An actress in our midst! (web version)

She looked exactly as she had dozens of times Jessica had seen her in the coma. Her hair was still fiery red, her skin silky smooth, and her eyes now revealed to be muted brown. Tears were streaking down from those eyes.

Jessica and Flame exchanged a look before cautiously walking closer.

“Everything  was… my fault. I’m sorry.” Trish finally looked up and locked eyes with them. “And… thank you for saving me, Jessica.”

She seemed nothing like the ever-enthusiastic sunshine Baugh and Sally had described her as. Understandable, all things considered. Although, how did she know it had been Jessica who–

“You were aware,” Jessica breathed out in shock. “This whole time. From the moment you fell into a coma.”

Trish nodded as she looked back at the blanket covering Sally, grief overtaking her features. “I heard everything, I felt the magic… and I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped inside my own body. Even as Sally broke down, even as you and Baugh tried to figure everything out, I just… lay there, doing nothing.” She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… Sally…”

Jessica… wasn’t sure what to say. Because it was true. This whole situation, this whole conflict involving demons had been all because of her and Baugh’s experiments. Because of their subsequent falling out with the other magical girls.

She wasn’t going to lie. Wasn’t about to say that it hadn’t been her fault. That it was okay. Because it wasn’t okay. It may have been an accident on their part, but they still set off an apocalypse and started an interdimensional war. A pretend one, yes, but still.

At the same time, though, Trish was devastated by it all, and Jessica wasn’t so insensitive as to kick this crying puppy after everything.

So instead, she sighed. “What’s done is done, I guess. We just have to make sure not to make the same mistakes again. Learn from the past, work toward a better future… or something.”

Flame looked at her weirdly. She ignored it.

Trish gave a sad nod before finally standing up, wiping off the tears with her sleeve, and locking eyes with Jessica.

“When I was the weapon, I gained a new sense,” she suddenly said. “I wasn’t sure what exactly I was sensing at first, but… well, I had years to figure it out and nothing better to do. So after a while, I discovered that I was sensing magic and the demonic spirits around me. Their positions, their intentions, their emotions, their future even.”

Flame gasped at that, realization dawning.

“Is that… What the magical girl sense is? How we always subconsciously knew where the demons would attack?” Flame asked as her eyes widened.

Jessica narrowed her eyes and tried to focus to try and get a feel for this supposed another sense.

Trish nodded. “You probably had a weaker, more subtle version of it. My theory is that when the… the apocalypse happened, the fifth weapon – me – was forcefully connected to things with magic – except Baugh and our daughter – inside the demon realm.” She looked down sadly. “Which ended up killing most things as it drained them.”

Jessica found it. It felt so odd now that she focused on this different sense. She could feel the wolf demon inside the ice. Completely static, unmoving even through time, no intentions. It was lowkey disturbing.

But then she spread this sense out and she could feel a headache-inducing smear of presences through the fabric of space-time in the distance. It took her a moment to parse what exactly it meant. Current position of little asshole spirit, Magna,  his intentions, his possible future positions…

Whoa.

“But I think there’s a way to… reverse this,” Trish said, her tone turning serious. “I couldn’t do it since I couldn’t do anything at all but feel around… but you should be able to somewhat revert the apocalypse.”

That caught Jessica’s attention.

“Revert it? Are you serious?” Both Flame and Jessica gaped at her.

Trish grimaced. “Not completely. Everyone who died would probably stay dead, but… you could bring back all the demons who survived as spirits. That ought to appease at least some of them…”

Ah. That was her aim.

Well, Jessica had told her to work toward a better future, hadn’t she? Appeasing all the demons sounded like a great way to avoid most of the chaos they had been fearing.

Although… First of all, she would need to get rid of the one who wanted to cause chaos regardless of being brought back. Magna. From what she could tell with her fancy new sense, he had actually managed to escape from everyone somehow. Not on her watch.

“Well, that’s still good news,” she said out loud with a wry smile. “I’ll look into carefully reversing that apocalypse once this is over. Right now though–” She let the power overtake her and transform her into her magical girl form as she brought out her trusty spear-shaped conduit. “--I have a spirit to hunt down.”

Flame startled for a brief moment before her expression changed to awe.

Jessica tried feeling around with her senses again and wow, everything was amplified. Her magic sense covered half the city, her new… hmm… quantum entanglement telepathic magical energy precognition sense – or QETMEPS –  allowed her to predict Magus’ movements up to several minutes into the future, and she could even feel space itself somehow.

“Holy shit…” Jessica murmured as she screwed her eyes shut in order to lessen the sensory overload.

“You can feel it now, right?” Trish asked with a tiny smile. “I felt like some kind of omniscient superbeing back then… but unlike me, you can actually act on what you can feel.”

Omniscient superbeing. That was a pretty apt description of how she felt at the moment. Wow, good thing they kicked Magna out or both worlds would have been doomed.

“So…” Flame murmured. “What do we call you now? Pretty… Apocalypse?”

Jessica gave her a flat look before humming to herself and thinking for a bit. Somehow, she hadn’t even thought about the title the fifth magical girl should have.

But this was super important. She didn’t want to sound lame, after all. So what would be a good fit?

She had incredible magical senses, lowkey precognition, power on a planetary scale, magic that could outright erase things…

“Pretty… Void,” she finally said, testing it on her lips. “Yeah, Pretty Void. I like that. And it’s one syllable just like the others.”

Flame gave a small smile. “Pretty Void, huh? I like it.”

“Thanks.” Jessica briefly returned the smile before turning to face the direction where Magna was. “Alright then. Nomed! You still here?”

“Still here,” the voice in her head replied. “I also like Pretty Void, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she thought back at him. “You’ve been awfully quiet back there. Anything wrong?”

“Nope, just letting you have the moment.” She received an impression of a smile. “Are we ready to take out the old king?”

“Oh yes, I’m ready, partner,” she said out loud. “Time to commit regicide–” She steeled her expression. “--and avenge Sally.”

She locked eyes with Trish and gave her a nod, which she returned. Then she looked at Flame… and gave her a smirk before quickly pecking her on the lips before she could react.

“Wha–?!” Flame’s face grew as red as her hair.

“I’ll be right back, babe! I’m just gonna take out some trash!”

She turned and launched herself out of the building, leaving the sputtering Flame behind. Thankfully, as a magical girl, she could easily fly without having to manually coat herself with magic or having to use tiny wings.

Yeah, screw those tiny ass wings. Glad they’re gone.

Despite him having several minutes of head start, it had only taken Jessica fifteen seconds to find the lion-shaped demonic spirit, hiding away in a dark corner of a backstreet – thanks to her trusty QETMEPS – and come down on him like the wrath of god.

She kind of was a goddess at this point, wasn’t she? Huh.

“You!”

“Why hello there, you piece of shit!” she yelled at him as she effortlessly dodged all his attempts to attack her and grabbed him by the shadowy fur on the back of his neck like a misbehaving cat.

The little shit tried scratching her, shooting her with magic, invading her body again, but none of it would work. Jessica could sense his intent before even he knew what he was going to do.

“Damn you, human!”

“Fuck you too, asshole! You fucking made me kill Sally!” she roared at him as she threw him to the ground as hard as she could.

He roared in pain and before he could recover, she gripped his nose in her hand and flew up high into the air above the buildings, spear ominously aimed at his neck.

All his other pursuers soon found them and stared up at them.

“You think I’m just gonna let you off easy, you fucker?! After everything you’ve done?!”

Jessica noted in her periphery that people were gathering on the streets, looking up at them. She spied Rick among them.

“Hah! Me? It was the humans!” he roared. “You stupid humans were the ones to destroy the demon realm! You and that dumb researcher!”

Jessica growled and purposefully amplified her voice to be heard by all the people.

“Don’t act like you are innocent! You are the one who kicked Baugh out! You are the one who planned to invade Earth and conquer it! It’s because of you that he had to constantly walk on eggshells while trying to revive your civilization! It’s because of you he had to take on the role of the demon lord and pretend to be at war with the magical girls! And now you’re trying to destroy another world as petty revenge?!”

“Shut up, little girl! You know nothing! I was going to revive everyone with that power! I was going to restore the demon realm! A shitty little brat like you has no right to wield all that power!”

“And you think you’re a better choice? As if! This sham war has been going on for long enough! I’m going to revert the apocalypse! Revive everyone I can! And then the conflict can finally be over!”

Magna booming laughter was filled with scorn and derision.

“You think yourself benevolent?! You’re just a little brat with too much power! I know who you are! I know your type! An actress! Hah! More like a practiced traitor!” he spat out venomously. “Your goodwill won’t last! Sooner or later, you’re going to turn on everyone again! It won’t matter if you pretend to side with humans or demons! People like you will always betray everyone for their own purposes in the end! I at least know whose side I’m on! The demons’!”

Jessica grit her teeth.

“That will not happen! Unlike you, I’m not a megalomaniac! I already know what I want and world domination or destruction is not it!”

“And what is it, huh?!”

Jessica paused for a second as she stared into the spirit’s eyes.

She thought back to getting saved by the magical girls for the first time… She remembered learning of her mom’s death… She recalled being approached by Nomed and deciding to become a double agent. She reminisced about everything that had happened between then and now. How she went from a powerless, broken, and lonely little magical girl fangirl to a bonafide goddess with an awesome as heck girlfriend…

And how she barely even cared that she had the ultimate power at her fingertips now. How the excitement about finally becoming one of the magical girls had already faded and felt irrelevant.

At this point, the only two things on her mind were her beautiful girlfriend, reminding her of all the good things in life… as well as Sally’s death and her own role in it, reminding her of everything that could always go wrong.

And at the end of that? What did she really want?

It was obvious.

“Peace,” she finally said, her voice solemn. “I want to finally have some peace now. To stop running away, to put the past to rest, and to work toward a better future.” Her eyes narrowed into a glare again. “And for that, I will first have to deal with you.”

Magna growled before scoffing.

“And what are you going to do, huh?! Kill me? Seal me away? I survived an apocalypse! You can’t kill me! Even if you seal me away, I’ll break out one day! And when I do, the world will be mine! Both of the worlds!”

Jessica stared at the megalomaniacal spirit for a moment… before she put her spear away, stretched out her hand, and began gathering magic.

“You survived an apocalypse, huh? Good for you.”

Her magic turned into that cosmic black blob with white spots, and Magna’s eyes widened.

“No! Stop that! You can’t do this!”

Jessica continued to stare with faked disinterest as the magic grew, both in size and intensity. Magna began to struggle again, but avoiding his pitiful attempts to attack her was child’s play at this point.

“You can’t just kill me!”

“Why not?” she drawled.

“Because you’re not capable of killing!” He glared back at her. “I know you like to act tough, but you’re a softie! You don’t have the guts to actually kill anyone! You’re not gonna become a murderer!”

“Oh…?” she said, her voice turning frosty. “Well good thing you already made me into one, huh?”

“You–!”

“This is for Sally!” she shouted, finally letting out her anger again. She gripped his nose tighter, heaved, and tossed him upwards into the air–

“Sto–”

 “See you in hell!”

– and finally released all the concentrated matter-annihilating galaxy magic above herself into his face before watching as her magic disintegrated even something as immaterial as a demonic spirit. The following screech resounded across the entire city as the magic consumed the old king whole.

A moment later, the spirit was gone, and the only remnant of it were the still echoing screams between the buildings down below.

Jessica lidded her eyes as she looked at the dissipating traces of magic above her where she’d held Magna and sighed.

“It’s over,” she murmured under her breath, no longer amplifying her voice.

Then, the shouts and cheers from below began.