Rainbow

CW for internalized transphobia and, well, rather brutal fights (no people get actually injured though)

It all began when a monstrous, but still man-shaped, entity that materialized in the school gym about fifteen minutes after the last class ended. I was still there because I disliked changing after P.E. with all the guys and their smells, so I waited it out in the toilet until they were all gone. Three local magical girls arrived soon after, and I hid in the unfortunately still rather smelly locker room.

Even as a person with a gift for a specific type of magic, I’d never thought I’d find myself right next to a magical battle, and even more, one involving magical girls. Most such battles that people noticed involved superheroes or such, while magical girls went mostly unnoticed, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have fans — and I just happened to be one of them.

Okay, let me clarify something; a lot of the time when you hear a man say he’s a fan of magical girls, the appropriate reaction lies somewhere on the scale between ‘They’re about to say something gross’ and ‘RUN’, but… well, saying ‘I’m not one of those guys’ means exactly nothing, but I just… I just think they’re really pretty and cool and I really liked the designs of their wands and battle-dresses with so many pretty colors and… I just really like them, okay? And not in the fetish-y way, either, it was in a ‘thinking about this stuff makes me feel warm in the chest’ way.

Regardless, focusing more on the matter at hand, I saw all three magical girls looking tired, while the entity still seemed to stand strong at five meters tall, if not more. Two of them were being held by some sort of figures that radiated darkness. The remaining girl, one themed with pastel colors of pink, blue, and white, jumped towards the creature’s face. Her wand’s pink tip started to glow strongly as she was ready to swing it, when suddenly, she stopped. The creature caught one of her legs in its giant hand and it slammed her against the floor, causing it to crack. Then it picked her back up, and slammed her again. And again. And again.

At some point, the creature stopped, but it was too late — the girl’s eyes closed, and her wand fell out of her hand onto the floor. Just then, when the remaining two broke free, the creature disappeared in the cloud of black smoke, taking its minions and the unconscious girl with it.

“What. In the actual fuck. Just happened,” the magical girl in a dress in shades of pinks and oranges with some white accents said.

“We… we lost. That’s what happened,” responded the other one. She had theme colors of purple and yellow, with white and black elements too.

“It… it took Luna… Just when she was finally starting to…” She paused for a moment before yelling, “That’s not fair! If there’s anyone it should have taken, it would be me! I’m the sloppy useless one!”

The other one walked up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Hey, look at me. It shouldn’t have taken you. It shouldn’t have taken anybody. We need to calm down and go. It doesn’t know we can feel where she is; we’ll take it by surprise if we show up quickly.”

“But if she couldn’t take it down, what chance do we have?”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to try — for her. Now, to address the elephant in the room.” She looked directly at me. “I know you’re here. You better leave quickly too, unless you want this mess to be blamed on you. Now let’s go, Ellie.”

“W-wait, are you going to leave her wand here?” I asked.

The pink and orange girl, apparently named Ellie, sniffed. “We can’t take it. A wand can only be picked up by the girl it belongs to.”

I guess this was the time my gift finally became useful. “Can I try to pick it up?”

“It will harm you if you do,” the other girl said, her arms crossed.

“I… might be able to avoid that,” I said, as I hesitantly walked towards the wand.

Surely enough, when I moved my hand near it, it started to emit miniature pink bolts that hurt as they hit me. I didn’t move my hand away, instead I closed my eyes, and spoke to it, “Don’t worry, I don’t want to use you. The one you belong to needs you, but she can’t get to you. I just want to help you help her by bringing you to her, I promise.”

The pain stopped, and when I opened my eyes, I was free to move my hand to pick the wand up. It was white, with a light blue line going along its whole length in a spiral, and at the end was the pastel pink rounded star.

“Umm, what did you just do?” asked Ellie.

“I… It’s hard to explain. I can kinda communicate with, uhh… not-alive things. T-that’s my gift, I guess,” I responded.

“Okay then, looks like you’re coming with us. Now come on, we really need to hurry,” said the other girl, as she started to walk towards the exit.

Both of their dresses started to glow, and fell apart into light particles that faded away and revealed some more practical (and more boring) sets of clothes.

I needed to run a little to catch up to them in the corridor.

“Name’s Cassie by the way. You?” said… well, the girl that wasn’t Ellie.

“Umm…” If I had to be honest, I’d never liked my name, but introducing myself with it at that moment felt especially wrong.

Cassie just sighed. “Nevermind.” After a bit of a pause, she added in a quieter tone, “I swear, it’s just like with Luna all over again.”

“Wait, do you think he’s—” Ellie started, before being interrupted by Cassie.

“I think it’s neither the time nor the way for you to be asking this question. Not to mention he’s literally standing right here.”

Well, that was awkward. And I had a feeling it would have been even more awkward if I actually had any idea what they were talking about.

“Oh, right, I should probably tell you — my gift is telepathy. It’s not, like, strong, but I can still read surface thoughts from the people nearby, that’s how I could tell you were there when we were fighting,” Cassie explained.

“But… I thought your gift was… you know…”

“Yeah, no, most magical girls have secondary gifts that usually are easier to find, since finding out if one’s a magical girl requires some rather specific circumstances,” she said.

“Wow, that’s so cool!” I accidentally exclaimed.

I very quickly realized that I probably shouldn’t have said that. Cassie didn’t even need to read my thoughts to be able to tell I was a fan of magical girls now and both of them were going to think I was a creep, which I probably deserved and—

“Gross people don’t usually get panic attacks about that sort of stuff, you know. And, not to be rude, but we kinda have some rather urgent stuff to do, so it’d be for the better if you tried to stay calm, okay?” Cassie, of course, said.

“Okay,” I took a deep breath. “So, umm… where are we going?” I asked as we finally exited the school.

Cassie looked around for a couple of seconds, before saying, “South.”

“It’s going to be one of the abandoned factories, isn’t it? Why does it always have to be an abandoned factory?” Ellie complained.

I looked towards nearby tram tracks, and sure enough... “Umm, if we want to go there using regular means, then I’m pretty sure that’s our ride.” I pointed at the tram arriving at the stop on the other side of the road.

“Shit,” exclaimed Cassie, and we started to run.

*****

In the end, we did manage to catch the tram, at the cost of becoming absolutely exhausted. It took us a minute to catch our breaths, but, well, that was kinda normal. It also turned out that even without their super strength, I still had trouble keeping up with Ellie and Cassie.

At one point, the uncomfortable silence got interrupted by uncomfortable not-silence from Cassie, “Okay, I’m not gonna dig too deep, since you seem like a good person, but I need to know — about that ‘being a fan’ thing, what community you use for it.”

“Wha…?” I asked.

“You know, like a forum, Facebook page, subreddit, or… whatever the fuck Twitter has for this sort of stuff. It’s just that, you know, a lot of them are garbage, and it’s not always obvious, so I’m just making sure,” she explained.

Okay, that made sense, and from what I’d seen, it was a reasonable question to ask — That didn’t mean that admitting which one it was any less embarrassing, though. “It’s… Magical Girl Alliance,” I half-whispered.

I felt my face heat up.

“Huh, I… don’t know that one,” Cassie said, taking out her phone.

“Oh, I do!” Ellie stated excitedly. “I used to visit it all the time! I still do, sometimes. It’s really nice.”

“‘Magical girls fan site made for girls, by girls’, huh?” Cassie raised an eyebrow.

I felt ashamed. “I didn’t, like, make an account or anything. I don’t want to intrude more than I already do…”

“Well, you should make one, they’re really welcoming to everyone as long as you’re not a jerk, and you don’t seem like a jerk. You don’t seem like someone capable of being a jerk,” Ellie said.

“M-maybe I will, then,” I said, knowing full well I’d chicken out and never think about it again.

“I am curious, though, why are you a fan? Like, if you like people getting into huge fights, superheroes are much easier to observe and provide more material and variety. Like, I used to be really into magical girl stuff, but that was probably just, you know, foreshadowing,” Ellie asked.

“I don’t see how people get excited by supercops beating someone up with the knowledge that someone is very likely to be innocent. And even if they’re not, and they’re ‘evil’ and stuff, I still don’t like seeing anyone being harmed…” I responded.

“That’s fair. Then why?”

“I don’t know, it’s hard to explain besides the general coolness factor.” Well, there was one more thing, even if it was embarrassing. My voice started becoming quieter as I spoke, “And, I guess… The dresses are really cool and pretty and their colors are so beautiful and I just kinda like looking at them…” By the end, I was practically whispering, my face heated up more, and the familiar feeling in my chest returned. I idly wondered if Cassie could feel that last one.

Whether or not she did, she didn’t address it. “Do you know what those colors mean?”

“N-no…” I admitted.

“Figures. Well, that will make for one awkward conversation once it’s all over and we can talk about all the stuff in detail,” she said.

“W-what stuff?” I’d just assumed that after I delivered the wand, that would be it, and they’d never talk to me again.

“You know how the kind of creatures magical girls deal with can’t be meaningfully interacted with by anything other than our specific type of magic, and so we’re the only ones that can stop those? Well, without getting into any theories about how it works or what could it mean, your magic can interact with our magic.” She gestured at the wand in my hands. “And, well, as you can see from our current situation, we kinda need all the help we can get, so I was thinking of asking you if you could help us in the future. In ways you can help, at least.”

“O-oh. Of course I can help,” I exclaimed, a bit too enthusiastically.

“Okay, how about we talk about it later, when we get the wand to Luna so she can recharge, kill the thing that took her, and you can actually calmly think it through, instead of making a rush decision?” Cassie asked.

“What do you mean by ‘recharge’?”

“We don’t get physically hurt when transformed, we just lose energy. The wands, besides channeling our magic, also work kinda like batteries for it, and they can give it back too. So she’s probably just asleep and the wand will most likely help her recharge faster. Oh, and, uh, since other people aren’t supposed to be able to touch wands, there is a possibility that it might be draining you a bit,” she explained.

“Oh, I see.” I looked at the wand. “Are you storing energy from me?” I felt the answer come to me, and looked back up at Cassie. “She doesn’t know.”

“She?” Cassie raised her eyebrow again.

“Oh! Luna calls her wand she! Is that why you called it that?” Ellie asked.

“Most likely. Items tend to pick up on this kind of stuff,” I responded.

Cassie got up from her seat. “Okay, that’ll be our stop,” she said, as the tram started to stop.

*****

It seemed like Ellie wasn’t kidding about it always being an abandoned factory, since the two of them appeared to be rather familiar with the part of the city that was filled with those. It didn’t even take them ten minutes to find the building Luna was in, and that was including the time it took us to walk there.

Only when we reached the entry door did Cassie and Ellie decide to transform, and, well, it was a rather astonishing sight. They took out their wands, which produced a multitude of ribbons of light of colors that matched their outfits, which then enveloped them, only to dissipate and reveal the beautiful dresses they were now wearing. I’d already seen them transformed before, and I’d sure as hell looked at a lot of pictures of various magical girls on the internet, but seeing the transformation, and the resulting outfits in front of me, it was just… a lot. My chest got warm and tingly again, as I just… looked at them. But even despite the overwhelming feelings, I still wanted more.

Wait.

Why would I want more? What for? What did ‘more’ even mean in this context? I wasn’t just going to ask a girl if I could touch her dress or anything, that would just be straight up creepy.

But… there was still that feeling in my chest; it was almost like… longing?

I tore my eyes away from the girls before they could notice my creepy stare, and shook my head as I tried to get my thoughts back to the important stuff. Whatever this ‘more’ was, it was just an unrealistic fantasy; I should be happy with what I had. It hurt, not physically, but it hurt, but I knew I needed to do this.

“Okay, I’m gonna scout the place,” Ellie said, as she opened the door and peeked through it. “Eep!” she whisper-yelped. “It’s right there! The smaller ones are also there; didn’t see Luna, though.”

Cassie took a peek. “She’s probably somewhere deeper in the building.” She looked at me. “Look inside and tell me if you have any ideas you can help with that don’t involve trying to talk to the big monster that would crush you before you had a chance to speak a full word.”

I looked through the door, and sure enough, there it was, the big monster shaped like a man. Its face was featureless, but it still mimicked movement of looking side to side, as if on the lookout. The smaller dark figures were standing in all sorts of places around the big, empty storage room — now that I could focus on them, I noticed something very strange.

“Okay, I might have something — the smaller ones, they aren’t made out of the same stuff the big one is made out of, in fact, they aren’t made out of the same stuff as anything I’ve ever seen, but I think my gift is, like, tuned to a similar frequency as them or something, so I might be able to talk it out with them,” I said.

“And what makes you think that, if you can explain?” Cassie asked.

“The fact that my gift doesn’t involve me knowing what things are made of, and that those things are currently far outside of my range, and I can still feel them, even now, without looking,” I explained.

“I see… That’s still too dangerous. I’ve seen how strong these things are; they could very easily kill you,” Cassie said.

I took a second to think before I remembered something. “Earlier, when you fought the thing, did the smaller ones actually attack you, or did they just try to hold you down?”

“The second one, but—” Cassie started, before being interrupted.

“Listen, we need to do something, and I don’t see us having much of a chance against that thing with all those shadowy figures in our way,” Ellie said, then looked at me. “Okay, an important question — do you want to try what you suggested?”

I looked at the wand in my hand, then back up at both of them. “Y-yes.”

Cassie sighed, “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”

Turns out ‘this’ meant kicking the door open very loudly and walking in like it was nobody’s business, which, to be fair, had a rather large coolness factor to it, even if it meant that all the dark figures almost instantly appeared right in front of us. Aaaand they were getting closer.

Now or never.

I took a step forward and gestured for them to stop. “Wait!”

They did stop walking, and I felt their confusion.

“Yes, and I can understand you too.”

I saw in the corner of my eye that Cassie and Ellie already were in front of the monster, I just had to figure out the right thing to say.

“I don’t want to fight you.” Great start, of course I didn’t; they’d kill me if they wanted to. “I don’t want anyone to fight you. And for you to have to fight anyone.” Okay, that’s better. “If you agree to the ‘not fighting’ thing, I promise that I won’t let those two,” I gestured at Cassie and Ellie, “fight you either.” Actually, now that I thought about this… “The big one, it’s trying to make you fight us, right? But you don’t want to? We’re here to take it down, so I think we might have a common goal here.”

At that moment, I saw Cassie flying in our direction after being hit. “Watch out!” I yelled, and impulsively moved to try to catch her.

I somehow managed to support her back with my hands as she neared the ground, but the force was too much and I felt myself lose my footing.

But then I didn’t. We slid across the floor, with only my feet on the ground, which somehow provided far more stability than they should have.

When we finally stopped, and Cassie got back on her feet, I looked at one of the shadow figures. I could have sworn I saw it give me a tiny nod before all of them disappeared.

Or at least, they seemed to do so, but I could still feel one of them. I looked in the direction of said feeling, and found the big monster, or, more specifically, the bracelet on its hand.

Oh.

Then I noticed said hand move towards Ellie, who was seemingly repeating the mistake that got Luna caught, but then her leg moved out of the way, and straight into the featureless face of the monster strongly enough to create a small shockwave.

The monster teleported, and Ellie did the closest thing to superhero landing you could do in a skirt right after having done a backflip in the air.

“Well, that didn’t do anything to it,” Ellie said as she got up. “Felt fucking good, though.”

“Are you okay?” Cassie looked to Ellie.

“Yup, you?” Ellie asked

“I’m fine,” Cassie answered, then looked at me expectantly.

“Oh, right, I’m okay too,” I said.

“Okay then, let’s move while you explain what the deal is with the shadow things,” Cassie said.

We started to walk hastily as I tried to explain what I’d felt in those moments. “Well, first of all, they might actually be made of shadows. I think.” We entered a corridor that seemed to have multiple branching paths. “I’m also pretty sure that the bracelet that summons them wasn’t made with an intention to use them for fighting. Might have even been an intention to specifically not be used for that.”

We hit a dead end in the first branch to the right and turned away.

“Do you think that’s why they just held us down instead of fighting us?” Ellie asked.

“Most likely, yes. Like, they seemed really eager to listen to me when I started talking about not fighting.” As we entered a more promising sub-corridor, I realized something. “Okay, one disclaimer I really need to add is that, like, I’m using human words here because I don’t have anything more accurate, but those are still just objects without, like, thoughts or anything. It’s just that the magical objects that do things seem to have their functions much more ingrained in their beings than, for example, electronics, which is probably why I’m able to communicate with them like that, but in the end, they’re still just things mindlessly following the objectives they were created for; otherwise, they’d be more Cassie’s area of expertise than mine,” I explained.

We took a couple of turns in the corridors that started to resemble a labyrinth, but Cassie was still confidently going forwards.

“Oh, so you can’t talk to computers? I was actually going to ask about that,” Ellie said.

Just as I was about to respond, Cassie stopped and said, “She’s there,” while pointing at the wall. “She’s just sleeping.” Both she and Ellie breathed sighs of relief. “She’s just two meters away, on the floor.”

“On the floor? That monster, couldn’t it even just sit her in an office chair of something?” Ellie said. I couldn’t tell if it was mock outrage or serious, or both.

It was probably both though.

Cassie pointed to a door ahead. “That’s probably our way in; the question is, how do we deal with the very real possibility of that thing waiting for us there?”

“Well, the way I see it, without all those extra sets of eyes, it’ll be much easier to land a surprise attack. I’m going to distract it for a bit, while the two of you go to make sure Luna’s alright,” Ellie said.

“Are you seriously suggesting you’ll take this thing on one on one?” Cassie asked.

“Don’t need to beat it or anything, just make sure it doesn’t attack y’all for, like, thirty seconds. I can do that much.”

“Okay then, let’s go,” Cassie sighed.

Well, it turned out Ellie was right about the surprise attack. She ran with enough force to leave holes in the concrete, to then bodyslam the monster in a way that also allowed her to stab it with her wand.

As the two flew into a wall, me and Cassie ran towards the girl lying on the floor. Cassie turned her onto her back and I put the wand in her hand. She lifted Luna’s head and I put my bag under it for support.

Luna stirred, and her eyes opened weakly to look at Cassie. “H-hi,” she said.

Cassie took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank god you’re okay.”

“Mhmm,” Luna murmured. Then, she looked at her wand, and at me, and back at her wand, then smiled. “I see you made a friend.”

Loud noise of Ellie landing on the floor drew our attention.

“Stay here, I’ll go help her,” Cassie said.

Before she could enter the battle, Ellie made another dash attack, and just as it looked like it was about to connect, the monster disappeared in the cloud of black smoke again. This time though, the smoke shifted, instead of vanishing, and moved with an outstretched bit enveloping Ellie. Suddenly, the smoke materialized back into the being, which now held Ellie’s waist in its hand.

“Shit,” Ellie said, before being thrown into a wall with enough force to crack it and make the floor shake.

Cassie launched herself at the thing, ready to swing her glowing wand at full force, but when she jumped into the air, the monster took a step to the side and caught her with its fist, which it then slammed into the ground with her. Then it lifted the fist, and as it got ready to punch down again, she managed to get into a roll out of the way. Unfortunately, she didn’t recover fast enough to be able to dodge the giant’s leg as it kicked her in the direction of a wall she then crushed into.

Both Ellie and Cassie were still moving, but they kept failing to get up. I heard Luna struggling next to me, but when I looked at her, she couldn’t even lift her head up and gave up. The monster started to walk towards Cassie, probably to finish the job, and there wasn’t anyone that could stop it.

Well, so much for not talking to the giant monster that could easily kill me.

I stood up and yelled, “Hey!”

Its head turned to me. Yup, still no eyes, that was so weird.

“That’s right! Now, what’s your goal here? Why are you doing this?” I asked.

Its whole body now turned in my direction, and as it took a step, I could feel the answer. It was created with only one purpose, and that was destruction. Great.

“Y-you do realize that even if you succeed here, you will still be stopped at some point, right? There’s more magical girls out there. Don’t you want to keep existing?” I asked.

See, I made an assumption based on the fact that, just like living beings, most objects prefered to continue existing; there was a certain resistance to change that’d make an object no longer itself. What I didn’t consider in my attempt to stall, however, was that the object made solely of its intent to destroy would still consider destruction of the self to not be a bad thing in any other way than that it would stop it from destroying other things.

And now I found myself right in front of the monster, which was taking a swing at me.

“Eep.” I closed my eyes, knowing that I wasn’t nearly fast enough to get out of the way.

But instead of the pain of almost certain death, I felt something similar.

When I opened my eyes, I found the creature’s fist terrifyingly close to me, but not moving, and I could tell it didn’t know what to do.

It eventually fell on its knee and held its fist, mimicking a reaction to pain.

Then the figure of shadow materialized in front of me, and looked back at me, then towards the monster again. One by one, more shadow figures appeared in front of me, until all twelve of them were standing between me and the thing that had just tried to kill me. I could feel that what I just did convinced them to help me.

The monster got up, looking ready to attack, but then one of the figures lost its shape to dash through it and materialize on the other side, which seemed to damage the giant.

Two figures ran to grab the bracelet on the thing’s hand, while others started to dash through it, at first one by one, but then they started to do it in groups. At a point when the monster seemed really weakened, the bracelet slid off its hand, and shrunk back to a size that would fit a human.

Just as the monster looked like it could barely stand anymore, the attacks stopped. Besides one that was holding the bracelet, the rest of the shadows gathered in a half circle around the giant, and just like that, all of them dashed through it at once, delivering the final blow.

The entity started to dissolve. This time, instead of black smoke, it dissolved into nothingness, until it was completely gone.

Huh.

I looked blankly at the space where the monster used to be, blinking a few times.

So that’s a thing that just happened.

I was shaken out of… whatever that was, by a nudge from the only remaining shadow figure.

Wait, all the other people still couldn’t get up; that was awkward. I should probably sit down.

Another nudge. I looked down, and noticed the shadow figure offering me the bracelet.

“N-no, I don’t want it,” I said.

It extended the arm with the bracelet in it further.

“Fine, I’ll keep it, but I’m not going to use it.”

When I neared my hand to the bracelet, it started to glow. I heard a gasp or two, but I was too busy being a completely rational person, reaching to touch the unknown glowing object.

Why did I do that? Because some part of me knew it was the moment. Did I have any idea what it being the moment meant? Absolutely not.

So anyway, back to the potentially dangerous situation. When I touched it, it exploded in light, causing me to flinch away. Almost instantly, I was surrounded by light from all sides.

Now I was kind of wondering where the thing that was supposed to run on shadows got so much light from, but I also understood that I was really confused and probably still shocked from a near-death experience less than half a minute ago, so I decided to go with the flow and react when necessary.

I looked down to realize that not only was I also glowing, but also that the glow that was me was shifting its shape. The only thing I could compare it to was probably when Cassie and Ellie transformed.

I was honestly just thankful that all the glowing wasn’t actually blinding; in fact, it seemed to have a calming effect on me. Well, that, or all the shifting my body was doing had somehow removed the adrenaline from my system. Or both.

Huh, the bracelet was also changing shape, interesting. And by interesting I mean how rude of it to just close me inside this light thing without any things to distract myself from the situation I found myself in with! Rude, I tell you!

Reluctantly, I looked down at my body again. Yup, still light. And, given the background that was also literally just light, it was rather difficult to tell any details, which meant I was free to remain blissfully ignorant about whatever was happening.

Actually, the me light stopped shifting. I looked up at the bracelet to see it too seemed to again have a solid shape, a shape of… a wand. Not a wand like Luna’s one, but still distinctly a wand.

I looked at it expectantly, and got the feeling I should probably grab it. Well, I was about to do that, but then it rudely interrupted with all the light stuff!

Anyway, I extended my arm again, and grabbed the bracelet-wand solidly.

Suddenly, my surroundings were the generic factory room once again, my body and wand no longer made of light. There also was this weird gust of wind surrounding me for a split second, which startled me enough to cause me to fall on my butt.

Good, I was just about to sit down anyway!

There was something Luna-colored covering a huge chunk of my vision, but that didn’t make sense, Luna was supposed to be somewhere to the right. I looked somewhere to the right, and there she was! Then what were blue, pink and white suddenly doing in front of me? And why were they shaped like a particularly puffy dress? And why was it on me, while still looking like it wasn’t being worn by someone who’d look disgusting in a dress?

I had very many thoughts and feelings about all this.

“Umm…” I said.

Yup, that about covered it.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t doing this whole ‘words’ thing very good at the moment, but in my defence, I didn’t expect to be sabotaged by my own voice being so different and not awful.

My rollercoaster ride straight to panic attack was interrupted by tapping on my right shoulder. I turned my head and it was Luna. She was close. I’d have said hi, but I was currently busy doing this thing where you’re panicking and start breathing really fast.

She proceeded to grab both of my shoulders and look me in the eyes. “Hey, try to focus. I know a lot just happened, but I need you to focus and try to take slower, deeper breaths, okay? You can do this.”

It was amazing how big of a difference having someone to ground you made. Being grounded had a positive effect of letting me breathe normally again, but it also had a side effect of my thoughts no longer being a rushing mess, which allowed everything that just happened to start sinking in.

“See, I told you you could do this.” Luna smiled at me, and for whatever reason, I found it hard not to smile back.

But ultimately, the everything else of the current situation quickly returned me to my worried state. “W-what just happened?” I said, my voice shaky and soft, as if it was about to fall apart — please ignore how that doesn’t make any sense.

“Well, that was what we call The Moment. It’s when somebody with a potential to be a magical girl does something that demonstrates their virtues in a significant way. An object that was most significant to the moment becomes a catalyst for the transformation, and becomes the person’s wand in the process, thus giving them the ability to realize their potential. It’s usually much… safer, though.” Luna explained.

Well, that made some sense; it definitely explained that weird feeling that it was the Moment I’d felt before.

That still left so much unexplained though. “But… why?” I asked eloquently.

“I’m afraid that one will require some effort from you to answer, so let me ask you this — did you ever feel like you wanted to be a girl?” she asked.

I… I couldn’t just answer this question, could I? I mean, there had to be some rule against it. And I definitely couldn’t answer it honestly, not in front of actual people. That would definitely be really bad and also why were my eyes hurting all of the sudden?

“Hey, look at me, please, I promise you it’s not bad,” Luna said. I slowly looked back up at her. “I can promise you that I won’t judge you for your answer, and you can trust me, because I went through the same thing when I first transformed.”

“R-really?” I asked shakily.

“Really. And I was really confused at first too. And that’s exactly how I know that embracing your feelings and realizing what they mean helps a lot.” She was smiling at me again with that big kind smile.

“I mean, I guess I kinda sort of maybe wanted to b-be a g-girl. A bit. Sometimes. Maybe. Maybe a lot instead of a bit, and a lot of times instead of sometimes. And I might have been e-envious too… And I had all these feelings and I really wanted something to be different and it hurt, but I couldn’t do anything about it… And I knew I shouldn’t say anything about it so I just tried to hide it but it was still there but I didn’t know what to do and… and…” If before I was on the verge of tears, now I was definitely crying.

Before I knew it, I was being hugged by Luna. “Shh, it’s okay, let it out.”

And so I did, I cried for a good couple of minutes. Even when I eventually stopped, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be nearly the last time I cried about this.

“So, have you connected the dots on what all that means?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, there’s a certain group of people that feel this way about being a girl, and let me tell you, that group doesn’t include guys. And, well, guys don’t exactly become magical girls,” she explained.

“But I’m…” I started, before realizing the implications of what she was saying. I looked at her with hope and asked, “Really?”

“Really. It’s called being transgender, by the way. It’s pretty neat, except for all the parts that suck. That’s actually what the colors of our dresses represent,” she said.

Our dresses. I just remembered I was wearing a dress. I was wearing a magical girl dress. And despite being the same colors as Luna’s, the colors were distributed differently and it had a completely unique energy to it. It had a lot of ribbons, and a really puffy skirt, and the material was just so soft and comfy.

Was that what I always wanted? The rising feeling in my chest told me that, yes, I finally felt happiness instead of longing.

I got to be a girl, and a magical girl, and I got to wear a really pretty dress, and it was everything I’d ever wanted and more.

Seeing my mood finally brighten, Luna said, “Okay, let’s get off the ground.”

She took my hands and practically lifted me to my legs. I knew she had super strength and all that, but it still made me feel so light, which in turn left me feeling really warm and fuzzy.

Then, I realized that the colors in the corner of my eye were in fact Cassie and Ellie standing right next to us. And before I could even ask myself how they got there, I realized another thing — while Luna was definitely the shortest one of the three, I was now at least half a head shorter than Luna. More warm and fuzzy feelings happened.

“H-hi,” I muttered.

“Hi,” Cassie responded. “So, we have this little tradition for every time we take down a monster. It’s nothing special, we just go eat fast food together, but it’s still kinda nice. And, well, you were already going to be invited, but now…”

“You’re, like, triple extra invited,” Ellie finished for her.

“So are you up to it?” Cassie asked.

It… it felt like too much. I suddenly had everything I wanted, and I also had people who accepted me, and also kinda invited me to their group? It didn’t seem fair, it felt like I didn’t deserve it. But at the same time, it wasn’t really about that. I was already here, all those things were already here, and while I still had a lot of questions, the first one I needed to ask was one to myself — was I ready to embrace it and live my life in a way that actually made sense for once, even with all the potential hardships? I knew one thing for sure.

“I think I’m willing to try,” I said.