Modern Magical Girls: Judd’s Trial

Warning: This story contain violent imagery not suitable for young children.

Hi, my name’s Judd, I’m a spirit guide for magical girls. Once upon a time, I had another name, one considered beautiful and blessed. Then someone else with that name brought shame to themselves. And the higher ups decided to change my name for PR reasons.

At least they let me keep my cute little plus-eyed goat form. The white wool and feathers plus golden horns and hooves look good on me. Don’t tell me my pretty blue eyes look creepy because they’re like a real goat’s, I’m going for a style here!

Since you’ve been living under a rock apparently for, well, a very long while, I’ll tell you: as a spirit guide I’m supposed to recruit new magical girls, advise them, coordinate them, keep them sane, and try to keep them alive for as long as possible against the fiends.

Fiends, predators, wolves, monsters, whatever you wanna call them, human souls are on their menu.

Contrary to what you see, there’s nothing more beautiful than seeing a human soul bloom and spread its wings to become something greater using its experiences during life after it ditches the sausage shell. And nothing more horrible than seeing a fiend rip open their shell and stuffing him or her down their gullet like a battery. Or is it like taking a needle for them? Sorry. Just trust me, you don’t wanna experience it.

Once upon a time, we were able to fight the fiends ourselves, but the universe was a lot younger then, and the laws of physics aren’t what they used to be. Not that it stops the fiends, go figure.

So now we have to rely on our charges, the ones we were supposed to be protecting, to do the fighting for us. Fate always was a total geek when it comes to irony.

And we can’t recruit trained warriors, oh no, that would be way too easy! Instead, we have to rely on humans who both still have some innocent love for the world, AND still have a tether to ‘life’s spiral’ as it’s sometimes called. Everything in existence has magic in it. Everything in existence produces magic! But that doesn’t make it actively -magical-. All atoms have electrons but that doesn’t make everything electric.

But life and heart is the only way to actually USE magic. By the time humans, ahem, develop to the physical point where they can pass on the genetic torch, their connection to life’s spiral fades, and fades fast. And wouldn’t you know, those who will be but are still unable to BEAR another life have the strongest connection of all.

So the only ones able to conjure enough magic to fight the fiends, were little girls. And the younger, the more powerful. We even give them physical immortality so they never age and can fight forever until they’re killed. Remember what I said about one of my jobs was keeping them sane?

Preschoolers, fiends run screaming from them. But good luck teaching them how not to make stupid mistakes with their magic (like saying turn a town’s streets into literal gold and causing traffic accidents), or not to wet their pants and run from the big scary monster they could turn into Winnie The Pooh with a wave of their wand.

We’re stuck trying to balance maturity vs power. And the girl has to consciously agree to fighting monsters forever. It’s why PR spends so much on magical girl media. We used to give pensions to their families directly but… you can guess where it went with greedy adults.

And then there’s the witches. The fiends quickly decided to fight fire with fire. Long as the food flows, they don’t end up on the dinner plate.

Yeah yeah, sorry for the text book read, you’re the one who whined that I had to spell out everything right at the start like a friggin’ driver’s manual! Make up your mind!

But here’s the deep dark secret I’m sure you were waiting oh so patiently for! We actually CAN recruit other humans as magical girls. The magic turns them into an ideal magical girl all right! Decent level of magic too… Except it obliterates who they were before, and reshapes them into the perfect ‘love and justice’ idealistic heroine, their old life being a stranger’s.

I can hear you thinking, “Oh boy! Take all the bad guys and make ’em useful!”

Which is exactly why we don’t advertise it. You ever seen that movie where the big reveal is that the new emergency rations are made from people? Yeah.

Before we figured out how to turn sweet little girls into magical child warriors, humans would sacrifice their own to demons to keep their overlords happy. After all, if the cattle was going to self deliver, why bother penning and branding them?

First humans would treat it as a great honor or sacrifice to their masters… then it became a way to get rid of society’s scum… then the sickly, then the weak, then the abnormal, and finally, the unwanted.

I remember Himiko kicking all sorts of demon ass that first time she got her magic. At the start people were more scared of her ticking off their enslavers then happy about her saving their lives. They thought she was being selfish not willing to become demon food. Then she took out their rancher’s replacement, then the pair sent to check on him, then the goon squad sent thinking he was hoarding the shipments. At that point, it dimly occurred to them that Himiko might actually stand a chance.

So yeah, we COULD just turn all of humanity’s scum-buckets into perfect little angels who just wanna fight the scary monsters in the name of love… But who the Hell gets to decide whose a saint and whose beyond saving? I mean morally.

Remember what I said about fate being an irony otaku?

A huge coven of witches had gotten together, and opened a dimensional rift large enough to let a Grand Elder Fiend through: size of a building and sucks up souls like a vacuum cleaner, and closest to the Progenitor of Monsters Itself for bad news. I hope there’s nothing closer.

So naturally it was all hands on deck. Mechaelle and her squad of angelic magical girls leading the charge.

But like any natural disaster, there were those left behind. The ones who whenever something big and nasty arises, and sacrifices need to be made, humans leave them to die.

The prison island off the coast of the city where the Grand Elder Fiend emerged was quickly evacuated… of the guards, staff, and warden. The prisoners left behind in the hopes that the hoard of fiends pouring through would be too busy munching on the death-row inmates and life-sentencers to bother with the people paid in taxpayer money to look after them.

Just one problem, we spirit guides don’t think like that, and our charges don’t think like that either, they wouldn’t be magical girls if they did.

But when you’re facing the end of the world (or at least a big chunk of it), you gotta prioritize. So most squads were sent to keep the millions of people safe.

My squad of four magical girls was sent to protect the convict population.

But to get what came next, I need to rewind back to the last day I guided a squad of five magical girls. You need to know about Illusion Lilly.

Lilly’s parents were hippies, and firm believers in free love and new age consciousness. You never saw a flower child until you saw that ten year old girl. They were so proud their daughter had made ‘first contact’ with an ‘alien’ and saved them from ‘The Man’s bioengineered red skinned ox-monster enforcer.’ That was sixty years ago. I think. The years blur together after a while, sorry.

The witches got an Elder Fiend (not a GRAND Elder mind you), /mostly/ through a rift… the majority of it that got through was mighty ticked off. The higher ups now think it was a test run for this.

We were the only thing between it and a slew of European towns with old women who likely thought demons also caused tooth aches. But that wasn’t to say they weren’t modern. You should have seen the power plant they have, er, used to have. We were no match for that thing.

So Lilly got the bright idea of pushing her magic to the absolute peak, using more power than she ever had before. Maybe even driving herself a bit crazy, she had to fool the senses of an extra-dimensional predator with things besides height, width, and depth after all. But she did fool it, maybe it thought a power reactor was an orphanage filled to the brim with innocent kids.

Funny thing about fiends; unless something’s magical, it can’t hurt them. Drop a nuke on them, they won’t even notice. It literally just doesn’t affect them. Has an explosion drawn on paper ever hurt you?

So Illusion Lilly beefed up the power reactor using her magic, to MAKE the blast magical. Except, to KEEP IT magical she had to keep feeding it magic…

You… you can guess what came next.

Of course we tried to stop her. Except we were stopping one of her illusion decoys, who told us how much she loved us, how we were her family too, and she didn’t regret saying ‘yes’ to me.

I… she… Sorry. I need a minute.

So… it was just the five of us… Me, Eve, Maggie, Mary, and Josephine.

When the Grand Elder Fiend wiggled through, the higher ups were giving me grief for not yet commissioning Lilly’s replacement… like it was possible for anyone to… ugh. Sorry.

None of us complained about protecting a buncha convicts while the battle for the world was happening in view. They were human beings, so we were gonna protect them from demons. Nothing else to it.

They attacked in a swarm. That just meant my girls didn’t have to aim. But this wasn’t a video game where you just had to put in extra quarters. And these fiends weren’t paid extras who were expected to fight one at the time and politely wait their turn to die.

Even with my telepathy helping the girls watch each other’s backs, it spiraled into insanity.

Magical Girl Job Josephine used her magic hammer to create wooden walls the size of the Hoover Dam.

Magical Girl Evergreen Eve conjured up vines like steel cables to reinforce them as the friends smashed through Job Josephine’s barricades.

Magpie Maggie and Magic-Bullet Mary shot any monster that peaked over the edge or pushed through.

No, she isn’t Miracle Mary, Miracle Mary was busy on the front line regrowing arms and legs on magical girls as fast as they were being ripped off by ghostly demon tentacles. We’re fighting the forces of Hell, did you expect them to play nice?

Maggie, on top of being able to conjure wings and claws and fire razor sharp feathers, could conjure birdies and even combine them into a giant. But her trump card would have just been a giant target against a horde this big.

Josephine was working like mad. She left after images of herself, repairing the damage as fast as the fiends damaged it, with Evergreen Eve’s plants keeping things in place until she could. Our plan was to funnel the horde and bleed them out on our defenses.

Then a Witch of the Dragon, the kind Joan of Arc herself should be fighting, showed up set the whole damn wall on fire! I think she realized a battlefield filled with the strongest magical girls alive wasn’t a good place to be, and knew she had a better chance for trophies with the B-listers.

Remember prohibition? A nine-year-old Eve used to play in a garden next to a speak easy with the park used as ‘hidden in plain sight’ storage … when the Feds raided the place, a particularly demented gangster decided to ‘burn the evidence’… That was the day I met her, a girl with no parents, who only had that garden… she asked for the power to save it. I’ve helped her through it. But gigantic flames still make her uneasy even in our line of work.

That was on top of it being an obvious weakness to both Eve and Josephine’s magic. Things got frantic. Josephine didn’t stop working, she never did. She knew there was no one else. She knew complaining wouldn’t change anything. She knew we had to do the best we could.

We forgot the fiends aren’t mindless animals, no matter how vicious. They smashed through a weakened section just as Josephine got close to repair it… and pulled her out. The horde used themselves to seal up the hole after her. Some fiends used themselves as shields While others redoubled their efforts on Maggie and Mary. Any plants that Eve sent out to try to help were torn to shreds… I guess the witch was too prized a ‘hunting dog’ by a fiend higher up the pecking order for them to risk losing her.

Josephine… my girl… she … she didn’t go down easy… no magical girl does… Each swing of her hammer took down more than one. She shattered the Witch’s jaw. Little traitor backed off. But… there were just too many.

Her last thoughts to us were, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll build it back.’

And the monsters, and that little traitor, were all laughing.

I felt the shock of horror of my… my now three girls, losing their friend of half a century.

Josephine was the physically oldest girl I had recruited, a certified teenager. She had grabbed me by my horns and DEMANDED I make her a magical girl on the spot. She didn’t care her magic wasn’t gonna be super epic… (kinda funny given how strong it was), she just wanted to save her classmates, she didn’t give a damn a big chunk of them bullied her. She never needed therapy, she told me to focus on the others.

That was when I made my decision I’d hate myself forever for.

It was stupid. I knew she hadn’t ceased to exist. A magical girl’s soul couldn’t be consumed by demons. She merely retired to the paradise awaiting all humans. So why was I a little emptier? Had I been in a physical body so long I’d lost all perception?

But I’d just lost one of my girls again… to another of these stupid mega-monster-disasters! I… I couldn’t.

Lilly and Josephine.

I wouldn’t lose Maggie, Mary and Eve too.

So I did something utterly and completely -human.-

There was no way the girls could fend off the horde now without Josephine repairing and remaking the barricade. Help wasn’t coming. Or that was what I told myself. I have no way to know what would’ve happened. I just know what I did.

---

It thundered outside.

I let the convicts out of their cells. None of them knifed each other. Thank God. Last thing I need is a “You Die First!” type. Maybe they know there’s no point. But when has that stopped caterpillars?

“I won’t waste your time or mine!” I boom from a guard bridge’s railing.

“My three girls are fighting to the death to protect you. One already has. They’re likely the only ones giving a damn about you right now. I won’t pretend you’re all the same, but to the demons outside, you are: food.

“My girls are going to die for you, then you’ll VERY REALLY TRULY WORSE THAN DIE! You’re going to wish you could be executed twice!” Thunder crashed.

I bow my head flat. “So I beg you! Please help save them. I won’t lie, you’ll likely die twice today, or instead spend eternity wishing you could. The fiends will only offer their hunger.

“So anyone here have the guts to become ‘Pollyannas’? Yes! That’s what I’m asking! But everything of you that’s unworthy will go poof! Your soul gets pureed and reshaped! So who wants to go down taking a bunch of your killers with you, and who wants to wait to be eaten like good cattle?”

Wish I could say I knew their names. Their families will know.

They’ll never forgive me.

But my girls are falling back one step at a time and will have their backs against the prison wall.

They won’t forgive me.

There’s no time dammit!

“It’s what mother would want,” one says at last.

And that opens the gate. More step forward. I don’t dare change them individually, least the rest decide to die as themselves.

Sixty-three stepped forward before I ran out of breathing room.

I can’t remember the last time anyone recruited 63 caterpillars at once. I’m gonna make it into the books for sure: assuming they don’t erase my name like Quisling and the textbooks he found math errors in as a schoolboy, after he sided with the goose-steppers.

The higher-ups were gonna feel this one. Thankfully they were too busy to send anyone to deal with me right now.

“By this oath to fight evil and protect humanity forever more, of you own free will, become magical girls!”

The light of magic filled their bodies, making them glowing silhouettes of different colors, most being pink. Each one in their own brief-micro-universe filled with objects and landscapes symbolizing their magic and outlook. Nearly all of them were filled with stereotypical and traditional girly things, like ribbons, hearts, flowers, and dolls.

The transformation was still based on their own perceptions of what it meant to be a magical girl and the costumes on their own subconscious designs.

Their silhouettes shrank down to the shapes of little girls from grade school to middle school age with hair styles that ranged from whimsical to classical.

Trust me, any demon that’s ever thought that the ribbons and long hair of a magical girl were easy grab areas never thought that again.

Their costumes formed on their silhouettes from the stuff of their micro-worlds as they became flesh and blood again. Their eye hair colors matched the primary color of their costume.

Most of them went for the cliche ‘Japanese School Girl’ uniform, since that’s the only thing most of them imagined the ‘Pollyannas’ wearing. But no matter what their costume looks like, it’s tougher than kevlar. Much tougher.

Before you get any ideas, I could see all this, but to a normal human, demon, or witch, it would complete in a flash of light.

And I noticed, there were several magical girl twins in the group. Quick rundown, you know conjoined twins? Magical girl twins are MENTALLY and EMOTIONALLY conjoined. They can fight as one person with or without my help. They have separate minds, but they’re terrified of being separated, and will often think, feel, and act in lock step. But they can still consciously act differently in a fight, this makes them hyper effective in battle. But if one of them dies, the other goes kamikazi. If they survive THAT, they’ll always sign up for the most suicidal missions, just wanting to be reunited with their other half, but refusing to take the coward’s way out. Double-edged sword.

Since they were all transformed together, they were given unifying traits. Each one had a number and their magical girl title somewhere on their costume. They also all had a stripe pattern somewhere on their boots, long socks, gloves, skirt, etc. There was also the matching colorful jewelry but that was par the course. Finally, somewhere on each of them was an golden heart shaped lock.

The convicts… my converts… 63 simultaneous new starlights.

They each struck the same magical girl sideways V-for-victory pose, and called out their magical girl title followed by their new names, drowning each other out.

Now I had 66 voices in my head all at a once telepathically using my so-called brain as a chat-room. This would have driven any human insane. I’m not human, not in the least.

I remember the looks in their eyes, those bright smiles. That unbreakable belief that everything was going to be okay. They knew they were going to march into battle with nightmares from beyond, but didn’t care, they had each other, their friends at their sides, they would see it through.

I’ll never forget the expectant and innocent look they gave me, I was their spirit guide, I was to guide them in the way of being a magical girl. And I knew most of them wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.

I should have ordered my new charges to look after the remaining convicts, to have my … their big sisters cover for them while the 63 escorted the remaining prisoner to safety. Demons and witches alike fixated on magical girls even when they had helpless victims right there.

That would have resulted in the least deaths of civilians and magical girls until the big girls took down the Grand Elder Fiend and the small fry fled from seeing the big fish go down.

But I was too busy thinking: Mary, Maggie, Eve, Lilly, Josephine.

We spirit guides are supposed to accept our girls are gonna eventually bite the big one. But I could see it happening before my eyes.

I imagine you want some super detailed description of every last one of them. Except I know you’d just gloss over them after the first couple. Everyone always does unless it was their family member.

But I will give you their names and numbers, it was all they had before as convicts. But those people didn’t exist anymore. Instead I had over five dozen new starlights, all seconds away from going into battle.

I… I didn’t have a chance to get to know them.

1. Strawberry
2. Raspberry
3. Cranberry
4. Blueberry
5. Boysenberry
6. Blackberry
7. Elderberry
8. Huckleberry
9. Gooseberry
   10 & 11. Wolfberry and Goji Berry.
10. Mulberry
11. Pineberry
12. salmonberry
13. Lingonberry
14. Chokeberry
15. Olallieberry 18 & 19. sarvisberry and Juneberry
16. Açai Berries
17. cloudberry
18. Sumac Berry
19. hackberry
20. crackerberry
21. Bunchberry
22. Crowberry
23. Silverberry 28 & 29. Rumberry and Guavaberry
    30 & 31. Nannyberry and sheepberry

24. Riberry

    33 & 34. Buffaloberry and bullberry

25. Barberry
26. Billberry
27. Conkerberry
28. Honeyberry
29. Banana Berry
30. Agarita Berry 

    41 & 42. India berry and Amla Berry 

31. Baneberry
32. Bearberry
33. Bilberry
34. Caperberry
35. Cowberry
36. Dewberry
37. Farkleberry
38. Holly Berry
39. Juniper Berry
40. Loganberry
41. Mistletoe Berry
42. Privet Berry
43. Seaberry
44. Snowberry
45. Sugarberry
46. Tayberry
47. Thimbleberry
48. Wineberry
49. Yew Berry
50. Youngberry
51. Ivy Berry

There, happy? I’m not. And during all that I didn’t notice Her. Why should I notice Her? She was the same as the rest I thought. Another smiling face who had agreed to die for the sake of people who’d have likely knifed her in her sleep yesterday, or she’d have knifed in their sleep. Her old self didn’t exist anymore, and as far as I knew, she wasn’t likely to see her first birthday party.

Evergreen Eve, Magic-Bullet Mary, and Magpie Maggie were fighting shoulder to shoulder at this point. Maggie could have flown off at any time and saved herself -like that-, but she never even imagined it. Never call any of my girls cowards.

I mentally spoke to my 63 new starlights, ‘Your Big Sisters are on their last legs outside, save them,’ and then I added. ‘Avenge your fallen big sisters.’

And like good little girls, trusting their spirit guide, they followed my instructions to the letter.

They charged out of the prison, via the windows, the doors, smashed through the wall, phased through, or willed the stone to part way for them.

The healed up dragon witch’s face was priceless when she saw an army of magical girls swarm out of the prison. She back-pedaled without a word, not out of the fight, her master would kill her first, but back to the back ranks. The distance fighters let loose a barrage, the melee fighters tore, cut, ripped, and smashed into the stunned and surprised demons. The precious few healers were at their Big sisters’ sides in a moment, healing and restoring their strength.

The entire horde recoiled in shock.

My… my three SENIOR girls looked at me shocked too. Maggie looked uncomfortable. Mary was confused. But Eve… she looked sad.

She said, “Judd what have you done?”

I couldn’t answer. I was too busy trying, and failing, to keep my army together.

There were too many… I couldn’t coordinate them, not all at once. There was a reason magical girls were broken down into squads. Besides the twins, most were fighting as individuals rather than an army.

I should have had Maggie, Mary, and Eve retreat, and quickly divide up the new starlights into three sub-squads. I could have kept balance between them and let the demons enter the prison, thinking they were in for a slaughter in their favor, only for the tables to turn, with the demons again funneled into kill zones like we’d been doing before.

It sucks when you realize how much you could have done differently if you actually had space, or had taken time to think.

The sudden influx of magical girls naturally broke the horde into a panic. They had no idea they were fighting new starlights. For all they knew these were veterans attacking them. And the sudden lack of direction threw them off. Nothing scares bullies more than suddenly no longer having the advantage.

But even as my new starlights tore through the horde, this shock wore off.

The dragon witch morphed completely into a red humanoid dragon amazon. She roared. “FIGHT BACK YOU IDIOTS!”

And then the slaughter began.

I… I… I suppose you want me to talk about that too don’t you? How I was in each of their heads as they died. As each one died I became more focused, and the death of the next came through more intensely.

What were you bloody hoping for? Some epic and heroic play by play of each of my girls? … Remember what I said about not going crazy from having all their voices in my head? It wasn’t the same thing as trying, and failing, to coordinate an army.

The worst part is… most of them died from being cocky. They went from helpless prey to the hunters. They had magic at their finger tips. We spirit guides are meant to reign them in so they don’t make rookie mistakes.

But there are ones I can remember.

No 7, Elderberry. She slowed down time around her and sped up her own perception of it. She got completely separated from the group, like most of those killed. She used her cane sword to great effect on the quasi-humanoid fiends. Until a big lumbering one she mistook for no threat stabbed her with its lightning fast tendrils from behind as she was bisecting a grunt. The tendrils spread through her body from the inside. She opened the hourglass on her cane’s grip, aging the monster to dust. But with the tendrils gone, she bled out.

No. 63, Ivy Berry, she pulled down the grunts and heavy hitters with her vines, like Eve, but she went straight for the dragon witch. The dragon tried to get air-born, only to be pulled down by Ivy’s vines and slammed into the ground over and over. She wrapped the dragon witch’s jaw shut, and began constricting her air passage.

Ivy took a moment to gloat, “Just call me Magical Dragon Slayer!”

The dragon witch breathed fire through her nostrils, incinerating Ivy’s vines and covering Ivy in flames. The dragon witch smashed her so hard into the ground it made a crater. Ivy was still breathing. She launched a razor sharp vine right at the witch’s eyes. The witch blocked it with her wings, then had a swarm of imps cover Ivy like vultures on carrion.

No. 43, Baneberry, cannonballed the dragon witch in the face, hitting the traitor with enough force to send her skidding across the sand and into the water. Her magic was based on kinetic force with go-go boots and brass knuckles to channel it in ways a kung-fu master would love. Figuring this was her chance to avenge Ivy, she dove in after the traitor to humanity. Baneberry was totally focused on the witch as the traitor tried to remember which was up before she drowned. Baneberry didn’t think how there would be fiends in the water waiting for anyone who tried to leave the island the old fashioned way.

Baneberry created tidal waves from her punches and kicks, knocking over more fiends on land (and a couple of her sisters). But this meant her focus was off the witch, who swamp up, and bit her two. Baneberry fought off the finned horrors, and climbed back on land, and would’ve bled out seconds later, but the dragon witch stepped on her.

No. 26 Crowberry. She took to the air, releasing light and shadow in equal measures on the monster below. I shouted at her to keep moving… because I knew… a stationary magical girl in the air was a big target in battle. But by the time she understood what I meant, a monster with an artillery cannon for a head shot through one of her wings as she dodged. She tried to stay airborne, twirling and dodging best she could. But each shot only slowed her down, and she was pulled into the horde, and never came back up.

And… the ones I couldn’t forget. No. 50 Holly Berry, No. 53. Mistletoe Berry, No. 61 Yew Berry, and No. 56 Snowberry. I actually heard them engaging in some casual dialogue at how they could be the Christmas Quartet when this was over. There were plenty of Holiday themed magical girls after all.

They’d stuck to the rear of the carnage, acting as ‘bodyguards’ for the Eve, Maggie, and Marry. They didn’t realize how much their big sisters were protecting them instead. They lasted longer than most because they were actually acting like a team.

“Hey Mistletoe, sorry for the whole ‘tried to strangle you in the shower room.'”

“Doesn’t matter anymore Holly! Let’s fight for our tomorrow!”

“Right sis’!”

Mistletoe created her namesake to strikes demons, who’d make out with each other oblivious to everything else. Yew created literal fire walls and shot fireballs. Holly Berry spent time healing up her big sisters, she was no Miracle Mary, but she could’ve learned. And there was Snowberry. I’ve never looked up her old life. Never tried to learn what had made her like she was. Some people came along a while ago claiming they had been their family, they were typical fraudsters. She’d create ice walls… the problem was Yew was making fire walls.

But now it was the demons who were getting cocky. They’d torn down Snowberry’s ice wall on top of Yew’s firewall, but the explosion of steam sent them barreling over in the opposite direction. Snowberry kept playing defense.

Even when a very cocky demon made a blind charge right at her, instead of trying to impale it through its big open mouth, she just created another ice wall that it rammed straight into, burying it. Snowberry relaxed, thankfully Maggie knew if you don’t see it die, it’s not dead, and one of her magic bullets went through the monster several times when it dramatically exploded from the icy rumble and wasted time with a roar.

The problem is that my big girls were magical girls too… even if the odds were a million to one, they’d risk their lives to protect their little sisters from the monsters and their own inexperience. A job that sadly got easier as their numbers fell. My big girls would rush to save anyone they could when they needed saving.

Another problem is that always playing defensive means the defenses eventually break.

After the big girls were healed, Holly saw Strawberry’s arm torn off (to No. 1 Strawberry’s credit, she knew to summon her scepter to her left arm to skull-bash the fancy-suited faceless fiend). Holly shouted, “SNOW! Form walls to Strawberry! Mistletoe, Yew, clear a way!”

Holly had brains, she knew they had to work as a group.

The girls followed through with her plan, and Holly reconnected Strawberry’s arm. Then she saw No. 4 Blueberry’s leg be shattered in four places by an avian fiend with six arms. Holly had them repeat the exact same maneuver. Yew Berry made fried chicken, but the avian field laid an egg that rolled away and hatched itself a new body. Holly healed Blueberry’s leg.

Strawberry and Blueberry’s brush with death sobered them up enough to fight back to back, covering each other’s weaknesses.

Then Holly saw No. 38. Honeyberry’s bee wings being torn off by a red bear fiend with an extra mouth in its stomach. Holly had the quartet repeat the same maneuver again.

The dragon witch flew down, and breathed fire down the tunnel. Snowberry had sense enough to block up the tunnel. The quartet retreated, only for the dragon witch to fly and breathe fire down the other end and Snowberry to block that end too.

Yew Berry blew a hole through the ice wall and the girls got out into the open.

It honestly made me happy when Strawberry and Blueberry saw Holly and co weren’t going to make it and ran on top of the ice tunnel (well, Blueberry ran, holding Strawberry), and gave the bear fiend a kick and punch in both its mouths, saving Honeyberry’s life. The three now share a bunk room and still fight as a trio.

The quartet, meanwhile, had been fighting with their backs to the wall, and without the big girls to cover their mistakes. Now they were quickly getting surrounded. Worse, the dragon witch had zeroed in on them for termination.

Yew launched a stream of fire at the dragon, expecting a ‘flame-o-war’ to follow, instead the witch flapped her wings, sending the fire back. That was no problem for Yew, but she had no clue how to adjust her magic for ‘friend or foe’. Snowberry created another ice wall. She didn’t realize she was using so little magic because she was right next to the ocean.

My big girls zeroed in on the dragon witch for termination, forcing her to back off. Which had the unintended effect of luring the quartet’s guardian angels away.

By now, the horde was down to less than half its original size. These demons were all second stringers who had snuck along, avoiding the big name battle to go for an easy rampage while the strongest ‘sheep dogs’ were busy with their boss. But I was still feeling my girls fall left and right, Magical girls who had never been in a fight before, who I’d thrown into the deep end.

The demons saw Holly Berry was a healer, and demons didn’t follow the Geneva Convention. The quartet thought their ice wall to their back was protection like the prison. If they’d had time to think they’d realize that was dead wrong.

A sword came out of Holly’s chest. A silent fiend that looked like a suit of samurai armor covered in spiderwebs made of red flesh drove its second sword into her before the others could react. Then it sliced its swords out sideways. Yew melted it, and kept melting it until it was bubbling puddling, and just kept pouring on the flames. She wasted precious time and attention surrounded by enemies.

A similar fiend resembling a European knight came behind Snowberry, but Mistletoe saw it in time, and thanks to her parasite plants it began passionately embracing a Viking armor fiend who had been coming up behind Mistletoe.

“YEW LOOK OUT!” Evergreen Eve screamed.

Yew looked all around. An experienced magical girl, or one who had gone through combat training, would know to watch the sky. The dragon witch slammed down, and gobbled up Yew Berry. Mistletoe threw her parasite plants, but the witch blocked them with her wings.

Yew blew her way out of the witch’s dragon stomach.

“Oh no you don’t!” The witch impaled Yew on her claw. The witch didn’t look worried about having a hole in her belly. Yew found something in herself, and created a sword made of flames that beheaded the dragon witch at the base of the neck.

Mistletoe wisely didn’t pull out the claws. Snowberry sealed the wounds as Mistletoe broke off the claws (that were beginning to dissolve).

I don’t blame them for what happened next. I’m the Spirit Guide, it’s my job to keep up to date on every known witch and what they can and can’t do with their magic. But in the bedlam I had created, I let it slip. I should have had the big girls keep an eye on the corpse. Never assume a witch is dead until you’ve seen their soul eaten by their benefactor. I’m responsible for what happened next.

The witch, human, in her pretty red silk and rubies dress, burst out of the beheaded Dragon’s chest. Mistletoe pushed Snowberry out of the way, and was impaled as the Witch’s arm grew into a new dragon’s arm which the witch violently ripped back out.

“Sucker! Enjoy the escape I gave you?” She blew a raspberry.

Yew Berry unleashed an explosion of magic that may or may not have harmed some of her sisters in the process. The witch wasn’t harmed, she just sprouted her wings and used them as a flame proof shield. Snowberry created a barrier around herself and Mistletoe.

Another of the girls, No. 32, Riberry, charged behind the dragon witch attacking with a couple dozen enchanted throwing knives. In a flash, the witch regrew her tail, and with its blade-tipped tail, slashed upwards without turning around, bisecting Riberry instantly up the middle.

“This is too easy… you’re all canon fodder. And they call the Ranchers monsters,” the witch singsonged.

Snowberry was in a panic, it would’ve gotten her killed. She thought to put her ice walls around the witch instead, and just keep piling them on. I saw the red light getting brighter and brighter inside the growing ice prison.

There was something about Snowberry I hadn’t noticed before. How could I? A gold bracelet on one arm. With 62 jewels on it. They’d been all dull before. And now several had lit up.

“EVE PULL BACK SNOWBERRY NOW!”

Evergreen Eve’s vines wrapped around Snowberry, and pulled her away as the ice prison exploded in a tower of glacial chunks and steam. The blast took magical girls and fiends alike. Two more jewels on Snowberry’s bracelet lit up.

It’s crazy. But I knew what Snowberry’s real magic was. There have been fiends engineered like this. Witches too. But given their attitudes, they were often quick to turn on each other.

I give the orders I should have at the start. “WITHDRAW! ALL WITHDRAW! BACK TO THE PRISON! BIG SISTERS COVER LITTLE SISTERS!”

“Oh come on! This is finally getting fun!” The witch cheered, realizing she was fighting a buncha new starlights instead of an army of experienced girls.

‘Girls, protect Snowberry, that is your order,’ I think to the big girls.

I had Maggie bring Snowberry straight to me.

I look in those round blue eyes of hers with my square ones. ‘Snowberry. Say nothing. Listen only to me. Your friends aren’t gone. Listen to me. Forget what you think you know and listen. You won’t win because you’re justice. You can’t just win because you’re doing what’s right. Your friends, your sisters, they’re still with you. Right now. They’re right beside you. If you let them, they’ll lend you their strength. Your life doesn’t belong to just you. Your power isn’t only yours. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOUR OWN LIFE MEANS NOTHING! It means it’s worth SO MUCH MORE! You’re fighting with all your sisters, even if you can’t see all of them now. You have the power, you can destroy that witch and the rest of these monsters. I believe in you.’

I nuzzled her. The horde closed in. The witch circled like a cat playing with her food.

‘Watch Snowbery’s back… and don’t forget to watch each other’s,’ I told my big girls. They’d take care of the fiends going for the easy shots.

Snowberry in her white and light blue dress, with fur trim like her three fallen teammates, stood tall on the prison wall. She held her wand proudly and shouted.
“I am Magical Girl Snowberry Saria! Go home or I’ll send you home!”

“We’re doing this? I am Witch of the Dragon Edith, I’m going to eat you now.”

White feathery wings spread from Saria’s back.

She didn’t stay in one place. She zoomed forward like a jet.

Seeds shot down from her like bullets, sprouting into white flowers as they hit the fiends, who’d hug-tackle each other, making them easy pickings for Magic Bullet Mary!

Edith flew above her allies.

“You were faking this whole time? HOW CUTE!” Edith’s arm grew not into a new set of claws, but into a dragon’s head and neck.

They passed each other in a flash… Edith bit off Saria’s wand arm, chewed, and swallowed.

They turned and faced each other. Saria waved over her missing arm like a brush, growing a new one and reforming her white glove. She re-summoned her wand as Edith breathed fire at her from both her normal mouth and the dragon head, growing a third head with her other arm.

Saria couldn’t create an ice wall in mid air, it would just fall. Instead she created a firebreak, creating her own swirling wall of fire around her, redirecting Edith’s flames off course.

Edith charged in a zigzag pattern, and let the dragon form around her completely, trying to bite Saria in half. Saria grabbed Edith, and the dragon aged into sand. Another dragon emerged before the first dragon had even fallen out of its shape. Saria grabbed the dragon again, it turned to sand, only for six dragon heads to explode out of the clouds in a circle and breathing fire.

Snowberry Saria made cold and flame alike to deflect the barrage of fireballs, retreating as the dragon heads stretched out on their necks. She then caught a pair of fireballs and threw them back. The six fireproof dragon heads charged through them, and so didn’t notice the shackle thrown between them that exploded into six more on a ring, that violently bridled them, and slammed the six heads into each other, breaking them. I heard in Saria’s mind thanking No. 16. Chokeberry.

Edith with dragon wings flew back from Snowberry from the cloud of sand as it fell to the ground.

“I burned down Washington in 1812! YOU THINK I’M LOSING TO YOUR KIND TODAY?!”

Edith clawed at her own human arms, drawing blood. She splashed the blood forward, turning into little dragonlings that flew hungrily at Saria. Time slowed down around her, her wand became a sword, and slashed them to pieces. Her sword blade then became a flame and turned the pieces to ashes.

Snowberry Saria created a flurry of blades floating in the air, sending them at Edith who dodged them so fast she created afterimages, many making faces.

Edith didn’t say the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. She was perfectly happy to let Snowberry burn through her mana. Hey, I know how the enemy thinks sometimes.

She didn’t notice the vines that kept growing underneath them, catching the knives. She caught the glint as the knives were thrown in all directions at her. She grew her dragon body before they hit. Ice spread from the knife wounds.

“No way,” Edith said before she became a frozen statue. Her flesh turned to ice, and fell to the ground. What fiends remained were suddenly a lot less brave.

Saria punched the dragon, it shattered. Edith flew straight at Saria from the dragon’s center… right into repeating blasts of Ravenberry’s light and darkness magics, hitting like strobe lights until it was blinding.

When the dust settled, Edith The Witch fell to her knees, her face frozen in empty surprise. Her short black hair hung messily. Her red eyes stared at nothing.

A vertical fanged mouth split open on Edith’s back. Visible on the open back of her dress. A tiny dragon shot out like a missile.

“I’LL KILL YOU! KILL YOU!” The dragonling snarled in a squeaky version of Edith’s, flying away so fast it left a divide in the water, before it dove into the back of an aquatic fiend, digging into it, and the fiend dove deeper, shouting in the same voice as Edith as it disappeared. “WILL KILL YOU!”

Edith’s body and dress dissolved, her clothes falling apart like her skin, the skeleton only lasting a few moments more before turning to dust. The remaining fiends retreated.

Saria gracefully landed once the fiends were out of sight. Her long blond hair turned silver, her smooth skin wrinkled, the color in her eyes faded, and she fell backwards with a thud.

Last I checked, she was still in the medical wing hooked up to an IV and breather mask. Dreaming Delilah’s been keeping her mind occupied with her astral projection. They even moved Delilah’s isolation tank next to her. Heard they’re becoming good friends. Both definitely need one.

The surviving new starlights are all in intensive therapy of a different sort. No. 21 Cloudberry Claudia, asked if one of them… ‘sacrificed’ themselves Saria would wake whole and healthy. She’s on extra watch.

Blueberry Beth, Strawberry Susan and Honeyberry Haru are now their own squad and are now on active duty. Good girls.

Evergreen Eve, Magpie Maggie and Magic-Bullet Mary… I… I told them I had to talk to the higher ups.

+++++

Judd finished writing in the bright red book. His marks glowing briefly as they were engraved. He shut the book. He pushed it against the soft white floor to the spirit guide sitting opposite of him. A black wolf cub with a white furry face, and glowing white eyes. His fangs, claws and wings were silver. Besides them was a set of golden scales.

Around them were circular railless balconies, all scaled to his kind. All polished almost white bright blue barle. Sitting at the edge almost shoulder to shoulder were the other spirit guides. They looked down at him. The layers of observers stacked upwards with no sign of pillars so high until to a human they’d be a blur.

Gary, a white baby snapping turtle with golden feather wings said sternly. “Congratulations ‘Judd’, the first trial for one of us in what, four, five hundred years? All the Host is here to pass judgment on you.”

Judd hung his head. “I accept whatever judgment you who have heard my story pass upon me.”

~Fin