Demon Mom responded by petting my hair in a way that was pleasant but would probably cause problems with my much longer hair I had no idea how to take care of.

“Don’t worry sweetheart, this was unavoidable, and you made me realize I was being rather silly…” she explained.

She looked at knight Mom, who was herself still standing there and starting.

“Hey sweetheart, it’s me… I, umm, I have a lot to explain I think…” she added.

Knight Mom expertly shook herself out of her shock and took a deep breath.

“Not as much as you might think. I won’t pretend I’m not upset, but I also won’t pretend that most of it isn’t me being upset on your behalf, for living a lie so long…” she said.

“You… don’t seem very surprised…”

“Sweetheart, I had suspicions about both versions of you long before we started dating, just because I never connected those two particular dots doesn’t change that.”

Knight Mom approached us with an optimistic smile on her face, before gesturing for me to move aside so she could kiss and cuddle her wife.

Of course, once their kiss graduated into a hug, I returned to squeeze both of my Moms because I loved them.

“I love you Moms!” I exclaimed.

See? I told you so!

“I am going to be honest, this beats the best case scenario I expected by far,” Lottie commented.

Right, Lottie was here too! I wanted her to join in the hug! I knew why she didn’t, it was a very family hug, but she was a part of this too! Family is made up and stupid as a concept anyways, it takes a river to raise a child or something! I might not have deserved all of those hugs, but I sure as heck wanted them!

“It did all end up pretty smoothly, didn’t it,” knight Mom remarked.

“Well, not all, there’s still the matter of–” I started before being spooked by a noise coming from a dark corner.

“What was that?” demon Mom asked.

I squeezed Moms more for a false feeling of safety.

A figure emerged from the shadows, still surrounded in black glow.

Which didn’t make sense, since black was the absence of light and could not glow, even dark energy glowed purple, and yet that was exactly what it looked like.

Despite that, I could see enough to see that the person was a woman, clothed in an armor very similar to the one that Magical Knights wore, with most of the white fabric replaced with black.

My Moms separated in response, taking combat-ready stances, with me taking a step back in concern.

“Who–” demon Mom started, before grabbing her head with one hand, clearly in pain. “You… you’re the one who killed me– her– I…” She was clearly struggling with the memories she was recalling.

I was the first one to relate to the revelation by letting out a loudest “EEP!” to ever eep and running behind Lottie, as she was the furthest away from the danger.

“It’s grandma! She’s here to kill me for being an evil time bomb!!!” I yelled in fear.

“What.” The rage in knight Mom’s voice was strong enough I was surprised I didn’t fall over.

Grandma chuckled in a way that wasn’t cold, which somehow made it even more horrifying.

“That’s about right. I would ask the three of you to remove yourselves from my way to minimize harm, but… we all know you’re not going to, so…”

She took out her sword, which also emanated pure darkness, instead of the expected gold.

Knight Mom responded with the sword of her own, taking a huge leap straight to grandma, performing a two-handed overhead slash.

Grandma jumped back out of the way, just in time to avoid the sword’s impact with the ground, which created a deafening crack as the concrete floor gained a large crater.

I elected to ignore the physics of doing that with a sharp weapon.

“You’ve fallen! You’ve been fallen this whole time, haven't you? Since you killed her! That’s why you never transformed in front of me!” knight Mom accused.

A fallen magical girl, shrouded in darkness, here to deliver my death… I was lucky she at least wasn’t using a scythe… though that would probably make for a worse weapon than a sword.

As knight Mom removed her sword from the ground and went to straighten herself, in a dash of darkness, like she was playing Hollow Knight, grandma went in and forced knight Mom to jump away herself.

Just as she was about to strike, in a purple flash, demon Mom appeared to block her sword using nothing but spectral, glowing claws that now surrounded her hands.

“How dare you try to do this… to my family!” she exclaimed, before putting in enough force to throw grandma back to her dark corner, now illuminated by residual purple glowing spots on her sword.

“Looks like we both have some unfinished business here, and I don’t feel like playing this one fair… Together?” knight Mom suggested.

“Heh… I know how you fight, and you know me… This should be easy,” demon Mom responded in an uncharacteristically low voice.

Maybe she was just like that when she fought.

“Lottie, guard her just in case! We’ve got this!” knight Mom added.

From there, the fight got almost too fast for me to keep up with, and Lottie decided to distract me.

“I know what you must think… I’m not nearly as strong as your parents, what chance do I stand to protect you if they fail… And it might be true, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it my all,” she professed, confidently.

The feeling of Lottie standing there to defend me against all harm… It’d been there before, buried under the mountain of sadness and feeling gross, but now, I could feel it freely, without anything in the way, stronger than ever, and several parts of myself heated up in embarrassed gratefulness, fluffy, a little floaty.

“T-thank you…” I mumbled, tiny, unable to hide the wave of affection washing over me.

My parents started to incorporate teleportation into the fight in order to counter the darkness dashes, making it all even less readable.

“What’s up with the whole ‘time bomb’ business anyways? From where I’m standing, you’re entirely harmless,” she asked.

“Not now, but you’ve seen my parents, they’re so strong… And those opposite forces, they’re all in me, making me unstable… I’ve caused problems already, without even meaning to…” I confessed.

Maybe grandma was right after all…

Lottie lost her composed guard battlestance for a couple seconds, her sword lowering more than it should as she burst out in laughter.

“You really do believe you’re dangerous, don’t you? It would be adorable, if it weren’t so sad, watching you hurt yourself with your own insecurities, helpless to help,” she said.

I didn’t know what to do with most of what she’d said, but I have discovered that being called “adorable” by a right person had the same effect of dizziness as spinning, making it hard to stay standing, with added warmth in my face and chest that was oh so fluffy.

I looked back up from the ground to notice that Lottie took a moment to turn back towards me, observing me with a smug grin on her face. Not fair!

“Okay, fine, I’ll go back to guarding, no need to pout,” she assured. I did what. “On a more serious note, I don’t really buy this ‘corruption’ being opposite of truth and justice, with how honest it’s made you and all. Magical Knights being natural enemies of the Demon Queen seemed made up from the start to me, I just thought I wasn’t smart enough to get it, but given the last couple weeks, and what’s happening right now… I think I might have actually been right all along…”

It seemed to take her some time to reassert herself, but grandma’s coldness returned, and suddenly, she didn’t seem so outmatched after all, as could be seen by the fact that her sword was clashed in context of strength with both a sword and a pair of claws, and yet, somehow, she was winning.

Just like that, in an explosion of darkness, both my Moms got thrown back. Demon Mom managed to catch the floor with her claws and slow herself down into a smooth landing in a decent pose, but knight Mom wasn’t so lucky, as she flew across almost the entire length of the warehouse, and rolled as she landed.

We all looked back as knight Mom started to get up, before emitting a flash of darkness and collapsing in renewed pain.

“I don’t understand, they should be stronger than her, even just one of them… Why are they losing?” I mumbled.

“Maybe it’s…” Lottie trailed off, without clarifying.

Talk about anticlimactic and unsatisfying…

Instead of ripping her claws out of the concrete (or simply unsummoning them, as I would have done), demon Mom effortlessly crushed the concrete into powder by closing her fists.

“That’s it, it’s time to finish this and show you your place,” she said calmly as an absurd amount of dark energy gathered around her. “Time for my ultimate technique: Time… Crash!”

The energy exploded outwards from her in an uniform orb, turning everything inside it but me and her desaturated, with a slight added purple hue. Since I was somehow the only one unaffected, it took me a second to realize that everyone stood perfectly still, unnaturally so. Not just everyone, every thing, the debris that should be moving stood still, some of them even frozen in place.

Did she…

Did she just fucking stop time?

She deliberately started making her way towards grandma, her steps as strong as they were elegant.

However, something wasn’t right.

Just as Mom made it halfway to grandma, there appeared a crack, albeit a tiny one, of the normal color on the Fallen Magical Knight.

“Mom, look out!” I yelled.

Unfortunately, she turned to me in surprise, not having expected me to be able to move, but to her credit, she quickly regained her composure and started to look back at her target, widening her stance, just as the crack widened and spread across almost her entire body.

She wasn’t fast enough to block, however, as the crack widened enough to shatter it all, resuming the time in its natural colors, which grandma instantly used to dash ahead further than ever before and smash her armored shoulder into demon Mom’s chest with deadly momentum, throwing her back so hard she was only stopped by the wall, leaving an indent and a lot of cracks as she fell to the ground.

Grandma took that time to regain her form and take a deep breath, before facing Lottie, resummoning her sword as if to issue a challenge.

“Child, I do not wish to harm you, please step aside as I do what has to be done,” the fallen magical knight stated in a perfectly cold monotone.

“You’re asking a being of justice to yield before someone who deems herself judge, jury, and executioner? If you think that’s ever going to work, then you’re so far enough from your former I don’t even know what you mean to stand for,” Lottie answered with unshaken resolve.

“What do I stand for? I don’t stand for anything other than protections of those who will come to be harmed by the one you’re defending. It may not be just, but those who will die before you act won’t be able to care for justice. I am one of the few people willing to be the necessary evil to protect the innocents before they’re harmed!” Grandma shouted.

I couldn’t shake the feeling I’ve heard that line of reasoning before.

“The only few? You sound like all those bigoted right wing politicians so deluded they live in a different reality! You–”

I was so angry on behalf of my loved ones, still trying to be a good ally despite falling for my perverted temptations, before Lottie extended her hand to stop me.

“Don’t.” she said, calmly, before addressing grandma again. “It’s not just justice you’ve betrayed – punishing people for the crimes they haven’t committed, for the imagined worst case scenarios, is not the truth."

She put her second hand back on her sword, resuming a battle stance.

“So, I shall not defeat you because I need to, or because I want to, not even because it is my duty. I am not here to avenge the wrongs you’ve done to people who matter to me, or even to stop you from killing the one dearest to me. I shall defeat you because that’s what I am, and I cannot allow you to continue regardless of what you chose or will choose to do. So face me, with as much honor as you have, and see if you’re truly as above truth and Justice as you think,” Lottie stated, her tone stable and determined, her will solid and unshaken, ready to take on anything and everything.

I never understood what it meant to swoon, and she had just shown me.

As the battle began, it became very clear that Lottie didn’t have any fancy tricks, no magic spells, no special techniques, even her sword work was only stable because of her immense strength, and yet, she didn’t just stand her ground, she kept up in the duel with someone with infinitely more experience and power, not letting her get through her defenses, not even with her dashes. She always knew where the next strike would land, as if she had sixth sense (well, humans have more than six senses, but you know what I mean!), an unbreachable wall in my defense.

Grandma, having decided that the current approach wouldn’t work, backed out.

Even though my sense of restrained impulses didn’t seem to work after my transformation, and despite my lack of battle knowledge, I could tell exactly what she was thinking: one, singular clash, the simple test of power that defeated my Moms.

I should have been worried, rationally, Lottie had no way to withstand it, and yet, something within me knew better – knew that as she was now, Lottie could achieve anything.

Grandma ran in, her strike carrying power immense enough to create a visible shock wave as she landed it on Lottie’s sword, pushing her almost a meter back before her feet regained the grip.

“You know nothing! You are just a naive child who’s in over her head, who doesn’t realize what she’s even dealing with, because if you truly knew, you’d be too scared even to try!” grandma exclaimed, her voice crazed.

I couldn’t figure out if she was actually pushed to her limit, or if she was simply attempting to provoke Lottie again, but one thing was clear – it didn’t work.

“The two of them failed against you because you’ve harmed them, irrevocably so, to the point where it dictated their lives. They are angry, they are furious, but more than that, they’re scared – scared of you. But I can see right through it, see through you. You used their fear to break them, but it will not work on me, because I’m. not. Scared. Of. YOU!”

During Lottie’s speech, her natural dark glow became stronger and stronger, too strong to look at, before finally, as she exclaimed her point, she threw grandma back, not with an explosion, but with a brilliantly focused beam of golden glow, straight at her target.

When I could look in that direction again, all that was left was Lottie, standing strong, looking as if the battle didn’t even happen, and grandma, laying on the ground, pathetically trying to even so much as raise her torso, before detransforming involuntarily.

As I processed what had just happened I let out a deep sign, all my puny strength left my limbs, causing me to collapse harmlessly on the floor. It was over.

It was finally over.