She had silver hair. 

The absent observation rang hollow in my addled brain before dispersing into the aether. Compared to the stranger, I cut a pathetic figure, crumpled dolorously on the ground as I was. I rubbed my red rimmed eyes fiercely, only succeeding in smearing my already bleary vision even further. Shining globules prickled at the corner of my eyes, warping  the tenebrous alleyway into a monstrous rendition of abstract art. I forced myself to rise on quivering legs, trying to ignore the intemperate pounding in my chest and the freezing clamminess that manifested as perspiration on my palms. Despite the severity of the situation, I couldn’t help but study the stranger more intensively. 

She was a very pretty girl. I think.

Her ‘face’ overlapped with dozens of other faces, almost like a kaleidoscope. The outermost layer of her face was chock-full of generic traits that could be found in a model magazine: iridescent blue eyes, a cute button nose, perfectly plump cheeks with just a bit of flush to them, and a cartoonishly heart-shaped structure. But as I continued looking, her eyes seemed to change shades, the vivid baby blue dimming fractionally to a more navy hue. Then it shifted a few notches more down the color index, darkening until it was almost black. The next second, it reverted back to a royal blue.

It wasn’t just her eyes. One second, her face was rounded; the next, it was lean. Her lips seemed wider than it’d been a moment earlier, and her eyebrows looked more voluminously bushy. Her hair wasn’t spared from the widely varied array of changes. Although the uncanny silver color remained a staple, the same could not be said for the length. Fortunately, the shift was only a couple of inches in either direction for the most part.

It was almost magical watching her face change in dozens of subtle ways. I liked to think of it as there being countless layers underneath the surface, and a new one rising up to overlap with the current ‘base’ face to create the person I was seeing right now. Each new detail was a tenuous addition or subtraction, a slight adjustment of her face that made it impossible to descry her true identity. And that single thought made all the pieces click together.

The changes were abstruse enough to conceal her identity, but not enough to render her unrecognizable. It was a fine line to travel along, making it so that someone would be able to recognize you while also masking your presence, and I only knew of one group of people who employed the tactic:

Magical Girls.

The realization knocked the air out of my lungs. The enticing impulse to giggle like a lovesick fangirl and check my appearance rose up unbeckoned within me. A bout of wooziness washed over me and I swayed, my leg bumping into the mutilated body lying next to me. Automatically, I glanced down, and finding the corroded face gaze vacantly back jarred me. All at once, the sense of amazement and awe that had taken over my senses evaporated like a fog cloud in a dry season. Working my mouth, I fumbled for anything to break the silence.

The Magical Girl was quicker. “Well? Are you going to tell me or what?” Her voice was like a blizzard cutting through any excuse I tried to formulate. I racked my brain trying to figure out what she was talking about, but her shrewd gaze scattered any deliberations to the four corners of the world. It took me staring intently at a moldy patch right above her head to scramble my thoughts into something coherent and recall the straightforward, if crude, question she’d asked. 

“I-I heard a weird voice that said you were in da-danger so I followed you into the alleyway but then a man g-grabbed me and we fou-fought and I….I…..” I tried forcing the rest of the garbled mess out but I couldn’t translate my thoughts into words. The pain of what I did was still too raw. I lowered my head sullenly instead, hoping I could get the rest of the story through with my body language.

She didn’t respond for a while. I glanced up and wasn’t surprised to find a look of disbelief on her constantly-altering face. I wouldn’t believe myself either. Her nose was scrunched up, as if she was trying her best to not smell rancid feces. Her beady eyes conveyed a dozen words in a single glance, each one a harsher insult than the last. Her facial expression reminded me of someone who was looking at a repugnant beetle, and weighing whether she should stomp the insect or go the opposite direction. Derision was etched into the lines of her face, and my stomach swirled anxiously when she turned those razor-sharp eyes onto me.

“You’ve got to be fucking with me. This isn’t a fairy fairy tale. You expect me to believe this fucking joke?” she snapped. With every word, I ducked my head lower, flinching as if her speech were physical attacks hailing down on me. She sighed, rubbing her forehead with her index and middle finger. “But I guess that confirms it….you heard him? Fan-fucking-tastic.”

I chanced a look at her, uncertainty playing with my emotions. She looked extremely aggravated, like she was seconds away from ripping someone apart—preferably not me. She kept on inclining her head to her waist and waiting. I watched as anger unfurled across her face like a blanket, the corner of her eyes pinching and turning downward. She flung her arms into the air, clearly frustrated by something, and started to turn around before stopping mid-whirl and looking down again. Her mouth twitched but there were no audible sounds.

I watched all this unfold before me, wondering if she’d succumbed to insanity. She hadn’t exactly been the ideal image of a Magical Girl to begin with, and my childhood dream of meeting a Magical Girl was quickly shattering to pieces and turning to dust. Then it struck me like a lightning bolt. The explanation for her eccentric behavior was linked to another key facet of being a Magical Girl that had completely slipped my mind in favor of the more popular identity-concealing magic: Familiars.

Also dubbed as Mascots by some, though that title was often spurned by Magical Girls who saw it as demeaning and debasing their precious allies. The GDM had released an official document to the public approximately twelve years ago to answer some of the citizen’s most burning questions. Along with tips on how to survive Diablerie Invasions, was a subsection on Magical Girls and Singularities.

Singularities were the event when a girl became a Magical Girl. A girl who was pure of heart was noticed by a spirit, and asked to make a contract. They were bestowed with immense magical powers when the spirit entered their body and merged with them, surviving off their life force and fundamentally changing their physicality in the purpose. Some of the spirit’s energy was represented as Familiars, who were always seen hovering around their respective Magical Girls and providing support. Nobody was really certain what their role was besides looking cute, but the GDM’s PR team must cherish them. It doubled the standard Magical Girl’s appeal and to this day, there were hundreds of plushies made of different Familiers.

I craned my head, trying to catch a glimpse of the tiny critter enshrouded in her cloak. Simultaneously, I was beating myself up for not making the connection earlier. Of course the strange voice from the train station had been the Familiar talking to his Magical Girl! Still, that added a sense of urgency to the situation if even the Familiar felt that his Magical Girl was suffering. A smidgen of vindication surged through me at the thought that I’d been right in coming to her aid, but it was dampened by the uncomfortable truth that I may have stumbled into a situation beyond my capabilities. I wasn’t a therapist, I could barely handle my own mental luggage!

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she muttered. The sound startled me out of my deliberation to find the Magical Girl scrutinizing me with the same attitude a disgruntled parent would wear upon discovering that their wild kid whose hobbies consisted of wrestling in mud and drawing on walls turned out to be a once-in-a-generation genius. For some reason, I felt like I’d let her down and shame welled up from my gut. 

“I just want to have one fucking day to myself and I run into a Potential. That’s fucking great, absolutely great!” The Magical Girl ranted, clearly agitated as she began pacing around in a circle. I stood awkwardly to the side, unsure whether I should try to comfort her or remain silent. Judging from how it seemed like I was partially responsible for her irritation, I wisely decided to clam up. 

The Magical Girl paused mid step as she was raking her hand through her hair. “What do you mean, ‘Not quite a Potential?’ You saw what she did, she saw me! A human can’t do that!” She renewed her circling, her hand reviving and running through her hair ferociously. “Fuck this, I don’t have time to deal with her on top of everything else….yes, of course I know that!”

Her eyes snapped towards me and I froze. I was a deer in headlights, a timid little creature facing a roaring metal beast with lights as powerful as the Sun. Her gaze petrified me, reaching into my body and wringing my intestines. My breaths came out in shallow puffs and it felt like an elephant had decided to nestle onto my chest.

“You.” That single word sent shivers down my spine.

“Y-yes!?” I squeaked, resisting the inclination to salute her. Magical Girls didn’t hold an official rank in the military, but they all seemed to be masters of emanating a professional aura unlike anything else. It was hard to look at this girl who couldn’t be much older than me, and not see a much older, troubled soul hiding behind that youthly disguise. 

“What the fuck is your game here? Let’s say that you did have altruistic motivations, which sounds like a load of crap to me, but whatever. What now? You killed that man, didn’t you? You won’t be able to have a normal life after this. Will you try to haggle for my silence by blackmailing me? Or will you just rat me out to the GDM for protection from the authorities?” she questioned. Despite the aggressive nature of the word-dump, she looked as if she couldn’t care less what I chose. The clenching of her hands on her cloak betrayed her true thoughts though.   

There were a myriad of emotions circulating through my brain right now, most predominantly panic. I’d avoided thinking about how my life would be affected by my actions, but she was completely right. My life was defunct. Still, something she said didn’t sit right with me. Hoping I wasn’t making a mistake by prodding, I asked, “W-what do you mean by ‘r-ratting you out? You work for the GDM, right?”

It was an absolute truth that the Magical Girls and the GDM went hand in hand, ever since the beginning. Hell, the GDM had been built around the Magical Girls! There should be no reason for doubt, but I couldn’t keep the dubiety out of my voice. Why did I feel like there was something larger going on here?

The girl’s eyes sharpened and her lips curled up in contempt. “‘Work for?’” she repeated in a mocking tone, overly enunciating every word like I was a stupid child. “More like slave for.” She spat the words out like they she couldn’t bear to keep them in her mouth.

I wanted to deny it. Everything taught to me in school, by my parents, by the people around me said that the GDM and the Magical Girls had a healthy working relationship that was benefical fo both parties. I thought of all the ads and the events and concerts where Magical Girls looked like they were having the time of their life. How zealously the GDM protected the Magical Girls from the worst of humanity’s prying eyes, and how fulfilled the Magical Girls looked while standing next to Tim Marvin in conferences. Hell, there was even a GIF showcasing two younger Magical Girls hugging Tim during an interview, and people online called him the ‘Father of Magical Girls.’

The doctrine I’d been fed my entire life rebelled against what this Magical Girl was telling me. But the anguish in her voice that cut deep into my soul, the glint of tears sparkling in her eyes, and the vibrant red flush of her cheeks wasn’t something you could fake. My resolve wavered, and for the first time, I found myself wondering if the GDM was truly what it looked like.

“And people like you make it worse!” she continued, breaking me out of my mental crisis. I whipped my head up, indignation blasting away any thoughts of a secret conspiracy for a second. 

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” I protested. I was about to add ‘stupid’ to the end before remembering that it probably wasn’t the best course of action for my health to antagonize the Magical Girl any more than I already had. I settled for glaring spitefully at the hem of her cloak.

She scoffed. “Are you serious? Geeks like you who only care about social media and homework and what? Building kits? Who do you think we have to work our ass off to protect?”

My ears burned. She’d hit the nail. I’d been a devout member of the Science and Engineering club once upon a time before…..before Alice. But that didn’t justify her accusations! My apprehension forgotten, I took a step forward and jabbed a finger into her face. She went cross-eyed trying to look at the finger before opting to glower at my face instead.

It felt like there was a furnace bellowing inside my chest, burning hotter and hotter. The sheer audacity of this girl to say that….it infuriated me like nothing else. There was a maelstrom of utter hatred, detest, loathing, and abhorring, all compressed into a tiny ball as hot as the Sun. The flames traveled up my throat and I worried that if I opened my mouth, I would eject fire. 

I dug my nails into my palms, prior Diablerie Invasions flashing before my eyes. The words came unbidden, everything that I’d tried to come to terms with.

“Do you think we want to be defended by you!? Do you think we chose to be weak, to be powerless? None of us wants this! We don’t want to have to huddle down underneath a school desk, hearing you guys fight outside and wonder if the next big explosion is a fucking magic laser hitting our school! Have you ever been terrified out of your mind, not sure if the sound of the building breaking down is real or inside your head?! To look at your phone to see how the fight is going, and feel helpless when you see your favorite store be destroyed or your friend’s house atomized, knowing that you can’t do a fucking thing to help? Have you ever experienced how relieved you are when the alarms go off, and that stupid voice tells us the Diablerie Invasion is over? Do you know how quickly that relief turns into unsaturated terror as you check the list of the deceased, praying that we don’t find our loved ones!? To see our class dwindle with every Diablerie Invasion?! WE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS!”

“I KNOW THAT!” she roared, punching the wall. The cheaply constructed concrete shattered under her fist, hurtling chips and pieces of debris into the air. A thick cloud of dust and plaster rose from the wreckage. 

“I know that,” she repeated. Her voice trembled. I’d never seen a Magical Girl look so distraught before, so lost. “But what can I do?” Her voice broke. “I can’t do anything. I fight and fight and fight and I get nowhere. Who do I blame? The GDM? Theresa? Myself? It’s not your fault, I know that….but I hate you so much.” The Magical Girl hung her head dejectedly.

Silence followed her proclamation. I felt like I needed to say something to fill in the emptiness, but I could barely think.

“I lost my sister.” I blurted out. The Magical Girl twitched but that was the only reaction she gave. I carried on. “She’s not dead….but she’s as good as. And I lost my other sister too. She doesn’t want to be around me anymore since I failed. And my parents can’t look at me anymore. They avoid me like I’m some kind of a monster. Me. Their own daughter. My best friend, she was like a sister to me. I thought we’d be together forever. But I ruined that as well.”

I laughed bitterly and looked up at the night sky, willing my eyes to stop tearing up. “Damn it, this is so embarrassing. Why do I cry so much?”

“I knew it,” the Magical Girl muttered. I turned my head questioningly. 

She was no longer slouched over like a dead person. She still appeared drained, but a sick, satisfied smile tugged at her lips. Her current face had given her heavy bags underneath her eyes. She looked tired, but happy too.

“I knew it,” she repeated. “You’re not a goody two-shoes. You came to confront your own demons and feel better about yourself. Nice to know that I’m not losing my touch.”

I blanched. My arms quivered with barely contained rage, and I envisioned slapping her across the face. Keeping in mind that the person in front of me could slap me and my head would detach from my neck, I carefully shuffled through amicable sentence starters.

“Listen….I think you have the wrong idea. I just heard your Familiar say that he was worried you were distressed, and I came to see if I could help.” I attempted to keep my voice even, to conceal the swirling typhoon that was battering against my mental fortifications at this moment, demanding to be released so it may deliver justice to this cocky Magical Girl. The filter I’d carefully honed over years of trying to prevent being perceived negatively by snobby students was making a comeback right now simply to tone down the slew of curse words I wanted to spout. 

“Right, and I’m Santa Claus. That was probably what you told yourself to justify your actions. I mean, who goes into the slums just because of a hunch? A weird voice that no one else can hear? As if! You just didn’t want to feel worthless anymore.” she stated matter of factly. There was no judgment in her voice. Nonetheless, it felt like I was on a lab table and was slowly being dissected by her. I tried to defend my intentions, to fight back, but words vacated my brain. I felt like I was trying to move through a batch of honey, and my tongue had been swapped out for a cumbersome stone.

She didn’t let up, piling on with the apathetic interpretations. “You said that the people you care about left you, and you also used the word ‘failed’ fairly often. I can infer that you believe the reason they left you was because you ‘failed’ in protecting your sister, which created an unconscious desire to never fail again. You correlated failure with loss, and your ineptitude was the driving factor of all your suffering. Therefore, you saw your chance of helping me as a way to redeem yourself, didn’t you?” In a few sentences, she had systematically taken me apart. Worst of all, she wasn’t waiting for a response. She crossed her arms with the swagger only someone who was absolutely confident in their analysis could generate. 

At that moment, I’ve never hated anyone more than her. 

I wasn’t sure if the true reason for my wealth of resentment and rage was because deep down, a microscopic part of me agreed with her claims. In less words than it took me to churn out a B-worthy essay, she’d dismantled everything I’d built up in the past 6 months. I’d taken solace in the fact that I strived to do good for wholly selfless reasons, that despite everything, I was still a good person.

And apparently, I didn’t even have that small token. I felt like I was falling in quicksand, the ground giving way to a sea of dismay and angst. My self-loathing manifested itself as sand, and before in a blink of an eye, it had risen to my chin until I was desperately clawing and fighting for air. I didn’t have anything stable to cling to; the Magical Girl had knocked down the blocks that made up the foundation of the beliefs I crafted to deal with everything, and I was floundering like a finless fish without it. I warred with myself, trying to deny the claims while also accepting them wholeheartedly.

What did she know? I couldn’t stand the injustice of it all. I needed to make her suffer, needed her to understand all the torment she was putting me through. It felt like my mind was ripping itself in half trying to reconcile truth with fiction, but there was one thing the two factions agreed on. Even if she’d unraveled my thread and I was falling apart at the seams, I vowed that she was going to pay for it.

All I saw was her self-congratulatory smirk, dripping with arrogance and deceit. I heard her mocking laughter fill my head. My body moved without my command, and by the time I knew what it was planning on doing, I had plenty of moments to stop it. But I didn’t.

I strode forward, relishing in how her smile faltered. I planted my hands onto her torso and pushed with everything I had, pouring all my grief and sorrow and anger into the movement. In my rage-induced state, even the poor state of my right hand wasn’t enough to hinder me. Instead, the tender torment was fuel to the burst of strength that made me feel invincible. 

Instead of flesh underneath the prickly fabric, I felt metal. I blinked in surprise, but it was too late. My body already carried out my will and she flew backward before she made contact with the wall behind her. A dark shape fell out of her cloak and clattered to the ground with a distinctly metallic noise. Her mocking laughter dissipated into a shrill white noise, and I realized she had never been laughing at all. 

Triumph was slain, and horror replaced it. I backed away as if to escape from the scene. My hands flew to my mouth but I aborted the motion midway, instead letting my right hand drop to my side. I closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, I had reversed the last minute. Of course, I was no Magical Girl, and the image before my eyes remained stubbornly the same, condemning me to a fate worse than death. I didn’t know what the consequences of laying hands on a Magical Girl was, but I could kiss any chance of her holding her tongue goodbye.

My right hand sent sharp spikes of pain through my body, further hammering in just how badly I’d fucked up. My hand was full of anxious prickling, like a dozen pins and needles had been jabbed into each individual finger and set to vibrate until my hand became numb. At the same time, it felt like my hand was being flayed over red-hot coal, ecstatic sparks popping and peppering my acidic flesh with burning kisses. The stark contrast of hot and cold, of burning and freezing, was such a foreign sensation that I couldn’t help but be captivated by it.

I didn’t care anymore. I just….didn’t care. I squared my shoulders and glared at the hunched over shadow of the Magical Girl, who still hadn’t budged from her position by the wall after I pushed her. My eyes fluttered anxiously and I rolled back and forth on the balls of my heels, trying to burn off some of the excess energy. I didn’t back down though; I refused to be intimidated by her. 

A shrill giggle split the air, crescendoing in pitch, growing more maniacal and unhinged. The Magical Girl seemed darkly amused by a thought only she was privy to, her hefty laughter wracking her lithe body. Perturbed, I bent my knees, prepared to break into a sprint at a moment’s notice if she showed any sign of attacking. 

She uncoiled from the wall with the coyness of a huffy cat, the shadows melting off her body. Slinking over, she bluntly kicked the metallic object out of her path and sent it skidding along the ground. Unsolicited, my eyes tracked its path, truly seeing it for the first time. 

It was a metal tube with what appeared to be a cap on one end. A short handle protruded from the bottom, bound snugly in brown leather, with another situated just a couple of inches behind the first. Contrary to its nondescript appearance, it practically thrummed with power. I could feel the energy wafting off the cylindrical item, the air taking on an electric charge as my hair stood ramrod and my skin tingled. I could have sworn I saw little bursts of light pop around the tube, and ozone lingered in the air.

A ridiculous idea fermented in my mind, but there was no way, right? Surely not even a Magical Girl would be so deranged to carry one around in public?

“Yep, it’s a rocket launcher.” The Magical Girl whispered, mere inches from my ear. The soft, feather-light touch of her breath sent shivers down my spine and I jumped, spinning in midair and clamping my left hand over my ear. I glared half-heartedly at her, and she simply shrugged. She looked far too pleased with herself for my liking, but I was still reeling from the truth about the nonsensical object. I snuck surreptitious glances at the rocket launcher, trying not to appear too amazed, but unable to stifle a long-dormant part of me that yearned to dismantle the weapon and see how it operated—the same part that had motivated me to jot my name down on the Science and Engineering sheet in freshman year. The sardonic smile on her face told me I hadn’t been nearly as clandestine as I’d hoped, but I met her gaze, uncowed.

“I’m not blaming you for anything. Honestly, if you hadn’t tried attacking me, I’d think you’re a robot. And trust me, I get your mindset. It’s not healthy, not even close, but what can I say? I'm sure you can already tell, but I’m not exactly the paragon of mental health,” she commented.

Great. I avoided getting pity-therapy for six months and now I’m getting lectured by a fucking Magical Girl in an alleyway. This is what my life has come to. Besides, she’d been more effective in diagnosing my psyche than any ‘professional’ I’d been forced to talk in. Although, that might not be a matter of qualifications, but more a result of her living through the same strife. In this field, her experience shone unrivaled. She’d been locked inside a whirlpool of scalding emotions and trauma, but she’d managed to carve out her own path.  I couldn’t say she’d gotten to the other side unscathed—or mentally intact—but she’d survived. And right now, I was in the eye of the vortex and if taking advice from this Magical Girl was going to help me escape, I’d swallow up my pride and listen. 

She cocked an eyebrow at my unexpected compliance, but didn’t dwell on it too long. “See, people like you are a dime a dozen. This is a fucked up world we live in. Can’t even go a month without having a Diablerie Invasion, and humanity’s greatest weapons are teenage girls. Anybody would crack under that kind of pressure. You get used to this sort of stuff,” she stated nonchalantly.

I pursed my lips. Was that true? Was there anyone else I knew who also showed signs of lingering trauma from a Diablerie Invasion? I vaguely remembered a student in my elementary school who ran out during the middle of a class one day, and never came back. Later, gossip circulated the rumor mill and the general consensus was that her elder brother had been killed in a Diablerie Invasion in New York City. I didn’t recall much of the situation, only that it had caused a big ruckus among the school population, but I distinctly remember thinking that it didn’t have anything to do with me.

I could chalk it up to the incapability of a kid to care about anything outside their immediate bubble, but that didn’t erase the fact I’d brushed off that girl’s suffering as inconsequential. A stray yarn of thought scratched at the back of my consciousness, and when I tugged on the string, Zoe came to mind. Could I really blame her for deeming my troubles irrelevant when I had a track record of doing the same?

No, that’s not the same. She and I were best friends. You don’t just abandon them. You try your best to understand their pain and help them get through it, not just leaving when the going gets tough. It was hard to stomach that there was credence to the idea that Zoe had been justified in ditching me for other, better friends. After all, although I liked to throw the term ‘abandon’ and ‘betray’ around, she hadn’t exactly cut off all communications and began conspiring against me. If anything, it was more like we’d just drifted apart over time. But inaction is still a form of betrayal! And what about all her talk about remaining friends until the end of the universe? 

“But do you want to know what makes you different from all the other poor chumps who are trying to trudge along their life, lying to themself to feel better?” I started shaking my head but she bulldozed over my gesture, going straight for the kill. “You want to be a hero.”

The word ‘hero’ sounded like an abomination coming from her mouth, a twisted slur reserved for the most heinous of criminals, a derogatory label that stamped someone as the height of foolishness. It was an affront to everything I’d grown up believing in. What was so wrong with having an ideal to live up to? 

I must not have been able to hide the question on my face because the Magical Girl’s bared her teeth, looking strikingly like a vulture at the moment. “The problem is that it’s an impossible ideal. There’s no such thing as heroes in this world.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to cite the Magical Girls as the modern archetype of heroes but I managed to stall my tongue in time. Regardless, her lips curved bitterly. 

“You were going to say Magical Girls, huh? Ha! That’s probably the funniest thing you said all day—wait.” She tilted her head, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “You said a lot of funny things. But it’s definitely up there! See, Magical Girls are overrated; trust me, I should know. Take a look. Do I look like I have my shit together?”

“Yeah, definitely not,” I muttered dejectedly. And wasn’t that a depressing thought? 

She barked. “Of course not! Hell, you send children to war and expect them to come back all peachy? Get your head out of your ass! We’re all just a fucked up happy family, and the ones that act the happiest on TV are the ones that have the most screws loose in their head because they can’t accept that they’re fucked up. They play the facade of a perfect heroine so well that they’ve lost touch with reality. Ain’t that messed up as hell?”

I bit my lower lip until iron flooded my mouth. I didn’t want to risk souring my tentative relationship with the Magical Girl more than I already had, but if I didn’t stick up for what I believed in, who would? “I think you’re wrong.”

“Eh?” The Magical Girl glanced at me sideways as if she couldn’t comprehend the words coming out of me. To be frank, neither could I. The last shred of my self-preservation was ordering me to shut up and not escalate the situation, but I adamantly refused. Heartened that I hadn’t been killed by her yet, I forged on. 

“Maybe the heroes in movies and books don’t exist in real life. The superheroes with capes flowing behind them as they fly through the cityscape, shining bastions of hope and justice that can do no wrong. You’re right; that’s an unrealistic dream. But I believe there are so, so many people who do things purely out of the goodness in their heart. To me, they’re heroes in their own right. And you’re also right that the world is fucked up, but part of the problem might be cynical people like you who refuse to see the good in humanity. If more people tried to reach for the skies, then we would be able to unite and destroy the Diablerie!”

I panted, feeling like I’d sprinted through a marathon. I felt lightheaded but at the same time, I was delirious with elation. It felt so good saying that to someone else for the first time (not just Prometheus), and to a Magical Girl, no less! Exhaustion pulled at the edges of my consciousness, reminding me that I’d roamed the alleyway for far longer than anticipated. However, I refused to succumb to sleep. Not yet. 

She released a long-suffering sigh. “So what? You’re not one of these ‘heroes.’”

There was no venom in those words but they still stung me worse than anything else she’d uttered. My entire frame shuddered as I tanked the pitiless words, doing my best to let it wash over me harmlessly. I took a couple of seconds to stabilize my breathing. The next words I was going to say would be difficult to admit, but it was crucial.

“You’re right again. I’m not. I don’t do the things I do because of some inherent selfless quality that I possess. I wish I did, I really, truly wish I did. But to me, that doesn’t change anything. While my motives may be selfish, I’m still moving forward to help everyone I can. I’ll continue doing the best I can until one day, I’ll be worthy of being called a hero. I don’t know when that day will come—it might be tomorrow, it might be on my deathbed—but I won’t stop trying to be the best person I can be.”

It was done. All the bottled, pent-up emotions that I hadn’t been able to put into words all this time were now out in the open. I no longer felt like I was choking on the enormous weight of my feelings. A burden had been lifted off my shoulder, and I thought this is what it must have felt like for Atlas when he was able to relinquish the weight of the world. I turned earnest eyes to the Magical Girl, exultantly anticipating her response. 

She looked absolutely devastated, like someone had gathered up her most cherished stuffed animals, threw them into the fireplace, and forced her to watch as the charred-brown cotton curdled and disintegrated away. The jubilant tower of elation wobbled perilously, and my stomach dropped. What had I missed?

“That’s a nice dream, but it’s not going to happen. You’re going to be better off sticking with something that you’re more likely to not regret,” she suggested, her callous body language at odds with the unspoken apologies shining through her periwinkle eyes. 

My teeth clacked together as the beast in my chest sputtered to life, chasing the exuberance out of my body. The beast dug its claws into the base of my brain stem, and whispered into my thoughts, insisting I leap forward and scratch that insufferable pity out of her eyes. A fresh swell of rage rose in me, and fury roared through my mind until my thoughts went blank. 

“It’s the truth! I’ve seen other people, better people, go down the same path you are now! And trust me when I say that it never ends well! You’re not just going to hurt yourself; I promise you, if you continue down this route, you will hurt everyone around you! If you want to be a true hero, the most heroic thing you’ll ever do is walk away. Deviate. It’s turned good people into bad, and trust me, the last thing the world needs is more bad people.”

The pacifying timbre of her voice kindled the blazing flame inside me, inciting the ravenous fire to devour the paltry words the Magical Girl offered as advice. The beast reared its head, frothing as it screeched its vexation at the condescending tone of the Magical Girl. Through sheer force of will, I swallowed down my frustration. Inwardly, I was seething, but I molded my face to not express any of the turmoil inside. 

“No.” 

It was a single word, but the weight it carried could not be understated. I was in open-defiance against a Magical Girl, the Defender of Humanity. Shock flitted across her face before she composed herself, her lips pressing into a line so thin that her luscious red lips went white. Her eyes turned frigid as a glacier, and any trace of warmth left in the lines of her face vanished.

“Fine.” she spat out. “I don’t know why I bothered trying to convince you otherwise; you’re a naive little girl. When your dream crashes against the rocky seabeds, you’ll learn that I was telling the truth. The world has a way of stamping out the hope in people like you, and replacing it with hatred. And there are few things more terrifying than a good person scorned who turned cruel.”

She wasn’t just furious; she was afraid as well. She hid it well, but the beads of sweat glistening on her forehead and the way her chest moved up and down gave her away. Her eyes were wide and just a little bit frantic, the dark shade of her pupil growing to engulf her blue iris behind a black curtain until it looked like her eyes were an inky pool of shadows. My heart skipped a beat and my throat went dry.

The Magical Girl didn’t seem to notice. She was staring absentmindedly at something over my shoulder that I couldn’t see; she was completely lost in her own world, fighting demons of her past. My eyebrows bunched together and I cautiously moved my hand in front of her face. Her pitch-black eyes didn’t follow my movements, instead beaming through my flesh and muscle to peer out the other side. I kicked my lips nervously, trying to moisten my parched mouth. I hadn’t anticipated that she would completely lose her mind!

Warning! I sense five Magical Girl heat signatures approaching rapidly. We have approximately five minutes before they reach us. 

What!? I zeroed in on the Magical Girl’s waist where the sound had originated from. Under further scrutiny, the poorly cobbled-together disguise fell apart. Now that the Magical Girl was standing still, I was able to discern the distinct outline of a plump creature the size of a beach ball. The more inconspicuous details were successfully obscured, but I could make out hindquarters and something that looked suspiciously like horns straining against the cloak.

The Familiar. I thought, a jolt of excitement blazing through me. Magical Girls were beings of incredible power, but they were still humans. Familiars were creatures entirely composed of magic, who had no ties to Earth’s ecosystem and didn’t obey the laws of physics. According to the GDM, their true form is something we couldn’t comprehend so they usually assumed the appearance of animals on Earth. Of course, more often than not, they added a magical twist to the standard animal.

Case in point, the deer-like antlers jutting out from what I suspected was a hare or something of similar build. I found myself leaning forward, eyes locked onto the shifting bulge and my hand outstretched. As I neared, the Familiar stilled, but in contrast, my heart thundered in my veins. The air turned staticky, and it felt like the space between my hand and the clad Familiar was alive with energy, making my head swoon. It was an exhilarating sensation, akin to guzzling a bucket-load of Gatorade and inhaling a dozen donuts before the inevitable sugar crash. The closer I got, the more intense the reaction; my breath caught in my throat and my fingers twitched. 

I was about a foot away from making contact when I spotted a brown blur in the corner of my eyes. My survival instincts overrode my geekiness and my hand retracted from her waist as quickly as humanly possible before backpedaling.

Her hand smacked into her Familiar which let out an affronted squawk. I winced in sympathy as her fist sunk into the Familiar, leaving a visible indent in the shape of her knuckles when she removed her hand. In front of my awe-stricken eyes though, the Familiar instantly filled the crater in its body by bouncing back, the malleable substance it was made out of conforming to smooth over pristinely. 

“I told you to only talk to me! I don’t need just anybody wandering in and eavesdropping!” the Magical Girl hollered. I figured I was that ‘anybody’ she was referring to. It was still hard to stomach that I somehow possessed the potential to become a Magical Girl. I hesitated on breaching the topic with the Magical Girl; it would make the possibility far too real, changing it from a whimsical dream to something tangible. And I was consumed with fear that I’d been picking up on the wrong hint, making assumptions and finding clues where there were none.

Yeah, like you could be a Magical Girl. Stick to what you know, huh? I took the words to heart, mentally filing away the mention that Magical Girls could open a private channel with their Familiars and taking note of the subservient nature of their relationship.

Sorry.

The short, nonchalant reply didn’t fool anyone of the Familiar’s true feelings, but it was ignored. The Magical Girl seemed grudgingly satisfied by the Familiar’s admission of guilt, and it was just starting to hit me that more Magical Girls were coming here.

“Oh god, I feel sick,” I moaned, bending forward. My stomach gurgled and sloshed, playing with the idea of upending its contents on the alleyway floor at the thought of meeting more Magical Girls. Bile rose up in my throat and I pushed it down, gagging at the rancid taste that stabbed into my sinuses. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Hey, you said you wanted to help me, right!?” The Magical Girl demanded to know. I didn’t trust myself to speak right now, but I bobbed my head up and down sluggishly, instantly regretting it as even that small movement triggered a new wave of nausea. Relief flashed across the Magical Girl’s face even while sorrow ate away at her eyes, making her look a thousand years old. My pulse quickened, and despite my absolute certainty that this was what I wanted to do, I had a sickening feeling that I’d just made a grievous error in judgment. 

She jogged over to the missile launcher, hooked her feet under it, and in a move so quick I almost missed it, she launched it up and plucked it out of the air. For a second, I thought she would change her mind, but then she hurled the missile launcher towards me. “Here, catch.”

Though I’d been expecting it, it still caught me off guard somehow. It hit me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me. Wheezing, I seized the weapon before it could fall with my left hand and held it close to my chest. I massaged the soreness away, already resigned to seeing a bruise in the mirror tomorrow.

If there was a tomorrow.

Excruciatingly aware that I was handling a weapon that could obliterate a building like it was matchsticks, I examined it with the gentle touch it deserved rather than eagerly stripping it to pieces like I wanted to. It was a very simplistic design, extremely minimalistic with its lack of knobs and magazine parts. I had to remind myself to give it some leeway; it was magic after all. And wasn’t that a thought? My hands itched to fiddle, and I cursed the eternity it would take for my right hand to heal.

“W…what do you want me to do with it?” I forced out. I felt abysmal simply pondering the possibility of relinquishing the weapon, and immediately wanted to shovel the words back into my mouth. The weapon crooned under my touch, as if touched by my gesture, and my eyes snapped to it. Weapons didn’t croon, or anything else that indicated sentience. My hold trembled but I couldn’t bear dropping the sanctimonious weapon. 

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her head scrunching into her shoulders. Her right hand clasped the left in a white-knuckled grip. For the first time since I met her, she didn’t meet my gaze head-on. There was no dare, no spunk, no challenge in her face when she did eventually raise her head. Instead, she studied me like she was committing my face to memory, the same way you would do for someone you were unequivocally certain you weren’t going to see again. While that could mean any number of things—what were the odds of running into her again?—my breath hitched. I fidgeted, my urge to baby the weapon impeded by the alarms in my head.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. Her voice carried an undertone of despondency and my heart palpitated. That wasn’t a good sign. “I can’t be caught with that. I’ll draw the others away; they won’t find you. Just hide the weapon somewhere and leave. Forget about it, and forget about me. You can go back to your normal life.”

She was offering me a way out. But what if I didn’t want to abandon this new and exciting way of living that I’d stumbled onto? What if I wanted to continue to confront the fragility of my life, the overstimulation that made my head swoon and my stomach swirl and my limbs go weak, challenging the world to strike me down and crowing in triumph every time it failed to do so. I was tempted to reject her offer; the word ‘No’ was on the tip of my tongue.

Then I thought about the somber moments too: the discovery of the corpse and the fatal fight with my assailant chief among them. It put a dampener on the rush of positivity, like a stormcloud descending from the heavens to drench the earth in gloom. Suddenly, I remembered the sight of the man’s face melting off. The queasy sensation returned to plague me with a vengeance, and I narrowly stopped myself from upending my lunch. 

The Magical Girl groaned, her eyes darting nervously to the rootsteps. I imagined what it was like to experience the world from her lens; to be able to sense her comrades approaching through their magical auras long before they entered her line of sight. Despite my efforts to quench it, anticipation and hope at the fact that I might be able to do the same buoyed me upward. My dreams must have shown on my face because the Magical Girl snapped. 

“Damn it, look!” she exclaimed. “You’re not special, okay? I know he said you’re a Potential but he doesn’t know what’s saying half the time anyway—Hey! I take offense to that!—and he gets confused easily. Most likely scenarios? You’ve been in close contact with someone who’s a real Potential. Their magic rubbed off of you and you can now partially see through the glamor and partially hear Familiars. Big whoop. If you had the Potential to become a Magical Girl, you would be radiating magic like a leaking battery but you’re not. You’re middling. You have some potential, but nowhere near enough to become a Magical Girl. You’d be better off finding the true Potential and making her awaken, since that’s the closest you’ll ever come to feeling what it’s like to be a Magical Girl.”

I flushed from the roots of my hair to the tip of my toes. She’d found all of my yearning and aspirations, and yanked it out from underneath me. My lips wobbled and to my horror, I felt burning behind my eyes. The Magical Girl became little more than a brown blob. Sniffles occupied the air and my cheeks burned with shame, which only increased the volume of my whimpers.

I heard the Magical Girl curse but it was muddled, barely audible through a dim white noise that muted everything else, like I was submerged a dozen meters underwater. “It’s the harsh truth, but not everybody is suited to become a Magical Girl. I suggest that you break off your relationship with the Potential before it sours; you’ll never be able to look at her without seeing what could have been. It’s better to end it painlessly than let it fester into resentment.”

There was only one person it could be; I knew it intimately in my gut, the name engraved in my bones and whispered on my skin. My left hand reached for a phantom, monotonously going through the motions of an elaborate handshake that only Zoe and I knew. I could feel the comforting pressure on my hand, the warmth signifying her steady presence and anchoring me to the world. The homely heat sharpened to a smoldering fire, searing through my veins and arteries, and matching the passion in my heart. I tried to release the hand but the memory held on, clinging to me as if bent on burning me to a crisp. I was overheating; I felt like I was inside a furnace, slowly being cooked alive by the realization that my best friend had betrayed me once again. 

No. I couldn’t accept this. Any thought of forgiving Zoe was long gone, devastated by a barrage of grudges that I hadn’t known existed. Every mundane, trivial qualms I had about Zoe reared their ugly head, grossly exaggerated and enhanced to show her worst traits that only I knew about. A small part of me refused to let go of my dreams, praying that the Magical Girl was wrong.

As if sensing my dilemma, the Magical Girl’s next words put a swift and uncompromising end to my burgeoning ambitions.

“Look at me.” Her voice brooked no argument. Blinking the tears away, I inspected her dynamic face. “Tell me what color my eyes are.”

“W-what?” I asked, my tongue feeling like sandpaper. She raised a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. I hastily studied her face, willing my eyes to drill through her illusion. Her face fluttered from mask to mask, switching faster and faster until her features blurred. It was like staring into a whirlpool and being tasked with locating a speck of diamond in the rushing current. Fresh tears pricked the edge of my eyes and it felt like I was falling endlessly without anything to grab onto. I pushed onward even as my vision clouded and I could no longer see her hair, much less her eyes. I had to; she had to be wrong, I could become a Magical Girl!

I strained my eyes to their breaking point, feeling the veins around my temples pop under the exertion, but still, I didn’t stop. Even when a migraine barreled into my skull like a sledgehammer and made it impossible to think coherently, I ordered my deteriorating body to focus on the slim chance of victory. I gnashed my teeth together; I was so close, yet so far. Every time I thought I’d pinned down a face, it danced slyly out of my grasp like a leaf in the breeze. 

I felt like someone was gouging my eyes out with a poker that had been nestling inside an active fireplace for the past three hours. Molten tears flowed down my face in equal parts physical and emotional torment. My inability to rend her illusion was an admission that there was nothing truly special about me, that in one night, I’d been stripped down to my parts and shown the ugly truth that I didn’t possess anything of value. I still continued to gaze at her face, but I didn’t see her face anymore. I was a hollow shell just mindlessly committing myself to an act that I was no longer suited for. I was the most foolish clown in a circus of freaks, the main attraction behind bars to ogle and gawk at. I was already beaten, and I knew it, but I couldn’t bear to be the one to yield. It was petty and ultimately meaningless, but I just wanted this small win to call my own.

In the end, it was the Magical Girl who called it off. “Enough,” she ordered, her voice dripping with sympathy and pity. I kept at it for a couple more seconds out of pure spite before averting my burning eyes.

Disappointment, self-loathing, and disgust duked it out for the dubious honor of being the prominent emotion. The missile launcher picked up on my distress, flaring once, twice, as if trying to show its support, but it just brought about another wave of grief to come crashing down on me. Even this magical artifact was a reminder of the strange, mystical world I could never be a part of, no matter how desperately I wanted otherwise. 

I wanted to howl, to rip my hair out and hurl it haplessly at the Magical Girl, to punch and scratch and bite her until she was so mangled that her illusion magic could no longer give the pretense of a perfect face. On the other end of the spectrum, I wanted to curl into a ball and bawl my eyes out, to pretend like I was back in the familiar safety of my bedroom, to go into a tiny dark space and never venture out again. 

The Magical Girl’s head snapped sharply to the sky, her eyes narrowed as she peered into a spectrum that no mortal instrument could pick up. 

“I need to go.” she declared. It took me a second to realize that she was announcing her leave for my benefit. Why bother? I thought sourly. Just come and go as you please. It’s a little late to ask for permission. Of course, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of any outward reaction. I wanted her to see how completely she’d ravaged my soul. She winced, but that was it. A small muscle spasm for all my suffering. “Remember to hide the rocket launcher. And……good luck.”

She turned, bending her legs into a crouch. I was taken by a panic so intense that it was like getting lanced in the stomach by a spear. It almost brought me to my knees, doubling over and retching Sahara-dry air. The Magical Girl paused, looking over her shoulder with clear concern and annoyance tearing interchangeably across her face. 

I hesitated. Was I going to stoop so low as to beg for help from someone who had proven to have an adverse effect on me? Was I so desperate that I would throw away what little dignity remained, and cling onto the last remnants of my dream even as it faded? There was only one answer resounding from my heart—

YES.

“Are you ab-absolutely certain!?” I cried out, my voice breaking. “Maybe I’m just a l-late bloomer or som-something! That happens, right!?” I was almost fanatical in my attempts to get the Magical Girl to say one word, just a single-vowel word that would bring me back from the brink of nothingness, to confirm that I was worth something.

“No.” she said, and my world came to a halt. My hope, a newborn sparrow tentatively peeking its head out, was crushed before it could spread its wings. “Strong Potentials unlock their power when they’re in the immediate vicinity of magic, whether that be Magical Girl or the Diablerie. Weaker Potentials might need direct contact. There have been some cases of Potentials awakening in moments of extreme stress while they’re under a lot of duress, but those are few and wide in between.” She didn’t need to fill in the blanks; what went unspoken hung in the air like an anvil: I’d touched her when I pushed her, and there were five more Magical Girls approaching. If I could have awakened, I would have.

Now that she’d said her piece, there was nothing keeping her here. She shifted her weight. Rubbed at her skin. “For what it’s worth, you were a good listener.”

I heard it for what we both know it truly was: an empty apology meant to soothe the burn of rejection. It was bred from guilt, not from a place of genuine remorse. After all, she bore the facial expression of a person  who’d taken her anger out on someone but realized too late that she’d crossed a line in the process of venting. The crestfallen expression of someone who had thought she was fighting with an equal opponent, but learned that she had taken candy from a baby.

One second, she was standing in front of me, shame and guilt written all over her face. For a silver of an instance, I thought I saw cerulean eyes glimmering back at me. Then she was gone, traveling through the shadows with the silence of an ninja.

Leaving me sitting on the floor of a damp alleyway, surrounded by a dead body and dead dreams.