Not being able to fly sure sucked. With the fragment of Nomed still in her, she could do a scuffed demonic transformation and sprout her tiny wings if she focused hard on it, but obviously, they were as useless as ever.

On the bright side, that meant she got to be carried by Pretty Flame on her back as they flew back to the school.

Silver linings.

“You alright…?” Spark asked, noticing her spacing out.

“Peachy,” Jessica managed to finally enunciate correctly. Although her limbs still felt a bit numb. Seriously, who would have thought having her soul poked would affect her physically this much?

“Anyone thought of a plan B yet…?”

As expected, only silence followed Spark’s question. Jessica was the one with all the information, and at the moment, thinking straight was still a bit of a challenge for her.

There was probably a joke about being gay and riding Flame somewhere in there… but Jessica couldn’t be bothered to formulate it in her current condition.

“We’re here,” Bloom announced, jerking Jessica out of her thoughts.

As she got off of Flame’s back she noticed people on the streets pointing at them and realized that she was still wearing her Tepes outfit minus the mask. She also found out that she just didn’t care. Her secret identity was probably shot anyway, and she wasn’t even a demon general anymore.

The group entered the school and headed for the drama club, ignoring their onlookers. On their way there, they noticed that the police were still around, standing around their yellow tapes around the still sealed trio of demons.

Then, of course, someone saw her in her getup and shouted something, prompting everyone to turn to him. He was pointing a gun at Jessica.

Frost immediately stood in front of the former general, raising her shield to block.

“That’s Tepes! Why is she here?!” the man shouted, unnerving the others as well.

Flame immediately jumped to her defense… “She’s not Tepes! She’s just an actress dressed –” …but was stopped by Jessica’s hand on her shoulder.

Jessica shook her head before walking around Frost and facing the policemen.

“S’up, everyone. The name’s Jessica. I used to be Tepes, the magical girls’ spy in the demon army,” she casually announced, to everyone’s bafflement. “Unfortunately, the jig is up. The demon lord ripped into my soul and got rid of my powers, and we now need to figure out what to do, so if you could leave us to it, that would be great.”

Naturally, such a straight-forward honesty caught the law enforcers off guard.

“Is… that… so…?” one of them asked as he put a hand on the gun guy’s arm and made him lower it.

“Yeah… It’s true.” Flame said with an exhausted sigh before turning to Jessica. “Are you really sure about this…?”

Jessica shrugged. “Plenty of people saw us. The rumors were going to spread sooner or later and I just don’t care at this point. Let’s just go back to the clubroom and figure this out.”

She turned around and gestured for everyone to follow, but was stopped by a “Wait!” from one of the officers. She faced him and raised an eyebrow.

“I’m coming with you,” he said, before nodding to his colleagues.

Jessica shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”

“My name is Officer Kyle,” she heard him introduce himself to the magical girls behind her, but mostly ignored it.

The following walk to the club room was silent and awkward. Jessica didn’t let it get to her. It didn’t really matter anyway. Nothing mattered. They just needed to figure out a plan. If Baugh didn’t cooperate, things would get even messier.

And knowing her luck today, he wouldn’t cooperate.

When they got to the club room, they were greeted by everyone who had still stayed here for some reason.

“Jessica! Everyone!”

“How did it go?”

“Are you okay?”

Jessica grimaced.

“It was a disaster,” she announced as everyone shuffled inside. “I’m basically powerless, we caused total chaos in the castle, and we didn’t even manage to get Trish.”

“Can I get an explanation?” the officer – Kyle – piped up. “This seems more complicated than I thought.”

The former general couldn’t help but groan, but opened her mouth to start explaining again anyway.

But then, Frost suddenly tensed up and snapped her head in a specific direction.

“What’s wrong?” Spark asked, subconsciously falling into her combat stance.

“Something is… Someone’s coming! This is… It’s Salem!”

Jessica cursed under her breath and grit her teeth. “Of course, it’s her. Dammit! She’s probably here to kill me.”

The tension in the room skyrocketed.

“Don’t worry,” Spark said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll take care of her. You, come up with a plan.” She then nodded to the other magical girls and Cody, who nodded back, and all of them promptly left the clubroom again to intercept the general.

Jessica gazed at the door for a second before she closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. “Okay…”

Her eyes then snapped open and found Rick’s. “Alright, who here remembers what I told you before?”

Rick hesitantly raised his hand. Everyone followed shortly after.

“Good. Rick, catch Kyle here up on everything, I need to figure out a plan B for us.”

“Uh, right,” Rick said as he glanced at the police officer.

As they did that, Jessica pulled out a white sheet of cloth for costumes and a permanent marker, and started aggressively sketching out the demon lord’s castle as the other club members crowded around her.

She began mumbling about the secret room with Trish in it, about ways to get in there discreetly, about the possibility of Trish being moved elsewhere after their failure, and it didn’t take long before the first bang echoed in the hallways.

Heads snapped that way, eyes going wide with fear.

The magical girls’ voices went on to shout their spell names, only to be followed by their screams.

“Shit…” Jessica murmured. “Is she not holding back…?”

Just how out of hand had things gotten in the castle? Had Baugh authorized Salem to go all out against the magical girls? Or even to kill her?

Her chest tightened.

This wasn’t a game anymore, was it? Her friends were literally risking their lives out there, weren’t they?

The walls shook as the sounds of battle got closer to them, and as Jessica was about to start hyperventilating, the wall of the clubroom caved in.

“Tepes! Where are you?!” the familiar bitch voice roared, amplified with magic.

“Jessica, run!” a frantic scream followed.

She pushed aside the fear and anxiety pooling in her stomach and started at the backdoor, leading to the storeroom.

“C’mon, we need to get out of here!” she called to the others.

“Come out! Traitor!” Salem bellowed just as they made it to the storeroom.

There was another door out of there; unfortunately, it was completely blocked by all the random props and boxes filled with random junk.

Jessica swore again before pointing at the door and moving to wade through all the crap, everyone following right behind her.

And then, the wall caved in once again as a limp body shot through it and landed on a pile of all the garbage.

“Flame!”

“Shit!”

Jessica noticed at the last second that the ceiling was about to give out and bury them all alive. Luckily, Frost was already in front of them all, creating pillars of ice to prevent it from crushing them.

Jessica noted that Frost was even using her demonic form.

The four of them couldn’t take Salem before. And now Flame was out, Frost was busy protecting everyone, and Bloom, Spark, and Cody were visibly tattered.

Tepes snuck a peek from behind one of the club members and saw Salem in front of them, readying her staff again.

It was over. 

She was going to die.

A sardonic part of her wondered why it had taken this long for her double agent scheme to blow up in her face.

And then another part of her reminded her that she was a pretty damn good actress, that was why.

Salem took a step forward and the magical girls tensed. Nobody spoke a word.

Jessica sucked in a shaky breath as she closed her eyes.

There was still one thing she could do.

It would be near suicidal and probably wouldn’t work. But there was a chance.

Jessica had to at least try.

She breathed out, forcing herself to calm down and center herself. She opened her eyes into a sharpened gaze, schooled her expression, relaxed her body language, and scoffed derisively.

All attention turned to her as she walked out into the view.

“So you’re the attack dog Baugh sent? How predictable,” her arrogant demon general voice broke through the silence.

Salem startled, suddenly on guard, while everyone else looked completely shocked… Before it seemed to dawn on them what she was doing.

If she was going to die here, she was at least going to give her best performance yet.