Chapter Twenty-Four

Amber glared at the dummy. It was wobbling a little, tipping back and forth and wasting off excess energy with every shift. Six knives were planted in its chest, the last still trembling a little.

“Not too bad,” Morgan said.

Looking away from the target, Morgan took in her team. Jade was with Wendy, the smaller girl having abandoned practicing with her dummy to train with Wendy. Their senior was slowly going through the motions of some sort of martial art thing while Jade watched.

Cassy was frowning at three dummies which were currently laying on the floor. She had her broom in both hands, holding it as if it was a baseball bat instead of a cleaning tool.

“My aim’s a bit off,” Amber said. She pointed to the dummy which was only a few meters ahead. “I was aiming for the head with that last one.”

Morgan eyed the rather spread out way her knives had hit. Amber was a little disappointed in herself. She expected to be better at using her magic-given weapons.

“Did you ever use throwing knives before?” Morgan asked.

“No,” Amber said.

Morgan shrugged. “You hit six out of six throws, point-first, with under an hour’s practice. That’s better than you’d expect from anyone normal.”

“But we’re not normal,” Amber said.

“That’s true,” Morgan. “Still, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to practice. Your combat instincts will give you a great initial short-cut, but they’re not everything. You need to refine them, see how to act in different situations and repeat your practice until acting becomes second nature.”

Amber nodded. It makes sense, I guess. We get a boost, but not everything is given to us on a silver platter. If that was the case, we wouldn’t need the academy. “I’m trying to come up with different things,” Amber said as she reached towards her knives. She could kind of feel them, like knowing where her hands were even with her eyes closed.

A tug at her power and the knived flew backwards, one after the other, and Amber caught them out of the air.

Morgan tilted her head a little. “That wasn’t telekinesis... did you rewind them?”

Amber nodded. “Yep, back to where they were before. Or, nearly, I can kind of cut it off when I grab them.” She wiggled her hands, three knives pinched in each. “Might be handy.”

“I can imagine, yes. But won’t that limit your movement if the knives go right back to where you were?”

“Maybe. I don’t think they’ll return to me, so... yeah, basically. I think I could get them to return to me? Maybe? Until I figure that out. it does mean that I can basically un-throw a knife, maybe hit someone from a strange angle.” Amber tucked her knives away except for one. “Look, at the bottom of the handle? There’s this sharp bit.”

She opened her hand to show one off. The blade was double-edged and maybe four inches long, almost leaf-shaped, with a handle that was just big enough for her hand to wrap around. The pommel continued the shape of the blade, ending in a stubby curved edge that was still fairly sharp.

Morgan took the knife and expertly flipped it around. “Oh, I see. That’s clever. You’ll need to keep in mind where your enemies are, and if they’re travelling through a space where your knife was. When they come back, they flip the same way, right?”

“Yeah,” Amber said. “At least, I think.”

“And if there’s something in the way, what happens to it if the knife hits it while rewinding?”

Amber shrugged. “I don’t know. Want to move a second dummy over, we could try it.”

Morgan got a second dummy from the back of the room. One of the walls was actually a sliding door with some equipment stored behind it. Amber flung her knife to the dummy ahead of her, then waited until Morgan placed a dummy in between her and her target. “Go ahead,” Morgan called as she stepped back.

Amber focused, then twitched her power.

The knife embedded into the dummy flew backwards towards her, then smacked into the dummy before her. The dummy tipped a little, but held in place.

“Looks like it just flew as hard as you first threw it, but backwards,” Morgan said. “Not too bad. Might be useful for a sort of trick-shot with someone who doesn’t expect it.”

Amber nodded. “Cool. I can throw the knife without spinning it too, but it doesn’t feel as good. And I can just, uh.” She squinted a little and tapped into her magic again. Less so than when trying to rewind the knife, but still a little chunk of her magic left her.

Her knife appeared in her hand without much fanfare.

“Oh, you can snap it back to your position,” Morgan said. She looked at the dummy’s back and nodded. “Leaves a nice gouge too. Might be good for monsters that can bleed. Any issues with your position when you do that?”

“Uh, no? Doesn’t feel like it,” Amber said. “It just returns to me.”

“So similar to resummoning a weapon then,” Morgan said. “That’s a trick you need to learn eventually.”

To demonstrate, she summoned her rapier and casually flung it to the side. The tip sunk into the farthest dummy’s head almost hard enough to tip it backwards.

Morgan sliced her arm to the side, and her sword disappeared in a green flash and reappeared in her hand. “Like that.”

“Neat,” Amber said. “Everyone can do that?”

Morgan nodded. “Pretty much. Some magicals have strange weapons though. Our teammates foremost among those, I think.” She pointedly looked over to the side where Cassy was whaling her broom at a dummy.

“Right,” Amber said. “We’re going to have the find, um, creative ways to work together, I think.”

Morgan chuckled. “Let’s hope our first deployment isn’t too soon.”

“What’s that like?” Amber asked.

“For a new team? We’ll probably just be sent out to kill some pixies or to clear out some rodents in town.”

“Rodents, like mice?” Amber asked.

“Nah, Agartha has these huge, really aggressive rats. Class One threats, if barely. They can be taken out with a shovel, but they’re still dangerous for normal people when they swarm.”

“Wow. I can’t wait to go rat-hunting,” Amber deadpanned.

Morgan’s lips twitched just a little. She turned away from Amber and looked towards the others. “What time is it?”

“Two fifty-seven,” Amber said.

The blond clapped her hands. “Alright everyone, I think that’s it for today.”

“Alright!” Cassy cheered.

“For our next class, I think we should do some actual combat training,” Morgan said. “It’ll be good to put everyone through their paces, see what we can do, even if it’s just against each-other.”

Wendy snapped a salute. “I’ll get us some space on a training field,” she said. “Can you remind me to do that?” she asked to the side.

Amber had almost forgotten the Seelie watching over them. The cat-like creature nodded. “We can do that,” it said, both tails twitching behind it.

Amber closed her eyes and focused a bit, her costume disappearing with a blink and leaving her in her school uniform. When she reopened her eyes, Morgan had done the same, and her teammates soon followed her example. “So, lunch?” she asked.

Team Svalinn said good-bye to Wendy, who seemed quite pleased with herself, and they filed out of the building and onto the streets of Norumbega Academy. “So, we just eat, then do nothing again?” Cassy asked as she sat on her broom again. “That’s kinda boring.”

“We could go shopping again,” Jade tried.

“We did that already, you can only do so much before it gets boring,” Cassy said. Her broom sped up a little and she hovered over to Morgan’s side. “Hey, are you still doing detective stuff?”

“Detective stuff?” Morgan asked.

“Yeah, with the explosion thing? Bet we’d be real popular if we found the pink-haired bitch,” Cassy said.

“Wouldn’t that be too much work for you?” Morgan asked.

Cassy glared over to Morgan. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Girls,” Amber said. “Please, we don’t need drama.”

“She’s the one that started it,” Cassy said, a finger pointing right at Morgan. She bounced off her broom and started walking next to them. “But I can be the better girl here. What do you guys want to do? Because spending the night on shitty Netflix isn’t what I had in mind when I became a magical girl.”

Morgan hesitated, then sighed. “Sorry, I suppose. And there are a few things to do. Depends on what you want to focus on. There’s training...”

“Nah,” Cassy said.

Morgan rolled her eyes and Amber had to hold back a laugh.

“We might do some training a few days a week,” Jade said. “I don’t mind studying. And Wendy said that I should practice some martial arts, since I don’t have a weapon-weapon.”

“That’s a good idea,” Morgan said. “Maybe three days a week we can spend a few hours at the gym and track, get into better shape.”

“That sounds awful,” Cassy said.

“I don’t mind it,” Amber said.

Cassy slumped. “This is worse than being bored. There has to be something to do here, c’mon!”

“We could join a club together,” Morgan said. “Last year...” She shook her head. “It’s best when a whole team joins a club as a group. It sounds stupid, but more time spent working together helps, a lot.”

“That sounds nice,” Jade said. “What kind of clubs are there? Are they student-organized?”

“There are martial-arts clubs, some for weapons training. The kendo club and the HEMA clubs are usually pretty busy.”

“HEMA?” Amber asked. “Like... European swords?”

“That’s the one, yeah,” Morgan said. “I participated a bit last year. Good training.”

“No!” Cassy said. “Not more training. We need to do something fun. Fun!”

Morgan pulled her phone out, and started tapping away at the screen. She holds her phone like an old lady. Tapping with her index instead of using her thumbs.

“There’s... dancing, drama, arts and crafts, there’s a charity club too,” Morgan said. “There aren’t that many of them active yet.”

“There aren’t that many students,” Amber said. “There’s what, less than two-hundred? If there are ten people per club, that’s just twenty clubs, and I bet there are plenty of girls that aren’t in any of them.”

“Some girls are in two or three,” Morgan said. “It’s pretty easy to start one. You’ll see new ones pop up during the year, and some close as soon as the girls who really ran it leave.” Morgan wiggled her phone. “The charity club is an older one. They’re pretty popular.”

“That sounds hyper-boring,” Cassy whined. “Is there a flight club?”

Morgan shook her head while scrolling down, then her eyebrows shot up. “There is.”

“Wait, really?” Cassy asked. “Hell yeah, let’s join that.”

“One second,” Morgan said as she tapped something. “It’s... one of the clubs that’s partially run by the army.”

“Interest dropping,” Cassy said.

“It teaches you how to pilot helicopters and small rotary-engine, and prop planes, and drones,” Morgan said.

“Interest rising exponentially!” Cassy cheered. “That sounds rad!”

“I don’t think they'd actually let you fly anything like that solo,” Morgan said. “It looks like it’s mostly sims and you get to ride with some pilots during training flights and such.”

“Still kinda cool,” Cassy said. “I always dreamed of carpet bombing a forest.”

“You have some pretty unique dreams,” Amber said.

“I’m a unique kind of girl. Is there a fashion club too? I need my flight-suit to match my hair.”

Jade shook her head. “I think the flight club might be neat, but I’m not too keen on fashion. Is there a knitting club?”

Cassy looked at Jade as if she had turned into an alien.

“I think the flight club idea is cool,” Amber agreed. “We can join more than one, right?”

“Of course,” Morgan said.

“Then maybe we do that one together, and do one other apart? Or in twos? Just to try things out until we find something fun,” Amber said.

“That sounds fair,” Morgan said.

Amber grinned. “Right, now let’s please get to lunch, I’m famished.”

***