Content warning:

 

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“--Fuck off, dipshit!” Jessica roared as soon her and Nomed finally managed to break through the fog and roused her conscious self.

It was blurry, but she remembered what had happened while she had been out. She had impaled someone. She remembered the blood and the voices telling her to stop. But she didn’t remember who she had stabbed.

Jessica was furious. Whoever that person was, there was no way they could have survived that. That fucking demon had made her kill someone.

Who? Was it Pretty Flame? Had she killed her own girlfriend right after they finally confessed to each other?!

“You… Little…!” her mouth spoke in a disturbingly deep voice.

She continued to wrestle for control, screeching as she thrashed around. She could feel Nomed in the back of her consciousness helping push back the unwanted intruder.

“Jessica!” she heard a familiar voice just at the edge of her awareness.

Flame.

She was not dead. Someone else had died.

Jessica felt horrible for being relieved at that.

She could barely see, but she still somewhat remembered how everyone felt to her magic sense, so she tried to look around using that sense as the damn intruder clawed at her mind.

Flame, Spark, Frost, Cody, Hecate, Baugh, Trish…

And Sally lying on the ground unmoving, her magic unnaturally still, already slowly leaking out of her body. Bloom was perched over her, looking like she had already given up on trying to save her.

“Damn humaaaaaaaaaaaa! Saaally!!!” she howled, body wreathed in magic flying every which way.

She had killed Sally.

Was that some sort of irony of fate? After convincing Sally not to kill her, she had turned around and stabbed her instead. Was she simply destined to stab someone in the back in the end?

Dammit!

They hadn’t been friends. Hell, she had always thought Sally was an utter bitch.

But that didn’t change the overwhelming sorrow mixed with white rage at the fucking demon who had made her do it.

“You piece of shiiiiiit!!!”

Air crackled around her as white spots appeared inside the disturbingly black blots of magic surrounding her. 

Jessica grabbed onto the magic with her sixth sense. It felt different from before. Part of it was still demonic but a bigger portion glowed in a similar way the magical girls’ magic did, although differently from the four others.

Because she was a magical girl now. The fifth magical girl.

It was all she had ever wanted, all she ever dreamed about… and yet, now, she wanted nothing more than to get rid of it. To give up the role, to expunge all this magic from her body.

She growled again as she wrestled complete control over her left arm and gathered some of the magic into her palm. The little shit kept trying to interrupt her or take control again, but she focused on resisting it in just her hand.

“Get… the fuck outta here!!!”

And then she slammed the big orb of magic into her other arm before roaring in pain in unison with the damn demon.

Surprisingly, her arm mostly withstood her attempt to blast it off in hopes of rattling the asshole. It still hurt and felt numb, not to mention the weird black blood with white spots – just like the magic – leaking out of the impact site, but that should have been enough to sever her arm. Why was she so resilient now? Was that part of the magical girl package?

No, wait. She was also the weapon now. And weapons were supposed to be indestructible.

Shit.

“Jessica!”

She chanced a glance upward from her hunched position and noticed the magical girl plus Baugh and Hecate surrounding her, expressions unsure, worried, and guarded.

“Seal me!” she barked out as soon as her eyes landed on Frost. “You have toooooo! Don’t you dare you littleeeeeaagh! Fuck off, parasite! The adults are talking!”

The damn demon kept trying to conjure magic to shoot at her friends. Jessica continued to dismiss them or shoot them into empty space.

“Do it!!!” she yelled.

Finally, everyone moved. That knowledge alone satisfied her enough to stop minding her surroundings, and fully focus on beating the bastard inside herself into submission. She felt herself kneel as a demonic growl escaped her throat. The asshole was much harder to beat back than she thought.

But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t alone anymore. Heck, it wasn’t even just Nomed’s support in the background. Everyone was finally working together.

No more lies. No more masks. The magical girls and the demon lord were working together to stop the true threat from causing untold destruction.

Herself.

This was going to be it. She could feel the ice slowly crawling over her skin, sealing her movements. Hell, she even helped it. Grabbed the magic and pulled it tighter around herself. It was finally going to be over.

And whether she would ever be released from the ice prison or not… didn’t seem to even matter anymore.

As long as the bastard couldn’t hurt anyone else.

Couldn’t hurt Pretty Flame.

Erika.

But then something unexpected happened. A magical force slammed into her back as she kneeled on the ground, wiggled inside her being, and went straight for her soul, before grabbing at the bastard invading her.

“Nuoooaaaaaaa!!!”

Baugh.

They weren’t sealing her. The bastard was getting pulled out.

This could work. Baugh had already done it before, after all. Sure, the invader held onto her soul with an iron grip, but with Baugh pulling, Frost sealing their movements, and Jessica and Nomed pushing, he stood no chance.

Finally, after a short eternity, something gave, and the demon-shaped gunk inside her soul lifted from it, all its tentacles around her unfurled one by one, and the damn thing was ripped out of her.

It felt just like when Nomed had been ripped out, but luckily, she was prepared for it this time. Not to mention, the Nomed fragment then hastily patched her soul up the best way he could.

“Jessica! Are you okay?!”

She heard the voice but struggled to stand or even articulate a sentence. Her vision was blurry and her head pounded, but the good news was that at least she could hear unlike the last time a demon was forcefully evicted out of her soulspace.

She also retained her magical sense this time around, probably because she was still a magical girl. Being the weapon also likely helped with her resilience, now that she thought about it.

“Shit–! He’s running!” Spark exclaimed before running off.

“You’re not getting away Magna!” Baugh roared and a series of footsteps followed Spark. All but one person seemed to have left in pursuit.

It took a good few moments, but she eventually managed to stand.

As soon as she did, her eyes met Flame’s.

“Jessica,” the other girl gently whispered, fear and concern flooding her features.

There was a crash in the background and subsequently a cussing shout by Spark.

They both ignored it.

“Ey’... ‘mback. Sorry bout… that,” Jessica managed, before giving her a wry grin.

Flame returned it, although hers was a bit more reluctant.

Then, as if by some unspoken agreement, both opened their arms, Flame stepped closer, and they squeezed each other into a soft hug. Both ignored the blood covering her right arm.

She dimly noted that it had turned back into normal red blood. Probably because she had detransformed at some point during the struggle.

“Welcome back,” Flame said in a soft voice to her ear. “That was… both much quicker than I expected… and also way too late for my liking.”

Jessica winced at that, faintly recalling everything that had happened during her ‘absence’. Her eyes slid over to the dead body of Sally, still lying on the ground in her own blood – with Trish kneeling by her side, holding her lifeless hand – and couldn’t help but tightly close her eyes.

This was all her fault. Her mess up. She hadn’t accounted for a third party interrupting the ritual.

She really should have.

“Sorry…” she murmured, without even slurring now. “I’m sorry…”

Flame merely hugged her tighter.

God, it had been nothing but disaster after disaster since the school play. Had that really been just earlier today? It felt like a lifetime.

It wasn’t even over yet. They still needed to catch the little shit running away. Jessica wanted to let the others handle it, but at the same time, she also felt responsible.

“I’m sorry too…” an unknown voice, filled with regret, and a subsequent sob, caught their attention.

The two reluctantly pulled apart to face the source of the voice.

The red-haired girl was in the process of pulling a blanket over Sally’s body.

Trish.