"Quite simple, really. I infused the solution with demon blood."
"I think I've heard all I needed to hear from you, old timer."
As the four of us recoiled in shock at the Director's confession, a new party seemed to appear out of nowhere. One who was once again wearing my face. 「Shapeshifter」.
"Kagami?! You're here?!" For the first since we arrived, the Director seemed genuinely fearful.
"I thought it was suspicious that you told us to stay behind, so I shapeshifted into a fly and followed you here."
"You… you…"
"Stow it. I knew exactly why you didn't want us to hear all this now. Siding with hell? Injecting us with demon blood? You never told us a damn thing about all that."
Kagami's voice sounded calm, but her disposition showed how just how livid she truly was.
"Y-you have to understand, I truly did intend to tell you eventually! I-I-I-I just had other things to do first!"
"Calm down, old timer, I ain't here to kill you. I'm sure you'll hate rotting behind bars more anyway. But mark my words, you son of a bitch. If you ever worm your way out of there, my crew are gonna make sure you never see the light of day again. You got it?"
"Y-y-y-yes, Miss Kagami!"
I could hardly believe my eyes. The man who had just endured a colossal beating with a smile on his face was now cowering in fear from a single teenage girl. Just how scary was this psychopathic girl?
"I'm sure you four have this handled. I've no reason to fight you today."
"Kagami, wait!" Just as she turned to leave, I instinctively called out to her. Even I'm not sure why.
"Hmm? Spit it out."
"Wh…where will you go?"
"I'll talk to the girls about it, but I expect we have no choice but to join up with the legions of hell. We've got demon blood in our veins after all."
"But you're still h-!"
"Human? After the things I've done, you think I still have my humanity left?" I was unable to answer her question. Though I suppose my silence likely spoke for itself. "I assumed as much. This won't be the last time we meet, Shin Nomimoto. You and I… we're mirror images, after all."
"Wai-!" Before I could get a final word in, Kagami disappeared completely, likely shape shifting to something too small to see.
'You and I… we're mirror images after all.'
Those words lingered with me. It was a long time before I truly knew what she meant.
But that just left one final port of call for that day's events.
"Time we took this bastard to face justice." I said, as we all turned our attention back to the snivelling, pathetic man in front of us.