An actress in our midst!

Nicole paced in place, nervous. The roaring concert and the surrounding crowds of people weren’t helping in the slightest.

After all, they would be fighting their friend – and a former magical girl, apparently? – very soon. At least they had advance notice this time, but still… Nothing about it felt right, even if there were good reasons to do it.

Trying to focus on other things didn’t help either.  Her mind immediately latched onto yet more uncomfortable topics. Like the origins of the magical girls they had recently learned about from the first Pretty Frost and Bloom.

Nicole was all for studying and researching everything magic, but even she felt wary of poking the subject of the fifth weapon. She had seen what the Demon Realm looked like. If that was the result of mishandling it, she didn’t want to know what would happen if it got into the hands of someone deliberately wanting to cause harm.

Which brought her back to Jessica. According to her – or rather, what the demons had told her – both Earth and the Demon Realm were in danger of being destroyed, apparently. At first, Bloom had thought their own powers would be the cause, but after learning about the fifth weapon, the potential culprit had become obvious.

But one question still remained. Who were the rogue demons possessing random people? Where were they coming from? Why? If the demons were secretly the good guys, then why do this?

The crowds around her cheered as the song finished.

“Thank you! Thank you!” the lead singer said into the microphone with a smile. Her face shined in the spotlight because of the sweat on it.

As the crowds calmed down again, she continued, “And now for this night’s finale! A new song we call ‘In the River of Sunlight’!”

And then they started again.

Too bad Nicole couldn’t fully enjoy the concert at the moment. The songs were so good too! Argh…

The worst part about this was that Jessica hadn’t even told them where the attack would happen. They had already gotten the tickets to this concert a couple of weeks back, and sure, they could have decided not to go, but it felt like this had been orchestrated. That particular aspect of their powers still felt weird.

Or maybe it wasn’t their powers at all. Maybe the demons simply knew where to strike. Were they watching them or something? It sure seemed like they knew more about the entire situation, given what they’d told Jessica.

And on that note of telling Jessica some things… They still hadn’t told her their secret identities. Everytime they tried calling her or sending her a message asking to meet up or something, she declined, saying she was busy with her job.

Yeah, ‘Job’. Not like they didn’t know what that meant now.

With the final stroke of the guitar, the new – really cool, in Nicole’s opinion – song concluded.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

Two figures emerged from the shadows. One flying up high with her giant menacing wings, the other one… uh, clearly struggling to keep her height, flapping her tiny wings.

Regardless of that odd display, the magical girls exchanged a glance and nodded to each other, then proceeded to retreat out of the venue and out of sight before transforming.

By the time they came out, crowds were rushing out of the venue, screaming in fear. Bloom opted to stay behind to try and help those who had been stomped while her teammates went ahead to face the demons.

Luckily, there weren’t that many injuries, and the venue quickly cleared out, allowing Bloom to join the fight.

By the time she got back, Flame and Frost were already taking on Salem while Spark was exchanging blows with the minion – Jessica – with maybe a bit too much enthusiasm.

“I’ll show you this time!” Spark shouted at Jessica as she drew her bow and fired a volley of glowing projectiles. “Thunderstorm!”

Jessica dodged most of the arrows, and neutralized one of them with her bare hand. As she did that, she also conjured a dark ball of magic in her other hand and threw it back at Spark.

The magical girl had no problems dodging the projectile with her speed, but even she didn’t seem to anticipate the projectile exploding into several smaller projectiles that shot in her direction. Even this surprise attack was too slow for the fastest of the magical girls, however.

Huh.

Wasn’t this supposed to be just a pretense fight? Why were they both going so hard at each other…?

Pondering that, Bloom joined Spark in her endeavors. Funny. This was exactly the same match-up as the first time they’d encountered Jessica as a minion.

Well, since those two seemed to be pulling out the big guns, Bloom didn’t see a reason to not do the same.

She floated closer, and pointed her wand at Jessica while shouting “Sunflower cannon!”

Bloom didn’t really expect her attack to hit since she hadn’t caught Jessica with vines beforehand like back then.

She also didn’t expect Jessica to just stand there without even trying to dodge as the beam fired.

For a brief moment, Bloom thought Jessica was going to take the full brunt of her ultimate move… but then her beam bounced off the girl in Spark’s direction. Bloom immediately ended her ultimate move, but not before it reached Spark.

“Wha-!?” Luckily, her teammate dodged the unexpected friendly fire. Then, she glared at the demon. “You, little…!”

Jessica merely looked at Spark and tilted her head, as if saying “Hmm? Something wrong?”

Well then…

Now Bloom understood why they seemed to be going all out on each other. Not only was Jessica still playing the troll game here, but she had clearly gotten much stronger and more skilled with magic since the last time.

No wonder they had picked her to be a new demon general. Damn.

The fight continued. Bloom spread out her magical seeds and began growing vines to impede Jessica’s movement as well as occasionally blasting her with her wand while Spark kept up her assault.

Jessica weaved through her makeshift jungle and either dodged, neutralized, or reflected any and all projectiles thrown at her.

How the heck had she gotten so good? She couldn’t have been a demon for more than a few months! Bloom had been a magical girl for a couple of years already!

Slowly but surely, frustration crept into Bloom’s fighting style and soon there were two very annoyed magical girls trying to pin down one damn minion.

And failing.

BottledChaos Next time: "Brawl!" or "What do you mean I have to take on all four of them on my own?! Get back here, Salem!"