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Sayaka Miki took a deep breath after bumping into someone at the edge of the pool. Her biceps are sore, muscles begging to stop right there, but that wasn't an option, not after waking up at five in the morning just for her swimming lessons. She asked her mom so many times for this that it was just too late to pull back. Now she endures the chemical taste in her lungs and bloodshot eyes, two laps closer to burst.
"A swimmer’s focus should be on their technique," says the instructor with a voice that was like a buzz in Sayaka's ears, "each lap we make has an order of corrections measured by their importance. We call it BLABT."
Sayaka lifted her googles, struggling even to raise her arms. Water felt like honey and stung like acid, coldness sweeping through her skin after only one hundred meters. Last night's witch hunt was too much, her eyelids on the verge of closing, liquid blurring the world away, but she still had 400 meters to go, and the pool ain't gonna get shorter. One could think that being a magical girl would free her from this pain, but it wasn't so easy.
“Miki! Your body position is all wrong,” screamed the instructor from the other side, “and your kicking is too slow, faster!”
“Yes, yes” she muttered, trying to not swallow too much water.
“You could try a little harder than that, Miki!” Sayaka heard between stroke and stroke, “You could be the best of us if you really put your heart on it.”
The instructor's voice went with water, getting lost in the splashing. When she pulled the water with each stroke her focus was on the blue line in the center of the lane, making the workout bearable. She used to think about the last song Kamijou showed her, or the jokes she's gonna tell Madoka or Hitome. Nonetheless, this time only the witches were dancing in macabre ways on her mind, and each stroke felt like a swing of the sword.
Body Position
She adjusted her torso in a spinning motion, blocking the incoming twisted arm. Sayaka tensed up and then relaxed, letting the impact of the witch slide through her blade, parrying it off. One and two cuts went with the winds, landing in each of the monster's arms. Quick to retaliate, the witch sends her minions to grab and crush the magical girl under their weight. Tasting the blood in her lips, every muscle tore apart and became whole again. Ribs snapped in half and then glued together by the magic and music in her veins.
One slash upward towards the familiar, who growls and loses balance. Sayaka shifts her weight, kicking the beast far away. The familiar falls over the witch, pushing both against a column, and the whole labyrinth starts to shift. The walls are the ceiling and the ceiling is the floor, the thin trees turn huge, and the bold columns now have the width of a toothpick. Sayaka looked around as the space twisted, jumping on top of a pillar just wide enough to fit her.
With the screaming agony of the witch, her soul gem shook, and the thin column she was standing on trembled away. Just a second more of this, and her guts could be out in the open between spikes and darkness. Across that cursed space, the light fades to a pinkish tone. Madoka's voice echoes in her head.
"Sayaka," she said, shifting positions in the chair, her hands firmly gripping the seat, "I hope you're alright fighting by yourself." The girl inhaled the air around her deeply and held it tightly against her lungs. "After what happened with Mami..."
The memory was fuzzy, and the blows coming in all directions sure didn’t help; hearing the name of her former master only gave her a stale taste in her tongue. Even so, Madoka's hands clutching to that chair made her smile, and, blocking a blow, she remembered why this was a life she would never regret, letting loose her grip and then pushing an opening in the beast.
Her body was a weapon she could use to its fullest, a bulwark for people like Madoka, without the strength to raise a shield or the courage to lift a sword. Bones breaking and skin ripping, the basics for a fierce magical girl with only one objective in mind: Justice.
This world would be safe. That was all that mattered in this thunderous instant, body shivering, face to face with a horrible fate looming on the horizon.
Legs
Sidestep and push. Parry and exploit their opening. Not even the most devious horde of familiars could beat a good stance and a firm foot. Mami taught her that, at least that's what Sayaka thought, that her role model was still teaching her from wherever Magical girls go when their fight leads to death.
Yet, death couldn't catch her, not tonight. Tea time with Mami had to be postponed. Block, regain, and then slide the blade between the eyes of the familiar. A clean cut and then a bad step to the right, the familiar arm piercing deep in her tight, blood flowing like water from a chalice. Vision blurring and a humming sound in her ears, something whispering a song she could almost remember. What was this time? Chopin, right? Those piano notes were lighter than her; she could lift them and swing like she swung the sword.
"Chopin wanted it played in his funeral," In her memories, Kyosuke snickered at her swinging both legs at the slow rhythm of the melody, “some even called the piece suffocation.”
Prelude in E Minor, how could she forget? Kyosuke showed it to her, and she loved it, but the poor guy couldn't understand why she liked it so much; it was a melancholic song after all. She missed his awkward smile.
"Well," Sayaka says, pointing to her face, a mischievous smile illuminates the hospital room, "I think it is delightful."
Just the two of them smiling, together...
No time for memories, Sayaka, her leg was kicking again, and the familiar was still breathing. She clenched her jaw, and a redhead's face flashed in her mind. If she wasn't fast, that stupid girl would come to save this one and let it feast.
Girls like her only used their legs for kicking down. For a change, Sayaka's legs were only for pushing the world upwards, to a better future. Kick after kick after kick, keeping the balance in the world. The good guys kicking the bad guys.
The story in the ruins of the church comes to her mind in sync with a bite to her ankle. The legs of Kyoko didn't even shiver between the ashes, telling the story of the church that went up in flames, and the culprit and her father being one and the same. A tale that twisted her insides. Sayaka had to swallow that bitter pill with a double shot of pride; her face couldn't move, her feet didn't hesitate. She stormed out of those ruins with the pieces of her stoic expression and a heart aching to help, but not at girls like her. Never girls like her.
Her legs were for kicking down the bad guys and pushing up the good guys.
Those same legs gave up the moment she learned the truth of what she was now. Her body still like the winter winds on the beach, a freezing water that flooded her lungs and her stomach. Her blood moved slowly and lazily under the skin, knowing her mission now was a mere subproduct, not necessarily for keeping her alive. In that instant, Prelude in E Minor blasted in her ear again. A memento. She ignored it.
Arms
Again and again and again, the side of her cutlass blunted with rage at the dark witch. One swing, two swings, three swings, and a smile for the whole world. A world that gave her no more than hate, despair, and loneliness. The hands grabbed her body but never her soul, packed very tight in a convenient device, isolated from the hugs of friends and the kisses from her crush, but right in the open for despair to sweep in. Inch by inch, each drop a tick in the clock.
In that blinding rage, she was surprised by a face showing when she closed her eyes. That transfer student, that stupid transfer student. Empty eyes watching her, the judgment of an empty corpse with her soul in a shiny rock, a stupid rock. What was her deal? Why did she treat Madoka like shit, like someone took all the blood in her body and poured it into a cereal bowl?
But Sayaka knew something; she was more perceptive than anyone gave her credit for. Homura's eyes didn't lie, and it takes one to know another. Deep down, between the fiery walls of her soul peaking through purple pupils, there was an ounce of love. But why, and for whom?
Now in the train, the nightlights flashed behind her in patterns. She looked around, and the emptiness of it all felt like someone punching her stomach. Only a couple of guys talking, they were talking so much shit. Hearing them treating people like shit made her dizzy.
After a day where she herself treated Madoka the same way, she didn't have the time or the energy for that, her mind wandered on the train, the two pests talking to each other, spewing words that felt like black miasma from their mouths. She could raise her arms, grab, push, and then recover. Stroke after stroke. Nonstop until her arms were sore and they were gone. It was her role as a warrior of justice. With each cycle of swinging arms, her soul would go darker and darker. And in that dark, she could scream.
"All for nothing," Sayaka yells to her insides, "for becoming this wretched thing, I deserve no more than dirt under my nails and a watery grave."
The spirals turn brighter, the sound deafening. Her lungs crack under the pressure, but not a single sound comes out.
"I told my sword all the things," her voice breaks inside, "all the things I used to tell you."
A resonant cacophony echoes in her head.
“Justice and glory, huh?” Rapid flashing lights in the train station, her mind keeps going round and round, falling deeper every minute, “Why have those foolish things if my only purpose is to rot away in this corpse?”
A burning sensation in her chest was the only thing keeping her bound to this reality. A ticklish instinct, burning all of her, even her spirit. Kyoko's presence was an anchor, but the sea was rising. That stupid voice was all she wanted to hear. All the oceans of the world flooded her dreamed land, and she was left only with a rock and a plastic cup to hold it all.
The soul gem was tightly grasped between her rough palms, the hands of a monster. A song humming in the whole room, about to burst her brain out. She was holding the tainted blue and gold rock, ready to open the gates to the symposium of her nightmares. A single teardrop brings the storm.
So she was really stupid in the end, right?
A single E3 minor chord broke down her soul. The grief seed bloomed with an A minor.
Breathing
Drowned among the filth of each mistake, her watery blood releasing with each cut of the roses from a garden she couldn’t treat with care. Thorns must go to waste in the muddy puddles after each cut digs way too deep, into the dermis and past the bone, what a way to go. Not even the Kyoko hard words or Madoka soft voice could calm her; the music was too loud. Tea time with Mami had to be canceled, because even death wasn't granted to her.
Light switches its hues, first blue and then red, and then purple. Her hands aching in pain, mangled fingers or broken ribs didn't hurt that much. Stupid choices spinning around her, wheels free from the carriage of destiny, one she grabbed by the neck, and in retaliation, it spat on her face with the disdain of a mocked god.
The ocean filled her lungs, hands too close to the surface, almost touching the sun, feet pointing toward the depth, the darkness where the self is lost, and there's nothing more than a faint grief. The oxygen in her mind was low, vision blurring between smears of blood and water. Not more hunting, not more loving, not more justice. Mami's legacy, Homura's hair, Kyoko's smirk, everything consumed by the saltpeter in her songs. Hitomi's curls, Madoka's laugh, Kyosuke's music, a hope for despair, a torn one for a stitched one, all in balance.
Yet there was more hope in her heart than she could expect for a zombie like herself. That red passion was coming to her, no, wait, for her. Their last breath was with their hands and bodies entwined as one. She gasped for air with her mouth, liquid drowning her in sorrow and salt, a rotting body incapable of moving forward, legs kicking water that felt like concrete against her shins, each messy stroke pulling her deeper and deeper. Her hand went numb, wrinkled fingers grabbing the elusive waters of fate.
Between heavy breathing and bloodshot eyes comes a fire that makes even the sun pale. The red passion was coming for her. The ocean was calm for once.
Timing?
"Perfect, you idiot."