After spending some drugs to get her new meat bag patched up and clothed, Alex dragged him to get some food. The reason being, the boy’s stomach was growling fearsomely. Fei wasn’t with them anymore, since the mute boy was now able to move on his own.

Alex sat across, watching the mute boy attack the tasteless meatloaf in front of him, drowning the thing in ketchup. She watched silently, her mind racing thinking of what to do with this man.

As the teacher stated ,she had saved his life and, henceforth, he was now her property.. Inwardly, she rather not deal with a burden, but she brought this upon herself. The least she could do now was to see it through.

“So… You got a name?”

The boy stopped eating his food and looked up at Alex. His bright green eyes shining through his black hair made him look like a hobo in her eyes. The boy put down his fork and then pointed at his mouth and rolled his eyes.

Then Alex remembered the boy couldn’t speak, “Oh, right... One second, I have an idea.”

Walking over to the counter, she asked if she could have a pen and notebook. The Chief nodded to her request and handed over the items. Taking the items back to the table, she passed them to the boy who was looking at her with curiosity.

“You know how to write?”

The boy shook his head in response.

“Then write me your name.”

The boy moved his plate away... with a lot of reluctance in his eyes. Parting with the food must've been though. Grabbing the pen, he began to write down onto the notebook. Finishing writing, he held up the notebook for Alex to see.

“Sial.”

When he held it up, he had a bitter expression plastered on his face.

“What’s wrong? You seem pained, did the healing not go correctly?”

Shaking his head slightly, he started to write again on his pad.

“My name means Unlucky.”

She really wanted to laugh at his response, but kept a straight face somehow. Her own name was a sore spot.

Looking him in the eye, she asked, “So, can you cook?”

Sial went back to the paper and replied, “No.”

“Clean?”

Moving his notepad shook the reply, “No.”

“Make drugs?"

“No.”

Alex kept asking questions to the youth, and found that he really didn’t know how to do anything of value. It kind of gave her a headache looking at this boy, he was completely worthless, knowing no good or bad life skills.

Finally, she had enough, “What can you do?!”

Alex stood up and blurted out her response without thinking. She soon registered what she said, and she felt a bit sorry for yelling at him. Oh, well, she could just hand him off to sugar to use, she had a good head on her shoulders.

Just as she was thinking of what to do with him, the boy started to scratch into his paper. Alex waited for the boy to have some useless skills that she couldn’t use, she had already given up on the man before her.

With a proud look on his face, Sial lifted up his notepad before Alex. Only one word was placed on that page full of emotion and pride.

“Fight.”

Alex read the message and started to laugh out loud, “Are you kidding me? That’s your only skill? You do know you’re speaking to a magical girl, right? You know the people with supernatural powers right? What can you do against that with just a mortal's power?”

Maybe this boy could fight really well in the regular world, but this wasn’t that world, this was a world ruled by the magical girls. At this point, Alex had made up her mind to hand him off to some village whenever she could.

As a matter of fact, she wasn’t even that strong of a magical girl to begin with, and could definitely not protect someone so weak. Having something that others didn’t would provoke people to come after her and try to steal what was hers. If this boy gave no benefit, then there was no point keeping him around. As a better alternative, she could release him, or give him to Sugar.

Making up her mind, she looked up at the boy to see him holding up his notepad. His eyes were shining in a boyish light that was proud of himself. It was hard to look him in the eyes since they were so bright. His beamed with the will to live, to take his fate within his hands and not die a dog's death.

Alex couldn’t help, but think of this man as similar to her current self. Before becoming a magical girl, she was someone that passed through the world of normalcy as an extra, a nobody that let time pass by.

While thinking this, she noticed that Sial was holding up the notebook, and she decided to read it carefully.

“I know how to fight well.”

“Fuck it. Why not give you a shot. Come, we're going to go fight.”

Scratching more into the notebook, the boy replied as he tilted his head, “Whom?”

She rolled her eyes, “Me, duh.”

...

Standing at the bottom floor of the dorm, Alex and Sial stood, facing each other in the ring. Sial and Alex were in workout clothes. Thankfully, the dorm had sets for males as well. Although she had to pay a little of her drug stash to buy them.. but she didn't really mind.

Writing this notebook once again, Sial held it up for Alex to see, “Are you sure? I don’t know how to hold back.”

Alex gave a small chuckle, “Heh? I'm a magical girl, I don't break that easily. And come at me with full force!”

“If you insist.”

Suddenly, they turned around. The boy stored the pen and pad away and started to change. Before, he felt harmless to Alex. But now she could feel his aura on the rise. In an instant, she felt like she was facing a monster. The boy kicked the ground and jumped into the air doing a flip, sending his foot smashing down at the direction of Alex’s forehead.

It took a second for the numbers to react to such a fast movement. Thanks to that, Alex was late to react so she couldn't counter-attack. The only thing she could do was fall back and draw distance. Unfortunately for her, though, Sial wasn’t pulling his punches.

Following up , he used his kicking foot to launch himself forward, sending his fist straight for Alex's throat, intending to crush it. Once again ,Alex was annoyed that her numbers weren't catching up to his movements, as if they were slowed by quicksand.

She, on instinct, dropped to the ground to avoid his fist, only to be surprised, as his knee was smashing straight towards her face. Using her forearms to block, she could feel the force behind the attack.

Sial's attacks were made to maim and kill. She could feel that he was dead serious about killing her. Fearing for her life, she backed off and tried to transform into her magical girl form. As she tried to speak the chant, Sial was still not pulling his punches.

His once warm eyes held a coldness to them—as for Alex's, those were life-dead—set on not allowing her to transform. Although her movements were delayed, and with Sial, distractions came one after another, after a few minutes of fighting she was finally able to transform.

Now that she was in her magical girl form, the delay had lessened, but it was still there, which greatly confused her. She started to try to study his movements with her numbers, only to be annoyed that it wasn't working.

It seemed it couldn’t process what the boy was doing as his movements increased with each passing second. Since the start of the fight, he had doubled the speed of his attacks, that kept Alex on the backfoot even in her magical girl form.

Although now she could somewhat handle it, thanks to her transformation, and its increase in her body's power. Alas, even with her transformation, Sial was getting even faster, making her wonder if he was even human.

At the five minute mark, she was once again having trouble keeping up with the boy. When the seven and a half minute mark passed, she was sweating bullets, while the boy was as cold as ice.

“What is this power?!” thought Alex, as she tried to fight back against Sial's endless torrent of attacks.

With a bitter expression, Alex knew at this point she was no match for this boy, “I concede!”

A fist that was an inch away from her throat stopped, the boy retreated, the aura of a beast vanished, and his happy go lucky attitude returned. She felt her headache returning when she saw the boy's excited expression, as he started to write in his notebook.

“See?! I fight well!”

With a sigh, Alex held her aching forehead and waved the boy off.

“Yah, yah... you're a pretty good fighter. Kicked my ass pretty good, what fighting style is that?”

Sial's expression saddened at Alex’s response, but picked right back up when she asked about his fighting style.

“The fire style of the elemental branch of fighting.”

Taking her hand off her forehead, she read what he wrote and frowned.

“What is that? I’ve never heard of it.”

Sial put his pen to paper, only to stop midway in the air. Alex watched his somber expression and his stiff actions, as he scratched out each letter one by one and she could see the pain gushing out from his eyes.

He sighed and turned the notebook back to Alex.

“I learned my art through my master, before she was killed.”

“Killed by who?”

Alex watched his expression turn from pain, to fury, as tears collected around his eyes. She could see the trembling of his hand as he wrote out the message character by character. Turning it for Alex to see that his once neat writing was now shaky and full of mistakes. Yet, Alex could make out the writing reading it word by word. It said,

“A magical girl in red clothing!”

If the boy could scream, she was pretty sure he would be in agony; his body could only tremble in hatred, losing his happy go lucky demeanor. She figured that it wouldn’t be good to keep testing the boy like this, and decided to call it a day.

“Come on, let's turn in for the day, we’ll pick it up again tomorrow.”

The boy just stood there, looking at his hands, almost hollowed. Since he was acting like this, she frowned and slapped his face. The impact caused him to stir from his thoughts and look at Alex confused.

“If you want revenge, then become stronger, Sial! Do you think you can kill a magical girl in your state? You’re dreaming! In fact, if you train me in your art, I’ll help you seek revenge. Now come!”

He followed behind her numbly, all the way to the servant quarters where he would be staying.

“Remember, we will be training once again tomorrow, so prepare yourself.”

He merely nodded his head and went into his quarters, not writing another word. Alex turned around and made her way to her room, as thoughts rushed through her head.

“Just what was that combat art? Why couldn’t my numbers read it?

Her thoughts were swimming about the boy's strange fighting style, full of killing intent that she

couldn’t read well with the numbers.

How did something like that come into existence? Who was this master Sial learned from? Was she a magical girl as well? But why teach a mortal how to fight like that?

The more she thought about it, the more she seemed that the truth was something pretty amazing. She could only dig into it by asking Sial about it in detail later, but for now, she needed something to drink and pass out in her bed.

Rubbing her sore shoulders, she sighed, I’ll think about this a bit more tomorrow.