An actress in our midst! (web version)

The three watched from afar as their target left the premises. They exchanged a brief glance and a nod before following after her.

They slipped out of the front entrance of the school, keeping an eye on the black-haired girl from a distance, making sure to stay far enough to avoid her notice.

No matter what she had said, no matter how well she had acted, they knew something was off about Jessica. There was no denying that something had changed, but neither one of the three girls believed Jessica had turned evil because of the trial or because – from what she had hinted at – her dad was apparently the other new general. There had to be more to it.

And so, since nobody had had any better ideas, after informing Iris via a text, they had followed Jessica out of school.

Obviously, they knew what her usual way home was, and Jessica didn’t seem to be following it. That alone made them think tailing her was the right call. She had to have been heading for that teleporter of hers – she had moved it elsewhere since they had discovered it last time.

Jessica didn’t seem to notice her pursuers and continued walking on. Taking a left here, crossing the road there, she moved with purpose and a clear direction in mind rather than in a way to shake off pursuers.

Then eventually, she turned down a dark alleyway between buildings. The trio hesitated for a second, but a quick eye contact and a nod  and they were back on track again. This had to be the place with the portal.

Jessica walked to the end of the alleyway and turned right. The three followed once she disappeared behind the corner. Silently, yet quickly to not lose sight of her.

But when they peeked around the corner, all they saw was a dead end and Jessica nowhere to be seen.

“Huh? Where did she go…?” Sarah whispered.

“The portal must be somewhere in here…” Nicole replied.

“Right… then let’s–” Erika was about to say, but was interrupted.

“Let’s follow the demon general into a dark abandoned street where there’s no witnesses,” Jessica’s voice resounded right behind them. They all jumped and turned around to see her leaning on the wall in the alleyway, blocking their escape path. “How very smart… Are you asking me to do unspeakable things to you?” She put on an evil smirk as she eyed Erika.

Ignoring the implied innuendo, Sarah shouted back. “Jessica! You little shit! What are you planning?!”

“Planning?” She quirked her eyebrow. “Why, the destruction of the magical girls, of course. Isn’t that obvious?”

“But why?!” Erika asked, desperation seeping into her voice. “This can’t be because of your dad! You hate him! And if he’s a demon general, wouldn’t that make the demons your enemy?”

Jessica scoffed and shook her head. “Of course, it’s not because of my dumbass dad. He’s irrelevant.”

“Then why?!”

Jessica looked Erika dead in the eye. “And why would I tell you? It’s not like you even have anything to do with all this. I don’t know what you are to the magical girls, but you aren’t them. So no matter how much I love your cute face, since you aren’t one, I have no business with you.” She shrugged.

Erika sputtered, baffled how Jessica still managed to sneak in flirting in the middle of her evil villain speech. In the meantime, Nicole and Sarah glanced at each other, and made a decision after a few seconds of silent communication.

“So…” Nicole began. “If we were the magical girls, you would tell us?”

Jessica frowned at that, seemingly confused by the question.

“No. They are my enemies. Why would I ever tell them my plans?”

“For a peaceful resolution!” Erika replied. “Wouldn’t you want that? Or has the trial really changed who you are…?”

There was a slight shift in Jessica’s expression. So brief and so tiny that most people wouldn’t notice. But the three weren’t most people. They knew Jessica both as their fan and as their friend.

“Oh, the trial changed me, that’s for sure. Pledging your soul to the demon ancestors does that, you know?”

“Bullshit,” Sarah called out. “We know you, Jessica. And sure, maybe you got a power-up after becoming a general, we could clearly see that, but that’s all! Other than that you’re still the same Jessica as before! You don’t actually hate the magical girls! All of this is just an act!”

Jessica’s expression slipped once again. She scowled at Sarah’s words.

And then, as if to mask that, she turned to glare at Sarah and stretched her magic, summoning her spear and pointing it at her. The three tensed up.

“Oh? And what if instead I’ve been acting before and only now am I showing my true colors? What if you don’t know me at all, hmm? What if I hated the magical girls from the start?!”

“Because–!” Sarah began and summoned her own magical weapon before immediately transforming into Pretty Spark. Jessica froze, her eyes turned into saucers, and her mouth hung open. “I know the way you look at us! I know how much you idolized us! And that was never an act! That would have been impossible if you really hated us!”

There was a moment of silence as Jessica gaped at her friend who apparently had been the Pretty Spark all along.

“Wha–”

Erika and Nicole took the moment to summon their own weapons and transform, causing Jessica to gape even more.

Another moment of silence, and the three were certain they’d short-circuited her brain. She stared at them, unmoving, unbreathing, her spear suspended in the air, still pointing at Spark, but without any malice or intent behind it.

She had turned into a statue.

“Uhm… Jessica?” Flame asked.

That finally snapped out the statue back into the land of the living.

“Wha-- How… What the fuck?!” she yelled as her eyes darted between the trio. “It was you all along?!”

Her hand holding the spear dropped. It stabbed into the ground as she leaned on it. “That means, back then… and that time… And that time… Oh and that makes so much sense now…” she mumbled to herself.

The three exchanged a look of concern – or amusement in Spark’s case.

“So, yeah.” Sarah shrugged. “Like I said, we know you. In more ways than you thought, actually. So we know that this whole being evil is an act,” she declared.

Jessica, pulled out of her mumbling, stared at the trio. Her brain seemed to still be processing the reveal as her eyes slid from one magical girl to the next.

A silent moment later, she seemed to have come to a decision, slowly stood up from leaning on the spear, put the spear away, and then lifted up her hand in the trio’s direction.

Sarah frowned at the action, and realized too late what it meant.

Concentrated dark magic gathered on Jessica’s palm quicker than any of them could react and burst out in a wave in their direction.

“Wha–?!”

“Firewall!”

Without their designated tank support, Erika did her best to block the brunt of the attack, the other two doing what they could to help.

But surprisingly, the spell had almost no power behind it and washed over them without harming them, and once it did, Jessica was gone once again.

“Oh, fucking hell! She ran!” Spark swore. “Again!”

“Well…” Bloom muttered. “I think that at least confirms that she’s just acting, right?”

“Yeah,” Flame agreed, a pained frown etched into her face. “But why?”