Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Okay,” Cecilia said. She shifted on her seat and leaned towards Amber, even though they were talking over their headsets. “Explain everything.”

“There’s not much to say,” Amber said. “Jess saw something, it looked like an old bunker. You mentioned contacting the base, I think, to make sure it wasn’t some old outpost, then we flew over. Someone came out. I couldn't make out much about them. They had like, a black robe on? And they had a big rocket launcher.”

“A rocket launcher?” Jess repeated. “Like an RPG?”

What? Aren’t those games? “Uh, just a big tube? It was grey? I didn’t see much after they fired. Everything sorta exploded.”

“I’m calling this one off,” Cecilia said.

“What?” Jess said. “You can’t! There’s someone out there willing to shoot at us!”

“Yeah, and we have newbies aboard. If it was just Glasir, I’d drop us here and run over to the bunker or whatever, but it’s not just us.”

“I wouldn’t mind helping,” Evalyn said.

Victoria nodded. “Likewise.”

Jade shifted. “I wouldn’t mind, as long as we’re on the ground. My fear of falling was calming down, but mentions of rockets and mid-air explosions aren’t reassuring me much.”

“I’ll ask the other girls,” Jess said.

“I said we should go back,” Cecilia said.

“This is now a democracy,” Jess said.

Cecilia glared. “What? I thought I was team leader?”

“We’re in a US Air-Force plane, if the US military is good at anything, it’s imposing democracy on people that don’t want it. Deal with it,” Jess said. She fiddled with her headset for a bit. “Yo? Y’all hear me?”

Amber looked out and could see the girls aboard the Goofy Two. Some of them waved.

“So, our local time seer chick just told us that some punk with an RPG blew us up in a future that didn’t happen yet. Y’all wanna mess them up?”

Amber could already imagine the replies. She didn’t know Evalyn’s team well, but Cassy and Morgan would both agree, though with entirely different degrees of enthusiasm. Oli would be all in, and Emilia would probably agree too.

“I’m with Cecilia on this one,” Amber said. “But if you’re all going to head out, then I will too. We should have some sort of plan. Not just... run in like idiots.”

Cecilia rubbed at her face and said some things that Amber hoped weren’t being recorded by anything. “Fine. Let me ping base again. We’ll call this a rapid probe. And I’m calling in some infantry support to someplace nearby. God, we are not equipped for this.”

Everything started happening quickly after that. The two Blackhawks moved on, circled around, then dipped down behind a line of hills maybe ten miles from where Amber remembered the bunker being.

The helicopters touched down. Jess wanted to drop, but Cecilia nixed the idea since teams Svalinn and Helskor weren’t trained for that. As soon as everyone was on the ground and cleared of the rotors, the Black Hawks rose back up and moved away.

“They’ll be on a holding pattern,” Cecilia said. “We can call in an airstrike whenever, which is a nice bonus.”

“Yo! Did you miss me?” Cassy asked as she skipped over.

“Hey,” Amber said. Jade’s reply was a quick nod. “Did you have fun?”

“Hell yeah! Spent the whole time chatting with M and M and annoying Morgan.”

M and M? Oh, Margaret and Mary, right. “That sounds... kind of awful, actually. Glad I was with Jade the whole time.”

“Girls,” Cecilia called out. “Since I don’t want any of you dying, I’d appreciate it if you paid some attention.” She scraped a foot across the ground, then knelt down and pressed her finger into the dirt. “We’re about here. The bunker is around here. That’s a good eight miles away if we move in a straight line. We’re in a heavily wooded area. There is no moving in straight lines. We can’t afford to get lost either. So, we’re all going to turn on our phone’s tracking. Glasir will take point, Svalinn and Helskor will take the right and left flanks respectively.”

Amber nodded along.

“It is now... five twenty. That gives us an hour and forty minutes until seven. We cannot be in the woods at seven. No exceptions, no ifs ands or buts. If I see that we won’t make it to the bunker with at least an hour to spare on arrival, I’m turning us around and calling in the Black Hawks, RPGs be damned.”

“You don’t want to miss supper time?” Cassy asked.

“Seventh Hour Men,” Cecilia said in a tone that brooked no argument. “We don’t mess with them unless it’s a damned emergency. The usual method of dealing with one of those involves heavy artillery and grid coordinates.”

Cassy raised her hands, surrendering before Cecilia’s glare. “Alright, if you say so.”

“I do. We’re moving out now. Glasir’s going to take the brunt of the fighting. Stay out of it if you can. Do both teams have ranged combattants?”

Evalyn nodded. “I have shadow magic. Margaret has throwing knives and can teleport,” she said.

“I’ve got throwing knives too,” Amber said. “I think that’s it for range though.”

“The rest of Svalinn is mostly melee-ranged,” Morgan confirmed. “Cassy might be able to assist at range, but I don’t trust her accuracy yet.”

“Hmph,” Cassy replied, but she didn’t disagree.

“Alright. Support your ranged attackers, stay out of the heavy fighting. Keep an eye on your magic usage, you don’t want to go OOM mid-fight. We don’t have a dedicated healer, do we?”

“Amber,” Morgan said.

“Barely,” Amber replied. “It’s less healing, more... time stuff.”

“Right,” Cecilia said. She stood up and stretched. “We’re going to be running until we’re closer. Emilia, I’m trusting your senses on this one. Anyone here have extra senses?”

“I can fly,” Cassy said. ”That’s like, a sense of coolness, right?”

Cecilia thought on it for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t think having anyone in the air is a good idea when they’ve already proven they can take out aerial targets. You’d be turned to giblets if a rocket hit you.”

“Hey, I’m pretty flexible in the air,” Cassy said.

“That was a negative,” Cecilia said. “Anyone else?”

“I can sense shadows, but that’s entirely useless in a place like a forest,” Evalyn said. “Sorry.”

“That’s fine. Keep your ears peeled and your eyes opened. Let’s go!”

Cecilia took off at a quick jog, and within a second, all of team Glasir was behind her. It took a couple more for the other two teams to get into gear and start running after them. We are so not ready for this.

They dove into the woods, and Amber encountered the first problem. These weren’t the nice manicured forests she’d visited before, but a real, unclaimed territory. There were bushes everywhere, fallen trees blocking paths and the terrain was entirely uneven.

Team Glasir were having an easy time of it, bouncing from tree to tree and diving over bushes as if they weren’t even a challenge.

Amber and her teammates, on the other hand, broke apart their little formation at the first tree as half went one way and the others went the other.

“Dammit,” Amber swore.

A glance to the side showed team Helskor with the same issue, though Evalyn was calling out commands and soon they were running single-file.

“Morgan, take the lead. Try to go around anything too complicated. I’ll be at the very back. Jade, get behind Morgan, Cassy behind her.”

They formed up a little. It wasn’t perfect, but with Morgan finding an easier path ahead, it wasn’t that bad. The more experienced girl was quick to slice bushes apart with her sword and she didn’t run nearly as fast as Amber suspected she could, allowing the others to keep pace.

The run was... not exhausting. It was a jog, the sort she’d done plenty of times for PE class and before soccer practice. It got her blood pumping as she felt herself de-stressing a bit, even as her mind raced over what they could be running into, but she knew that she could push herself a whole lot harder.

Cassy, of course, was just flying along, and Jade was stumbling after Morgan, the shorter girl proving to be a bit clumsy, but still keeping up without complaint.

Sooner than Amber would have expected, Cecilia raised an arm and the entire group slowed to a stop. “It’s just ahead,” she said once everyone was caught up. “Sense anything?” she asked Emilia.

The shy girl shook her head.

“Okay then,” Cecilia said. “We know there’s at least one of them, and they have military-grade equipment. Probably the ability to use it well too, so either a human, or one of the near-human monsters. Or someone possessed.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Cassy said.

“It isn’t,” Cecilia confirmed. “Glasir is going in hard and fast. We’ll try to take them out without killing anyone. So while we’ll be moving fast, we’ll be holding back our blows. Jess, you’re on the left, Em on the right.”

Both girls nodded.

“Oli and I are taking the middle route. We clear the surroundings, then see about hitting the bunker itself. No sense in rushing in. got it?”

“Got it,” Amber said. The others gave their own terse agreements.

“Okay then,” Cecilia said. She pulled out her phone and tapped a few things. “Signal’s fine out here. We’re kind of ridiculously close to the base... And sent. Let’s do this.”

They continued into the forest. Amber tried to pay more attention even as the rising tension formed a ball in her gut. I’m not ready for this kind of thing.

Birds sang, chirping and whistling, and she jumped when she saw a deer in the distance hopping away. The trees hid squirrels and chipmunks who stared with chubby cheeks as the group of magical girls ran past.

Cassy slowed down a little to hover next to Amber. Not that she had to slow down much, they were running much closer together now. “I’ve been wondering,” she asked.

“Yes?” Amber asked.

“What’s a group of magical girls called? Like not us. We’re four, so it’s a team, but what’s a bigger amount called? A bunch?”

“What?” Amber asked. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Is it important?”

“A bit? What if we want to intimidate someone. ‘Don’t mess around, there’s a whole bunch of us here.’ But what if a group’s called like, a murder?”

“That’s crows,” Jade said.

“I look good in black too,” Cassy replied.

“I heard troupe,” Morgan said.

Cassy scoffed. “No, that sounds stupid. Like we’re clowns.”

“What about a gaggle?” Jade asked.

“A gossip, more-likely,” Amber muttered.

Cassy giggled. “Oh, a gossip of magical girls! I like it.”

“If it’s a small group, it’s a friendship of magical girls,” Jade said.

“That’s cute,” Amber said. Is Cassy trying to distract us on purpose so that we don’t get nervous? Is... she smart enough to do something like that?

“Quiet,” Morgan said.

Ahead of them, through the trees and at the bottom of a dip in the landscape, was a building. Grey stone walls, with sides covered in a smattering of ivy and climbing vines, formed a stubby building. Part of it rose up a little higher, with a door in that higher section.

Amber realized that what she’d seen from the Black Hawk wasn’t someone stepping out of the building and into the forest, but someone stepping out onto a greenery-covered roof.

Team Glasir split, Cecilia and Oli jumping out ahead of the others. The air whistled as they flew towards the upper section of the building.

Someone jumped out to meet them in mid air.

Amber couldn’t have followed the action just a week ago. As it was, things happened so fast she almost missed it. Cecilia slashed out with a sword and it was parried by another blade in the hands of a black-clad figure. Oli flipped over to kick them in the back, but they spun around and ducked under the blow, all in mid-air while falling.

The black-robed figure landed right in front of team Svalinn. “Idiots,” they hissed a moment before shooting out towards Amber’s team sword-point first.

***