“I’m home…” he mumbled under his breath as he closed the door behind him. As always, he did it gently and without making any noise. The door hadn’t hurt him, after all.

Leader’s reveal had been… unsettling, to say the least. Apparently, the demons were the good guys all along? It was hard to believe. Would that mean that the whole rebel army thing was a bust? Would they be the bad guys for wanting to help the magical girls?

Worse still, he had forgotten to close the portal behind him… And that small burst of magic had turned out to be the magical girls who had been following him. He was so stupid and careless… Although, maybe it wasn’t a bad thing. Cody had been pestering Leader to tell the magical girls about the rebel army, after all.

Still, did Leader and the magical girls know each other? They had acted like close friends. It made Max a little jealous, to be honest…

“--re right. It’s more dangerous than it seems,” Blue Mom’s voice resounded from the living room.

“What is it, anyway?” an unknown girl's voice asked.

Max furrowed his brows. Who was that? A guest? What were they talking about?

“It’s a magical gem, obviously… But it’s a modified one,” Blue Mom replied.

Max immediately stiffened and perked up his ears as he quietly got closer to the living room while making sure he couldn’t be noticed.

“It’s a… prototype, it seems. A very… very unfinished prototype of the fifth weapon,” Blue Mom finished.

Fifth weapon? Wait a second… Were they talking about the magical girls’ weapons? Leader had been trying to create the fifth weapon for a while now.

“Wait, really? So, the fifth weapon can exist? I thought that was impossible, though… Aren’t the weapons based on seasons?”

Seasons…? Not the elements?

“They are. And, well, it should be impossible, logically speaking, but… There’s more to it, you see,” Blue Mom declared. “The truth is… a… a sort of mockup of the fifth weapon had been successfully created in the past. But it was incredibly unstable and dangerous, so we never tried to find a wielder for it.”

‘We never tried’? What? Was Mom even more involved than Max had thought?

“Right… So… Speaking of which, what are our weapons anyway? How were they made? What were they made from?” The mysterious guest barraged Blue Mom with questions.

Our weapons? Was… she one of the magical girls?

Blue Mom sighed. “That’s a complicated matter. To be honest, Trish and Baugh were the ones who made all of them. I was more or less just an assistant.”

Trish was… a familiar name. Who was Baugh, though? And wait a second, Blue Mom had helped make the magical girl weapons?!

“Trish and Baugh?” the guest asked.

“The first Pretty Flame and… the demon lord,” Blue Mom answered.

Wha–

Max’s thoughts were interrupted by the front door behind him slamming open.

“Howdy, my lovely family!” the hyper-cheerful voice resounded through probably the entire neighborhood. How she had managed to make no noise until slamming the door open, Max would never know. “Oh, hey, Max! You’re home already?”

Max stiffened and paled as Green Mom’s eyes landed on him and surprised noises came from the living room.

“Max? Are you okay? Something wrong?” Green Mom asked him, noticing his expression.

Max reflexively took a step back, only for Blue Mom and the unknown guest to appear behind him.

“Oh, Max! I didn’t… hear you return,” Blue Mom admitted, a look of apprehension on her face. She knew he’d listened in on her conversation. And he knew she knew. There was no running from this now.

“What…” his mouth moved before he could stop himself. He paused after the first word, but decided to keep going despite his fears. “What was that about?” He pointed his thumb back into the living room.

“Oh, um…” His mom was stumbling over her words, and the other one didn’t seem to know what to say either, despite being so full of energy before.

“Hello, Max,” the unknown guest said with a disarming smile. He had somehow forgotten about her. “My name is Iris.”

Max’s only reply was carefully watching her. Although… Something was nagging at him. Iris? Who was that? Wasn’t someone else supposed to be here?  Had he forgotten something?

“I am one of the magical girls, Pretty Frost.”

And that’s when it clicked. As if a spell surrounding her was lifted, his mind finally made the connection.

Of course, he had just been thinking that the guest must have been one of the magical girls! How could he have forgotten?

“I… uh… huh?”

“Sorry about that… There is a glamour enchantment around each of us. It prevents people from connecting us with our secret identities unless we tell them directly.”

“R-right…?” he mumbled whilst swinging his eyes between his two moms before settling on Blue Mom. “So… what is this about helping the magical girls and the demon lord make unstable and dangerous weapons?”

Blue Mom winced at that.

“Ahaha… Caught you red-handed, didn’t he?” Green Mom looked in his other mom’s direction whilst putting a hand on the back of her head. “Well, you see… We didn’t help the magical girls make the weapons, we were the magical girls making those weapons. Sorry, Max, we were going to tell you eventually, we just didn’t know how to breach the subject.”

Max’s jaw hung open. Once again, his eyes flicked back and forth between his moms, his mind trying to overlay the image of the other magical girls over them.

A moment later, he spoke up. “I… I didn’t know you were both that young. I didn’t know they let someone that young adopt children.”

Green Mom burst into loud laughter at that.

“No, Max,” Blue Mom said with a chuckle. “We aren’t the magical girls anymore. We were just the first generation.”

Generation. There were multiple generations of the magical girls?

Max looked at… Iris, Pretty Frost.

“I’m from the second generation,” she answered his implied question with a smile. “The current Pretty Flame, Pretty Spark, and Pretty Bloom are all third generation, though.”

“Oh… Okay…” he said, still feeling a bit confused about the whole thing. He then looked back at his moms. “So… about the… uh, dangerous weapons that you made together with the demon lord?”

Blue Mom sighed. “Right, that… that’s a… long and complicated story.” She briefly glanced at Green Mom, who, after a moment, gave her a nod. “Okay…” she said with a sigh. “I was about to tell Iris about everything anyway. Let’s go sit down in the living room then. This will take a moment…”

A round of nods later, and everyone settled down inside the living room.

Max felt nervous and confused. He still hadn’t internalized the fact that he had been adopted by former magical girls.

Blue Mom looked nervous and uncertain. Max didn’t know what was going through her head right now, but he opted to give her a little smile as encouragement.

When she noticed his smile, she returned it, then took a deep breath…

And began.

BottledChaos

Next time: "The past!" or "You and the demon lord did what now!?"