Pretty Flame shuddered as she rematerialized inside the shipping container next to her teammates. She looked over her shoulder to see the odd swirling ball of magic slow down and eventually vanish.

“So…” she said.

“So…” Frost repeated after a second.

“You know… I’m not even all that surprised about Jessica. This is her, we’re talking about,” Spark stated before sighing. “The imminent destruction of the world though? That is an entirely different beast.”

“I’m still not sure whether the demons can be trusted on that…” Frost added.

“But it makes sense. As Jessica mentioned, the generals could have easily teamed up and we wouldn’t stand a chance. Could you imagine having to fight both Hecate and Salem at the same time? They are obviously holding back,” Bloom reminded them.

“Eh… We could take them,” Spark declared.

“Well… We’ll get a chance to see if that’s true soon,” Frost said with a grimace.

“What? What do you mean?”

“If everything goes to her plan, Jessica will be a general soon.” Flame’s shoulders fell at Frost’s reminder. “And she said we’ll have to fight both her and Salem at once next time. So it’s kinda like two generals at once.”

“I guess so…”

“I still don’t like this…” Flame muttered, thinking about her undercover friend. “We should have talked her out of it. Get her to stop being a demon… or something.”

“No way she would listen. She’s in too deep already.” Spark shook her head before glancing at Flame. “Knowing her, I bet she wouldn’t leave this alone even if you revealed yourself to her as Erika and proposed to her.”

“T-that…” Flame’s face flushed to match her hair.

“Oh, right… Jessica still doesn’t know it’s us because of the glamour,” Bloom said. “Shouldn’t we… tell her? It’s not like telling her now would drag an unrelated civilian into the demon matters. She’s already neck deep in this.”

“Yeah, we probably should.” Frost nodded before glancing back at the disabled portal. “Too late now, but next time we get the chance, we should come clean. It’s only fair if nothing else.”

“Right…” Flame muttered with a sigh.

“Anyway… Destruction of both worlds,” Frost said, and then went silent for a moment.

Everyone present frowned.

“What’s supposed to cause it?” Bloom asked the question weighing on everyone’s minds. “Will we be somehow responsible?”

“I’m not buying it.” Spark shook her head. “Why would we ever do something like that?”

“Of course, we wouldn’t ever do it on purpose. But on accident? Imagine if we used our power to destroy things… How much damage could it do? It could happen.”

“Well… Yeah, I guess. How exactly would it happen, though? Anything we can do to avoid it?”

“The magical weapons maybe…?” Flame muttered. “Where do they even come from? What are they? I never thought to ask.”

All eyes turned to focus on Pretty Frost, the last magical girl from the second generation.

“I… Don’t actually know…? We were never told the weapons’ origins…” Frost’s frown got harder as she crossed her arms and stared at the ground. “Are they a bunch of ticking time bombs or something? Shit…”

“We should talk to the first gen girls,” Bloom proposed. “They have to know something, right? At least, they have to know where the weapons came from.”

“Right, yeah.” Frost nodded. “Good thing we’re already sort of in contact. I’ll try to arrange a meeting with them.”

Spark nodded before a thought occurred to her and she frowned again. “Wait… What if… What if they are the villains, though?”

“Say what?”

“Well, we’re certainly not planning on destroying the world, but I’ve never met the first gen. What if they are the secret masterminds of this world-destruction plot?”

Everyone went silent at that.

It sounded ludicrous… But so did basically everything else they’d learned today.

“That would mean the demons never bothered to tell us about the destruction of the world because they assumed we already knew… They assumed the first gen told us… And that we were willingly continuing whatever plot it is that they started…”

Was it true? Was the entire legacy of the magical girls a lie? Were they the bad guys all along, somehow?

“Right… Well… Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Frost tried, seeming to be quite rattled herself. “We’ll just… try to talk to them first. Be careful about what we ask. And if it turns out your theory is true…” Frost paused, unsure of how to finish the sentence. “... We’ll figure it out then, I guess.”

“Ughhh… Why does this keep getting more and more complicated? I just wanted to fly around and beat up bad guys!” Spark whined. “Now I don’t even know who the bad guys are!”

The others didn’t say anything to Spark’s outburst but silently agreed nonetheless.

“Alright, I’ll contact the first gen, try to arrange that meeting without seeming suspicious… And then, I don’t know about you, I’m gonna probably go and lie down. I think we all need to destress after this,” Frost finished as she walked out of the container and began flying up.

The others followed.

“Yeah, good idea,” Bloom nodded.

“I would rather punch someone right now, to be honest… ” Spark grumbled.

The four landed back outside, transformed back, said their goodbyes, and each went their own way… Except for Erika. She stood there for a bit, before leaning on one of the containers, gazing at the sky, and letting out a sigh.

Jessica was a demon… And was going to be a demon general. She had made it sound like it had all been because of that conversation back then, but Erika knew that wasn’t it. She knew her friend better than to believe that.

Jessica was just distracting herself. She tended to use her acting to become someone else for a moment and distance herself from her own problems. She had done it so many times in the past. But this was the first time she had taken on such an extreme role. One might have even called it suicidal.

People around her probably hadn’t noticed much, but her mom’s death, and her dad disappearing on her hit her harder than she let on. Erika might have been the only one to realize what was really happening.

She pulled out her phone and idly scrolled through her contact list before finding Jessica. She opened up the messaging app and then stared at the screen, unsure of what to type.

What could she even do? What could she say? How could she help her friend?

BottledChaos

Next time: "Answers!" or "Oh... So that's who Trish was."