Mirta Story by Cupcakedoll. Characters belong to Mr. Straffi, Rainbow, Nickelodeon, and whoever else.

Part 4

Mirta cowered behind her friends. They didn't notice. The six of them were surrounded by a crowd of shadow imps, and three gloating witches.

Priscilla waved her hand and a long fireflower vine flowed out around the fairies, burning up most of the shadow imps. Out of breath she panted, "Do something, they'll summon more!"

Katy Spika hissed and launched herself into the air, bouncing off a tree and diving at the witches with her claws out.

Electra slapped her away with a bolt of electricity.

"Katy!" Lolina yelled. She threw a handful of glowing rings, and Alice followed it with a shower of sharp-edged feathers.

Mirta had her phone out. She hit the button for the emergency number at Alfea, but the screen was dark.

The witch Electra waggled her finger at them. "No calling for help. We're going to bring you back to Cloud Tower—as toads! That will impress Icy."

"Just you try it!" Selene yelled back. She summoned her two swords. Katy rolled over and bounced to her feet to attack from the other direction.

Alice landed behind Mirta. "Can we beat them?"

"No!" Mirta answered, "They're too strong! We need to run away!"

"I'll get Katy and—"

Too late. Nixie said, "Cats don't like water, do they?" And summoned a stream of water all over the fairy. It was the same spell the Magix fire department used, and Katy was knocked flat by the force. She struggled to push herself up, coughing, from the puddle around her.

Megara pointed at the downed fairy. A bolt of light shot from her finger and Katy disappeared. Megara held up a crystal orb with a toad inside it. The toad had a furry tail.

"Oh no, Katy!"

Selene jumped in with her sword and Alice dived from above. She shoved Nixie, taking her to the ground. But Electra threw lightning and both fairies fell. Alice managed to grab Nixie and get the water-witch electrocuted too, but it wasn't good enough. Megara captured them both, as two bluish toads.

Mirta was, well, running away. It seemed like the smartest thing to do.

Lolina certainly thought so. She was a good ten feet ahead of Mirta, the words, "I don't wanna be a toad!" trailing behind her.

Well they'd only be toads for as long as it took their teachers to figure out what had happened and track down the witches and that… might take a while.

Mirta looked up. Priscilla was flying above her, backwards, waving her hands—she was doing magic while flying. Mirta glanced backwards and saw the fireflower hedge had grown twenty feet high, so fast it had wrapped around the witches. It was an impressive spell.

But then there was a crack and Nixie summoned water again. The hedge fell apart and Priscilla dropped out of the sky, back in her normal clothes.

Mirta turned back, but Priscilla waved her on, "Go find a cop and get us rescued!" she yelled, adding to herself, "can't believe I couldn't freakin'…"

The witches appeared in front of the fleeing fairies, Nixie so close that Lolina ran into her, tripped, and fell flat. She wailed in pain, until Megara zapped her into the bubble.

"Hey, it is you! Hey Meg, that's the witch who went to Alfea. Think you can turn her back into a pumpkin?"

Mirta looked down. She was wearing the pumpkin shirt again. Everybody thought it was weird that it was still her favorite shirt. But she didn't want to be a pumpkin again.

"We could just leave her here." Electra suggested. "This one's such a loser Icy won't care if we toadify her."

Megara landed. Smirking, she held out her hand. "Hey Mirta, Why don't you come back with us? It's not like you'll ever amount to anything at fairy school."

Nixie sniggered.

Mirta knew she should have agreed, and then run off to find someone to un-toad her friends. But she was mad by now. Really mad. She held out her hands and muttered, "Crystal of wisperia, hear me now, help me free my friends…"

"Like that's going to work."

"You can't use witch powers that way."

The magic wasn't working. Nothing was happening. But Mirta yelled out, "You're wrong! Witch powers can be used for good!"

The wisperian crystal appeared—and immediately shattered.

The witches shrieked and fell back and glittering fragments filled the air. Mirta, panicking, still reached into the storm. Her crystal! What had gone wrong? She'd never heard of a crystal breaking before!

Then Mirta heard music and the crystal shards were shining so bright that she lost track of things for a minute.

The first thing Mirta became aware of was a strange movement at her back. Felt nice. But strange. She looked.

And fell to the ground in shock. She had wings! Big pink… the same color the wisperian crystal had been… wings just like a fairy's! She was dressed like a fairy too, in pink and smoke-gray. The first coherent thought Mirta had was that pink wasn't the color she would've chosen.

"How did she do that?" One of the witches hissed at the others, "Can witches do that?"

That brought Mirta back to reality. Reality was suddenly looking better than it had a few minutes ago. Mirta stood up and stretched her new wings. "I don't know… but I know what I'm going to do next!"

She gathered a handful of energy and shaped it into a ball. Then turned the ball inside out. The witches ducked as Mirta flung the crackling black sphere at them. It exploded, sending the witches tumbling and breaking the spell over the fairies. They fell to the ground, automatically feeling their hair and bodies to make sure they were no longer toads.

Lolina was the first to get up. She ran over to Mirta, with a slightly hopping motion. "Oh my thumbs, I missed my thumbs! Mirta? That you?"

"Mmhm!"

"Eeeeee! You look so cool! What'd we miss?"

"Um… I don't know…"

Alice interrupted them. "Hey, those witches aren't giving up!"

The witches were so mad there was practically steam coming out their ears. Electra said, "Now we have to catch them again. What a pain."

Priscilla turned towards her. Sparks crackled from the fairy's red hair and a tree burst out of the ground. In seconds Electra was completely buried, invisible behind the branches. Her voice yelled out, "What?! Stupid tree, I'll blast you!"

"No you won't." Priscilla coughed. "S'a rubber tree. This time I did it right." She collapsed, but with a happy expression.

Electra's yelling spiraled up the scale as she found she couldn't break free. The other two turned to help her.

Alice whispered to Selene, and the two fairies took to the air. Together they blasted Nixie. A weird cloud of dust surrounded the witch and she fell to the ground, coughing. "Water!" She rasped.

"What was that?" Katy asked.

Alice twirled a perfect lock of hair around her finger. "She's not the only one who can use spells from the fire department. That's Deed's Desiccation Spell. She'll be all right if someone throws her in a swimming pool before tonight."

"Ready to join Advanced Disaster Management class with us?" Selene added. She sounded cheerful but she had her sword out. There was one witch left after all.

Katy said, "Well I could pounce on her…"

"No, let me try." Said Mirta. She had an idea, and she felt like it would work. She had so much magic now. "Hey witch, you want to turn me back into a pumpkin? Try it!"

Megara tried it.

Mirta shaped air into a shield and threw the spell back. Megara found herself trapped in a bubble, dodging her transformation spell as it bounced around. It hit, turned her into a pumpkin, bounced again and turned her back into herself.

Mirta sat down next to the trapped, still-transforming Megara.

"Elegant." Was Alice's opinion.

Lolina snapped her phone closed. "O-kay! Magix's finest are on the way. Are they gonna be harmless for ten minutes?"

"Sure." Said Selene, sword still in hand.

Mirta didn't bother to stand up, just crawled away from Megara and sat stretching her wings. Wings. She had wings. They were bigger than her friends' wings, but not a lot. Mirta tugged her new skirt, which felt just like silk though she knew from class that a fairy's transformed clothes were made of pure magic and a reflection of the fairy's beautiful soul… or that was how Miss Faragonda had put it. So Mirta's soul was apparently rose pink, with really cool glittery black sleeves. And a necklace made from one of the pieces of her wisperian crystal.

Katy shook herself and changed her clothes back, then used both hands to squash her kitty ears down. "Thanks for rescuing us!"

"You really saved the day." Selene added.

Katy pounced over that to say what she'd really been aiming for: "You transformed! I didn't know witches could grow wings!"

It was clearly a question. The other fairies listened intently.

"I don't know." Mirta said. She tugged one wing around to get a good look, until it became uncomfortable. Then she leaned on her hands and fluttered as hard as she could. For a minute nothing happened.

"You don't know?" Lolina repeated. "Um, Mirt…"

The magic kicked in and Mirta's body went weightless. She was suddenly six feet in the air. She shrieked and fell, laughing.

The ship from Alfea appeared in the sky, along with a police hoover. Professor Palladium was first out. "What in the world happened? I barely got Kimmy to the infirmary when the police called! What's all this about witches? Is that Mirta?"

Back at Alfea Palladium graded the girls' performance, giving them all As for quick thinking under fire and creative spellcasting. Then he told them to go get a snack and a rest. The first thing they all did was to go check on Kimmy, who was back in her own room confined to bed rest and cups of magic-restoring tea. The other fairies quickly grabbed mugs and sat down to give Kimmy the full story. Mirta fled before they got to the part about her.

Mirta went to her room to give her cat a hug. It helped when she was confused. Hexen was delighted to see her, leaping onto her shoulder and purring in her ears. He stayed up there while Mirta went to the cafeteria and got two burgers and a milkshake. She was starving!

She'd just finished when Livy skated up. "Mirta! The headmistress would like to see you when you're done eating."

"Ok. I'll go right up." Mirta put her dishes in the kitchen and washed her hands and headed up to Miss Faragonda's office. Hexen trailed along behind her.

She was a little surprised to see Miss Faragonda's desk piled with books. Both school pixies were there too, Concorda carrying a stack of books through a miniportal back to the library, and Discorda sitting on a pile of books from the Cloud Tower library.

Mirta bobbed a curtsey. "Hello Miss Discorda."

Discorda nodded regally.

"Hello Mirta." Said the headmistress. "I've just heard from the police. The three witches who attacked you have been arrested for magical mischief and misuse of transformation spells. They've been released into Miss Griffin's custody and sentenced to four months of detention cleaning out the potion laboratory. Discorda brought over some books from the Cloud Tower library."

Mirta took a step back. Some of those books could bite! "Um, did you figure it out? How I could transform I mean?"

"Not really, but we did find something. Come and look." Miss Faragonda held a book open. It was an ancient book, the dark blue leather cover cracking with age. The pages had gone brown, but Mirta saw a series of drawings: a witch summoning a wisperian crystal, the crystal shattering, and then the witch appearing as a fairy. The text was just squiggles.

"Yeah! It was just like that!" Mirta pointed and her finger slid on a layer of preservation spells. "What does it say? Can you read it?"

Miss Faragonda adjusted her glasses. "It is quite surprising. According to this book, which dates back before the witches known as the Three Ancestors were alive, at one time all female magical beings were able to manifest wings and protective clothing. Fairy and witch powers are very similar, as you've learned here at Alfea."

"Except witch powers are mean." Mirta said, then blushed in case it wasn't a polite thing to say. "I mean, have more aggressive applications." That was the way Professor Avalon had put it, in magical philosophy class. He'd also said that there was a theory that the two sorts of magic users were supposed to work together to protect the balance of the world. Probably no witches anywhere believed in that theory.

Hexen meowed, bringing Mirta out of her memory. "So witches and fairies are kind of the same? Wa! Am I turning into a fairy?! 'Cause that'd be weird!"

The headmistress chuckled. "I don't think so. Perhaps you are discovering powers that modern witches have forgotten—or even lost. It's only a theory, but some historians believe the Ancestors created the conflict between witches and fairies. There are no records of how our rivalry began so I suppose it could be possible. I'm afraid that's all I have for you right now Mirta, but Miss Griffin and I are going to keep looking for an explanation. Are you going to be all right?"

Mirta considered the question. "Yes. I was scared when I didn't know what was going on, but it's all right. And now I can fly with everybody! Um, if I can figure out how to do it again."

"You will. Just find the place in your head where you were before."

"Hmm…"

Livy sailed in the door at top speed. "Faragonda! The book of fairies, it's changed again!"

"I'd better go and see. You can stay and look at the books if you want, but I don't think there's anything else in them." Faragonda stood up, made a quick gesture, and vanished without any glowy magical overflow.

Mirta picked up another of the ancient-looking books and read: "The Artes of Wytches are Moste Bayneful, accomplished with Foul Components suche as the Bones of the Dead and Poysounous Plantes." She stopped and squinted at the text. "Maybe I need a stronger translation spell."

"Letterflies." Livy explained. "They fly around and land in words. They went extinct when someone decided proper spelling is important. It's true, ask Chatta."

Mirta didn't believe that.

She shut the book and wandered out onto Miss F's balcony.

"So what are you going to do, Mirta?"

Mirta looked sideways at the eager pixy. Just for fun she said, "Oh, dinner, homework, maybe a movie…"

"Ah?!"

"Meow." Said Hexen, positively smirking.

Mirta thought about what Miss Faragonda had said. Find the place in your head… Find out if there really had been witches with wings, back in ancient times. Maybe witches didn't have to be mean and fight with the fairies, they just thought they did. What if someone could prove that? There would always be girls like Megara who just plain liked messing with people, but there were plenty of witches who didn't. Like Lucy. Right now Lucy just wanted to be witchy enough for the other girls to like her. But maybe someday.

"Maybe I can tell Lucy witches can be anything they want."

Mirta spread her wings.