Ferromancer’s boast echoes through her workshop. No one challenges her claim, not even the boisterous Bombshell or the mysterious stranger watching from above. Everyone but me seems to know exactly who she is.

I give Ferromancer a second, more appraising look. Button-up and slacks, like my untransformed self is wearing right now, but with the buttons mostly undone and a black vest over the white shirt. She’s got some kind of necklace on, a chunk of amber on a cord, though I can’t make out the species of the bug inside the amber. Black gloves, shiny and sleek. Black shoes, the functional kind without a heel or laces—I think they’re called loafers? I’d call her outfit business formal if the shirt didn’t look so rumpled and unbuttoned.

Her face is where all the action is. Her features are sharp and angular, more rakish than beautiful, and there’s a set to her lazy smirk that gives her whole face a mocking air. Her hair is eye-catchingly red, but not so much that it looks dyed or artificial, and it’s done up in an incredibly messy ponytail. Her eyes—ruddy orange and unnaturally bright—seem perpetually half-lidded, as if she’s bored with everything around her, but there’s a light in her gaze that betrays keen interest. The glasses complete the look.

Nothing about her appearance screams “dangerous witch,” but two of the most dangerous witches in the Pacific Northwest tensed up when she stepped into the room. Who is this woman?

“So I’ve heard,” Radiance says, her whole persona shifting into networking mode as she offers praise to the unknown witch. “If my sources are correct, you were the real designer of the machine that terrorized Hollywood while Geisha and Wildfire went on their crime spree, and you built the power armor that let Penumbra win her grudge match with Slipstream. So what are you doing here, in Forks?”

“And how long are you planning on staying?” Lilith adds, cautious and reserved.

Internally, I whistle. I know about both of the incidents that Radiance referenced, but like everyone else I’d always assumed the tech involved was made by one of the well-known local inventors. Witches that mess with tech are very common in California, though mostly concentrated around Silicon Valley.

Ferromancer takes another drag of her cigarette and shrugs. “Timeline is undecided. I’ve got immediate business in town, and some contacts to meet with, but after that depends entirely on how receptive Forks is to my services. So, to get to the heart of the matter… I’m here to sell technology. Bespoke technology, every piece custom-made, that can’t be reproduced or mass produced. Familiars are my specialty—attack drones, point defense drones, shield drones, and pseudo-autonomous robots like what attacked Hollywood—but they’re not the limit of my ability. Like your Lilith here,” she says with a nod to the witch in question, “with enough time and material I can generate just about any effect not labeled strictly impossible.”

Oh, I have so many questions. And by the looks on their faces, Radiance and Lilith have questions of their own, but before either can ask anything they’re interrupted by Bombshell.

“Enough talk, I want to punch a robot!” The sparkly pink witch punches her hands together and grins. “C’mon, let’s start the demo.”

So that’s why she’s here. Bombshell must have been the first one that Ferromancer contacted. Maybe they already knew each other? Radiance and Lilith both seem to note that interaction and file it away, the questions dying on their lips.

Ferromancer makes an amused noise and says, “Yes, let’s save any more questions for after the presentation. Practicals first.”

The witch pulls out a thin remote from inside her vest and presses a button. The floor between the four floating drones splits apart and slides away, revealing a deep unlit tunnel stretching down beyond visible range. Mechanical whirring heralds the rise of a platform, and upon that platform stands a robot.

The robot is bipedal, tall, with the same clean future-tech aesthetic as the floating drones, rounded and sleek with bright green circuit lines running over deep blue metal. Its face is a smooth screen of black glass illuminated from behind the screen by a circle of white light. The robot towers over everyone in the room, maybe nine or ten feet in height.

Bombshell jumps onto the platform while it’s still rising. “Who’s ready for a show? In this corner, you know her, you love her, it’s Bombshell, here to blow this bot away!” The witch is laughing as she bounces on her heels, bringing her fists up in a ready stance.

“Hold on,” Lilith interjects. “The ceiling was one thing, but this is undeniable: you’re working in a pocketspace, aren’t you?” Her tone this time sounds like genuine curiosity, one master of her craft talking shop with another.

“I am,” Ferromancer admits, unruffled, “though it’s far more modest than your Morrigan’s Ossuary. And to preempt the question, it’s not a technology I’m currently offering for sale.”

Radiance sighs, disappointed. I, on the other hand, am fascinated. Pocketspaces are high-level magic, from everything I understand of the subject. There are some witches and magical girls who can innately create very limited and temporary pocketspaces, but permanent complex pocketspaces are incredibly rare.

The Ossuary is the most famous, and the most absurd: an extradimensional nightclub whose entrances change daily, and which reaches all across the Pacific Northwest. It’s a regular hangout spot for the witches of Forks—and those with an interest in those witches, be they admirers or opportunists. The Ossuary’s creator, the Morrigan, could be considered Strix Striga’s equivalent among witches. I certainly do.

Before I can gather the courage to ask my own questions about the pocketspace, Ferromancer clicks another button on her remote. Walls of transparent green energy crackle to life around the designated arena, rising from floor to ceiling perfectly aligned with the seams of the section that split away. “Care to test the barrier, Bombshell?”

The other witch whirls around with a grin and throws out a rapid-fire combo of punches at the energy wall. The barrier vibrates, shudders, and is just starting to crack when the villainess pulls back. After a few seconds, the cracks dissipate and the barrier looks untouched.

“Good. Enough preamble. Go loud, the both of you.”

Like a gunshot starting a race, Ferromancer’s words send Bombshell and the robot exploding into action. Small panels on the robot’s shoulders pop open to reveal brightly-glowing cylinders that shoot out green beams of light—lasers—at the witch.

Bombshell is fast. Not quite Slipstream fast, but she’s maybe the fastest witch I’ve seen who isn’t classified as a speedster. And she moves—she moves almost like Striga moves: no wasted energy, every motion in perfect sequence. I can’t tell if she’s faster than the lasers she’s dodging or if she just knows exactly where not to be.

The witch gets in close and lays into the robot with her fists. Green light flashes, a personal barrier shimmering into view every place that Bombshell punches and lingering as she targets different areas. The laser pods on the robot’s shoulders glow brighter and brighter until they crackle and fry as two massive beams burst out of them. This time, Bombshell doesn’t dodge—too close to move away in time, maybe—but instead crosses her arms and takes the blast.

One of my internet friends—Mike, the physics nerd—once gave me a whole rant about the relationship that light has with force, and how photons can’t push you but can cause things to move through some complicated process with electrons and energy—and that was about where I tuned out, but allegedly it’s how solar sails would work and how solar panels do work. It’s one of those nitpicks that sci-fi nerds have with any scene where someone gets shot with a laser and goes flying. Of course, these lasers are magic, so physics analysis only gets you so far. I’m sure Mike would love to figure out where exactly the force is coming from, but the result is that Bombshell gets slammed into the energy wall.

Cracks spiderweb across the barrier around the stage while the cracks on the robot’s personal shield start to diminish. Bombshell catches herself and manages to land on her feet, spending barely a second to steady herself before jumping back toward the machine. There’s a glow around her now, a rising aura of crimson light.

The robot shimmers and seems to split apart into a dozen copies of itself as Bombshell approaches, none of them in the same position as the original. The witch slams an elbow into the nearest copy and goes straight through, the illusion—hologram—not reacting but not disappearing. A panel pops open on the forearm of each robot and two dozen metal tubes rise up, click into place, and start shooting completely ordinary bullets.

A hail of gunfire fills the air. Bullets ping off the energy shields of the robots and the fixed barrier around the arena. Bombshell grits her teeth against the hail, the bullets bouncing off her skin and outfit without causing any damage. She leaps through hologram after hologram, barely bothering with proper form as she searches for the real robot.

The gunfire pauses, something clicks internally, and when the guns start firing again they have a new type of ammunition: pellets that expand on impact into some kind of yellow foam that quickly hardens. Bombshell’s head snaps to the side, eyes locked on a new target, and she lunges for her prey as the foam pellets continue to collide with her.

Instead of attacking any of the visible robots, her fist slams into empty air—and then the air isn’t empty anymore, the true machine emerging from invisibility as all of its holograms vanish, and the fake foam with them. The real foam continues to expand and harden, the robot firing into melee as its personal shield cracks and cracks… but doesn’t quite break before the foam finishes its work. Bombshell struggles to land another hit, but she can’t move her arms. She’s immobilized.

Radiance raises a single eyebrow. Lilith frowns. Delilah crosses her arms and says, “Stop jobbing. We get the picture, and there’s no crowd here to ogle you.”

Bombshell grins. “You’re welcome to go next.”

The witch’s aura shifts from red to purple, and this time when she flexes her arms and strains against the hardened foam it shatters. She tears chunks of the material off of her body and legs, ripping it apart faster than the robot can shoot more at her, and then in a single fluid motion she pulls her arm back, twists her whole body, and slams her fist into the robot’s head. The energy barrier holds for only an instant before shattering, and in the blink of an eye Bombshell’s punch tears into the machine and takes its head clean off.

The robot head bounces off the arena wall and rolls to a stop. The body slumps, deactivating, and just like that the fight is over.

Bombshell’s aura fades away and she staggers, but quickly recovers, though she’s still breathing a bit heavier. The grin on her face is even wider now. “Now that’s a good way to get the adrenaline pumping!” She turns back to the rest of us and strikes a victory pose, elbows out and fists on her hips.

Seeing Bombshell fight in person was amazing. The videos really can’t compare to being up close to the action, even if there was a protective barrier between me and the violence. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and clap. “Woo! Brava! Encore, encore!”

Radiance ignores my cheering and directs rapid-fire questions at Ferromancer: “What are your production limits? What kind of price range are you operating in? Are you willing to consider exclusive contracts?”

Lilith glares at Radiance and steps past her. “More importantly, who are you going to be selling to? The Coterie won’t shelter you if you’re caught supplying groups and individuals that exist outside the pact.”

Radiance scoffs. “Oh, please. As if the Coterie was ever going to shelter a witch who doesn’t officially exist. You’re barely willing to ‘shelter’ the people in this room.” She gestures at herself and then sweeps her hand toward Delilah.

Now that has my attention. Who is Delilah, and why is she here? Maybe she’s like Ferromancer, another witch that exists outside the public eye. How does she fit into the interplay between Coterie witches and Visage witches?

I want answers to all of those questions, but I’m not sure any of that is what I’m most interested in learning. Delilah is a mystery, but one that I know too little about to really get invested in. No, the one who really has my attention is Ferromancer.

The plain-dressed witch has been watching everything with that same expression that sits somewhere between calm boredom and keen perception. With a final breath of smoke, she stubs out her cigarette on the back of her glove and gives her full attention to the two witches asking her questions.

“I pick my clientele very carefully,” Ferromancer says, her voice frosting, “and I’ve never, ever needed protection from an organization like yours. I’ll follow your rules while I’m here, but I don’t answer to your Coterie, or to your Visage, or even to the Morrigan herself. Think of me as an outside consultant. For the right price—and we’ll get to that, Kamilah—I’ll sell to anyone I see fit. You’ll just have to trust my judgment on that one.”

There’s something enthralling about the way Ferromancer shuts down and dismisses two of the most powerful people for hundreds of miles. I could never imagine talking to Radiance or Lilith that way, and she does it effortlessly. The way her lips quirk even as the skin tightens around her eyes, the arch of her brow, her lazy posture as she leans back against a storage crate, the ash falling from the back of her glove as she crosses her arms…

Ferromancer radiates power and control to an almost intoxicating degree, and I’m feeling the contact high. I need to talk to this woman. I need her to talk to me. I need her to like me. It’s a heat spreading through my body like a fever. Who is this witch?

Bombshell breaks me from my reverie by bouncing over to Ferromancer’s side and chirping, “And mine!”

What? It takes me a second to connect her statement back to what Ferromancer just said, shaking the fog of obsession from my mind. Judgment. Ferromancer’s judgment, and apparently Bombshell’s judgment?

I can’t get a read on Delilah, but Radiance and Lilith look just as surprised as I am. Ferromancer regards them all coolly and says, “I’ve hired Bombshell to be my enforcer while I’m here in town. Those who want to interfere with my work or default on my contracts will have to deal with her kindly attentions. The other side of that coin is the threat of losing my enforcer if I take any action too objectionable to your community. Whether you trust me or not, you should trust one of your own.”

Radiance puts a smile back on her face and says, “That seems a perfectly reasonable arrangement. Now, if you would, I believe I put forward a few questions worth answering.”

Ferromancer rolls her shoulders. “So you did. Price is negotiable, exclusivity is not. As for limitations, well, you’ve seen one: the machines I create aren’t replacements for your abilities as witches, they’re complements. Use them well and you’ll find success. Use them poorly and I don’t want to hear you blaming the hardware. A second limit is quantity: you don’t need to know why or how, but the most I can sell you of any single invention is four copies. That doesn’t mean I can’t design something similar to get around that, but you shouldn’t expect to be buying in bulk. Everything I make is bespoke.”

I can practically see the gears turning in Radiance’s head, and in Lilith’s, but it’s Delilah who asks the next question: “Why is the new girl here? That Archon kid.”

I freeze. All of a sudden, everyone is looking at me. Witches I knew before today and witches I didn’t, but all of them more powerful than me, more important than me, just more than me. Why am I here? Even if Ferromancer is going to teach me something, why bring me here like this? What was Pandora’s game?

Ferromancer is the one who saves me. “We have private business,” she says, her smirk taking on a knowing, secretive cast. “And, speaking of that business, I believe everyone has seen and heard enough of my work for one day. You know what I’m offering, and whether you’re interested. I’ll be in touch.”

It’s a dismissal, and everyone can hear it. Radiance and Lilith make a bit of noise and snipe at each other, but eventually all the other witches file out—even Bombshell. They watch me as they leave. What do they think of me now?

My gaze falls to the cat beside me, sitting unnoticed by everyone for that whole scene. When the last witch has left, I accuse it, “You set this up. You engineered that moment. Why?”

“I told you,” Pandora purrs, “we invest in our talent. You have the motivation, but it’ll take more than the usual routine to shape you into the kind of witch that has the ability to restrict Striga’s actions.”

Right. Of course. It’s all about Striga.

On that, the cat and I agree.

“So,” asks Ferromancer, “what did you think of my little show?”

I look up from the cat and blink twice in surprise. In the time my attention was away from her, Ferromancer must have slipped away and changed, because her outfit is completely different; the pants and shoes are the same, and the amber necklace—it’s a scorpion, I can tell up close—but she’s traded shirt and vest for a black tank top and a red flannel left unbuttoned, and she’s ditched the gloves.

Somehow, the change in clothing makes her both more approachable and more intimidating. I can’t stop myself from focusing on the flannel jacket and spinning my thoughts in circles, because it’s not like only lesbians wear flannel but it’s such an iconically lesbian piece of fashion and she seems like the kind of person to think about the impression she makes and why am I even thinking about this??? I have a girlfriend!

Well, okay, no, I don’t. That’s kind of my whole problem. But there’s one girl who my heart belongs to and it is not this admittedly very cool and attractive woman who I’m going to be spending an unknown length of time in close proximity to and oh god this is a problem.

My gay panic happens in a flash and I pull myself together to try and answer the actual question that I was asked, hoping to death that I’m not blushing. I try to project as much gravitas and confidence as possible as I say, “The performance was very interesting. I’d never heard of you before this, to my regret, but you seem to have a real reputation with the other witches. You’re clearly good at what you do. I look forward to learning from you, Ferromancer, if that is indeed what I’m here for.”

Her eyes twinkle like she’s laughing inside at a joke only she knows the punchline to. “You’re pretty cute when you’re acting the proper witch, but let’s put the stuffy formality aside. I’m Erica, and thanks to our mutual feline friend I know that your civvie name is Rachel. Take off that face and I’ll buy you lunch.”

Is this what it feels like to be stunlocked in a video game? She called me cute. She knows my real name, and she told me hers. I feel like the whole world just dropped out from under me. “I. Um. Yeah, okay. Yeah, let’s do lunch.”

Hesitantly, almost fearfully, I let the transformation burn away until it’s just me again. Rachel Emily in her faux-formal outfit, painfully ordinary, standing before… Erica, I guess.

“So,” Erica asks, eyes bright and smirk turning into a smile, “you like Mexican?”

---

“Are you cooking breakfast?”

The disbelief in Sophia’s voice is a little rude, but I’ll grant her that it’s probably been over a year since I cooked anything in our household, let alone breakfast. Hell, I’m barely ever awake this early in the morning. But today is special.

I scrape the eggs and peppers around the pan and add some cheese. “You had some ingredients lying around, and I was hungry, so I felt like making something for the both of us. I’ve got bread in the toaster and some avocado mixed up with lemon juice and salt.”

My roommate rubs the sleep out of her eyes and squints at me. She’s already dressed for work, though her hair is still hanging loose. “You never cook breakfast. Have you been replaced by a bodysnatcher? Did you get your hands on shrooms?”

“Wow, Sophie,” I say sarcastically, “is it really that hard to believe that I’d pull my own weight around here for once? I didn’t know you thought that little of me.”

She winces and I immediately regret the joke. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I wave her off before things can get any more uncomfortable. “You’re just waking up, and I wasn’t offended. To answer the implicit question, I’m just feeling good today, that’s all.”

Sophia sighs, relieved, and starts the coffee maker running. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. What’s got you in such a good mood?”

A cat turned me into a witch and now I have magic powers, and I’m about to meet another witch and learn more about magic with her help. Not that I can say any of that to Sophia, of all people. I don’t really know how she’d react—patronizing concern, maybe, or open disgust—but it would ruin our peaceful days together, and I can’t risk that. I can’t lose the precious moments I have with her.

I don’t want to just stonewall her here, either, so creative reinterpretation of events it is!

“I’m meeting someone new!” Truth. “We met online.” Lie. “No idea what we’re going to do, but it’ll probably take all day.” Half-truth.

“That’s great!” Sophia brightens up immediately. “Oh, I’m so happy for you, Rachel. What time are you meeting up? And where? I could drive you there before I head to work.”

I roll my eyes and start scooping eggs onto plates. “Sunshine creature,” I accuse. “Don’t get so happy about this, you. You’re acting like I never hang out with other people, and if you stand there and try to find a polite way to say that I don’t then I will put your breakfast back in the pan and overcook it. I have plenty of friends.”

“Online is different,” Sophie insists. “Humans need face-to-face socialization, and video calls don’t count. I’m serious, Rachel, this is a good thing for you.”

I grumble about it a bit more while I slather avocado on toast and Sophia pours her coffee. I change the subject to the show we watched last night and we bicker over breakfast. I talk her out of driving me, and soon enough she’s out the door.

“Now,” I hum to myself, “do I have any decent clothing?”

I don’t know if I’m going to interact with this witch outside of my transformation, but I want to be prepared. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, right?

My wardrobe is a miserable affair. All the clothing I own is stacked up in a pile next to the couch I sleep on. I toss aside jeans and sweatpants in search of the single pair of nice slacks I bought for a job interview that fell through. The vast majority of my shirts are graphic tees advertising nerd media, but I did get a normal button-up at the same time as the slacks, so I add that to the outfit. My beloved hoodies aren’t exactly business casual, so I pick out the black cardigan that I like to wear when it gets too hot out for heavy layers. It’s cheap, and it’ll be a bit chilly, but I haven’t really felt cold since getting my powers.

I give myself a twirl in the bathroom mirror. There’s more I could do to fix up my face and hair, I’m sure, but I’m so out of practice that anything I tried would just make me look worse. At least I remember to brush my hair, for once, and my teeth while I’m at it.

Pandora’s chosen meeting place is close enough to the apartment that I decide to walk rather than fly. Probably better for identity security, even with the veiling effect.

Jade Garden Park is a lovely sculpted affair, a bit of green and blue forcibly injected back into the urban sprawl of developed Forks. Gorgeous evergreens, sloping terrain, and it even has a duck pond! I wander around enjoying the scenery until I find Pandora waiting for me in a particularly shady corner of the area.

“‘Sup, kitty cat? Caught any new fish?”

“Ms. Emily,” it greets me with a purr. “It’s good to see you again, and in good spirits. I hope you’ve been adjusting well to your new status as a witch.”

I shrug, then roll that motion into stretching my arms. “Well enough. I’m inconsolable that my conjured items disappear when I fall asleep. I love flying. I punched a bear. But more than anything, I want to meet the other witch you mentioned!” I rub my hands together and grin.

Pandora flicks its tail. “You sound excited,” it says, seeming amused.

“You wouldn’t even give me her name,” I complain, “so I haven’t been able to do my research. You have to give me some intel so I don’t look like a total noob.”

“My apologies, but this witch values her privacy—at least until she’s had a chance to take your measure in person. You’ll see what I mean. Follow me; the event is starting soon, and that’s where you’ll meet your teacher.”

“What event? What’s starting soon?” The cat walks off and I sigh dramatically. “Fine, fine, I’ll go along with the cloak and dagger.”

Our real destination isn’t far; Pandora takes me to an alleyway between a sandwich shop and a bakery. I’ve been to both of those places, so I know for a fact that there isn’t usually a hole in the wall between them. Is this another veiling trick, or did a witch or Jovian bend space to make this hidden alley?

Pandora stops outside a garage door and turns to me, tail flicking. “You should transform before we enter. And, if you haven’t yet, pick a name; the witches inside are going to want something to call you by.”

Witches, plural? My curiosity rises. I transform back into my witch self in a burst of supernatural flame. I spread my wings and enjoy the cool air on my hot skin. “I gave it some thought, yeah. I think I’m going to go with ‘Archon’ for my villain name.”

The cat tilts its head. “Interesting,” it says after a moment of thought, amusement rich in its voice.

I smile back.

After getting a bit of information from my internet friends, I went and did my own research on Greek myths. I started with Prometheus and Pandora, but four hours and three microwave burritos later I had a dozen Wikipedia tabs open on my phone. I learned a lot, though I don’t know how much of it I’ll retain. Turns out, mythology and religion are pretty fascinating when you’re learning about them on your own initiative.

Archon should be harder to connect to me than Alexandria, but not impossible for someone with Sophia’s detail-oriented brain. And there’s a part of me that does want her to find out what I’ve become. I just can’t tell her that with my words.

Pandora pads over to one side of the garage door and flicks its tail upward. There’s a red button on the wall, so of course I press it, and I hear a distinct buzz. A few seconds later, the garage door slowly rolls up.

The inside is—well, it’s some kind of warehouse-workshop combination, and big enough to have overhead walkways despite the exterior seeming single story, but I don’t really get a good look at the building itself before my attention is captured by four witches, three I recognize, two of those arguing.

“—wretched money-grubbing parasite and one day I hope to rip out that lying tongue and mail it in a box to your monster of a father!” hisses Lilith, a founding member of the Coterie.

Radiance, the de facto leader of the witches aligned with Visage, laughs her off. “You radicals are always so quick to violence. Don’t you feel an ounce of shame for the mockery you make of your own cause? Think of the children, darling.”

The venom in both their voices isn’t enough to tarnish how starstruck I feel to be in the presence of two of the most important witches in Forks. They can’t possibly be who I’m here to meet, can they?

Radiance is even more stunning in person than on video and in photographs. She looks like only airbrushed models on magazine covers look, perfect and gorgeous and frustratingly beautiful, like just being in a room with her highlights every flaw in your own appearance. Her warm skin is completely free of blemishes, her glowing golden eyes crinkle in mirth, and she’s got a smile that could take your breath away framed by flowing hair in a dozen shades of auburn and chestnut and caramel. For this gathering—whatever it is—she’s dressed down in a well-tailored suit, flats that must belong to some insanely expensive brand I’m too poor to have heard of, and a silk scarf. Everything is made of some pure white fabric that shimmers with every color of the rainbow, and that blinding opulence is paired with diamond earrings and an elegantly slim watch adorned with more diamonds.

Lilith, on the other hand, is the archetypal image of a witch—though maybe a shade more pinup than Oz. Even flushed with rage, her pasty white skin and stringy black hair create an almost corpse-like air that’s belied by the plunging neckline of her shoulderless black dress and the very short cut of her skirt. Her look is completed with striped stockings and bright red heels, a pointy hat and wooden staff, and innumerable esoteric symbols etched into her dress and dangling from her oversized sleeves as iron pseudo-jewelry.

Lilith shouts back at Radiance, “Don’t try and pretend your hands aren’t stained with the blood of thousands—millions, even!—ground to dust beneath the ceaseless machinery of your oh-so-precious profit incentives! If you could feel shame, you’d be drowning in it!”

Radiance chuckles, waving her hand as if the accusation leveled at her is patently absurd. “Oh please, darling. So typical of you and your fellowship to ignore all the good my company does for the world. When was the last time you lent aid to the starving children of Mozambique?”

“And I’m sure the tax breaks had nothing to do with that,” the other witch sneers. “Have you ever even been to Mozambique?”

Radiance’s real name is Kamilah Dajani, and she’s the heiress to one of the media companies that invested so many millions in Forks’ nascent entertainment industry. She’s one of the few cases among witches and magicals to associate her civilian identity with her witch persona, having leveraged it for lucrative business deals and social media reach. I’ve never seen a man or woman alive who could radiate smugness better than she can.

Lilith’s civilian identity isn’t known, but she’s always insisted that her witch name is her real name. She’s a leading figure in the Coterie and one of their most outspoken members on the subject of what exactly witches should be doing with their powers. Radiance, historically, has disagreed. Given that Radiance and Lilith are two of the strongest non-Catastrophes witches on record, property damage usually ensues.

Magically, Lilith is the ultimate all-rounder; with sufficient prep time, the only effects she can’t produce are the kinds of effects that no witch or magical girl can achieve, like resurrection or time travel. Everything else is fair game. Radiance, on the other hand, has a very focused toolkit. Bearing the epithet “Witch of Many Colors,” Radiance wields light magic that is just as potent as it is beautiful.

They’re both incredibly dangerous, and I really don’t want to be in the room if their argument escalates into another brawl. Let’s try defusing some tension.

“So, uh, should I come back another time?” I joke as I step into the room. The garage door closes behind me.

I smile and wave as the two powerhouse witches briefly flick their gazes my way before going right back to their staring match—one glaring, the other smiling like a serpent. The third witch I recognized pushes past them and waves back at me with extreme cheer.

“New girl!” she shouts. “Hey hey, both of you cool it, we’ve gotta meet the new girl. Hi hi! I’m Bombshell, if you haven’t heard. It’s great to meet you. Heart!” She makes a little heart with her hands as she skips over to me.

Bombshell hasn’t really been on my radar like Radiance and Lilith, but I have heard of her. She debuted with Radiance’s group, playing nice with Visage for fame and profit, before leaving them to fly solo. Now she’s something of an independent, running around picking fights with anyone worth her time but never really taking sides in the factional disputes of Forks’ various witches.

Her powerset is your classic flying brick loadout; she takes hits and then hits back harder, always coming out on top in a raw slugging match. There doesn’t seem to be an upper bound to her strength, or if there is it keeps increasing as she keeps fighting. Not much of a familiar user.

Visually, well, Radiance might be the picture-perfect model but Bombshell is so true to her name that I feel a little flushed just having her this close to me. She’s an explosion of sparkly glitter and searing pink—pink lipstick and glittery pink eyeshadow over dark skin, pink highlights streaking through golden hair—like one of those cuttlefish that hypnotize their prey with flashing colors before chomping down.

Her costume is just a pair of short shorts, a top that’s barely more than a bra, and knee-high boots, all of it pink and gold and shiny. Someone once told me it’s based on a kind of outfit you see a lot in women’s wrestling, which is the one and only time I’ve been tempted to watch any variety of sports show.

Have I been staring at her? Am I embarrassing myself? I feel faint. “Heart!” I say back, defaulting to my more playful persona and throwing up my own hands to match her gesture. I wink. Was the wink too much?

Bombshell giggles at my reciprocation, which eases a bit of the anxiety I’m feeling. “Oh, I like this one!” she calls over to the other witches, which makes me feel warm and breathless.

This is pathetic. Why am I panicking like a closet case? Sparing a second to think on it, I guess I haven’t really interacted with many cute girls that aren’t named Sophia since… well, college. I certainly haven’t had sex since college, or gone on any dates. Ugh, that’s morbid.

I need a new approach: unearned confidence to the max. “My name’s Archon,” I tell the assembled witches with a smile. “You’ll be hearing a lot about me.”

Lilith gives me a subtle nod. “The Coterie greets you, neonate.”

Radiance looks at me with clear appraisal. “I look forward to learning your capabilities. Visage is always interested in recruiting more worthy talent.”

Bombshell claps her hands and cheers. “Woo! I hope you’re strong, new girl. It’s been getting so boring around here lately. Hey, Lilah, say hi!” The witch waves at her counterpart up above—the fourth of the lot, and the only one I don’t recognize.

The building we’re in is a massive space full of strange machinery, stacked crates, and crisscrossing overhead walkways. The woman that Bombshell pointed out, Lilah, has been watching everything from one of those walkways, leaning over the railing.

“It’s Delilah,” she corrects, her voice distorted behind a white mask with eight red eyes and stylized mandibles. “Not that I expect you to remember that, to be clear. I’m sure the thought’s already left your vacuous head.” She’s wearing a full black bodysuit, complete with boots and gloves, and over top of that is a hooded cloak in a gray-and-white pattern that if I had to guess I’d call urban camouflage. It’s not an outfit that screams “magic,” but that’s probably the point. I haven’t heard of a witch named “Delilah” before. Is this the witch I’m here to meet? Bombshell sticks her tongue out at the witch insulting her.

“Good,” interrupts a cool, husky voice that echoes through the room, “now we’re all here and everyone knows everyone. The lot of you have been invited—on Pandora’s recommendation, and for various reasons—to see what I have to offer. Let’s begin.”

“Finally,” Radiance mutters. Bombshell bounces away from me to stand by the others.

A panel slides open on the far wall, maneuvered by a mechanical arm. Four orb-like drones fly out of the dark space behind the panel, made of dark blue metal and covered in neon green circuitry lines, propelled by some invisible mechanism (magic, probably). Each orb drone has a triangular faceplate outlined by individual green lights. They drift into a square formation around a clear space in the center of the workshop.

I’m expecting the figure who follows them to be wearing sci-fi power armor or to have a bunch of mechanical manipulators sprouting from her spine. Instead they’re joined by a bespectacled redhead in business wear, a freshly-lit cigarette held between gloved fingers as she takes the measure of everyone in the room and blows out smoke.

Is this really a witch? Who would be crazy enough to meet Radiance and Lilith completely untransformed?

Except, when I look at those two to gauge their reactions, they’re the ones who look wary.

“You can call me Ferromancer,” the witch introduces herself, tone lazy and confident. “Some of you know me by reputation. If you don’t recognize me, good. I happen to like my privacy, so I won’t comment much on my past, but I can tell you one thing: if you’re looking for a familiar with some kick, I make the best in the whole damn world.”

---

---

After I’ve had my fill of the snow and trees, I fly back to Forks and figure out how to retrieve my phone from wherever it goes when I’m transformed. I swiftly navigate to the private server where all my internet friends live and start posting. It’s still early afternoon, and everyone in our server is based in North America, so they’re all online.

Alexandria: alright you shits listen up

Alexandria: big fuckin announcement

Mike Trout: Oh shit

Mordacity: you finally butched up and told the girl you like her?

Alexandria: maybe the biggest

Alexandria: SHUT

Alexandria: silence 5, a 10 is talking

Mordacity: so you pussied out. again.

Alexandria: i am going to beat you with hammers

Mordacity: with what arm strength

Mordacity: jacking it to gacha girls doesn’t make you ripped and I know you’ve never stepped inside a gym of your own free will

Alexandria: i play them for work!!!

<Mordacity has been muted for 10 minutes.>

a single femur: She’s muted. Stop stalling and say your announcement

Alexandria: thank you

Alexandria: you will be spared

Alexandria: okay gang this is the big times, this is it, the big shit, the real shit. i, the Alexandria you all know and admire…

Mike Trout: did you finally install rainbow six?

Alexandria: oh for fucks sake

I snap a photo of myself and upload it. In the photo I’m transformed, obviously a witch, and floating high above even the tallest tower in Forks, the city sprawl laid out below me. My friends have never seen a picture of me before now, so I guess this is my official face reveal.

Alexandria: check this shit

Alexandria: I. AM A MOTHERFUCKING WITCH!!!!!!!

a single femur: Nice Photoshop

a single femur: My phone autocorrected that capitalization, I do not respect adobe as an institution

Mike Trout: Siiiick

Mike Trout: I totally believe you

Mike Trout: So are you up for siege or not? femur, siege?

a single femur: Sure, I’ve been looking for a new excuse to lobotomize myself

Alexandria: you shits

<Mordacity has been unmuted.>

Mordacity: democracy dies in darkness

Mordacity: your fascist suppression of my free speech has been noted

a single femur: Okay ancom

Alexandria: does trust mean nothing to you people

Mike Trout: Democracy reference! Changing my vote to helldivers

Mordacity: it has also been noted that none of you have the social literacy to tell when a joke would be out of character

Mordacity: @Alexandria do a video call you dumb bitch. hop in vc and stream

Alexandria: oh right

Alexandria: shut up

Alexandria: i would have thought of that in a second

Mordacity: keep telling yourself that

a single femur: Wait are you being serious

Alexandria: yes

Mordacity: start the fucking stream

I move to the voice channel and hit the stream button. Mord was already in the channel, waiting for me, and Femur and Mike join quickly.

“So, I think some groveling is in order,” I say with a smirk as I wave at them from a thousand feet above street level. The audio quality is probably jank, but I’m far enough up that the sound of city life doesn’t reach me.

“I’m exempt from groveling,” Mord says smugly. For all that she memes and shitposts with the rest of us, her voice is always carefully measured and controlled. There’s a sharp edge to most of what she says, and there’s an almost lilting way to how she shifts between tones.

Femur has a tired voice, like he’s always running on too little sleep and too much stress. His English is accented, having grown up in India before moving to Toronto for college like I moved to Forks, and it lends an odd warmth to his speech. “Holy shit. You weren’t kidding.”

Mike says, “No fucking way. Duuuude. This can’t be real.” We like to joke that Mike is the zoomer of the group, despite all four of us being Gen Z, because he’s got the most energetic voice and the youngest sense of humor.

I preen at their reactions, excepting Mordacity and her usual bite. “It’s real. Just a few hours ago, everyone’s favorite Alexandria became a genuine bona fide witch. I have magic now. Take a look.” I conjure green flame in my free hand, then cycle it to purple before putting it out. I make sure I get clean video, holding my phone steady. “I can turn people into clay golems, copy any object I can fit in my hands, and ‘upgrade’ objects with transformation magic.”

They all start talking over each other.

Femur asks, “Did you have to kill someone for this?”

“How fast can you accelerate? Can you hit Mach speeds?” That one’s Mike.

“Do you have a name yet?” asks Mordacity.

I roll my eyes, but of course I’m still reveling in the attention. “Okay okay, all of you shut the fuck up and wait your turn. Mord, you earned the first question.”

“Do you have a name yet?” she repeats. “I saw your fight with Thunderthighs, you’re already making waves. You should be figuring out your brand before social media decides it for you, A. You don’t want to be another Brickhead.”

I wince. “Yeah, okay, good point.” Poor girl. “Kinda still processing that this actually happened to me, so I hadn’t gotten that far. Uh, any suggestions from the peanut gallery?”

“Blaze!”

“Sandbox? Dollhouse?”

“Murder Death Kill!”

“Fire Angel. Wings Girl.”

“Kiln? No that sucks.”

“Alexandria.”

That last suggestion is from Mordacity—her only suggestion. I frown and consider it. “Mord, walk me through that one. Why Alexandria? Just ‘cause it’s my handle?”

“You have personal attachment to the name, which might matter if the theories I’ve read are accurate. And it has a heroic history, which contrasts with ‘Strix Striga’ effectively translating to ‘witch bird.’ You’d be positioning yourself as a foil, if interacting with Striga is a goal.” There’s a knowing tinge to that last line. There’s no way she knows the true depth of my feelings, but sometimes she gets scarily close.

I picked the name Alexandria for my online presence after I dropped out of university. The library of Alexandria famously burned, and I’m a college burnout. It’s not a bad pick. However, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to give out such a big hint to my secret identity. I don’t exactly blab about my IRL situation, but I’m sure someone could get some clues to where I live if they scoured enough of my posts, veil or no veil. Also, my roommate knows my handle.”

“I would think that last one would be an upside,” Mord says dryly. “But your argument is persuasive, so I’ll retract the suggestion. You should probably think on it overnight rather than listening to our inane ideas.”

“Me next!” Mike butts in. “You gotta give me those numbers. I am dying here not knowing how your average velocity compares to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird which flies at 2,200 miles per hour and was never destroyed due to enemy action.”

“Nah. Femur, you’re up.”

Femur, having waited patiently for his turn, asks me, “Do you know what your limits are, morally speaking?”

I sigh. I really should have seen that coming from the philosophy nerd. “That is way too heavy a question, man. I don’t know, I don’t want to kill anyone? Steal from the billion-dollar company, not from the mom-and-pop? I can just figure it out as I go.”

“That’s the kind of thinking that leads to you having a freakout because you killed a dog or something,” he argues. “‘Figuring it out as you go’ means figuring it out when you fuck up and traumatize yourself—or someone you care about.”

“That’s life,” Mordacity says dismissively. “People hurt people all the time. What matters is the optics of how you hurt people. Your trick with Thunderclap was a good start; you’ve demonstrated restraint toward one of the people who matter in the eyes of the public, which is more important than how you handled the civilians—though I assure you, I do have notes on that side of your performance.”

“This is not the time for your edgy sociopath roleplay,” Femur insists with real heat in his voice. “I’m not going to let my friend become a murderer because she thought she was playing a game where consequences can’t happen.”

Mike adds, “Yeah I’m kinda with Femur on this one, gang. Like, real talk, Lexi: are you okay? This shit is crazy. You’re a witch now. Why?”

I shift uncomfortably, wishing for a moment that I could cut the video stream without that raising more questions. I’ve shared a lot with these people (especially Mord, who I knew in college when I was having my breakdown) but there are some secrets that just aren’t mine to share, like Sophia being Striga. “The opportunity came knocking. That’s all I’m willing to say. And Femur, look, I’m not going to murder anyone, okay? I played it safe today and I’ll keep playing it safe, because I’m not stupid. I don’t want a Vanguard hit squad hunting me down. We can sort out the morals later. Yes, I know how that sounds, you don’t need to point it out.”

“Fine,” he relents, “but I am going to pester you into reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics if it fucking kills me. No more excuses.”

“I’ll do that.” I will not do that.

“She’s not going to read that,” Mordacity drawls. “Show her Feldman instead, it’s more suited to her frame of reference.”

“I hate the both of you,” I say with affection. “Mike, ask me some nerd shit.”

“I want to know everything about your powers. Can you break the sound barrier? What’s the heaviest thing you can lift? We have to get numbers, Lexi please give me numbers.”

So we get him numbers.

The glue of our little group is a fixation on magic. Femur cares about the implications of magic’s existence and what people are doing with it in the broader world. Mordacity is a wargamer interested in how mages fight and how they can be beaten. Mike is a physics nerd who wants to model magical abilities with scientific equations. And I’m the fangirl who loves everything about mages and devours anything to do with them.

The mechanical stuff is largely outside Femur’s wheelhouse, so he mostly tunes us out and works on homework while Mordacity and Mike give me tests to run, take measurements as best they’re able, and do the math that brings it all together. Very exciting in theory! In practice…

“Okay, I’ve got that in the spreadsheet. Two more laps and we can move on to the next set of landmarks.”

“Is this really necessary?” I groan, unmuting again now that I’ve come to a stop. Turns out high speed winds are nightmarish to listen to. “The numbers aren’t changing.”

“Of course it’s necessary,” Mordacity says with an edge of insult. “You can’t perform an experiment once and call it definitive. Science is built on replicated results.”

“Also it looks super cool when you zip across the sky,” Mike adds. “Though it would be cooler if you could reach Mach speeds. We gotta do more limit tests.”

I’ll spare you the fine details. Under their instruction, I fly all around the city and back and forth between the coast and the mountains. We measure how long it takes me to fly from skyscraper to skyscraper, from one district to the next, and so on. It took me three minutes to cross fifteen miles when I went from the city to the beach, which gives us a max speed of 300 miles per hour. That holds fairly well across the other tests we run, though a fair few come in much lower. When I’m deep inside the concrete jungle, I fly slower even with buildup.

“It’s the preservative impulse,” Mordacity explains. “We see this kind of behavior all across the spectrum when it comes to magic powers. I’ve seen speculation that magic doesn’t like harming its users, but that’s assigning more intent than I’m comfortable with. Practically speaking, magic modulates away from actions and events that would disrupt its continued use. Going top speed in the middle of downtown would result in a whole lot of crashes into buildings, so your speed gets handicapped until you’re out in the open air with a clean line of travel. Theoretically you can override that limit, but I’d advise against it unless you really need to.”

When I do have a clean line of travel, I can reach my 300 number in under ten seconds of acceleration. That’s fast, but not particularly exceptional by the standards of magical girls, and distantly below what modern aircraft are capable of.

Mike has the reference points, of course. “Commercial airliners like Boeing’s 737 and 777 cruise at over 500 mph, and the 787 almost reaches 600 mph at top speed. In ideal conditions the F-22 Raptor hits 1,500 mph, and the Blackbird tops out at 2,200 mph. Realistically you’re like a high end racing car that can fly; those models start in the 100s and hit their limit in the 200s, so you could crush an F1 race or IndyCar if your magic cooperated.”

“And if the organizers allowed it,” Mord comments dryly. “Regardless, we shouldn’t take the current measurements as immovable fact; magic is not science, and your limits right now might not be your limits in a fight, or when you’re angry, or any number of other random bullshit variables that seem meaningless to us but mean the world to your powers. Don’t get complacent, A.”

Complacent, she says. Well, I guess I’ve been called worse. “Yeah, yeah. We’re done with flight testing, right?”

“Should be,” Mordacity says. “I want to test your regen rate next. Thunderclap barely touched you in that fight, so I’m lacking in data.”

“I’m not stabbing myself for your amusement, dickhead. Suggest something else.”

“Arm strength!” Mike shouts. “Lifting force! I want to know how much you can bench. Lexi you gotta hit the gym now that you have magic so you can get buff like me. If I had magic they’d call me Gains Man because I’d be so good at lifting.”

I roll my eyes. Mordacity cuts in before I can. “The link between physical exercise and physical ability is inconsistent across mages,” she argues. “Besides, her powerset doesn’t seem physically-oriented to me.”

“That basically matches my impression, yeah,” I agree. “It’s—” I hesitate. I know I’ve already told them my big secret, but it feels wrong to share the name of my power. Witches and magical girls never share that, or at least not that I’ve heard—I didn’t even know for sure that powers had names until being told my own. But these are the only friends I have. It feels like paranoia not to trust them. “It’s called Prometheus. My magic, I mean. It told me its name.”

“Now that’s interesting,” Femur chimes in for the first time in most of an hour. “That’s a very big name.”

“Holy hell,” Mordacity breathes. I can practically hear her salivating. “Oh, that’s very interesting information. This has massive implications for our theorycrafting. Okay, no, setting that aside for a moment. A, do you know anything about Prometheus?”

“And if you do,” Mike adds, “let’s pretend that you don’t and still need it explained.”

“I don’t know much,” I admit. “Something about stealing fire and making clay people?”

“A gross oversimplification,” Mordacity grumbles, “but fundamentally correct. Greek stories aren’t monolithic; what we call Greek mythology was the living religion of multiple cultures that evolved and changed over hundreds of years. The version of Prometheus that survives, broadly, is this: he was one of the old gods that predated the Olympians—Zeus, Hades, and the rest—but managed to stay on good terms with them during the big war that put the gods we know in charge of the world. He made the first humans out of clay, then stole fire from the gods to give to his creations. For this trespass, Prometheus was bound to a rock and had his liver eaten by an eagle every day before regenerating overnight.”

“He’s very culturally significant,” Femur attests. “There’s a reference to Prometheus in the title of Frankenstein, and in the title of the biography for the man who built the nuclear bomb. The motif of stealing fire appears in a number of mythological traditions. It’s the original ‘spark of invention’ moment; the vast majority of human technology can trace its origin to early humans mastering fire.”

I hum. “Okay, that’s a lot. I definitely need to read a few books on this, or at least a few Wikipedia articles. And I want to experiment more with the limits of my powers, and how all this ties together. But, I also need to eat something because holy shit it’s been like six hours or something.” It’s been maybe three; the sun isn’t even setting. “I am hungry, gang.”

“Ah, but what if instead of eating—”

Femur kicks Mord from the voice channel. “Go eat.”

“You should eat,” Mike agrees. “We can play Rainbow Six later. And also the magic thing.”

“Later, nerds.”

I leave the channel, put my phone back in the weird pocket dimension where the rest of my stuff goes when I transform, and go looking for lunch.

---

---

Pandora finds me atop the Leyton & Messier commercial skyscraper, looking out on the city of Forks from a brand new viewpoint. The battle with Thunderclap was chaotic, but ultimately short; it’s still midday. The city is alive and bustling.

Twenty years ago, this was a nothing town. Forks was known for its lumber industry and its proximity to a national park, which might have been more exceptional if it wasn’t located in Washington of all places. We have three national parks, nine national forests, and a metric assload of trees.

But a lot can change in twenty years. Now, Forks is the rising star of the state, its urban sprawl greedily devouring the surrounding woods that were once its lifeblood. Concrete and glass have overwritten the green, replacing natural color with an artificial rainbow of advertisements and commercial projects.

And oh, do we have our share of projects. Out west, the Quillayute Airport, once barely in service, has grown to the size and traffic of Spokane International, though it’s still no SeaTac. Nearby coastal towns like La Push and Clallam Bay have seen an increased demand for fresh fish, and the local marijuana business is booming. I’ve been to three different weed shops that claim to source their premium stock from a magical girl with botanical powers, though only one of them was telling the truth.

The crown jewel of modern Forks is its entertainment industry. A handful of American film companies poured a fortune into aggressively poaching from Vancouver’s studios, aided by lucrative deals with Visage and its stable of photogenic magical girls, in an attempt to steal the title of “Hollywood North” from the Canadians. A magical girl can do her own stunts and make her own special effects; she can even survive getting shot with real bullets. The climate conditions restrict the outdoors scenes you can shoot, but not as much as you’d think (especially when a few magical girls have a degree of weather manipulation).

The city district where most of the filming takes place falls in the shadow of the Visage Spire, a massive structure built to look like two twining towers, sinuous and sleek, with a golden orb held levitating between them by Memento’s signature power. The Spire is a monument to what magical girls can do to build, not just fight. The industry around the Spire is a monument to how magical girls can be monetized.

I’ve lived here for the better part of ten years; I moved from Everett into the dorms at the then-new University of Forks, hoping to see more magical girls up close. In the end, I guess I got my wish.

“So,” Pandora asks me, “how do you feel?”

I hum to myself as I consider how to answer. My feet dangle off the side of the roof, five hundred feet above the ground. I feel… “Powerful. But not powerful enough.”

The cat tilts its head. “Oh?”

“Don’t give me that. You were watching, weren’t you? You vanished after giving me powers, then didn’t show up again until the fight was over. Did you know she was going to attack? Did you let it happen?”

“I’m a Jovian,” it says apologetically. “I can empower and guide, but I can’t intervene. If it’s any consolation, I was confident you would win. I don’t pick losers, Ms. Emily. So, yes, I was watching, and I sensed Thunderclap’s approach, but I didn’t let it happen.”

I chew on its response. It’s hard to really trust a creature like Pandora. I’ve watched too many magical girl shows where the entities granting powers are revealed to be the real villains. I guess it’s different when you’re explicitly working for the baddies, though. I am a villain, now that I’m a witch. I should get used to that.

“You’re disappointed that Striga brushed you off,” Pandora guesses. “Is that why you don’t feel powerful enough?”

I sigh. “I shouldn’t be surprised. She does B-list work when it comes her way, but Strix Striga isn’t a small-timer; she’s meant for fighting Catastrophes, not newbies like me. If Echidna really is in town, I don’t have a chance at grabbing her attention.”

The Catastrophes. Each continent has their own name for the category, and their own local threats, but the concept is pretty simple: witches so dangerous they’re living calamities.

Typhon, the Unnatural Disaster. She has the strongest weather control ability ever recorded, and she’s able to manifest tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, you name it. Her only saving grace is that you always see her coming, so a big enough team of magical girls can usually drive her off before she hits a major population center.

Phage, the Vampire Witch. Her energy drain power resurrects anyone she kills as a brainwashed thrall with a weaker version of the same power, and their victims come back with an even weaker copy that can’t make more vampires. She likes to hide in the chaos of other Catastrophes, seeding problems that won’t reveal themselves until long after she’s left the area.

And Echidna, the Queen of Beasts. Able to take control of any biological material she touches and completely resequence it, she would be a lethal threat even without the mutated products of her deranged experiments. If she’s set up a new lab in Washington, every city in the state will be dealing with her runaway pets soon enough.

The Catastrophes exist outside of the truce terms enforced by Coterie and Vanguard; in fact, part of the pact is an agreement to work together against the Catastrophes wherever they show up. Arguably, Thunderclap’s attack was a violation of the pact in two regards; practically, neither organization will care to enforce the terms until Echidna escalates her operations.

“Do you want to become a Catastrophe?” Pandora asks.

“What? No!” I lean away from the cat and scowl. “I’m not crazy enough to want that, and I’m certainly not stupid enough to think I could get away with it. Being a Catastrophe would get Sophie’s attention, sure, but there’s no banter there, no flirting, no back-and-forth. Only death. No, I need to become a strong enough witch that I can occupy Striga without becoming another continental threat that merits every magical girl in three hundred miles showing up to kick my teeth in.”

The cat licks a paw. “I see. Well, I think you have an admirable sense of perspective about this issue. I believe I can help you achieve your goal, Ms. Emily. There is a witch in town that can help you refine your control of your abilities—specifically your familiar creation, the mastery of which is vital to avoid getting in further brawls with your foes. Would you like me to introduce you?”

My interest perks up. “Networking with a witch? Yeah, I’m definitely interested, but, who is it? Harlequin? Sweet Tooth?”

“Not someone you’d recognize, I’m sorry to say. She’s a witch from California, and she prefers to stay under the radar. I’ll get in touch with her and arrange the meeting. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. Until then, I recommend you take it easy. You have magic now, Rachel. Enjoy it.”

When I blink, the cat vanishes. Dramatic little shit.

It’s still good advice. The magic thing, I mean. The kind of person who gets magic powers and immediately starts planning how to optimize their use is a nerd. And, okay, I may spend a lot of time modeling the powersets of magical girls in game systems, and I might play a card game that is quintessentially for nerds, but I’m not that bad. Probably.

I want to have fun. I want to celebrate this moment. I have magic powers, and I beat up a magical girl for trying to kill me, and I’m immortal and I can fly now and the whole world is my oyster if I can just make my powers stronger.

And then I can be with Sophia.

I let out another heavy, too-tired breath. I don’t know why I thought I could get everything I wanted without having to work for it. There was never a world where I became a witch and Sophia just fell in my lap. To win Sophia, to win her time and keep her eyes on me, I need to be more than just an ordinary witch.

I need to be the kind of witch that beats the odds. The one in a hundred chance. Every witch is gambling that they’ll be the one to survive, but luck can’t carry you when the competition is this fierce. I have to be a card sharp, counting symbols and goading the other players into making the wrong decisions.

Because if I fail, there’s no more Sophia. No more Rachel. No more card games, no more gacha on my phone, no more burgers and lemonade, no more anything.

No more nights like seven years ago when Sophia held me close in her arms, the two of us buried beneath blankets in her dorm room bed. She held me as I cried and shivered, and that night I fell in love. I would do anything for another night in her arms.

I would give everything for Sophia to be mine.

I stand up and perch on the very edge of the skyscraper roof, staring down at the city that has been my home and my curse for all of my adult life. I don’t have a fear of heights, but it’s natural to be a little scared looking down from this high up. It’s just as natural to feel the call of the void, that voice in the back of your head wondering what would happen if you let your feet slip and fell all the way down to splat against the pavement below.

I take a deep breath, let it out, and step off. The wind rushes past my face and scours my mind of pointless, petty worries. Right now, I don’t need to worry about my relationship with Sophia. I don’t need to feel bad about what I’ve done with my life. I don’t need to feel afraid of the future.

I fall, and everything else falls away. The ground rushes at me, and the cars and the people, and at just the right moment I spread my wings and soar.

Concrete, glass, and steel. Electric lights and billboard advertisements. The people of Forks are playing with their phones, scurrying back from lunch breaks, and making plans for the afternoon. I fly over the heads of a thousand ordinary souls, a city of normal humans that are all just like I was a few hours ago. They call out to each other and point as I pass by, eager to be the first to snap a picture of the new witch in town.

This city loves magic. How could it not? There are magical girls—and even a few witches—slapped on everything. The wall art on the taqueria, the figures in the windows of the clothing shop, licensed appearances in ads plastered in paper or playing on screens. If you have powers, you’re special, and everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to be you.

I drink it all in as I keep flying. I do a circle of Rainywood—the entertainment district—and wave to a crew working in one of the outdoor lots. I zip from one end of the city to its opposite, flying too fast to even see most of the buildings that I’m passing. I pass the game shop, my favorite restaurants, and the apartment complex where Sophie and I stay. I pass the college I dropped out of, too, and other less enjoyable sights.

I can fly anywhere. Why keep it to Forks? The drive to the coast is twenty minutes (usually longer because of airport traffic getting in the way), but at top speed it only takes me three minutes to reach the ocean and run my hand through the water.

I fly past fishing boats and wave to tourists on the beach before swinging back, crossing through Forks again, and climbing the slopes of the Olympic Mountains. For all the city expands, it’s still no Seattle; you’re never too far from the forest.

The evergreens are as gorgeous as ever, and higher up is covered in clear white snow. Snow! In October! I love it. I haven’t been up here in ages. Not since a trip with Sophia and our other classmates when we were in a course together.

I dive into the snow and roll around in it. The freezing temperature is refreshing, like a soothing balm against my supernaturally warm skin. I can make a snow angel with real wings! That’s the coolest thing ever!

The air is so fresh out in the woods and in the mountains. It’s like you’re living in a whole different world from the cramped, choked city. I settle into the snow, my internal furnace keeping the cold from getting painful, and I watch the clouds roll by.

I could get used to this. I could take walks in the woods and not have to worry about bears or getting lost. I could come to the mountains every weekend just to play in the snow.

And there’s so much more I can do. A world of possibilities. It’s strange having so much hope for the future. Not measuring my week just by when I can next roll the dice on spending time with Sophia, or when rent is due.

For the first time in forever, I feel alive again. I get to meet another witch soon! I get to experiment with my magic powers! I get to be someone important. Someone special.

Maybe, just this once, everything is going to turn out alright.

---

---

“Thunderclap, report.”

Striga hovers over the battlefield we’ve made of the mall parking lot. As ever, the knight in shining armor is completely unreadable. Her mouth, visible below the owl mask covering her eyes, is set in an expressionless line. She is a steel sentinel working a ceaseless vigil, unbroken and never tiring. More than any other magical girl, Striga truly embodies the concept of “heroine” in the hearts of the people.

I want to break that mask and see the human beneath. I want Sophia, my Sophia, bare of this armor and this hateful persona. They say that Striga never tires, but I know the truth; I’ve seen her stumbling home, exhausted, as dawn rises over a city that thinks her untouchable. They’re killing her.

Thunderclap doesn’t know what Striga is really like. How could she? All she sees is the cold metal mask.

The weakened heroine straightens her posture, or tries to. Her mouth tightens and I can almost hear her teeth grinding as she works through an answer in her head. Maybe it’s dawning on her how badly she messed up.

“I was attempting to subdue a dangerous witch, ma’am,” Thunderclap grits out. She’s glaring at me with so much anger I can almost feel the rolling waves of heat. It’s cute.

My more impish side wants me to make a snarky comment here and keep ruffling Thunderclap’s feathers, but the heroine who attacked me is an entirely secondary concern with Striga in the room. She’s so close. All that matters is getting her attention. But how should I go about doing that?

There are civilians around. They were cautiously interested when it was just me and Thunderclap, but now they’ve been lured closer by the sight of Forks’ very own guardian angel. I could threaten them to catch Striga’s eye, but I don’t really want her angry at me.

“Dangerous?” Striga asks. “More dangerous than the beast of Echidna that your teammates are fighting? How very impressive. It’s strange, then, that I haven’t heard of her before. One would think that a witch with that kind of history would be all over the news, or on the lips of our peers.”

Striga finally turns her head away from Thunderclap to look at me instead. My heart flutters. Her eyes are hidden behind the opaque lenses of her owl mask, but I can feel my darling’s attention as she takes in every detail of my appearance, how I hold myself, and Thunderclap’s own axe resting on my shoulder.

“How long have you been a witch?” she asks me, calm and cool, everything about her so dispassionate and controlled. Is she screaming inside, or has she deadened that part of herself to become their saint of steel feathers?

I check a watch I’m not wearing and have never worn. “Well, given the current position of the stars and the turning colors of the leaves… about half an hour, maybe? Also, wow, it is so cool to meet you, Ms. Striga. I’m your biggest fan.” I set the axe down and make a heart with my hands, like I did for Thunderclap before, but this time the adoration on my face is genuine. I could never hide my feelings for Sophia.

Striga notes that, I’m sure, in her organic supercomputer of a brain. Then she stops looking at me and turns her attention back to the other heroine. My hands fall and my heart twinges in pain, but it’s fine, it’s fine, I can wait my turn. I’m used to it.

Thunderclap is still glaring at me, but her wall of anger falters when Striga descends from the sky and sets down right in front of her. “Commander, I—”

“Tell me, Thunderclap,” Striga stresses, pointedly not using a rank for her de facto subordinate, “what was this witch doing when you left your teammates behind to apprehend her?”

Thunderclap doesn’t answer. She can’t. She looks so miserable that it takes a real effort for me to hold back my laughter. Striga would have felt the same wave of dark energy that drew in the other heroine—she would have known it meant the birth of a new witch—and she would have noticed Thunderclap racing off half-cocked to pick a fight that never needed to happen.

The gawking spectators hear everything. This must be humiliating for a heroine, especially for a Vanguard heroine. We all knew Thunderclap was a hothead, but now that’ll be the front page story on every site. The forums are going to love this.

Striga is stern and sharp, seemingly uncaring that this whole conversation is being recorded or streamed on half a dozen smartphones. Maybe that’s an upside from her perspective. A teachable lesson for her student.

“Disengage from this conflict immediately. You are in a gray area at risk of violating the pact and incurring retaliation from the Coterie, and others. We will discuss your failings when you return to base.”

The pact she’s talking about is a pseudo-formal agreement between witches and magical girls to play nice with each other. It doesn’t have an official name, nor is it legally binding, but everyone with a lick of sense follows its rules.

If the conflict between heroines and villainesses was a war in which neither side could negotiate with the other, they’d both keep escalating until the whole world looked like the ashen remains of Texas. In the Pacific Northwest, Vanguard and the Coterie (a loose alliance of witches) enforce the agreement and punish those who break it. It’s not exactly ironclad, and the two groups have disagreed in the past over whether a given action broke the terms in a way that demands retribution, but it largely holds together and keeps places like Forks from turning into another crater. Other regions usually have their own version of the pact.

When a witch learns the civilian identity of a magical girl, she doesn’t turn that heroine’s friends and family into hostages. When a magical girl learns a witch’s identity, she doesn’t ambush that villainess at her home or place of work. If a witch’s evil scheme would cause mass harm to a civilian population, she shelves the idea and finds a new scheme. And if a witch hasn’t done anything yet, it’s not very politic for a magical girl to force a first encounter.

Thunderclap’s issue is that she smashes first and rarely asks questions. She believes in the Vanguard, of that I have no doubt, but it’s never been clear if she really believes in the pact. A lot of magical girls scoff at the idea of treating witches like human beings that can be reasoned with, no matter how much history of cooperation there is with groups like the Coterie. Of course, most heroines with a grudge against the pact don’t join up with the organization that enforces it.

If Thunderclap respected the pact, she would have blanched when Striga mentioned a potential violation. Instead, that red anger boils to the surface again. The heroine is barely able to contain herself as she grinds out, “Is that an order, Commander?”

Striga lets the question hang in the air for a moment before answering, “No, it isn’t. It never is. I can only tell you what I think is best. If you aren’t willing to listen, then there’s no point in me staying here. There are real battles to fight.”

As Sophia turns around and tenses her legs to leap into the air, I call out, “Striga! Hey, before you go, could I—”

“I apologize,” she cuts me off, “but I have to find out what Echidna is planning before more people get hurt. Welcome to our world, new girl. Please don’t become a problem that I have to solve.”

And then she’s gone.

Sophia is gone, just like that, right back to the endless war without a second glance spared my way. Like I’m beneath her notice. One more speck not worthy of her consideration. I’m just the new girl, not a serious threat like Echidna or Typhon.

I should have known that—I did know that—but still… she barely even looked at me. She spent the whole conversation focused on Thunderclap, of all people. That stupid heroine monopolized the attention that should have been mine. The whole reason I became a witch.

Thunderclap looks angry, but all I feel is emptiness. I’m over this fight.

“Don’t think I’m letting you get away,” she snarls. She cracks her fists and a few sparks of electricity scatter. In the time we were talking, her powers came back.

Was that Striga’s plan? Did she drag her speech out just to keep me at bay long enough for Thunderclap to recover her strength? It’s the kind of plan she’d make.

It doesn’t matter. I beat this girl once, I’ll do it again.

I don’t bother with banter. I pick up the sapphire axe, I point it at Thunderclap, and then I burn it. I feed the axe to the furnace in my chest, the power of Prometheus blazing inside me, and my magic gobbles the axe like any other object. In an instant, Thunderclap’s signature weapon burns away and is added to my arsenal.

If she was angry before, now she’s enraged. Too bad for her; she can’t resummon her axe until she transforms again—another detail I learned from making so many stat sheets.

I have no such limitation. The heroine charges and I recreate her axe in a burst of purple flame. I swing at the approaching heroine and she veers off to avoid the blade, frustration written across her face. The axe is heavy and unwieldy, so it drags a bit as I try to arrest the motion of the weapon and bring it back to a readied stance.

Thunderclap blasts me with lightning. It hurts, but not as bad as the full storm. I shrug off the pain, adjust my stance, and finish raising the axe.

The heat in my chest pulses, a short little burst like a wave from a friend. Prometheus conveys an image of transformation to me, the sword in the forge becoming more than just a slab of iron. It wants to reshape something: the axe in my hands.

Sure, why not? I let green flame surge into the stolen weapon and mold it into a new form. My power guides the reconstruction, emerald fire solidifying the haft and melting the sharp blade into scorched slag. The slashing weapon becomes a brutish club, perfect for beating an obnoxious heroine into the ground. Perfect for letting the anger out.

“You should run,” I taunt the heroine. “You couldn’t beat me before, and now I’m the only one with a weapon. Go cry to your mother. Run away, little girl. Run away.”

She can’t. Not with everyone watching. Not with a dozen cameras recording. The whole world is looking at her, and they see weakness. I narrowly dodge another bolt flung my way.

“Or,” I say with a grin, “you can try your luck.”

I conjure a second axe and throw it on the ground in front of me. Thunderclap stops charging up another bolt of lightning and stares at the axe, torn between suspicion and the need to prove herself. The correct tactical move would be to keep pelting me with lightning. The move that preserves her reputation, though…

Thunderclap picks up the axe. “Mistake,” she growls at me.

The fight doesn’t last long.

She makes me work for the win, but she’s exhausted from burning out. She’s too slow, too weak, too unbalanced. I’m in peak form, all my injuries from her ultimate attack having faded away while Striga was talking. The melted axe feels lighter and easier to swing, perfectly molded to my hands, yet it lands with greater force and wins every clash. My magic hasn’t just changed the weapon, I’ve upgraded it.

I take a few nicks, but I hit back harder. The melted head of my makeshift club cracks into her shoulder, her leg, her ribs, and each contact sends a new thrill up my arms. Every blow exhilarates me. I laugh, maniacal and joyous, and I feel like a proper witch. This is the satisfaction I deserve. The apology I’m owed for not getting what I really wanted. For not getting Striga.

Her bruised flesh, the blood on the end of my weapon, the way her head lolls as she finally passes out… all of it sings to me in a way I didn’t know I needed. I want to keep going. I want to cradle her face and bite her lip. I want to squeeze her wrist until it snaps. Are these my instincts as a witch, or did I always have this in me?

Some small part of me thought that I wouldn’t enjoy this when it was actually happening. A little voice in my head hoped that any fantasies were just delusions, and that a strong moral fiber would rise to the surface and stop me. I thought I’d grow a conscience. Foolish of me. I was always meant to be a witch.

I stand over the unconscious form of my foe. I’m breathing heavily and I’m wounded, but the victory is mine. It’s satisfying, I can’t deny that, but as the adrenaline seeps out of me I’m left staring at the face of someone that Striga—my beloved Sophia—cares about more than she cares about me.

Magical girls can’t die from a little thing like internal bleeding. If I leave Thunderclap, she’ll wake up, shrug off every wound, and get back to doing what heroines do. If I summon another knife and drive it through her chin and up into her brain, she’ll take longer to regenerate, but more importantly it’ll count as the first kill in a pattern of three. That would send a message.

I want to kill her. I want to kill every girl between me and Sophia. I want to punish them all for getting in my way.

But… that’s not the smart choice. It’s what my heart wants, but my brain knows what I need. Witches who kill are witches that get killed. And besides, it’ll be more fun if I’m just playing with the other girls than if every fight is life-or-death. That’s the message I should be sending.

So I make the knife, but I don’t stab the heroine. I set the knife beside her, pointing at her neck, and I look around at all the bystanders that were mesmerized by the battle and holding their breath to see if I went for the kill.

“Be seeing you, Forks,” I tell the cameras. “I’m new in town, but I’m here to stay.”

I flap my wings and take to the sky.

---

---

Her sapphire axe comes swinging for my neck and I jump away with combat reflexes I definitely didn’t have ten minutes ago. My feet never hit the ground, my body held aloft by a pair of wings that biologically shouldn’t be able to lift me but which are running on the far superior system of crazy wizard bullshit.

Holy shit, I fly now! I soar up and away from the murderous magical girl, propelled more by the will to move than any physical mechanism I can determine. My wings are flapping, sure, but there’s a noticeable disconnect between the motion of my wings and the way I’m moving. My body basically floats in whatever direction I want it to.

Flying feels really good, regardless. The wind on my face is a refreshing breeze, and there’s a sense of lightness to my body as I turn and dive. I zoom through the air like a rocket, swooping around skyscrapers and skimming just over the roofs of cars. It all feels incredibly natural, like I’ve been flying my whole life, but it’s more exhilarating than I could have imagined.

I’m quite literally free as a bird. The whole world is my playground.

Then a bolt of lightning zaps past and I remember the buff lady trying to kill me.

Thunderclap is on my tail, zooming through the air atop a cute little cloud that crackles with more blue electricity. There’s still a fair bit of distance between us, but it looks like she’s picking up speed. This is a problem.

Deescalation didn’t work, so now it’s a fight. How does Thunderclap lose fights? I wasn’t lying when I called myself a fan; I’ve watched dozens of videos of my opponent. I’ve cheered her on in fights against witches, scoured imageboards for fanart, and theorycrafted about her powerset on the forums. I’ve spent hours dissecting Thunderclap’s strengths and weaknesses in arguments with other nerds, I’ve converted her powerset into roleplaying games both tabletop and digital, and I’ve even made fake trading cards for her like the real cards the Visage girls get.

If Thunderclap can do it, I know it. If Thunderclap can’t do it, I know that too. I’ve even gamed out how a witch could beat her in a fight.

This heroine won’t know what hit her.

A peal of thunder tells me I settled on a plan of action just in time. I blink and the magical girl is right in front of me, axe swinging down as lightning surges around her. Combat reflexes take over and my arm moves of its own volition toward the heroine. The image of the dress clicks into my mind and I burn one into existence falling toward Thunderclap. She cuts through the dress, buying me just enough time to fling myself away before her follow-up swing bisects the space where I’d been floating.

“Don’t you think this is a bit much?” I call behind me as I beat a hasty retreat from the pursuing heroine. “I mean, I haven’t even done anything evil yet! And it’s my birthday! You wouldn’t kill a girl on her birthday, would you?”

I hear the shouted reply of “Happy birthday!” in one ear as my other ear gets a burst of static ozone from the lightning bolt that sizzles past, just narrowly missing my head.

That’s right, keep it up. I’m a nasty little mosquito, and all you wanna do is swat me.

I soar through Forks, dodging blasts of electric energy and zooming over pedestrians, as I make my way toward the nearest mall, the Nessie Commercial Megacenter. The NCM is a sprawling behemoth, a relic of ancient America constructed in the halcyon past of 2019 by a pack of corporate gambling addicts convinced malls were about to see a huge resurgence in popularity. That didn’t happen, but the Megacenter has limped on through the years, carried largely by tourists here to see the magical girls.

Time to give them a show! I crash in through the skylight over the north wing food court and do my best superhero landing amid falling glass and screaming people.

“Hello, shoppers!” I greet them cheerfully, spreading my wings wide. “You are being hostaged. Do not resist.”

They resist, obviously, and start running away in a panic. Innocent civilians can be so rude to the sexy witch trying to use them all as human shields.

Now, this might have become obvious, but I’m a teensy bit completely obsessed with magical girls. That means I’m obsessed with witches, too, and cataloguing all the commonalities and intricacies of their powers. It’s not like either faction has ever come out and published a list of rules for how all those powers work, but nerds on the internet have compiled and cross-referenced enough data between communities that we feel pretty confident about a few key guesses.

Every witch, without exception, is accompanied by minions. Some of these minions get created from raw magic, some of these minions get transformed from local objects or wildlife, and some are converted from innocent victims. All of them seem completely subservient to their mistresses, willing to die for them without hesitation.

Collectively, we call those minions “familiars.” It’s thematic.

From what I understand of my creation magic, it relies on copying existing templates stored within itself. If I can get my hands on a weapon, I can feed that weapon to Prometheus and forge as many copies as I like. But in order to replicate a servant, I’d need to have made one first.

Therefore, since “witches have familiars” is a rule of the system, my other power must be the key to making familiars. The green flame transformed my body, so I bet I can use it to transform other bodies—people or animals or maybe even plants and objects—into familiars that I can then feed to Prometheus to replicate on demand.

This is exciting! I want to spend a whole evening just theorycrafting what my powers are capable of and running experiments to measure them. Sadly, I have to deal with an uppity heroine first.

I conjure the green fire in my left hand—Prometheus seems insistent it be that one—and command it to transform whatever it can. To my delight, the output of the spell is a string of fireballs shooting into the crowd. The flames splash onto a handful of shoppers and—oh, oh that’s horrifying. Oh no.

Thunderclap crashes onto the scene just in time to witness the monstrous tableau. Her focused anger is swept away for a moment by sheer horror, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open. We watch in shared discomfort as three innocent civilians stop being human.

The victims convulse and cry out as green flame spreads across their bodies and sinks into their flesh. The green light flares in erratic patterns beneath the surface of their skin, bright enough to be visible through clothing. Wet earth bubbles up in the wake of each flare and hardens into fired clay.

A man is trapped in the middle of reaching for help, his arm bulking out until it droops under its own weight. A woman’s shriek of terror is smothered by blank, featureless clay. Three lumbering golems rise where ordinary humans fell, turned lumpy, brutish, and faceless by my power.

Did I just kill three people? Please tell me that’s not permanent.

In a panic I reach for Prometheus. I need this to not be permanent, I am not ready to be a murderer. The blaze in my chest flickers, conveying confusion, before shifting to a comforting fireplace warmth.

One of the three clay dolls falls apart, chunks of hardened earth crumbling away to reveal the unharmed form of the civilian inside. He immediately bolts for the exit, which I consider a fair and measured response to briefly not being a person. I still shoot another fireball to recapture him.

I breathe out a sigh of relief. I’m not a murderer! I haven’t broken the treaty! Sophia isn’t going to come kill me thrice!

Thunderclap, on the other hand, is glaring at me with obvious violent intent. She was hesitating to attack while all the people were still around, but now most of them have scattered to the halls. “Monster!” she accuses. “A witch like all the rest.”

“That’s profiling,” I insist, throwing myself behind an info kiosk to dodge another lightning bolt. “Hey, minions: get the girl!”

My three clay dolls spring into action. One of them starts barrelling toward Thunderclap with the hunched gait of a football player, while the other two… take off at random in the direction of civilians. Not the sharpest sculptures in the gallery, my familiars.

“Get the girl with the axe!” I correct, exasperated. The golems adjust course.

Next priority: weapons. I do a quick survey of the food court. Most of the chains probably don’t need knives for anything if they’re just assembling stuff made elsewhere, but I’ve seen the guys at the gyro place carve their meat fresh. They’re gone with the rest of the employees, so it’s free real estate. I dash over, hop the counter, and scavenge.

The rich scent of lamb and beef threatens my focus, as does the banquet of feta cheese, olives, peppers, tzatziki, and other treasures of the Mediterranean. I never ate, did I? I should definitely eat after I kick Thunderclap into next week.

I find the knife I was after and grab it with the same hand that my magic prefers for creating objects. I visualize the forge and will the knife to pass into its mouth. Purple flame flickers to life and devours my first weapon.

With another conceptualization of intent, I recreate my first weapon. The burst of fire conjures a perfect replica of the knife I just incinerated, and a few test swings have it feeling identical to the weight of the original knife, for as well as I can judge that.

It isn’t going to stand up to that giant axe, but at least I can stab people now.

I glance over at the brawl in the center of the food court just in time to watch Thunderclap blast a golem across the room. It crashes through a dozen tables and collapses in a pile, clay crumbling away from the now-unconscious human host. Thunderclap swoops over to the body, checks for a pulse, and a weight visibly leaves her shoulders as she finds it.

My other two minions rush after her, but they’re the complete opposite of coordinated. They keep jostling into each other and losing their balance, costing precious time when they could just be moving a little further apart and it wouldn’t be an issue. Definitely not the sharpest.

Prometheus grabs my attention with a flare of heat. My power seems excited, watching the golems, or maybe… anticipatory? A flash of imagery shows me the kiln again, and wet clay, and my hands carving that clay with a knife until a lumpy block becomes a detailed statuette.

My servants are simple, but they don’t have to be. I can shape them. I just have to figure out how, which is honestly not near the top of my list right now.

I discard the knife, flap my wings, and take off through Nessie’s halls, leaving the battle in the food court behind.

The Megacenter is a cluster of interconnected buildings so labyrinthine that one girl managed to hide there for a whole week before being found by security. I’m not the biggest shopper, but I’ve still been here enough times to know roughly what I’m looking for. I ignore clothing stores and jewelry boutiques, zipping past stalls selling stuffed animals and one shop smelling of the most delicious cinnamon sugar that I desperately want to inhale. Fighting on an empty stomach is the worst.

I set down in the sporting goods section of a big-box store. A red-faced man with an ugly moustache comes stomping toward me, his nametag informing me that Dennis here is the store manager for this location.

Dennis shouts at me, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but when I tell Pearl Princess that you invaded her favorite store—”

I fireball the delusional idiot with transformation magic. “You really shouldn’t trust sponsor reads,” I chide my newest minion as Dennis becomes another clay doll.

I rip a baseball bat off the wall and feed it to Prometheus. That’s two weapons, now what can I scrounge next?

“WITCH!” roars Thunderclap, making her entrance with characteristic aggression.

“Hi again!” I greet her, and then I have to duck under another axe swing and shout at Dennis to distract her.

The clay doll comes lumbering in while I do my best to create distance. This time Thunderclap isn’t willing to give me that luxury, and she dodges the big clay monster’s clumsy lunge to stay close and stay swinging. This calls for an adjustment in tactics.

I conjure a baseball bat and throw it at her. She knocks it aside with her axe, but in that second of distraction I dart past her to my golem and undo its transformation. Manager Dennis returns to being human and is woken up by a knife at his throat and my other arm pinning him. Whatever exclamation he was going to make cuts off.

Thunderclap freezes at the sight of a genuine life-in-danger hostage.

“Y’know,” I say with a grin, “I really don’t think you’re as dumb as everyone believes.”

I grab Dennis tight and bolt for the exit at full flight speed. Thunderclap follows me into the parking lot and above it, higher and higher into the air. Dennis screams, so I drop the knife and cover his mouth to shut him up.

“Think fast!” I call to Thunderclap, and then I drop Dennis. He’ll be fine.

The heroine breaks off her charge toward me and swoops down in a panic, throwing her axe aside to be able to catch the civilian without cutting him up. Her dive is perfect, her course correction pristine, and she lines up the catch just a second before my fireball hits the falling body and turns him back into a heavy clay doll.

The sight of a magical girl getting slammed by several hundred pounds of monster brings a tear to my eye, and I belt out another mad cackle. I follow the duo down and shout to the falling heroine, “You’re putting me through a trial by fire here! Get it? Trial by fire? See, it’s funny because—”

A surprise lightning bolt clips my left wing and hurts like hell, damn it, my poor singed feathers that didn’t deserve such unprovoked cruelty. I’d file a complaint with Vanguard HR if they had that department. Maybe Visage will take the case for me.

Pain doesn’t seem nearly as debilitating as it was before my transformation, so pencil another line onto the forces of darkness benefits package. My flight wobbles, but I recover.

Thunderclap managed that shot while wriggling out from under the golem, and I see dear Dennis passed out in the crater that the falling monster made in the asphalt. The parking lot isn’t empty of people; plenty of civilians are either getting in their cars to leave or just plain unbothered that a fight between two superpowered warriors is happening just over their heads. The things you get used to in Forks, I swear.

That means more hostages for me to use. I make a landing next to two dudes who really should have run away. Their loss, my golems.

Golem, I should say, since one of them immediately takes a bolt of lightning to its distinct lack of a face and crumbles back into a person. Oh, and there goes the second. Thunderclap lands between me and the unconscious victims, her axe retrieved and once more in hand. Anger rolls off her in waves, her face contorted into a scowl so extreme it looks unhealthy. I can see individual muscles tensing, her whole body flush with incandescent rage.

“Nice work!” I praise. “But I think I’m getting the hang of this magic thing, so you should probably just head home.”

Instead of doing that, she rushes me again. And instead of flying away or hiding behind the golem, this time I step into the swing. With a burst of speed both of my hands snap to the handle of the weapon and I put all my strength behind pushing the battleaxe back. Thunderclap fights me for it, teeth gritted in single-minded determination.

I layer on the smugness and sneer at her, “If this is all you have, I’m sorely disappointed. I thought you were strong. Was I mistaken? Or are you just a half-rate pretender hiding in Striga’s long shadow?”

The rage boils over and something in the magical girl snaps. She lets go of the axe and jumps into the sky, hovering at least twenty feet above me. The clouds darken overhead as the air around her begins to crackle, and then a dozen concentric rings of golden light flash into existence and illuminate the brewing storm.

Thunderclap raises one hand and grasps a bolt of lightning. Blue electricity arcs off of the concentric rings and joins the lightning in her hand, feeding it and causing it to grow. The sense of raw power is palpable, and it’s enough to raise goosebumps on my skin.

I’ve seen her do this in videos, but I’ve never had a front row seat. This is her ultimate spell, her strongest attack, and she’s about to unleash it on me. One of the unique properties of her ultimate spell is that it’s completely and absolutely unavoidable; once she selects you as a target and unleashes the attack, it will strike you. There’s no way for me to escape her wrath.

I’ve won.

A shockwave of sound booms across the parking lot, a true clap of thunder, and the heroine chants the words of her ultimate move:

“Nothing beneath the sky can escape my justice. All things wicked shall break beneath my strength. STORM GOD’S JUDGMENT!”

The heavens crack open and the lightning bolt is loosed.

A pillar of white and blue energy crashes into me like an orbital laser. The massed power of her ultimate attack drives me to the floor and cracks the asphalt beneath me. Magical lightning tears into me with unrelenting force and fries me like an egg. My scream of pain is drowned out by the sizzle of electrified air and a thousand static shocks. My convulsions are masked by blinding white.

It hurts like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It’s a form of pain so bright that I can’t even think through it, a pain so sharp that my world is only knives.

But the light fades, and the static grounds itself, and when it all passes to the earth I find myself happily still alive. The pain is lingering, smoke curling off singed wings, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I can still move, so I stand up. The colored flames still burn within me like a furnace in my chest. I lift the axe I stole and carefully rest the haft on my shoulder. Already I’m recovering my poise.

Thunderclap, on the other hand?

She drifts down, half-floating and half-falling, and when her legs hit the ground she wobbles. She’s still an imposing figure, but there’s something diminished about her. A certain lack of strength in how she holds herself.

See, whenever any magical girl or witch casts their ultimate spell, their powers get fried for somewhere between three to eight minutes. It’s the single unifying quality that designates a move as “ultimate” in outside analysis of the system. No exception, no way around it.

So for the next few minutes, Thunderclap is completely powerless.

In all my models of Thunderclap’s toolkit, there are two glaring weaknesses. Her first weakness, the easier to manipulate, is that for all her bluster she’s incredibly wary of inflicting collateral damage. Her powers are direct, violent, and not particularly well-suited to dealing with delicate situations involving hostages or vulnerable bystanders. Bringing her to a high-population area blunted her edge, which gave me more time to stoke her anger.

Her second weakness doubles as her greatest strength: her ultimate attack, Storm God’s Judgment. What makes Thunderclap’s ultimate unique is that it trades some of its raw destructive power—in comparison to other ultimates, at least—for a guaranteed hit effect. That makes it absolutely brutal as a finisher move, but if she gets angry enough to cast it early?

Consequences.

“My turn,” I tell the burned out heroine with a grin. “Let’s make this part fun.”

I won’t kill her. I don’t need that kind of heat. But I might play with her a bit. All my instincts as a witch are purring at me to make her bruise, make her bleed, make her break. It’s only fair, right? It’s only natural for a witch to hurt a magical girl. It’ll be good practice.

“Thunderclap,” intrudes a calm, measured, familiar voice. “What’s going on?”

I whirl on the voice’s source, on the face—no, the mask—that I expect to see. An owl’s mask, or a masquerade imitation of one, and a suit of feathered armor to match. This magical girl is garbed in steel feathers, armored like a warrior of eld; no frills here, no ribbons, only a lethal sense of grace. A silver spear is held loosely in one hand, pointed at no one but always at the ready. This is a knight. A champion. A real, genuine hero.

This is Strix Striga, the unofficial leader of Vanguard and a strong contender for the title of most dangerous magical girl on the West Coast.

This is Sophia Lane.

---

Mere seconds after becoming a witch and I’m already burning alive. I would call it just my luck, but this is excessive even for me.

Bright green fire erupts spontaneously and swirls around my body like serpents of living flame. It gathers around my hands and courses up my arms, over my chest, and down my legs, until the whole of me is surrounded. I’m drowning in flame and I try to scream but the air in my lungs has already been devoured.

And yet, true to Pandora’s word, I feel no pain. No scalding heat, and no ache in my chest from the pressing lack of oxygen. I’m burning, but it doesn’t hurt.

My vision blurs, and then I’m looking at my body from an outside perspective, staring up at myself through another’s eyes as the transformation begins.

The neon green flames sink into my skin and spread beneath the surface, lighting me up from within. My bones shift and crack and reform, flesh tearing and resealing, and changes happen in rapid succession.

My hands elongate and sharpen, my nails extending from my fingertips to become deadly claws. The flame sinks into my body and I can feel new strength in my limbs, a new firmness to my flesh. Imperfections are washed away, weaknesses adjusted until only pure power remains.

The green fire flows into my clothing, too, and I watch my hoodie and jeans burn away and reform into something altogether more… well, I don’t know whether it says something about me or about the powers changing me, but the result is a very revealing outfit.

I’m wearing a dress that starts below my shoulders and pushes up my cleavage, a silken garment in gorgeous, dark, almost royal purple. It flows down my body like ink until it splits open at my thighs and fans out into a feather pattern and almost glows with brighter color. Satin darkness flows up from wrists and ankles past elbows and knees, glinting luxuriously as they cover much of my limbs but leave thighs and shoulders exposed.

In short, I’m baring a lot of skin that I haven’t since I was a teenager. The claws are new, though. I wonder if that would make me more or less popular with the girls?

It seems like my body is done transforming, but now my face is undergoing changes. The irises of my eyes blaze to life with a brilliant fuchsia purple. A deep, abyssal black colors my lips and my once-brown hair, the latter lengthening and straightening out until my messy mop of tangles has become sleek and picturesque. Pointed ears poke through my new hair, now elf-like knives of cartilage, and my canine teeth elongate to become fangs. A dozen little changes join the major, my features sharpening and smoothing into something more elegant and less Rachel.

I look like a goth princess, or a vampire, or—

The last of the green fire travels down my back and splits into two masses of flame that fan out as massive feathered wings, plumage stretched and flexing. The feathers start black where they meet my flesh and stay that way along the heights of my wings, but the color shifts to a searing infernal green in a gradient toward the wingtips, just like the flames that made them.

—like a fallen angel…

A new wave of fire washes over my body, but this time I watch fuchsia flames thin out into gossamer strands before crystallizing as gold chain and shining emeralds. The delicate chains decorate my shoulders in three loops to each side, united in the center with a green gem. More gold appears around my hips, a choker around my neck, and a crown top my brow, all dotted with glowing green jewels. A corset tightens around my waist, purple and gold, and golden heels appear snug around my feet.

The jewelry finishes materializing, and in that instant the void falls away and my perspective snaps back into my body, transformed and standing tall. The street around me is normal again, but who cares? I have claws! I have fangs! I have wings!

My new existence hits me in waves as my attention darts from detail to detail, marveling at the changes to my form and attire. I knew magical girls and witches both transformed for combat, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be experiencing one of those transformations. I didn’t think I’d look like this, either, but somehow it feels… right.

There’s a warmth beneath my skin that pleases me, something comfortable and familiar yet completely and utterly alien. Just like my heels, which grind into the asphalt with a satisfying weight despite their slender appearance, or like my claws, which seem perfectly suited to ripping through supple flesh. My new fangs fit perfectly in my mouth, and just the feel of them is enough to make me hungry. I want to take a bite out of a magical girl more than I’ve ever wanted a juicy burger. This is the form of a hunter, a killer, a predator.

My wings are like a second pair of limbs, following my movements with the natural grace of something I’ve had all my life. I can flex them like arms and feel every pinion, and now I suddenly know what a pinion is. I reach out and run a few fingers through one wing, and the texture is so soft I let out a little gasp. I could fly with these or swaddle myself in these, and I’m not sure which would be more enjoyable. Eat your heart out, Tobias Animorphs.

The dress is more scandalous than I had ever expected to wear again, but I feel like a work of art. I look amazing. I look like a succubus, some kind of fallen angel turned wicked seductress, and I like it. Monster. Demoness. Witch.

I’m a witch, and it feels good.

Pure, unadulterated, overwhelming joy bubbles out of my chest and swims through my brain. I laugh—no, I cackle—with maniacal glee. I exalt in the hungers and sensations of my monstrous, glorious, ravishing new form.

I feel ecstatic. I feel majestic. I feel powerful.

I want to see what this body can do. I want to see what my magic can do. Every witch has powers, so what are mine?

Immediately, as if summoned by the thought, something answers. The warmth beneath my skin intensifies in my chest. My heart blazes with two bundles of colorful energy. For some reason, my chest feels almost like a blacksmith’s workshop, the heat of a forge paired with tools and anvil. Or maybe it’s a kiln, firing clay shaped by my hands. The bundles of heat are blades to be drawn, or a hammer and tongs, or a pair of pottery knives.

A name sears itself into the deepest recesses of my memory. The name of my power, the source of my strength as a witch: Prometheus.

I was never the most avid student of Greek mythology, but the name rings a bell. Prometheus was a trickster god, I think, or maybe a progenitor god? He stole fire, I’m fairly confident about that, and I have some recollection of him making humans out of clay.

“I don’t suppose you could just tell me what you do?” I ask, doubtful it’ll be that easy.

The blaze in my chest pulses in a way that feels strangely apologetic. Again the imagery of a workshop comes to mind. My hands shape statues and bowls from clay, then I paint them in shades of green. I pull a sword from the forge, its metal shining purple.

Interesting. There’s some kind of empathic link here between my consciousness and my power, but Prometheus doesn’t seem to be able to translate complex concepts into human speech, only imagery and sensations.

I could sit around trying to interpret its meaning all day, but there’s a far more exciting way to figure out what spells I can cast: experimentation.

I give the area a quick sweep just to make sure I don’t have any uninvited spectators, but the alley is empty and ends in a brick wall. The street I came from is fairly quiet, so I shouldn’t have much to worry about, but should I find another place to practice anyway? No, I want to do this now.

I concentrate on the heat in my chest, those two bundles of power, and reach for the one that feels more like a forge than a kiln. Bright fuchsia flame flickers to life in the palm of my right hand and dances around my clawed fingers.

Magic. That’s real magic. That’s my magic. I made that happen.

I wave my hand through the air and watch the flames follow, purple fire hugging my skin without burning it. I look around for anything flammable and settle on a disposable cup someone tossed aside. I point my hand at the cup and grin.

“Burn!” I cackle. Nothing happens.

My grin drops. Prometheus? Hello? Are you just taking your time or can I not actually incinerate stuff with my fire magic?

The apologetic feeling is doubled this time as the heat pulses in my chest. Apparently I cannot, in fact, burn things with my power. That is… more disappointing than I’d like to admit.

With a sigh I examine the imagery from Prometheus a little more closely. The two colors it showed me in the second vision, purple and green, are the two colors of flame that appeared when I transformed. The latter seemed more involved in the actual transformation aspect, the physical changes I underwent, while the former added clothing and jewelry as a final touch.

So, alteration and creation? Shaping and making?

As a test, I fix the image of my fancy jewelry in my mind and will it to appear in my hand. The web of gold and emerald appears in my mind’s eye with more clarity than I’ve ever been able to imagine anything else in my life, and just as suddenly the fire flares and I’m left holding a second copy of the necklace that’s draped across my chest.

My previous disappointment is washed away by a wave of delighted greed. Is this an infinite money glitch? Can I make a hundred of these and pawn them somewhere? Do they go away when I transform back to normal?

I already have a billion ideas of what to do with this usage alone, but there are other limits I can test before any of that. I switch the image I’m focusing on from the necklace to a stack of dollar bills, since that would be way easier to liquidate just by taking it to a bank. Unfortunately, the mental image loses its unnatural clarity and blurs back to my normal level of imagination. Trying to force it into my hand does nothing.

I cycle through a dozen other useful objects before giving my dress a try. That one shows up in crisp detail, and a push of will makes it appear with another flash of fuchsia flame. I make a second one, and then a third, finding each just as easy to conjure as the first. I drop them all in a pile at my feet and chew on the details.

This would be a pretty lame power if it could only conjure jewelry and a dress, though admittedly useful for my finances. Prometheus showed me a sword when it tried to explain what the purple flame does, so I have to be able to make one. Maybe I just need to teach it the pattern, or the template? Like researching a new recipe or schematic in a video game.

“Well, Prometheus? Care to enlighten me how I do that?”

The image of the forge appears again, and the sword, only this time the sword is ordinary steel and I’m feeding it into the fire rather than pulling it out.

Well, that’s relatively straightforward. I guess all I have to do is—

—jump back in surprise as a magical girl slams into the street and makes a crater from the force of the impact.

Ah, right. The other half of the deal.

The woman who rises from the impact is tall, fit, and as tan as you can get in a city that only sees sunlight a third of the year. She looks like the kind of person who actually enjoys exercising. I bet she has a gym membership, the showoff.

Not that I mind what’s being shown off, to be clear. Her costume is sporty, not skimpy like mine, but she’s still baring a nice span of skin. The poofy sleeves of her bright yellow jacket cover her arms fully, but the blue spandex underneath cuts off at the waist to reveal perfectly toned abs. A combination of shorts, sneakers, and kneepads gives a fantastic view of firm calves and the delicious reason we call this gal “Thunderthighs” on the forums.

She’s also pointing a double-bladed sapphire battle axe in my direction and glaring at me, but frankly I consider that a bonus.

“Halt, evildoer!” she booms with a sense of authority that I have no intention of respecting. “Flaring your dark energy like a beacon of malevolence was an act of arrogance you will sorely regret. Tremble and repent, for you face—”

“Thunderclap, the Storm Axe!” I interrupt with a level of glee I’m only barely faking. “Oh wow, it’s so cool to meet you, you’re like easily top five Vanguard for me. I watched your fight with Riddlemaster the other day, that was hilarious! Hey, can I have your autograph?”

Thunderclap is a member of Pacific North Vanguard, a loose network of magical girls who form task forces to deal with dangerous witches across the state of Washington. If Visage is the face of magical girls here in Forks, the Vanguard heroines are the bloody fists.

I’m guessing that being a fist doesn’t really prepare you for gushing admiration from the witch you came to murder, however, because Thunderclap’s reaction is to gawk at me, stupefied, as I wiggle in place and flap my pretty wings. Her axe lowers a little and she’s clearly trying to think of something to say, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, but she’s too stumped by my fangirling to respond.

I ratchet up the ditz in my voice and thread my hands behind my back, putting pure puppy energy into wide eyes and a guileless smile. The fallen angel body is probably undercutting me, but hey, maybe she’s into that. “You’re like, really really cute. I’m sure you hear that from all the girls but I totally mean it! If you don’t want to sign something for me—and I’d totally understand, no pressure—then how about a photo together? I’d treasure it forever and ever, promise!”

I bring my hands together in front of me in the rough shape of a heart and grin even harder. I tilt my head, close my eyes, and lift one leg behind me to really sell the effect. When I open my eyes again, Thunderclap’s cute confusion has settled quite unfortunately into a scowl.

She raises her axe and says, “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, witch, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I won’t be deceived by this cutesy bimbo act of yours. Face me with pride or fall with disgrace!”

Well, shit. No, it’s fine, I can still recover this. “Well, I mean, if you get me high enough the bimbo thing won’t be an act anymore,” I say with a wink and a waggle of eyebrows. I drop some of the saccharine innocence and inject a bit of dirtbag charm into my leering gaze. This dress does fantastic things to my tits, so I lean forward to give her a better view. “I can be whatever you’re into with a bit of prep time. That might literally be true, now that I have magic transformation powers. Take a bite, cutie.”

Her hands tighten on that big blue weapon and I raise my hands in surrender as I take a step back. The heroine doesn’t look tempted or amused, and the scowl on her face is only worsening. A few sparks of bright blue electricity crackle across the blade. So flirting is out, noted. Readjust and fire again.

I quickly toss another line her way before she can start getting ideas about violence. “I get the feeling I’m being a little forward here, hah. Sorry if I made you uncomfortable, really not my intent here. Listen, before you take my head off with that nice big axe of yours, why don’t we sit down and have a little chat? Skip the autograph, skip the photo, just two gals with magic powers who really don’t need to try and kill each other, yeah? I get that your whole raison d’etre is smacking down witches but I’m barely a witch, for reals, cross my heart and hope to not get cleaved. This whole thing kinda just happened to me a few minutes ago. Promise. I was just standing here when you showed up, after all. Do you really need to attack someone who isn’t hurting anyone?”

Thunderclap breathes in, nice and deep, and lets it out with meditative focus. The frustration on her face settles into a cold, firm resolve.

“No truce with the enemy,” she says, and then she’s on me.

---

Agreeing immediately would make me come off as desperate, which I am and it probably knows I am, but it’s bad form to admit that.

I do really, really want to become a witch. It’s exciting! It could solve all my problems! Sure, it means becoming a bloody-handed champion of darkness sworn to the service of unknowable alien horrors that like to walk around pretending to be cats, but there are worse bosses. Probably.

Honestly, I’m really flattered to be getting the offer so expressly. I’m sure there are plenty of petty psychopaths and vengeful killers in the area, but instead they picked me. Me! The extradimensional patrons want me in their corner. I mean, when was the last time anyone wanted me for anything?

I clear my throat and try to look cool. I have to suppress the urge to start bouncing with excitement. I’d lean against an alley wall, but those are disintegrating into stardust like the rest of the alley. I wonder if I’ve stepped into some kind of pocket dimension or if my celestial surroundings are just an illusion? I’m not in any hurry to check.

“A witch, huh? Make monsters, fight magical girls, scheme dark deeds from a castle of ice and shade? I could be convinced. Of course, if you’re making the offer at all, I’m going to guess you’ve been watching me long enough to think I’d say yes.”

“We have,” the false feline confirms in its strange, cheerful voice. “To be more precise, I have, though I’ve relayed my findings to my superiors. You can call me Pandora, and I’m something of a talent scout for our organization. Based on the data I’ve collected, the sidereal Jovians would like to offer you a position. We think you would make an excellent witch, Ms. Emily.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” I say dryly. It’s hard to keep my attention on the talking cat when the starscape around us is so breathtaking, but I’ve got to take this seriously and pretend there’s a chance I’d ever reject this offer. It’s basically a job interview, right? I haven’t been to one of those in, uh, ever, but I’ve seen enough on TV. “I’m betting you don’t pay in dollars, so what’s the benefits package like?”

Pandora takes my sass in stride. “We offer a baseline package for all our signers, one you’ll find quite comparable to that offered by our chief competitor. To be a witch is to be an immortal, immune to the ravages of time and capable of surviving complete physical annihilation. Only another magic user can kill a witch, and only as the third killing blow in a pattern of rivalry. The same protections will apply to your magical girl opponents, so be mindful whose throats you cut.”

All of that is basically public knowledge, or at least public guesswork, but it’s nice to have confirmation that the pattern of three is a real thing. Watching a witch laugh off a Tomahawk missile is quite the spectacle.

“A perception filter will prevent your civilian identity from being connected to your witch persona, but it can be overwhelmed by a direct enough link. It should suffice to protect you from government scrutiny in the event you acquire personal funds through extralegal channels while acting as a witch.”

That explains why I couldn’t identify Sophia as Striga until I saw her transform through the window of our apartment. There were so many little clues that I couldn’t focus on until that moment. Just thinking of Sophia has my pulse racing and my blood heating up. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia.

The cat isn’t done talking. “And, of course, you get to use magic. In my experience, that last part gets the most attention from our new hires.”

Behind the cat, the cosmos unfold in colorful nebulas and shards of lunar stone. The Jovian emissary, Pandora, watches me with inscrutable silver eyes. I wasn’t expecting it to play along with my corporate analogy, but I guess the aliens have adapted as well as we have. I brush my hair back and grin. “Pretty little pitch. What are the responsibilities?”

Swish goes the kitty tail. “You’ll find us a very hands-off employer, Ms. Emily. So long as you make a semi-regular effort to cause trouble for magical girls, we won’t scrutinize how you spend your time. I promise, your workload will be significantly lighter than that of your counterparts under the solar faction.”

The kind of employer everyone dreams of. All I have to do is join the dark side. “So, not to be ungrateful or anything, but… why me? I mean, what made you think I’d take a deal like that? You’re right that I’m tempted, but, I want to know how you knew I’d be tempted. What did your little bout of spying tell you about Rachel Emily?” I gesture at my slovenly, unkempt, subordinary appearance.

The cat licks one of its paws, acting the part of the simple animal that it very clearly isn’t. “You pace restlessly alone and jump at the chance to explore places you’ve never been, and you try new food at least once a month, new video games once a week. You’re constantly chasing new experiences. It’s not enough, though, is it? You’re still unsatisfied. You’re still missing something.”

I know exactly what I’m missing, but does the cat? “Go on, then. What am I missing?”

“Well, I can’t read your mind, but I can read your internet history,” the cat says with just the faintest hint of smugness. “You spend hours every day staring at magical girls on livestreams and videos, and you talk about them incessantly on forums and social media.” Pandora stretches luxuriously as it adds, “There are other sites I could mention, but we don’t need to get that specific, do we? I’m sure you’d prefer it if I left those details unsaid.”

The magical cat aliens know what porn I read. This is the worst day of my life in the history of ever. I fight the blush exploding across my face and wave my hands in surrender. “We’re good! That’s good! You made your point, you’ve seen it all. Let’s refocus. Ahem. Uh, so, the appeal is there, for sure, but I still have concerns. You’re asking me to join your war and fight for you, to fight magical girls and plot their demise, but you also know I’m a fan of those very same girls. Do you really think I have it in me to hurt them?”

Pandora flicks its tail again, then lifts its head. “Let’s dismiss a piece of ambiguity about this situation: the real reason you’re tempted by the idea of becoming a witch is because it will let you get closer to Sophia Lane, who you love and desire. Ms. Lane’s first priority is and always will be fighting witches. If you yourself become a witch, you become that first priority. So allow me to turn the question on you, Ms. Emily: are you willing to fight your beloved Sophia?”

It feels like my whole body is humming with desire. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia! I glance back the way I came, imagining those distant rainbow lights where my perfect Sophie is risking her life fighting some other girl. There’s another witch out there, some girl who only sees Strix Striga and not the wonderful Sophie underneath. A witch who thinks she has the right to strike my beloved, to plot against my beloved, to steal away my beloved’s time when it should be going to me.

If I were a witch, I could make sure that never happened. I could have Sophia all to myself, every hour of every day. I’d never have to worry about some other girl taking her sweet, precious attention away from me.

Am I willing to fight my Sophia? Am I willing to hurt her?

I let myself imagine it. Wielding dark magic and clashing against her, weapons crossing, our bodies in harmony as we come to know each other through the siren song of violence. Getting the upper hand and pinning her against a wall, my hands around her wrists, my knee between her legs, my breath against her ear. She’d turn the tables on me, of course she would, my incredible Sophia, and I’d get to feel her strength against my body, her fists against my skin.

I wonder how far I could push her. If I kept needling her, antagonizing her, pushing her off-balance, could I get my perfect angel to spit in my mouth and call me names? How would she react if I moaned when she did it? Could I make her moan, if I found the right trick in the heat of battle?

“It seems you’ve found your answer,” Pandora purrs.

I snap back to myself, suddenly aware of how heavy I’m breathing and the guileless smile on my face. I shiver as the chemical bliss of my deepest fantasies is nudged aside by the practical reality of the situation I’m in. I want everything this creature is offering… which means there must be a trick. Another shoe waiting to drop.

I claw back some of my composure and force a bit of professionalism into my expression and posture. “That answer does prompt another question. You have to be aware that I would never, ever consider killing her. Is that acceptable to your faction?”

The very idea that it might not be acceptable boils my blood with molten rage. If anyone wanted to hurt Sophia, if anyone even thought about trying to kill her, I’d… do nothing, if I didn’t have the power to stop them. So it’s more important than ever that I take this deal, whatever the cat’s answer, whatever the truth of that answer. Sophia is mine. Sophia must be mine.

Pandora bows its head and says, “Worry not, Ms. Emily. We have no designs on the life of Ms. Lane. Your loyalty to our cause is far more important than whatever incidental gains might come of removing that piece from the board. All you need to do is keep her attention on you, just like you want.”

My gaze sharpens. “And what is that cause, cat? What is your ‘sidereal faction’ actually after?”

“I’m afraid that information is classified,” Pandora replies warmly. “Of course, if you earned your place in our organization, I’m sure you could negotiate a higher level of clearance.”

Secretive little shit. But… it’s offering me exactly what I want. And if it’s lying and they do want to hurt Sophia, whether directly or indirectly… saying no to their offer wouldn’t do anything to stop that from happening. The Rachel Emily that isn’t a witch doesn’t matter. Can’t matter.

There was never a world where I turned Pandora down, I know that. Still. There’s one more question I need to ask.

“Cat. Will I lose?”

The sidereal Jovian, black and purple with shining silver eyes, flicks its tail again. “That depends entirely on what you’re asking, Ms. Emily. Are you requesting a promise of invincibility? Or is your meaning more abstract?”

I roll my eyes and fold my arms. “Don’t get cute, kitty cat. I mean, you are pretty cute and I kinda wanna squeeze you, but I’ve got this sense you’re leaving something out. The immortality you’re promising is conditional, and contingent on factors I can’t entirely control. And that raises a question: how do you see my story ending? Everything has to end, eventually, and I know that villains don’t usually get happy endings. What I’m asking you, Pandora, is whether or not you’re promising me something that I’ve never seen happen. Are you going to tell me that I get to sail off into the sunset after all the dust has settled? Or am I signing on for a short walk to a shallow grave?”

I stare at the cat intently, the whole of my being focused on its answer. For all my irreverent humor and casual attitude, beneath the mask I’m taking this deadly seriously.

Pandora’s gaze never leaves mine, but the cat tilts its head to the side. It muses, “Perhaps you could call it a gamble. Of all the witches we’ve empowered, eighty-four percent of them died within the first year of activity. Another fifteen percent perished within the second year. The remaining one percent, however, remain operational to this day.”

Its words are a cold splash of reality. If I take this deal, my chances of surviving past the next two years are one in a hundred. Better than a lottery ticket, sure, but we’re not talking pennies here. This is my life I’d be betting. “Why?” I ask. “Why should I take a risk like that? Becoming a witch gets me closer to Sophia, but dying a witch puts me as far away as I can be.”

Pandora, placidly sitting this whole time, finally stands up. The cat that isn’t a cat begins to circle me, padding across the asphalt and letting out a gorgeous, thrumming pur.

“Because,” Pandora tells me, “you are already dead.”

I stiffen. “Elaborate.”

“Eight months and six days ago, you slept for a combined total of thirteen hours. You woke up several times, but always buried yourself again once your immediate needs were seen to. When you finally stayed awake, you laid there unmoving, attention captured by the game on your smartphone. You didn’t eat that day, but when Sophia came home late and tired you told her that you’d been out of the house most of the day and had eaten your fill. You slept without having eaten a thing. This was remarkable for your routine only in the absence of a late night snack binge to make up the neglected calories.”

I flinch. “So what, it’s not like I have—”

“Money?” the cat interrupts, behind me now but steadily returning to my front. “No, not much, but you have a roommate who would buy or make food for you any time you asked, and you insist on not troubling her. You consistently downplay any need she would be equipped to assist with, even at significant cost to your own health. You display a number of reckless behaviors that put yourself further at risk, such as crossing streets with your eyes closed or walking alone in the dead of night. You seem to have no concern whatsoever for the value of your own life. As if you dispute the very notion that your life could have value.”

I shove my hands in my pockets to stop them from twitching. Everything the cat is saying is something I’ve thought to myself, screamed at myself, on those cold and lonely nights when Sophia wouldn’t come home. Pandora doesn’t wait for me to respond before continuing its merciless assault.

“You are a corpse that eats and breathes and rots and rots and rots. You wait for an end that can’t come soon enough, withering in isolation… but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can choose a better path than that slow and inevitable decomposition. This is what I promise: a second chance to feel alive again.”

I swallow, throat dry and limbs shaking. “But you’re asking me to die for you.” The sound comes out almost pleading.

“No,” Pandora says, harsh and immediate, and it comes to a stop in front of me. When it speaks again, there’s something like frenzy in its light and pleasant voice. “I’m asking you to live for us. Roll the dice on becoming a witch, knowing it might kill you, because in taking that risk you will have finally lived for the first time since that day in the rain on the bridge with Sophia. Beat the odds, Rachel. Show us—show everyone—that you are more than just a statistic. Show them all that they were wrong to dismiss you. Show her that she was wrong to ignore you all those long years.”

Sophia, Sophia, Sophia. I’m shivering and I can’t breathe. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia. I’m terrified and mesmerized in equal measure, like looking at a wildfire that keeps getting closer or staring down a car coming full speed right toward me. This could kill me. This could save me.

Sophia could finally be mine.

All at once the terror leaves me and I can’t help but laugh. I know what I’m going to say. It’s inevitable. I can feel it in my racing pulse and my ragged breath, in the toxic cocktail of anger and desire that’s flooding my veins and boiling my brain. The world can’t keep me down. No one is going to stop me.

I catch my breath and force a wild, wicked grin. “You know, cat, I’ve always thought myself plagued by misfortune. But I was wrong. Right now? I’m feeling pretty damn lucky. Let’s roll those fucking dice. I’ll be your witch.”

Pandora laughs, delighted by my choice. “Excellent, simply excellent! I look forward to working with you, Ms. Emily. Now, this next part might look a bit scary, but it won’t hurt a bit.”

That’s exactly the kind of sentence that makes me think I’m about to feel excruciating agony, but I don’t have time to express my alarm before the world is swallowed by darkness. The city and otherworldly sights are both gone, and I find myself drifting through an endless black void.

Then my entire body catches fire.

---

---

It was my evilest, cleverest, wickedest scheme yet, and I almost believed it wouldn’t fail.

Of course, my evil scheme was what more grounded commentators might call “sharing a hobby with a friend” or “going on a date with a girl I like,” but I’ve had years of experience ignoring such ignorant naysayers, treasonous dissidents, and audacious heretics. The fact that all my most vocal critics live inside my head gives me a lot of practice tuning out their complaints.

While it’s true that I’m madly in love with Sophia Lane, I hold no delusions about my chances of ever becoming her girlfriend. Sophia is, to put it succinctly, something of a human angel, and I’m more of a human trash pile. She graduated from college with top marks and put that big beautiful brain of hers to work immediately, while I dropped out of college halfway through and now I sleep on Sophie’s couch. She’s a beautiful blonde, I’m a shambling brunette. She wears skirts and cardigans, I wear jeans and hoodies. She helps cats and dogs for a living, I scam horny losers on the internet. Sophia Lane is a ray of sunshine as earnest as they come, and Rachel Emily is a goblin.

No, I don’t delude myself. The most I ever hope for is a few more moments of her time.

So our trip to the local game shop isn’t really a date, as much as I’d love to believe otherwise, and I’m quite happy to make the mental edit from “I want my closest friend to play my favorite trading card game with me” to “I want to get another hapless victim addicted to cardboard crack.” It’s basically the truth! Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.

At the store counter, Sophia looks askance at the shelves and shelves of colorful booster packs. “Are you sure about this, Rachel?” she asks me. “I’ve heard you rant about rarities in this game a dozen times, and you’ve shown me how bad the odds are for finding a specific card by random pull. Isn’t ‘buy singles’ the classic adage of the community? You won’t get your money’s worth doing it this way.”

“Ah, but what if I hit the jackpot?” I grin at my roommate with as much impishness as I can muster, knowing—or perhaps hoping—that she’ll take the bait.

“You could, but you’re far more likely not to. Statistically speaking, the vast majority of packs you open have to be a net loss for you in order for ‘winning pulls’ to have the value that they do. Otherwise the market would normalize closer to the sale value of the pack, pushing down those lucky outliers.” Sophie rattles off dry analysis with a genuine enthusiasm that I always find so charming. This isn’t even her area of expertise and she’s still primed to read the data.

“It’s true, it’s true. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting, my dear Sophia: I might lose every gamble and get stuck with a pile of worthless cardboard, but a whole bunch of those useless cards will have pretty girls printed on them. Now hit me, dealer!”

Sophia hands over her credit card with a put-upon sigh and a roll of the eyes, but there’s no real reluctance in the act itself. There never is. I chat up Liz at the register and point out the packs I want, all six from the same set. The box they’re in has the VisageCorp logo slapped on the front of it, and a bit of marketing copy proudly proclaims “A magical girl in every pack!”

I guess I should give you a bit of background while we’re here.

Ten years ago, the planet Jupiter vanished from the night sky. Two minutes later, the Jovians announced their presence on Earth by gifting magical powers to a thirteen-year-old girl. That teenage girl, the very first witch, turned the state of Texas into a smoking crater.

The Jovians reevaluated their approach. Nowadays they only recruit from adults, and the witches and magical girls they empower keep the collateral damage in check. Once humanity got over the collective shock of learning that magic is real and aliens have it, a Japanese virtual idol company jumped on the chance to add genuine magical girls to their roster. Militaries and humanitarian organizations followed suit.

That idol handler, VisageCorp, farms their girls out to whatever company can pay for them, making brand deals with everything from Nascar to Monster Energy. An appearance in one of the world’s most popular trading card games was inevitable.

When the receipt prints, I scoop up my spoils and hand the credit card back to Sophie. We sit down at the nearest table to peel open packs and rifle through the entrails. Every pack has a guaranteed magical girl inside, but the really high-value picks—the chase cards—are kept ultra-rare. The odds of me pulling a Pearl Princess or one of the Twilight Sisters are basically nonexistent.

That’s fine; the only magical girl I really want to see wouldn’t sign on with Visage even if they gave her a billion dollars. Well, no, she’d probably take the money and donate it all to charity, then do the contractual minimum before quitting.

Still, I love collecting. The sound of the wrapper foil crinkling as I rip open pack after pack is the sweetest of songs. The contents inside are less sweet, being mostly chaff and bulk that hits the market with high supply and low demand, but that’s expected from a draft booster. I sort the cards into piles with practiced precision. It’s been a while since I went to local events with any regularity, but I haven’t forgotten the habits I drilled into myself when I still had dreams of winning a tournament some day.

Sophia, seated across from me, eyes the sorting process with a focused interest that I recognize as the gears in her brain churning away. She glances at each pile of cards as I add to the stack, gaze darting across text and symbols, but she doesn’t ask what any of it means. She waits until I’m on my fifth pack before shifting forward, a hand beneath her chin, and beginning her interrogation.

“I’m curious what it is that you get, materially or psychologically, from opening packs instead of buying the cards directly. Is it just the chemical thrill of a metaphorical dice throw, or is there another appeal I’m not seeing?” There’s no judgment in her voice, only genuine curiosity.

I finish sorting the fifth batch of cards and take the sixth pack in hand, sensing an opportunity to play my usual mind games. I slow my pace for this last pack, opening the booster wrapper with unusual tenderness and care. “I’m never one to knock a bit of gambling, you know that, but you’re right that there’s more to it than just a bit of risk-induced excitement. Take this pack, for example: in teasing apart the foil that was so precisely printed and sealed, I destroy the beauty without to claim the beauty within. It was made for this, its artistic design destined for a death knell, and it goes to that end with pride and grace. It utters only the slightest of crinkled whimpers as I take its life.

“Ah, but inside, the treasures that it hid are revealed as false idols, their worth a fragile illusion sold by a wrapping now in tatters. In this, we see a familiar kind of yearning: the gap between one’s desire for wealth and the destitute reality that curses us all. We see it again in this pair of cards I lay side by side, near but never touching, as they dwell within the space between wanting and fulfillment. This too is yuri.”

Sophia squints at the cards in question. “That card’s a catapult and that’s some kind of glowing bog. How is any of that ‘yuri?’”

I rub my hands together with glee, fully prepared for this next question. “Imagine, if you will, a pair of girls called to war, kept together by sheer coincidence as they are tasked with pushing a catapult to the front lines of conflict. They know they might not survive, but they still hesitate to confess their deeply-held feelings for another, kept silent by fear of love unrequited. The catapult reaches swampland and finds it unsuited for traversal, like a pit trap waiting to swallow it whole, but is that relationship not also a forbidden love? The allure of the will-o-wisps as they dance above the waterline, those muddy black pools hiding a hundred years of secrets, where a machine that was built only to destroy may find itself nurturing the cycle of life through a brave yet ultimately meaningless sacrifice.” I pause for effect, then finish, “It’s yuri of absence, you uncultured swine. Read a book.”

Sophie raises an eyebrow. “So, I take it from the insults that you don’t want me to buy you another pack?”

My faux-indignant smugness immediately collapses and I flash Sophie my best doe eyes, quivering my lip for added failgirl energy. “I’m sorry,” I whine softly. “I’ve been such a bad girl. Please buy me another pack, miss.”

Sophia physically cringes and I score another victory point in my mental tally. “Oh god, never do that again. If you stop that right now and promise to never, ever do it again, I’ll buy you one of the fancy collector packs you kept eyeballing.”

“One week,” I haggle, switching to ruthless mercantilism just as swiftly as I’d adopted my last persona.

Sophie rolls her eyes at my shameless behavior, but I can see the corner of her mouth twitching with hidden mirth. “Fine, fine, deal. It’s not like you’d remember it for longer, anyhow.”

I rise from my chair and give her a big grin. “You’re the best sugar mommy a girl could ask for.”

Sophie follows me back to the register and threatens, “I will hide your gummies. I’ll stick them by my heater so they melt.”

I gasp. “You wouldn’t dare! And you don’t even know where they are!”

“Closet by the front door, third hanger from the left, stuffed into the right pocket of a jacket you never wear,” Sophia recites perfectly. “You know, where you always hide your food and drugs, you absolute human squirrel.”

“The victory is yours,” I hastily concede. “I beg of thee, my liege, spare the innocent intoxicants. Hey, look, boosters!”

One sale later, I open my first and only money card of the day. “Oh, hell yes! Look at this beauty,” I crow. The card in question is from a special rarity series that puts the Visage girls on existing high-value game pieces in an anime art style. This one features the Underworld Heiress, Memento, bullying Dusk of the Twilight Sisters. “This thing sells for easily a hundred bucks. The regular art for this card is just a dude coughing up coins, and these are two of the more popular streamers in Visage. I would know, I watch them a lot.”

Sophia examines the card and lets a frown touch her face for just a moment before forcing it away. “The idea of heroines agreeing to commodify themselves still feels wrong to me,” she admits, “but I’m glad they can live comfortably. So, are you going to sell the card?”

“Hell no! Look at the smug laughter of Memento as she plays the role of haughty social superior. Look at how Dusk is turning away from her, head in her hands, but through her fingers you can see the faintest ghost of a smile. Forget all that nonsense I spouted earlier, now this is yuri. Those two are incredibly good at yuri baiting and I am not immune.”

Sophia laughs, short and sweet, and suddenly the whole day is worth it. Her golden curls frame her face with an angelic beauty matched by her twinkling emerald eyes. Her smile lights up her whole face with radiant, glowing warmth. I could get so lost in that smile I’d forget to eat or drink, utterly enchanted by the light she emits. Every joke I tell, every false persona and rambling narrative, they’re all for moments like this one. For the chance to see Sophie smile.

Then a loathsome sound interrupts my precious moment and I want to scream and punch something. Sophie’s phone rings, and when she glances at the caller ID her face immediately falls. She steps away and takes the call, and just like that all my hopes for the afternoon are withering to rot and dust.

Sophie works as a vet tech at a non-profit, and among their team she’s far and away the most dedicated to her work, not to mention the best at it. Her supposed free hours are filled with calls just like this one, the clinic pulling her away to one crisis or another.

Or at least, that’s what she says. And hey, I’m sure a few of those calls really are about her vet work. But the rest are about fighting witches.

Sophia Lane’s big secret is that she’s one of those magical girls off saving lives and keeping our city safe from the ever-looming tide of darkness. As the heroine Strix Striga, she’s one of the most effective and respected magical girls in the entire city, maybe the entire state. Part of what makes her such a good heroine—no, such a good person—is that she can never resist helping someone in need, whether they asked for it or not. It’s one of those details about Sophie that makes her so lovable.

I think I might hate her for that.

She comes back with pain etched into every line of her face, and I already know what she’s going to say. “Rachel, I—”

“It’s an emergency,” I say quietly. “I get it.”

My roommate bites her lip, looking even more pained, but she nods. “I’m so sorry, I know you were excited about this. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be fine,” I lie. “Your work is more important than a silly card game.” More important than me. “You’ve got lives to save, right?”

“Always,” she says, sounding utterly exhausted. Sophia always sounds tired when she gets those calls, but she never stops answering them. She’s making herself a saint, whispers my mind. A bleeding martyr. She’ll keep fighting until she gets herself killed saving some stupid innocent who doesn’t even know her real name, and then I’ll be alone again.

I ignore my inner voice and plaster a warm, encouraging smile on my face. “Hey, really, it’s okay. I’ll clean up here and find some lunch. Text me if you get back early, and if you don’t, no sweat. And… good luck.”

Relief floods her face, always more open and honest than mine. “Thank you for being so understanding, Rachel, now and all the other times. I really… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

If only you knew. I wonder if you’d hate me, if you ever got to know the real me.

When I’m sure Sophie’s gone, I let it all wash over me. The anger boils in my veins and closes my hands into tight-clenched fists. I want to bang on the table and leave a dent, but I’m still too lucid to make such an obvious mistake. I grind my teeth, wishing for something to bite, but I’m too angry to get up and find food. What else do I want?

I glare holes into the piles of trading cards that I sorted for nothing. My ultimate scheme was to entice Sophia with the elegant mathematics of deck construction, explaining concepts like mana curves and the probabilities behind recommended ratios of mana sources to spells. I’m certain she would have loved it, the adorable nerd that she is. But now I’m left with a bunch of reminders that I’ll never really get to have time with her to myself, and it makes me want to set the cards on fire or drown them in a sink. I want to break something that’s mine.

But, these cards aren’t mine. Or, they are, but they’re also a gift from the only person I care about. Sophie bought these for me, casual as the gesture was, and I’m not so petty as to destroy something like that just to sate my irrational frustration. Not that I think she’d even notice if I did, with how little attention she has to spare for anything that’s not work or heroics.

My eyes are getting watery and I hate it, so I scrunch my eyes tight and force the tears away. I won’t cry over something this stupid, I won’t. I refuse. I can’t be that weak.

I force myself to do something productive and sweep all the card piles into a deck box I brought for the occasion, one I’d been hoping would hold a real deck built from my pack pulls. I shove the box of cards into my bag and sling the bag around my shoulder. I still feel like shit, but I have the wherewithal to ping the clinical side of my brain for assistance.

Emotional instability is amplified when I don’t take care of my physical needs. Inappropriately intense responses are a common consequence of insufficient sleep, nutrition, or hydration. Did I sleep enough last night? How many meals have I eaten since waking up, and does that number sound appropriate? Have I been drinking water?

The irritating string of therapy-speak and checklist items invades the forefront of my consciousness and I have the urge to bat it away, but half the point of this dumb technique is making me more aware of when my impulses are aberrant and being unduly influenced by chemical factors. The trick is useful, even if I find it annoying when I’m in the throes of that chemical influence, so I follow the checklist.

I made sure to get good sleep last night so that I’d be rested for today, and I’ve been sipping lemonade for the past half hour, but I haven’t actually eaten anything since breakfast and it’s just about noon. I was going to get lunch with Sophie after card games, but that’s not happening anymore. Knowing my luck, Sophie will probably be gone the whole day, so I guess I should probably just… go eat.

I step out of Troll Bridge Games and try my best to ignore the bleating screeches of people and cars. Forks is fairly mid-sized for Washington, falling distantly short of Seattle but beating out Bellevue and Everett after a whole lot of rapid development in the past two decades. The urban sprawl is a little much for me at times, but I’m never leaving so long as Sophie stays here. Besides, we’ve got the highest population of magical girls in the state.

Rainbow flashes in the distance mark the presence of magical girls doing what they do best: fending off their dark counterparts. Given the timing, that’s probably the fight that Sophie is on her way to join. A part of me wants to go watch it up close, even if it would be safer to go digging for a stream instead.

If I got really close, right up into the melee, maybe Strix Striga would be the one to save me. It would be crazy risky, and I might even die, but wouldn’t that be worth getting Sophia to pay attention to me? Maybe she’d even show me her secret identity, and I could be the girl she comes home to, like the Lena Luthor to her Supergirl. If all she really cares about is saving people, I just have to become another victim for her to save, right?

I cross another street without looking either way, and I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I almost don’t notice the black cat that crosses my path.

Now, when I say “black cat,” I should really be saying “purple cat,” because the black base of its fur is paired with tufts of bright purple along its chest, ears, and paws. The cat is collared, but the collar is really more like a bronze necklace engraved with what looks like a vase or jug. The cat’s eyes are glowing silver orbs with pinprick pupils of gold, and they’re staring right at me.

Jovian. That’s a Jovian. Why is a Jovian looking at me!?

The feline flicks its tail once, holding eye contact with me, and then it turns away and walks around a corner.

That’s one of the aliens that hands out magic powers. One of the otherworldly entities that creates magical girls and witches out of ordinary human women. And judging by its coloration, I’m guessing it’s more the type to make villainesses than heroines.

Sophia wouldn’t have been tempted. Sophia would never even consider chasing after one of the dark side Jovians to beg it for magic powers. But I was never as good as her.

I need what it can give me. I need magic.

It’s my best chance at making Sophia care about me.

I break into a sprint and chase after the cat. I veer around the corner it went behind and see it vanish into an alley. I race towards the alley, pushing my muscles to their very limit because I cannot let this chance slip away from me.

I step into the alleyway and skid to a halt as the ordinary city street opens up into an endless expanse of swirling stars and broken moons. The cat is waiting where the asphalt fractures into a thousand drifting particles, sitting calmly at the fraying edge of reality. The Jovian swishes its tail as it watches my careful approach. It tilts its head, still maintaining eye contact, and then it speaks in a high-pitched voice that straddles the line between creepy and cute.

“Rachel Emily. How would you like to become a witch?”

---