Omake: Kaoru Training II:
Getting Strong Now
Kaoru excitedly approaches the junkyard for her daily training with Mami. Yesterday had been much more useful then her previous elite training, and Kaoru is hoping to make even better progress today. Mami is waiting for her with Sayaka, as today they are going to look more at Sayaka's magic. As Kaoru has already adapted some of Sayaka's magic, she's confident she can succeed at today's task.
Mami has her Soul Gem out and is intently observing Sayaka summon circular musical platforms. Sayaka jumps on to one and launches upwards in burst of speed, beyond what even magical girl bodies can do normally. Summoning a second one at more of a 60° angle with ground while still in the air, Sayaka launches herself closer to horizontally this time. Seeing Kaoru approach, Sayaka flips around and summoning a third musical circle Sayaka halts herself, and then drops to the ground next to Mami.
Before Kaoru can speak, Mami greets her, "I've been watching how Sayaka uses her platforms. I'm pretty sure she's storing energy in the music, and then pulling it out to give her the burst of speed or strength." Sayaka scrunches up her face as if that's not quite right, but she doesn't say anything to contradict Mami. Mami continues, "Let's see how you use them."
Kaoru takes a deep breath. Mami doesn't seem to waste any time at these training sessions. Kaoru summons a platform that she leaps on to, followed by a second and a third at steadily increasing intervals. On the third one, Kaoru stops and calls down that at this point she usually pulls out her harp and starts sniping. Kaoru blushes a bit as she sees that Mami is observing her carefully with her Soul Gem - and frowning.
"Hmm..." Mami muses half to herself. "You're not pulling energy out of it." Turning back to Sayaka, Mami instructs her to summon her own musical platforms again. Mami has the two switch off repeatedly as she watches. On the third time that Kaoru is summoning her platform, Mami cocks her head, listening intently for a few seconds. "Kaoru, are you humming?" Embarrassed, Karou explains that she usually hums when doing this as she found that it helps. "Sayaka doesn't hum. Try summoning a platform without humming," Mami instructs her.
Kaoru discovers that she is completely unable to summon a platform without humming. Mami nods, "I think you're using the noise of humming to fill the platforms with energy."
Turning to Sayaka, Mami asks how she fills her platforms with energy. "I don't," Sayaka answers, "the music is just there."
"Hmm," Mami starts making more notes in her notebook. "This might be important." She looks up, "Well now that we know that, lets see if you can do it with some other noise." After talking, they decide on finger snapping. Kaoru is surprised how easy it is for her to summon a platform with a literal snap of her fingers. It takes her a few tries, but now that she knows she needs to be sending magic through the sound of the snap, Kaoru can actually feel it happening. The platforms still don't provide any stat boosts though.
"Well, let's come back to that in a bit," Mami decides. "Now that we know how you summon the platforms, let's see if you can do the blocking thing Sayaka does." Mami summons a rifle, and swings the rifle butt at Sayaka. A circular wheel of music appears blocking Mami's rifle. Mami then has Kaoru try, but without the rifle swinging at her. To Kaoru's surprise she gets it on the first try. Then she wonders why she's surprised, it's basically the exact same thing, but used as a shield instead of a platform to stand on.
After a few more tests against Mami's ribbons, and a swing or two of the rifle butt, Mami decides that they've succeed in adding musical shields to Kaoru's repertoire. Making notes in her notebook, Mami instructs Kaoru to write it down as well as an addition to the list of things to practice. That done, Mami sets the next objective. "Now let's get back to the musical platforms increasing speed and strength."
Mami instructs Sayaka to summon her platforms, but to have Kaoru use them, so that Kaoru can get an idea of what it feels like. Sayaka is surprised by the idea, she's never tried using them with another girl before. They make the attempt, and despite Kaoru getting flung upwards much faster then she expected and pulling her hamstring, it works out. A bit of healing later, and Kaoru tries again. Sayaka is excited by the idea she can try a few combo moves with other girls now, and actually pulls out one of her school notebooks to take some notes herself.
Despite this success, Kaoru still can't get her platforms to give her any kind of boost. Mami keeps having her switch back and forth between Sayaka's platforms and her own. On her fifth try using Sayaka's platforms, Kaoru notices that the platform is playing the same chord each time. Not sure what it means, Kaoru decides to try summoning a musical platform while singing a specific note. It takes a few attempts, but once she succeeds, Kaoru finds herself leaping high into the air. Okay, so it's not as strong and effective as Sayaka's, and Mami says she can sense magical power sloppily leaking from it, but she did it!
After that the next thirty minutes involved Sayaka summoning musical platforms for different effects, speed, strength, and so on. Kaoru would test them out and identify the notes associated with those effects and then replicated the platforms herself. Mami isn't satisfied, and adds them to the list of things Kaoru needs to regularly practice, but Kaoru is ecstatic. She'd always wanted to get her platforms to do the same as Sayaka's and now she has.
Sayaka then shows a new ability she's been working on. She summons what appears to be a... ribbon of music? Sayaka stands on it as it lifts her into the air for the short moment it exists before it fades away. Sayaka sighs, and explains that she hasn't really gotten it to last long yet. Her idea for it came from Mami's ribbons, and how Mami will occasional summon a large ribbon for her to run on when she needs to get some altitude.
Kaoru tries summoning it herself, and after ten attempts gives up with only the slightest hint of a magical ribbon lifting her. Maybe she got two inches off the ground, maybe. Mami suggests trying to just create a small ribbon at first without lifting anything, and both Kaoru and Sayaka manage to do that. Although Kaoru finds she can only get it to last as long as she can sing a note - and she has to keep singing the whole time to keep it going. Considering those limitations Mami adds it as an ability to explore later, but not on the regular practice menu.
Sayaka takes her leave at this point. She's already running late for dinner, and Kaoru hears her phone ring just as she's leaving the junkyard, with Sayaka assuring her mother that she's already on the way home. Kaoru has a momentary pang as she wishes she got to eat dinner with her mother. She actually hasn't seen her mother in over a week, and even then it's usually only during the late afternoon on the weekends. Weekends that are now being spent on elite training.
Turning back, Kaoru sees that Mami has dragged a small duffel bag out from where it had been behind an old refrigerator. In Mami's left hand is her notebook, and in her right a pencil that is tapping against her chin in thought. Looking up at Kaoru, Mami outlines her thoughts on what is next. "We've got another hour or so of daylight, so I think we want to work on the two ideas we had. A clearing move to push people away from you, and using your voice directly as a weapon."
Kaoru sighs, she had been hoping they were going to call it a night, but she supposes Mami is right. Mami suggests starting with the clearing move, as it would probably be related to what they had learned about Kaoru's magic with Sayaka's musical shields. Mami first has Kaoru run quickly through the finger snapping method to summon platforms and shields to get back in that mindset. Then they start trying different ways of making sounds to try and summon a larger burst of sound.
At first Kaoru tries clapping. Kaoru finds that when she makes a loud sharp clap she can get a half sphere of something like a shield around her hands. After working on this approach for ten minutes, Kaoru has managed to shape it to appear as a curved temporary magical shield that is a large enough oval to cover her full body from the front. Well... two times out of every three attempts anyways, which is pretty good actually. Getting it to explode outwards as a way of forcing enemies away isn't working out as well. Mami encourages her, telling her that she is making much faster progress then expected, but this just frustrates Kaoru more.
As her next attempt fizzles without even forming the sphere, Kaoru stomps her foot in frustration, and is nearly knocked off her feet as her magic that she had failed to push into the clap instead slipped into the stomp and softly exploded around her. Mami shouts excitedly, "That! How did you do that?" Kaoru is almost as excited when she tells Mami that she had put her magic into the sound waves created by stomping her foot.
After five more tries, Kaoru decides this is even easier then the snapping fingers to create the platforms. It's as if this is a natural flow of her magic to do this. The burst of energy seems to flow up and outward from her feet, almost like a funnel, only flowing up and out instead of in and down. After examining the move with her Soul Gem as well as her eyes, Mami excitedly announces that this was exactly what they'd been trying for. Mami murmurs to herself while taking more notes. Making plans for a getting a large number of other magical girls to help with training Kaoru in this new ability under something approaching combat conditions.
Mami tells Kaoru that she should practice both the clap shield and the foot stomp burst for thirty minutes each day. She also suggests, and has Kaoru write it down in her notebook, continuing to try and make the clap provide a burst, and to try and make the foot stomp directional. Being flexible in how she is able to use her abilities is key. Although, Mami wants her to work on the basics first for the next couple days before trying to modify them.
With the setting sun, Mami moves on to the effort for Kaoru to use her voice directly as a weapon, the way she does her harp. Mami pulls three glass cups out of her duffel bag for Kaoru to use as target practice. Kaoru tries for ten minutes to fire an energy beam with her voice, singing at the cups. At last she manages to crack one of the glasses.
Mami has been observing with her Soul Gem out, and stops Kaoru to talk about what she observed. "Well, it's not the energy beam we were looking for. Instead it's as though your voice is making the glass vibrate, and you have magic in those vibrations, causing it to crack." Mami gives her assessment, "I think it's worth exploring. Instead of trying to fire a beam of energy along your voice, try and just make the glass shatter with vibrations."
Kaoru finds this much easier, and after three attempts, shatters one of the glass cups, and then rapidly shatter the other two with her next two attempts. In the deepening shadows, Kaoru feels proud of her accomplishment. Mami just takes notes while nodding. She then directs Kaoru to try the same trick on the windows of the various junk cars around them for the last five minutes of daylight. It's a bit more difficult, but by the end of the five minutes, Kaoru has manged to successfully destroy one car window.
Mami congratulates Kaoru, and promptly crushes her confidence by saying that tomorrow she'll bring some empty metal cans for her to work on next. "Destroying glass has rather limited applications," Mami notes matter of factly. "So we'll just have to work on doing the same thing with other materials." Noticing Kaoru's worried face, Mami offers more encouragement, "Don't worry, we've barely started." Kaoru takes another deep breath and then lets it out while nodding. She'll just have to keep pushing forward she guesses.
As Kaoru heads home she is feeling a little tired, and it's only the second day. She hopes that once the exploration of her powers is over that it will start to get easier. Mami has promised her books on the physics of sound and some books on calculus to arrive tomorrow. When Kaoru asked when she was supposed to study that, Mami had just looked at her blankly, and said, "After your practice of course. There's plenty of time between when it get's dark and you go to bed." Kaoru is beginning to wonder if maybe Mami has forgotten that they aren't all as workaholic as she is.
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Whew. So there is the second training omake. I tried to cut down on the dialog a lot this time, as that tends to make the story expand very quickly. I just barely managed to get through most of what I wanted to cover in the second Omake. I hope it still came out okay. I'll do some proof reading tomorrow.
