The next day, Alex opened her bloodshot eyes and stared at the ceiling, listlessly. Her body still ached from all the beatings she got. How many bones had she broken on the way here? She remembered that she had gotten two fractures and ten clean broken bones. Yet none of these mattered.

Only the major injuries were healed by Incus, not the scrapes and bruises covering her body. Every time she tried to move in the bed, her body had stabbing pain, it even hurt to breathe. All the pain in the world could not stop her body twitching in anger, that she failed to contain throughout the night. She didn’t have a minute of sleep. She raised her hand above her head. Clenched her fist hard to make a wave of stabbing pain run through her body. She needed all the help to gather her rampant thoughts.

Just thinking about that tasteless meal made her want to gag and scream about the injustice that meal caused her. That wasn’t meatloaf, it was just a tasteless sacrilege that shouldn’t exist in the world. It was an unspeakable crime against the meat kind, one that couldn’t be pardoned, couldn’t be forgiven.

She went to her trunk and pulled out her issued workout clothes and brought them along. Honestly, she had wanted to stay in bed and wait for everyone else to get up, the only thing driving her was to make C-rank. The first step towards gathering any kind of power, as well as access to meat tasting better than horseshit.

C-Rank Magical Girls could enjoy food with taste. As one climbed in ranks, every part of their life was becoming better than in the previous one. Others here might be fine with eating tasteless food, but she was not. To eat some good meatloaf after so long was Alex’s additional drive to get out and train.

Waking up Fei, who was immersed in a dream, Alex asked her if there was any place to train. She responded that there were training facilities for D-rank and they were your average gym. There was also a training facility in the basement underneath that the teachers said they could use.

So, instead of heading out for a run at 5 A.M., she walked to the changing room to take a shower, as well as change her clothes and bandages. Strapping her machete to the back of her belt, and her badge back onto her clothes, she headed forth.

While walking down the flight of stairs, she tried to mess with her power. Like before, when she was in the jungle getting her ass beat. She had learned painfully that her power so far dealt with numbers and probability, and when she transformed into her Magical Girl Form she got a slight physical buff.

If you compared it to the monsters she fought, she realized and saw it was at the bottom of the barrel. Before she headed off to sleep, she figured out that her useless ability had some level of redemption, if she could call it that.

Training.

During every fight she had gotten into or watched, the numbers floating were collected as the data inside her head. If she thought about it and tried to bring it to bare, she could enter a trance and then fight the shadow she watched. The only problem is that for each strike she took from the shadow, she would feel the feedback of each painful strike against her.

If it didn’t have that annoying drawback, it would be a perfect ability to train with. Messing with her ability, she looked at it and really wished that she could make a training regime with it.

As if answering her thoughts, numbers and projections filled her mind at high speed, making her stumble and almost fall down the stairs. There was a slight pain in her head, so she sat down and waited for the numbers to settle.

Images were forming in front of her that turned green or red. Those that were green were thrown into a pile while those with red were discarded. The sorting finished quite quickly, leaving the green in a pile before it too was sorted again.

This time the pile of green turned to the colors of yellow, red and white. Like before, red was thrown away again, and those of the same color merged together. This sort went on longer and this pain that was once something minor turned into a throbbing ache.

After about a minute, her headache subsided, and two colors had turned into crystals that floated in her mind. Curiously she focused on the yellow crystal, her attention caused the crystal to expand. She looked closely at it. When she did, information flowed into her mind like a fresh memory.

It took her some time to understand that this was a physical training program meant to get her body in shape. Not only in shape, as in fact it was a full crash course with a goal of raising her ability to that of an expert fighter. Excited, she wondered how far it went and tried to see, only to find a wall that said 'not enough information collected'.

“Figures... Since it’s pulling from my brain it won’t be able to improve the plan. What about the other crystal?”

Moving her attention to the White crystal, the information that came to her was on how to improve her magical girl transformation. The information was quite sparse, with very little information she gained from history class, but there was something to hold onto.

Magical Girl Transformations were based on a few things; their power, the clothing they wore, and their weapon. If one took, for example, a set of plain everyday clothes as a base for magical girl clothes, then compared the result to clothes made out of a high-grade monster. The power gap between the two would be vast.

Finally, the weapon was something she came upon by chance when reading about history. All famous recorded magical girls used various types of magical girl battle weapons and gears. There was even one magical girl that transformed a tank and used it as her weapon. All it really depended on their affinity and proficiency with the weapon itself.

The other way that wasn’t recorded in the history books was actually something she had forgotten about. To raise their strength magical girls could take drugs to increase the speed of developing their powers. But these weren't common drugs that could be acquired in the streets. Those were the types that were hard to come by. Also, a good deal of them only had temporary effects.

Her power didn’t hold any information on this subject, and asked for more data before presenting any sort of solution. She finished reading it all and let out a sigh. She had spent a good half hour there on the steps, not working out at all.

She slapped her cheeks, got up, and headed to the basement once more. Since she now had a clear way to raise her strength, she made a mental note to find more information. For now, though, she would raise her base physical strength!

After reaching the basement, Alex looked around in slight awe at all the machines around. By her standards, they would be considered to be of good quality. Not top of the line, but good enough to provide all types of training. One thing was clear though, the gym was huge.

She concentrated on the information she had extracted beforehand and pulled all she could out of the yellow crystal. She was provided with a training regime for the entire incoming day.

Alex was kind of excited to see what kind of top-tier training her powers had in store for her. The small time it took her to wait felt long and outstretched, before she frowned at what it told her to do. It was a pretty simple, run of the mill workout. Jogging, squats, leg press, lunge, climb stairs, etc. Most of the exercise focused on the legs instead of all the body parts. She looked at her bandaged hands in wonder.

Maybe they are not healed enough for me to train them? She thought of her injuries, getting ready to start her training. It shouldn’t be that hard to do... since the sets were light and not that many in her eyes.

Alex shook her body to loosen up, which caused her pain. She got through it with a grunt, and began working out. Feeling confident that the workout was nothing, she got into it, only to be sorely mistaken as her legs started to burn and ache.

It wasn’t helping that the rest of her body was hurting a lot ,as she moved from exercise to exercise. Still, she kept pushing forth, following the regimen and pushing herself, as sweat gathered on her face and poured throughout her body.

Two hours passed, and the sweat drenched her body.

What was easy about it? This is brutal!

Laying on the ground, she tried to get her breathing under control. In all her life, she never had such an intense workout. Her legs felt like wet noodles whenever she tried to stand up. For each step she took, her legs wanted to cave in.

An hour passed, and the sweat gathered had drenched everything, pooling up beneath her..

Half walking, half crawling, she made her way up the stairs to take a shower and change. It was torture going up the steps, but gritting her teeth, she made her way up the flights to her floor. By now, Fei was up, sitting in her bed reading a book while lazing around.

When Alex reached her bed, Fei looked over to the wobbly Alex with curiosity, raising an eyebrow.

“Working out early, huh? Should you really be working out hard with your body in such a state?”

“I can’t slack off if I’m going to reach Rank C by the end of the month.”

“Man, you're really shooting for the stars, huh? Although I can’t blame you for wanting to eat tasty food.”

“Well let’s talk later, Fei, after I take a shower, alright?”

“Alright!”

Grabbing her clothes right there and then, Alex walked to the shower room that she was shown the other day by the very girl. Looking at it again, she really felt that this shower was very prisonlike. If not perfectly, it was only for one key difference. Walking up to a showerhead, Alex undressed and unbandaged, putting her gym clothes and fresh clothes in a compartment.

The only thing she held on hand was her machete and badge, both of which she slotted into two different holes. A red light appeared around the blade and badge, scanning it, before turning green.

When she saw this the other day, she truly understood what her teachers were telling her. If just a simple shower needed these items to run, then what about other things? They wouldn’t get a reissue of these items, if she lost those, she wouldn’t be able to eat, shower or even enter the dorm, since you had to flash the items.

It didn’t matter what gang you were in, if you lost the little status you had, you’d become nothing but a slave. Such thoughts running through her head, the numbers ran amok, as she was reaching out to turn the knob to hot.

It suggested to better work the muscles that she took a cold shower. She looked at the numbers with half-closed eyes before sighing. She needed to do everything in her power to become stronger so she could reach C-Rank as soon as possible.

Gritting her teeth, Alex turned the shower to the coldest setting and let the water gush forth. Outside the shower, the girls who were getting ready to eat or take a shower could hear a loud pitched squeal.

…

A wee bit embarrassed, Alex walked out of the shower. Whilst doing so, she was already drying her hair with a towel. She calmly walked over to her room, and went straight over to her bed, where Fei was doing a morning stretch. When Fei caught sight of her, she grinned.

“Did the water bite you or something?”

“No, I was just taking a cold shower.”

“Cold? Why not a warm one?”

“Cause it’s more healthy for you! Anywho, a change of topic when are we heading out for our first class?”

“In about an hour, but before that, let’s bandage you up and get a bite to eat.”

“Why the bandages?”

Closing her book, Fei gave her a look, “Cause you look like shit! And the bandages make you look a lot better. Man... How many girls kicked your ass in?”

“Fuck off. I’ll get to bandaging after we order some food.”

Putting her workout clothes into a hamper to be washed, Alex grabbed a bundle of bandages and walked out with Fei in tow. She really wasn’t looking forward to eating that tasteless slop. The only thing that filled her with ease was that they gave out unlimited ketchup and mustard to use.