Magical Girl Trixie

Platinum City. Like a utopian city immersed in plants, flowers, grass and rivers, and it was this city that the magical girls of Manehattan called their home.

I was the first one out of the three of us to make it to the fountain, which basically acted as the meeting spot for all of the magical girls whenever we wanted to discuss anything outside of the real world. I needed to talk to them about what was going on, but I had no idea how to tell them that Lulu Lemon was Marrow and that she wanted me dead. Then again, I also wanted her dead, which would also be difficult to explain, but I had to at least warn them that something was going down.

“Oh, Great and Powerful Triiixiiiieee!” called a bubbly voice. Turning to my side, I saw Dreamdrop leaning forward and holding something behind her back. “Who's your favorite magical girl in the whole wide world?”

“Hmm…” I mumbled, putting a finger to my chin. “Not Cupid Symphony, not Mind Games, definitely not Night Seam… Maybe Palette?”

“Awww, come on!”

“I'm joking. What do you have behind your back?”

“Ta-daaah!” she said while pulling out a giant spear?! What the fuck?! “It's to protect you! You know, in case whoever hurt you tries coming back.”

“I didn't even know that Platinum City sold stuff like this!”

“You see, that's the thing! We usually don't, but after you ended up in the hospital, a couple different items like this ended up in the shop. I guess Discord just wanted to make sure we were safe.”

“Well… Thank you!” I said, accepting the spear but not really knowing what to do with it. “Do I have to carry it around everywhere I go?”

“No, silly! It's magic! You can make it appear or disappear the same way you would transform into a magical girl or back into your regular self!”

It seemed simple enough. By concentrating all of my magic to my hand, I emitted the energy into my spear, making it instantly disappear, and doing the same trick again, I made it reappear back into my hand. “This is amazing, Dreamdrop!” I said. “Thank you! How many brownie points did you end up spending on it?”

“Aww, don't worry about it. I just… wanna make sure you're safe, you know? Now! Tell me everything!”

How would I even explain? What kind of story could I possibly tell her? Maybe just telling the truth would be the best thing to do, but if it backfired…

“You didn't see who did it, right?” Paradox said, suddenly appearing out of nowhere and frightening both Dreamdrop and me. “You said your glasses got knocked off, but did you at least see if it was a man or woman? Where did it happen? What motive did they have in stabbing you? Do you think they knew you were a magical girl? But even then, even someone stabbing you so that you can't turn into a magical girl and meddle with them seems pretty hard to believe…”

“Well, maybe if you let Trixie tell the story…” Dreamdrop began, looking at me to help clear things up, but I didn't know what to say. With all the questions that Paradox came up with, I couldn't find a realistic explanation other than the truth, but even that might be too far-fetched for them to believe.

“I…” I began, dropping eye contact. “I don't remember.”

“Then I may have a solution,” Paradox said, tilting her goggles. “I don't have the necessary amount of brownie points to buy it myself, but once I raise enough, I can buy those magical contacts, and by going into your memories, I'll be able to see exactly who did it.”

Crap! If she saw my memories, there would be no way I could play this off!

No! Wait! This was a good thing! If she saw my memories, she would see exactly what happened, and I wouldn't have to explain anything!

“How many brownie points do you need?!” I asked, quickly grabbing her hands.

“I'm still short about two thousand,” she said sadly.

“Awww!” moaned Dreamdrop. “There's no way we can come up with that many in three days! And I just spent the last of what I had on that spear.”

“Then let's just try to figure out what we can. Trixie, where were you when you were attacked?”

“I was… at school…” I said, hoping that the truth would work out somehow.

Dreamdrop gasped. “Was it that girl who tried to kill you yesterday?!”

“Yeah… It was her…”

“Why didn't you just tell us?” Paradox asked with a somber tone. “We would believe you, you know. Maybe we can even help protect you.”

“That's just it, though… you can't protect me.”

“Come on, Trixie!” Paradox slapped my back with a smile. “It's not like we haven't done it before! I'll go back with you as soon as you're out of the hospital, and we'll teach that girl to mess with the Great and-- AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”

Out of nowhere, Paradox began screaming and convulsing in place, her eyes nearly popping out of their sockets, even through her goggles, before falling to the floor motionless with smoke billowing from her body. Before we could even react to the situation, a puddle of urine ran down her thighs with her open mouth drizzling her foamy saliva.

She didn't get up. Her eyes wouldn't close. She was dead.

“Paradox?” I muttered with my chest rising and falling and my body trembling. “Paradox! What… What hap--”

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” Dreamdrop let out an ear-shattering scream and fell to her knees, holding her head with shaking hands and rocking back and forth. “This can't be happening! You can't be dead! I can't keep seeing people die! Why won't you wake up?! What's happening?! Paradox!! PLEASE!! WAKE UP!!!”

Quickly realizing the gravity of the situation, I turned in every direction, looking for any kind of sign as to what could have killed her. Was it Marrow? No. Even she couldn't have hit Paradox with the magic that she had, at least not without being noticed. Unless…

“Dreamdrop! Did you see anything you could use brownie points on that would electrocute somebody?”

The sleep-themed magical girl, however, was still on her knees, holding her arms to her chest while rocking back and forth and saying, “Please wake up. Please wake up. Please wake up. Please wake up.”

I couldn't wait for this, especially if we were in the same kind of danger as Paradox. Grabbing Dreamdrop by the shoulders, I lifted her up and shouted, “DREAMDROP! SNAP OUT OF IT!”

“SHE'S DEAD, TRIXIE! I DON'T WANNA DIE! I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANYONE DIE ANYMORE! WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP DYING?!”

“We're going to be next if you can't answer the question! Is there any item that someone could use to electrocute somebody?”

“I-I-I don't think so! I don't know! MAKE IT STOOOOOP!!!”

Dreamdrop was no longer any help, which just meant that I had to figure this out and fast, and to make it even harder, I had to be looking out in every direction to make sure nothing happened to either Dreamdrop or me. This either had to be the work of a magical girl or Discord, but as far as I knew, Discord didn't have any reason to hurt any of the magical girls, which meant that someone in our own group did this.

Then, suddenly, everything clicked.

Grabbing Dreamdrop by the shoulders once more, I firmly asked, “You said yesterday that one of the magical girls has a wand that allows her to project her magic towards a target, right?”

“Y-yeah. It shoots magic like a laser beam.”

“Paradox was just electrocuted. Which magical girl has that wand?”

With her eyes growing wide and her lips trembling even more, she muttered, “S-Storm Rose…”

Storm Rose, the girl with the power to transmit electricity, just happened to have the wand. Everything fell into place except for one question.

“B-but it couldn't have been Storm Rose!” Dreamdrop said, beginning to panic even more than before. “She's a magical girl like us! Why would she kill Paradox? She wouldn't! That's crazy! THIS WHOLE THING IS CRAZY!”

Looking back down at Paradox, however, I noticed that her magic was no longer in effect, leaving her real life body on the ground in her place. The girl inside Paradox was older, about nineteen years old, with short, brown hair, a baggy tank top and high school track pants. It was almost sickening seeing the real girl behind the magic, but maybe that was just me reacting to seeing a body that was alive and well just moments earlier suddenly frozen forever on the floor.

“Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!” Dreamdrop repeated over and over, covering her ears and again rocking back and forth.

“Dreamdrop,” I said, holding her in place while she stared at the ground. “Get out of Platinum City. I'm going to go looking for Storm Rose. Don't transform back into a magical girl until I tell you it's safe. We may just have to wait this out until we all lose our powers, but so long as we're safe, it will be worth it.”

“O… OK…”

After her trembling hands struggled to get a good grasp on her teleport gem, she finally managed to grab on and get herself out of Platinum City, leaving just me and the dead body at my feet. Without even taking a second to think of the options, I summoned my spear and jumped onto the nearest rooftop, searching all of Platinum City for any signs of magical girls. Then, my feet moved before I knew what I was reacting to, and just as soon as I leapt off of the building, a beam of lightning soared past my cheek, barely missing its target.

“There you are,” I said to myself, landing once again by the fountain. My feet then bolted into a superhuman dash towards the light source, with buildings beginning to blur into unrecognizable shapes and colors. Seeing as how she was so close to Marrow, I should have known that it would only be a matter of time before Storm Rose went after me too, but why Paradox? What did she do to deserve this?

I must have caught up by this point. Turning one final corner, I searched for the magical girl responsible for killing my friend, but instead was met with a skeleton sending a brutal uppercut to my jaw, making me fight with my life just to stay conscious. Then, looking up from the ground, I saw Storm Rose behind the skeleton, aiming her wand at me with a look to kill in her eyes. Reflexively, I pushed myself off the ground with just enough force to dodge her attack one more time, just barely keeping myself alive.

“Stop dodging, Tripsy!” said a voice from behind me. Then, looking back, but while still keeping a cautious eye on both Storm Rose and the skeleton, I saw a magical girl with blonde hair and a black dress, almost unrecognizable without her bony outer layer. “Don't you get what you're doing?”

“What I'm doing?! YOU JUST KILLED ANOTHER MAGICAL GIRL!”

“No,” Storm Rose said, making me turn once more. “I did that.”

Once again, she drew her wand, making me draw out my spear, but suddenly, Marrow rang out, “Both of you, stop!” I was a little cautious about lowering my guard, but after seeing Storm Rose put her wand away altogether, I could at least lower my spear. “Where did you get that?” Marrow asked, motioning to my new weapon.

“Dreamdrop gave it to me to protect myself,” I answered angrily. “Why did you kill Paradox?! What did she have to do with any of this?!”

“That had nothing to do with Marrow,” Storm Rose replied. “Don't you get it? We're competing for our lives here. That's Discord's test.”

“You idiot! We're supposed to be competing by using our magic to help people!”

“Then why did he suddenly decide to give us weapons?” My heart stopped and my mind started racing, but I couldn't let her inside my head. “Miss Great and Powerful Trixie, you're so naïve it hurts. If I didn't start this deathmatch off myself, someone else would have, and if I didn't strike when she was still oblivious, I'd never get that chance again.”

“You would really kill someone just so you wouldn't lose your powers?! Is that really all you care about?!”

“Platinum City is my home! I’m not going back to the streets!”

Then, summoning her wand once again, she sent another blast of electricity towards me, and I knew that in a three against one match, it was only a matter of time before one of them killed me. No matter which way I went, though, I would have to deal with either Storm Rose, Marrow or her skeleton, which, in my mind, was an easy decision. With as much speed as I could get, I charged towards the exposed Marrow, lifting my spear over my head.

“Le Blanc! Return!”

As soon as I swung towards her, though, her exoskeleton was attached to her body again, shielding her from my spear with some kind of diamond-hard bone protection. This meant, though, that one of the paths from earlier had opened up, and before Marrow could take another swing at me or Storm Rose could send another lightning strike my way, I turned on my heels and ran as fast as I could away from the battle.

I ran through a labyrinth of trees and buildings, taking as many sharp turns as I could until I was sure I had at least a couple moments to catch my breath. Then, hiding in the shrubbery, I pulled out my phone and began texting the first person who came to mind.

“Iron Maiden, I need your help! Where are you? Are you alone?”

It would be a few minutes before she would reply back, and during that entire time, I was doing everything I could not to give off any clues of where I was hiding. Finally, though, I got a message back that said, “Aren't you in the hospital? What did you need? How can I help?”

“I need you to transform NOW! Don't come to Platinum City. I'll come to you. Just tell me where you are and if there are any other magical girls with you.”

She then sent me the address of where she was, and without wasting another second, I grabbed hold of my teleport gem, traveled through the dimensions and ended up right where she said. Looking up, though, I was at an arcade in downtown Manehattan, which was unusually busy during the middle of the afternoon on a school day. Then again, Iron Maiden said she was twenty-three. Did she work here?

“Yo! Great and Powerful Trixie!” Turning around and nearly having a heart attack at the sudden voice, I saw Iron Maiden completely transformed, despite us being in a very public place. “Sorry, I guess now you see what I do during my free time. Why aren't you in the hospit--”

“Paradox is dead,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulder pads. “Storm Rose killed her. We need to hide!”

“Hold on!” she said, now furrowing her eyebrows and pushing my hands off of her. “Repeat everything one more time! There's no way I heard you right.”

“Storm Rose killed Paradox! She's turning our competition into a deathmatch! Dreamdrop is in hiding right now, but I don't know who else to trust! Everyone knows my true identity. I need someone to help protect me.”

“But…” Iron Maiden froze, still completely shocked from the information overload that her brain was forced to comprehend. “Why would Storm Rose do something like that?”

“Iron Maiden,” I said in a serious tone, “she's not the only one. We're all in danger. It's only a matter of time before this deathmatch turns into a battle royal. If I go back to the hospital, I'll die.”

In all my years of begging, I had never felt more pathetic than I did at that moment. I was basically pressuring her into being my bodyguard, but the way I saw it, there was no other way! Fortunately for me, though, Iron Maiden smiled and said, “I'd better get some serious brownie points for this.”

“Thank you so much!” I said, wrapping her into a hug and making the people around us feel even more awkward.

“Now, I do have one condition, though.”

“What is it?”

Putting her hands on her hips, she said, “We're gonna need some backup in case they find us. Who else do you trust?”

If I was being honest, I didn't trust anyone but Dreamdrop. I was taking a chance with Iron Maiden because I felt that her magic would protect me better than anyone else could. If there was any other girl, though, which one would I pick?

Then, an idea came to my mind, but if I was wrong here, we would both be dead.

“I want Night Seam.”