An actress in our midst! (web version)

The three of them arrived at about the same time. Spark waved at them from her hiding spot, beckoning them to land.

“Spark! You okay? Where’s the demon?” Flame yelled out while looking around.

Spark immediately shushed her by putting a finger to her mouth.

“Not here anymore… But there’s something we need to investigate. Follow me.”

Her teammates were confused for a second but followed after her anyway. They floated up, over the container, and in the empty space surrounded by a bunch more containers. Spark then walked up to one of them and opened the door.

Eyes widened as the glowing ball of magic entered their sight.

“What the…”

“What is that?”

“Huh…”

“The demon went inside here… and then disappeared,” Spark stated. “You know what that means?”

“A portal… to the demon world?” Flame asked, her mouth agape.

“I’ve never seen something like this before,” Bloom muttered to herself as she studied the swirling ball of magic. “Is this how the demons cross to our world…?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Spark said with a nod. “So… What do we do with this? Do we try going through?”

“It could be a trap,” Frost protested. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side. And we could get trapped there if the portal turns off.”

“Well, we need to do something. Standing around won’t accomplish much.”

“She’s right,” Flame spoke up. “If this thing really leads to the demon realm, it might be our chance!”

“That’s true, but… It just seems fishy.” Frost shook her head.

“Oh, this is incredible!” Bloom exclaimed, drawing everyone’s attention. “It’s using magic similar to what our weapons do! Just much more advanced.”

“What? The same magic? How so?” Spark asked, skeptical.

“Like this,” Bloom said before raising her wand and making it vanish. She transformed back into Nicole in the process. “Where did my wand go?”

“Oh… Right…”

Nicole promptly summoned her wand back and retransformed.

“Then do you think you could figure out how this works?” Frost asked. “If the portal shut off behind us, could you reactivate it?”

“Uhm…” Bloom hummed to herself as she stared at the portal with a frown. “Possibly…? Maybe if I had more time to study this, I could figure it out…?”

Her response clearly didn’t fill Frost with confidence.

“I say we go in,” Spark suggested.

“I agree. We might not get another chance like this,” Flame added.

“And there might be more than just one portal over there. Even if this one shuts off, I don’t think we’ll be trapped,” Bloom reasoned. “We should try going through.”

“I still don’t like this,” Frost murmured. “But fine. Let’s do this.”

With the magical girls in agreement, the four stepped inside the container and approached the swirling ball of magic. Flame lifted her hand and tried touching it.

The magic immediately seeped into her through her arm, making her yelp in surprise. Her view shifted; the vague cavern she’d seen inside the magic ball became clearer and larger while her surroundings shrunk and grew fuzzier. The two views merged and warped around one another, hurting her mind as she tried to parse what was happening.

Before she knew it, the two views had swapped places, the container’s interior now visible inside the magical ball, while the cavern surrounded her.

Flame gasped as she looked around the dark cavern only illuminated by the portal. Her gut immediately told her something was strange about it. If this was a portal used by the demons, why was it in some cavern instead of whatever base they might have? And why wasn’t it guarded?

A moment later, the magical ball spat out three blobs of magic that quickly took on the shape of people and then stopped glowing to reveal the rest of the magical girls’ crew.

“Whoa, what the…”

“T-that was weird…”

“Shh…” Flame shushed her disoriented friends.

Once everyone got their bearings, they looked around for any traces of a trap.

There were none.

“There’s something strange about this,” Frost whispered.

“Yeah, where are all the demons?” Spark replied.

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Flame nodded.

Bloom was too busy staring back at the portal in awe to chip in.

“Let’s move,” Flame whispered as she lit her finger on fire for vision and stepped away from the portal.

The others followed behind her without a word.

The more they looked around, the more suspicious everything seemed. Were they still on Earth, or was this really the demon realm? It was impossible to tell. Neither one of them had ever been to the demon realm, after all. They didn’t know what to expect from it.

Not too long after they began exploring the dark cave, they heard voices.

Flame stopped abruptly and put a finger to her mouth, gesturing everyone to keep quiet.

“..agic… girls…” the distant, barely audible voice said.

“Magical girls…?” Spark asked with a whisper.

“Shh…”

Flame extinguished her light as the group creeped forward, straining their ears to hear whatever conversation was going on.

“...at… ou… talking … bout…?” the male voice asked. “Are you saying the magical girls might end up destroying the world?”

The group could clearly hear the last sentence and it shocked them. What was this about?

“I don’t know,” an oddly familiar female voice replied. “All he said is that the spirits and the generals are trying to prevent destruction.”

“Implying the magical girls will otherwise cause said destruction…” the male voice summarized. “That’s not what I wanted to hear…”

The magical girls glanced at each other. A mixture of confusion, shock, and anger painted their expressions.

“Yeah… I know. I don’t like this either. Worst case scenario, we might end up fighting the magical girls alongside the demon lord for real.”

While the others remained in shock, Spark gritted her teeth as she listened to the female voice. The voice that unmistakably belonged to a certain person they all knew. She had been right.

 “They might not know… ” a third, oddly androgynous, voice said. “I don’t think the magical girls are evil.”

“I don’t think so either… But this whole thing is just suspicious. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were being manipulated or somet–”

At that point, Spark couldn’t hold it in anymore. She jumped out of their hiding spot, furious, and screamed.

“Jessica?!”