It's been almost a week since I became a magical girl, and I think I've gotten the hang of my powers now. For basic attacks, I pretty much have three options. Teddy Mk II and the Teddy Drones move on their own, but I can direct either at an enemy with just a thought; the Teddy Drones hit with the force of a bullet, and Teddy Mk II comes down like a piano on the enemy and can also smack things with its paws. I can also use my telekinesis skill to throw debris or other familiars at the target. This seems to take more magic, so I usually avoid it. And of course, the third way is to use my feet and fists.

Apart from basic attacks, I have my connect skill, which boosts my partner's attack power and confers some of my charm magic on her, which makes enemies stop in their tracks and stop attacking for a short time. Then there's my ultimate attack, which uses Teddy Mk II and the Teddy Drones to fire a beam, which also makes the enemies stop attacking. Finally, there's my clairvoyance, which helps me to avoid being blindsided in battle. In effect, it's like having eyes on the back of my head.

"Ashley, pay attention!"

But it doesn't help me if I space out in battle. Sarra's warning alerts me to a familiar swinging its cartoon tree trunk at me, and I duck under it and smack the cartoon gorilla with a heavy fist. Then I seize the trunk and telekinetically fling it at the army of animal familiars that are surrounding me, taking out ten or more in a single blow.

The witch we're fighting must've come from a girl who liked the zoo, because the landscape is like a child's painting of the African savannah, and all the familiars are misshapen versions of iconic animals – so far I've spotted gorilla, giraffe, elephant, lion, and zebra, but I'm not sure if that's all of them.

Looking around, I notice that Sarra seems to be surrounded, so I send Teddy Mk II and the cartoon tree trunk to support her, sweeping away a bunch more familiars. She finishes off the rest with a barrage of lasers, then turns to look at me.

"Got something on your mind, Ashley?" she asks. "It's not good to space out in the middle of a battle like that, seriously!"

"Yeah, I won't do it again," I reply. "Still, you really are strong, Sarra…"

Although her powers are based entirely on light, they are indeed quite strong. Her lasers pack a punch on their own, and since that first battle I've learned that she can also create illusions so realistic that I couldn't even tell it wasn't real. Apparently she avoided that power in our first battle out of consideration for me, which means I was holding her back, and she still let me have the grief seed.

"Oh please, I'm not that strong," Sarra retorts. "I usually struggle with witches and just barely scrape by. My lasers might look powerful, but they're still just light when you get down to it. They don't have the weight of a physical attack."

"You have that halberd too though," I point out.

I've persisted in calling it a halberd, but it's unlike any real weapon I've ever seen. In addition to the blade, which is shaped like a crescent moon, there's an oval mirror mounted just below it, which Sarra can use to deflect energy attacks, as well as projecting the repulsion field she used when we first met.

"Sure, but that means I need to get up close," Sarra replies.

We look around at the labyrinth, trying to figure out where to go next. A few more familiars are starting to appear, but it looks like Sarra should be able to hold them off by herself, so I close my eyes for a moment and use my clairvoyance to scan the area. Ah, it seems like that big tree in the middle of the scene is hollow. I open my eyes and point.

"Over there!"

Sarra has already destroyed the familiars I spotted a moment ago, and we turn and head for the tree. I smash it with my teddy bear, revealing a flight of stairs leading downwards. Runes just above the opening spell out what I assume to be the witch's name – "Tier Gretchen". The walls of the stairwell are decorated with child's drawings of birds and clouds.

"Looks like we finally found the witch's chamber," Sarra muses. "Let's go!"

"It goes so much faster when we work together…" I say. "When I go solo, I can barely defeat one witch in a day. Together, we usually take out two and can sometimes manage three. I really wish we could convince Alice to join us sometimes.."

I've barely exchanged two words with Alice since my first day back to school, but I spot her now and then, either at school or on patrol. On the other hand, I've been teaming up with Sarra three or four times a week. As a result, my usable grief seed stock has gone up from one to two despite all the seeds I wear out keeping my soul gem clear, and I'm expecting it to rise to three or four by the time I leave for Paris.

Sarra shrugs. "I'm sure she has her reasons."

We reach the bottom of the stairs and step into the witch's chamber. Although the general aesthetic of a child's painting of savannah still persists here, Tier Gretchen herself is held within an enclosure such as you'd see at a zoo. She takes the form of some kind of chimera. I can see a lion's tail and gorilla arms, an elephant's trunk, and the body of a zebra. Immediately upon spotting us, Gretchen rears up onto her hind legs, beats her chest with her fists, and trumpets like an elephant.

"Say, Ashley," Sarra says. "I've been thinking about that connect thing you did when we first met, and I'd like to try doing it myself. Do you mind?"

"Of course not," I reply.

We press our hands together, and as that glow flashes from between them, I feel her power entering me, though I'm not sure what effect it has. Still, it doesn't matter that much. Either way, we've got to take down this witch. I direct my teddy to smash the witch's face while Sarra splits into three before leaping over the fence and attacking with her halberd from three sides. I know that two of those are not real, but Gretchen is confused by it, preventing her from dodging my attack.

Trumpeting in fury, Gretchen points her trunk at me and shoots a jet of green fluid from it. Taken by surprise, I'm slow to dodge, but the fluid parts and deflects around me anyway. So that means that Sarra's connect skill must grant me the benefit of her repulsion field, right? This should be useful, though I can't rely on it too much since I don't know how long it lasts. Maybe it only deflects a single attack. In any case, I bring Teddy Mk II around for another attack, calling out to Sara again.

"Let's connect again, my turn!" I call.

"Good idea!" she replies.

Her two illusory copies vanish, and she hops over to me to press our hands together once more. Then she unleashes a barrage of lasers on Gretchen, and the effect of my connect skill causes the witch to stop moving.

"This skill of yours is amazingly useful," Sarra says as she jumps right back in to stab Gretchen in the face.

"Honestly, I'm a little shocked too," I agree. "I think it makes the witch mistake us for one of its familiars, so basically it sees us as a friend… so that's why I've been calling it charm."

I'm interrupted by a new batch of familiars appearing behind me, so I turn to face them down, sweeping the Teddy Drones through their ranks before smashing Teddy Mk II down upon them.

"Look out!" Sarra calls.

Unfortunately, instead of dodging immediately, I make the mistake of turning to see what she's talking about. Gretchen's jet hits me squarely in the chest, and I look down to see it eating away at my clothes. It stings, too.

"Ugh… sorry about that," I say.

"Don't worry, it's nothing major," Sarra says. "It feels like this witch is already weakening. How about we combine our ultimate attacks?"

I nod. "Sure."

I summon Teddy Mk II in front of me, and the Teddy Drones spin to charge up as before. Sarra raises her halberd above her head, the mirror mounted below it beginning to glow brightly. We shout out the attack names in unison.

"La luz de la verdad!"

"Ultimate Teddy Glittering Gunk!"

My glitter beam is practically drowned out by Sarra's laser bombardment, though I don't think that actually dilutes the effect or anything – it's just not really visible. When the light clears up, Tier Gretchen is collapsed prone on the ground, but seems to still be alive. I direct Teddy Mk II to slam down on her with as much force as it can, then telekinetically pull the tail and trunk in opposite directions.

"Cut her in half!" I shout.

"On it!" Sarra replies.

She hops down, the blade of her halberd extending into more of a glaive, slicing right through Gretchen's body. Moments later, the witch explodes into clouds of glitter, and the grief seed lands on the ground where Sarra immediately snatches it up.

"That was easier than normal," Sarra notes. "Maybe we're getting used to teaming up, huh?"

"Maybe," I reply. "Your connect was useful too. It enabled me to avoid a hit that I was too slow to dodge."

"Oh, I'm glad it worked," Sarra says.

We both power down and purify our soul gems as the barrier breaks down around us, depositing us back in the park where we discovered the witch. Though the sun is getting low, it hasn't started to get dark yet. I check my phone and see it's around eight o'clock.

"Should we grab dinner?" I suggest.

"Sorry, I've got to be home earlier today," Sarra says regretfully. "Maybe next time."

"That's fine," I say with a shrug.

We go our own ways, Sarra taking the new grief seed this time, and I decide to do one more round of the neighbourhood before going back home. After about fifteen minutes, I wind up at the school, where I pick up traces of a witch. Following the trail leads beyond the area I normally patrol, so I briefly consider leaving it to another magical girl, but then I decide I have to make sure, so I keep going.

Ten minutes later, I finally find the entrance to the witch's labyrinth in an abandoned building. A sign outside says it's scheduled to be demolished in the coming spring. Of course, we don't get snow or anything here, so they could demolish it even now if they wanted to, but perhaps they're concerned about rain or something, or they just have higher-priority jobs to get done first.

I look at the labyrinth portal, which has a design that vaguely resembles the tower of a feudal castle, complete with a triangular flag flying from the top. Additionally, it seems to be flickering weirdly. I'm not quite sure what that means. Is it unstable?

Almost as if it can sense my thoughts, Cube appears out of nowhere with an informative line. I'm pretty sure it can't actually sense my thoughts, but I suppose in this case it was fairly obvious what I was thinking.

"There is no need to involve yourself with this witch," it states. "Another magical girl is already fighting it."

"I see… is that why it's flickering?" I wonder. "I guess that makes sense. Still… I'd like to at least check if they need some help."

"Do as you please," Cube replies.

I transform and step into the barrier, where I'm immediately set upon by clanking medieval knight familiars in full plate armour. They are surprisingly tough, barely feeling it when I slam Teddy Mk II into them, but fortunately they have one feature that presents a glaring weakness against my power. I pull back Teddy Mk II and seize their swords with my power, flipping them around and impaling the familiars. I can tell it works when the baleful glow from the helmets' eye sockets fade, and I seize one of the fallen swords in each hand to cut my way through their ranks. Even so, there are a lot of them, and my progress feels achingly slow.

Then I run into the second type of familiar in this very castle-like labyrinth – a catapult, which throws massive boulders at me. Each one is about the size of one of those balance balls used for some kinds of physical exercise, but made of heavy stone rather than soft air-filled plastic. However, once again, it's not effective against me. I simply smack the rocks right back at them with my powers, usually taking out two or three knight familiars at a time. But after five or six tries, the familiars seem to sense that the catapults just won't work on me, and after that I don't see them anymore.

There's too many of the knights to count them, all packed together and jostling for a chance to land a blow on me. More seem to be appearing from side corridors all the time, and while I'm able to slowly progress towards what I assume is the centre, it's just too slow to bear.

"Ugh, there's just so many of these guys," I groan out loud. "Alright, I know it's bad to break out the ultimate attack on familiars, but…"

I grab Teddy Mk II and wait for the Teddy Drones to spin up the charge, then blast the entire corridor with that glittery gunk. Of course, I call out the attack too. With the army of knights suddenly treating me as a friend, I'm able to push between them and run down the corridor much faster than I would've expected. I don't even bother destroying the familiars on my way. If the witch is defeated, they'll die anyway.

I break free of the knight army, only to see new ones appear that haven't been affected by my gunk. Indeed, upon glancing back, I see the mob I just escaped already recovering and turning to chase me. Fortunately, there's only a few ahead now – they must have committed most of their forces to keeping me penned up near the entrance. I run along the stone corridor, taking down a few in passing, until I come to a grand-looking door that looks like it would lead to a great hall of some kind.

I pause, getting a good look at the labyrinth for the first time. It had given off an impression of stone corridors like a medieval castle, but on closer inspection it looks like the stone pattern is just painted on. Despite the fact that it felt like I was running straight, when I look back I see the corridor I came from is all twisted like a möbius strip, and there are other similar twisted corridors of fake stone as well. Every so often there's a window, which also looks like it's painted on, but the painted scene outside the windows appears to be a burned wasteland.

Then there's the grand door in front of me, which is made of dark wood and bears the same design as the labyrinth's portal. Engraved in fold filigree on the door are witch runes that presumably spell out the witch's name – "Marigold Z. Ritter". I kick it open and break into the great hall, which is empty but for a twisted throne at the far end, more like something you'd expect of a demon lord's castle. Sitting upon that throne is a princess, in a manner of speaking. She has the white dress and the tiara, at least. There is no face, however, and the design of the tiara is bizarre and misshapen, more suitable for Sauron than a princess. And instead of arms, she seems to have tentacles. I can't count how many there are though, because they are flailing around wildly at the magical girl who is fighting the witch, curving and crossing too many times for me to figure out which tentacle is which.

The magical girl in question is clad in a deep forest green, with a jagged-edged skirt and a similarly jagged-edged hooded cloak, as well as green knee-high boots that look like something made of soft leather or cloth. The overall impression is of an elf, if I ignore the fantastical weapon she wields. It's a metal ring with eight knife-like spikes evenly spaced around it, which she grips by a handle within the metal ring. As I watch, she waves it around and cuts off two lengths of Marigold's tentacles. Then three of the spikes shoot out, zooming towards Marigold's core and impaling those voluminous robes. A bolt of lightning arcs from the weapon to the place where those spikes struck her, and then the spikes extract themselves from the witch and return to the weapon.

I watch for a minute or two as the girl leaps around, trying in vain to get closer to Marigold, but it seems clear that she's struggling. Of course, I'm not just left unattended here while I watch – I'm forced to take out several knight familiars that try to sneak up on me as well.

I decide to take action. Summoning Teddy Mk II, I build up for my ultimate attack once again, fending off the knights with their own swords as Teddy charges.

"Ultimate Teddy Glittering Gunk!"

The glittering beam passes straight through Marigold's defensive tentacles and hits her core. The charm effect of the beam causes her to start retracting those tentacles, her head turning back and forth in seeming confusion. The green girl takes immediate advantage of the opening this creates and charges in with her weapon, ejecting all but one of the spikes and propelling them ahead of her charge before burying the final one in Marigold's head. Including the one she still holds, the spikes pierce Marigold in a circular pattern.

I follow behind her, grabbing a few more of the fallen swords with my telekinesis and manipulating them to slice through as many tentacles as I can, while attacking Marigold's voluminous robes with the swords I hold in my hands. Then the green girl calls out an attack.

"Circle of lightning!"

It's not very imaginative, but it certainly describes what I see. Arcs of electricity connect the eight spikes from her weapon, causing Marigold to convulse in pain. The witch's body falls forward and collapses, the green girl jumping back to land next to me as the spikes return to her weapon. She shoots me a glare, and I realize it's Alice. Now that I can see her from the front, I note that she also wears a sleeveless shirt in a lighter shade of green, with a small diamond-shaped boob window and another diamond window exposing her navel, her green soul gem situated right in between the windows.

"I never asked for your help, newbie," she retorts. "Don't think I'll let you have the grief seed just because you saved my ass there."

"I wouldn't dream of it," I retort. "I have a spare grief seed, anyway."

"Besides, this is all your fault," Alice complains. "Ever since you contracted, there hasn't been as many witches around here that I can beat on my own."

"Don't go pushing the blame on me," I shoot back. "You just need to practice and get stronger. Either that, or team up with someone. Although, if I had a reliable way to gauge a witch's power, I'd be totally fine leaving the weaker ones to you."

"Don't treat me lightly," Alice says. "It's not like I need your consideration. I was doing just fine before you came along."

As we banter back and forth, I realize that something's not quite right. The barrier should've fallen by now, and Marigold's body should've disappeared, but that pile of voluminous robes is still sitting there on the floor where it fell a few moments ago.

"Wait… I think she's not dead yet," I say. "We'd better be careful…"

Just then, an eye suddenly opens up on the back of the throne, gazing at us, and I take a step back in surprise. Then it shakes itself like a dog and starts moving towards us, trampling that pile of robes like so much trash. Was Marigold's true form the throne all along!?

"Alice, hold out your hand for a moment, like this," I say.

"Why should I?" she retorts.

"Just do it!" I urge her.

Though she seems skeptical, she does reluctantly obey my urging, and as our hands make contact, I push some of my power into her.

"Huh!? The hell did you just do?" Alice gasps. "I feel so much stronger now!?"

She looks at the oncoming throne witch and ejects the spikes from her weapon once more. This time, they fly forward and form a ring around the witch, and when the arcs of lightning appear, they connect opposite spikes instead of adjacent ones. Marigold the throne stops her advance, twisting in a very un-chair-like manner as she looks around in confusion, no doubt wondering where her target went. I'm about to take advantage of her distraction to charge in and maybe hack a leg off or something, but then Alice calls out another attack.

"Plasma Sphere!"

The arcs of lightning connecting those metal spikes grow larger, splitting and bending to form a sphere. The witch being made seemingly of wood, she begins to smoke and then catches fire, and the flames themselves seem to be bent oddly by the shell of electricity, turning into what I can only describe as a miniature sun.

Then Alice gasps and falls forward on one knee. The lightning vanishes and the spikes fall to the ground with a clatter, leaving only the fire. I glance at her worriedly, but there's no time to deal with her right now. I dart in and slash through the flaming chair back with my swords, splitting the baleful eye in half first horizontally and then vertically. This seems to be the finishing blow we need to kill her, for the seat of the chair crumbles to dust, along with the pile of robes it was standing on, and I snatch up the grief seed from the ground and run over to check on Alice.

It seems like she's still barely okay. Her soul gem has become dark, and I can see at least one crack running through it, but there are a few remaining bright green lights. I quickly press the grief seed to her gem and watch as it clears out the corruption.

"You gotta be more careful," I admonish her. "You almost died there, or worse!"

"The hell could possibly be worse than dying?" Alice retorts.

"You probably don't wanna know," I reply. "Hell, you probably wouldn't even believe me. Just, be more careful in future, okay? If you die, it's over. If you run out of magic, you're as good as dead. There's no coming back."

"Ugh, I don't need a lecture from you," she says, grabbing the grief seed. "Thanks for the assist, but I'd prefer if you don't in the future."

"I refuse to promise something like that," I retort.

The barrier collapses around us, leaving us back in the real world by the abandoned building. Alice powers down, so I follow suit and check my soul gem. It's somewhat darkened, but nowhere near a dangerous level. If I try to reduce it to a number, I suppose maybe it's ten to twenty percent darkened.

"Just out of curiosity, what is your power exactly?" I ask. "It looked like telekinesis, the same as me, but then there was that lightning…"

"Not that it's any of your business, but it's magnetism," Alice says. "That's it."

"Oh, I see, so you create electric current by manipulating the electric fields," I nod. "That's pretty ingenious! I'm not sure I would've thought of it myself in your shoes."

"I don't need your flattery," Alice retorts.

"Then how about joining me for dinner?" I suggest. "I'll treat you, or you can pay your own if you prefer."

Alice sighs.

"Fine, I guess I owe you just this once," she says. "There's a Burger King not far from here. I'll pay my own though – I don't want to owe you even more."

"Okay, that works!"

And that's how I end up having dinner with Alice Chandler. We chat a little both about school and about magical girl stuff. Although she still has a tendency to be brusque and short in her responses, I get the sense that she's starting to warm up to me, just a little. I don't learn anything new, but we do end up exchanging contact info. Actually, I wasn't expecting her to agree to that so readily… maybe she really is just a big tsundere?

Magical Girl Corner

Whenever a new magical girl is introduced, I'll include a brief profile of her here. Some details may be redacted, or contain minor spoilers. You have been warned! The numeric ranking values are on a scale of 1 to 10.

Alice Chandler

Age: 14
Eye Colour: Blue
Hair Colour: Blonde
Origins: Santa Cruz, California, USA
Symbol: Compass rose
Soul Gem: Green oval gem just below her chest
Element: Forest
Weapon: 8-pointed star-knife
Powers: Magnetism
Wish: redacted

Speed: 10
Magical Stamina: 4
Offensive Power: 10
Defensive Power: 1
Initial Power Usability: 2
Learned Powers: 8