My First Team Meeting

Gretchen pulls the van into the parking lot of a Mendys, the parking lot isn’t too full so we’ve come at a good time when they aren’t too crowded. We all climb out from the backseat one by one and catch up with Tikki who’s already started to open the door. Tikki finds us a table and we all sit down, two on either side with Gretchen on the end. Gretchen takes all our orders with a little notepad and walks off to order it all leaving us to chat.
“So, has anyone got any team names already?” Tikki asked. King began to speak but before he could even get a word out Clarice had covered his mouth.
“Okay hear me out on this.” Marcia begins, “So if we go by powers we’ve got: My Beast Transformation, Soph’s Fool’s Knight, Clarice’s Pulsar, and then Tikki’s Bone Flames. Powers don’t entirely go together in a nice category, right?”
The group nods and shrugs. She continues, “But if you take Tikki and Clarice’s normal appearance, then add in Soph and I’s powers, you get like a monster mash of monsters.”
“My normal appearance is totally normal!” Clarice retorts, rising from her seat. King tilts his head, “If anything her appearance is raised by being connected to me and my presence.” Clarice stares at him, then slowly returns to her seat. She slumps admitting defeat.
“Ahem.” Marcia coughs, “So what sort of team names could you give to a group of a Werewolf, Mummy, Haunted empty Suit of Armor, and like an Alien puppet thing?”
“Certainly not the Monster Mash Guardians.” Tikki chuckles. I nod in agreement, arms crossed.Marcia strokes her chin, “Well what about Monster Girl Guardians?”
Clarice and I shook our heads. “It just doesn’t seem right. Do we have to include the word “Guardian”?”“I don’t think so?” Tikki shrugged. “I mean I’m trying to think of other groups and besides our individual Guardian names I think you can name yourself anything that seems appropriate.”
“Okay then!” Marcia grinned, clapping her hands together excitedly. “So the question becomes what can we do with “Monster” as a team name!”
Tikki reaches over to my whiteboard in front of me, tapping on its corner. “Got any ideas to share?”I awkwardly shift in my seat, but I do scribble down an idea and thrust it around to show the others. “Monster Coven ____”
The others read over my board, King nods in approvement. “So the blank is for one more word, right?” Clarice asked. I nod.
“Monster Coven Cerberus!” Marcia shouted pointing at me with a thrust. Tikki shook her head, “You’re the only one here that comes close to being a dog.” “Hey!” Marcia responded. 
Tikki scratched at some bandages on her face, “Look what about we make up a word that sounds cool. That way looking us up is easier in search engines.”
“Wait!” Marcia shouted, turning with a shock, “Is that what Vontavia is!? I’ve always wondered what it meant! I just thought you guys used some big fancy words!”
Tikki threw her hands out to her sides in a large shrug, “What can I say. Guar- Holy came up with that. And it totally did work, super easily searchable.”I didn’t want to say anything but I also thought it was just some fancy word I didn’t recognize.
“What about combining something with Marrow since it’s the name of our town?” Clarice proposed. “Maybe keep the “mar” or the “ow” for our new word.” 
“Grrr that’s too hard I can’t think of anything!” Marcia rubbed her head in her hands. “Plus “Mar” is totally just half my name so it would make it weird!” She had a good point.“I wish we could do something with the first letters of all our names, but man, nothing you can do with “TSCM”!” Clarice sighed. King stared into her soul, even I could tell the message was something about why wasn’t there a “K” in there for King.
The table became silent as everyone thought hard about another suggestion. Man names are hard! I keep thinking of ideas but none of them seem like that good of a name. Maybe something fantasy sounding? Or perhaps we drop the “Monster” part. We fight Spawn, maybe we could put that in the name? No, the public doesn’t know Magical Girls and Spawn are related in any way. We’re practically cousins sorta, hatching from the same breed of cocoon. Haha, we truly are the same breed. I write out my next idea, turning my board towards the others. “The Coven Breed”
The other looked my name over on my whiteboard. Tikki lets out a “Hm.”
“The coven is witches, right? So that’s a reference to us being magical monsters?” Clarice asked. Her hand rose above her, King leaning into her face, “Yes. Keep up girl!”
I wave my hands trying to tell her the question was fine. “And “Breed” fits nicely with us being some sort of new type of half human half Spawn creation.” Marcia said approvingly.
“You slap “Guardians” at the end of that and you may call yourselves that.” I turn around and see Gretchen has returned with two handfuls of food on trays.
“The Coven Bred Guardians then?” Tikki asked, changing to a past tense. “Yeah if we gotta have Guardian in there that certainly flows better.” She concluded with a nod.
I hold my board up again, “ARE YOU ALL OKAY WITH THAT NAME??” My board is met with grins from my teammates. “Sounds good to me!” Clarice smiled.“Names only mean so much, so it's perfectly fine here!” Marcia agreed, more focused on the food in Gretchen’s hand.“There we go then!” Tikki patted me on the side. “Can’t argue with that!” She put a bandaged hand held out into the center of the table, the others looked at her then instinctively placed their hand in with hers as well. I panicky caught up and put my hand on theirs. “Okay girls, from this day forth our team shall be known as The Coven Bred Guardians! I look forward to fighting alongside you all! Let’s do our best!” With that all our hands went up into the air in a cheer.
“Very good, but come along the food is getting cold.” Gretchen began biting into a hamburger. We all followed suit and grabbed the food we requested, chowing down on this momentous feast to celebrate the start of our lives under the new name!I finished my meal and dumped my trash, the others all finished up as well. I sat enjoying the feeling of being full, I felt like I hadn’t had a good meal in forever. That then made me realize I couldn’t name the last time I had something to eat. In fact, I can’t think of a time since I woke up from the cocoon where I had eaten anything at all besides some pills.
I wrote down a question on my board, this was worth getting my marker a little greasy from my fingers.“WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU GUYS ATE? I THINK THIS IS MY FIRST MEAL??”
Tikki and Clarice turned to look at my board, Marcia lay back in her chair seemingly in a food coma. “Oh gosh Sophia, this your first time experiencing eating as a Magical Girl? You’re in for a treat.” Clarice grinned.
“Don’t tease her Clarice, everyone has to learn eventually.” Tikki shook her head, she got up from her chair and came over to my side, taking my hand with both her hands. “Sophia darling, you are correct that we don’t eat very often, and before I tell you this next part why don’t you try and focus on the good feelings you had eating that food. Okay?” I feel incredibly nervous as I slowly nod my head to show I understand. “Our new anatomy as Magical Girls leaves us not requiring human food anymore, you might have already noticed your lack of ever needing to visit a restroom. Basically to put it in simple terms, our bodies now subsist off of a chemical released when we kill Spawn. One kill can feed you for almost a whole month, so to not let anything go to waste MGI collects all that valuable chemical and packages them up as pills for us. Understand so far?”
So that’s what the pills are about! Here I was thinking there might have been something nefarious about them! I give her a nod, and try to go for my whiteboard but she stops me. “Okay so your next question is probably about what happens now that we’ve all eaten human food which our bodies don’t need, right?” She wasn’t wrong, that was what I was about to ask basically. “Okay, here’s the curveball.” She takes a deep breath. “Basically-”
Marcia, annoyed at her taking so long, turns to us and shouts, “Get on with it! Soph you’re going to have to vomit it all up tonight and there’s going to be some freaky Spawn acid from your Spawn stomach!”
“Marcia! I was about to say that!!!” Tikki shouts at her. She turns to me to begin assuring me it’s going to be okay but I can’t seem to hear anything as my legs go shaky. All I can think about is how much I don’t wanna vomit. I hate that, hate hate hate. So freaking gross.
Clarice comes to my other side as I slowly drop to my knees with terror. Both her and Tikki comforting me on either side. Then another hand grabs me, someone reaches under my arms and lifts me up to my feet. I turn around and Fool’s Knight is standing behind me looking down at me with its empty helmet eyes. I give it a shocked look shouting with surprise in my mind. It gives me an odd gut growling noise as it tousles my hair. This for some reason calms me down and he disappears as quickly as he appeared.
Tikki and Clarice have both climbed back to their feet, both seem as surprised as me to see Fool’s Knight appear. “You feeling any better..?” Clarice asks sheepishly, not sure how to react.
I grab my board off the table and draw a smiley face and give her and Tikki a thumbs up.Tikki brushes my hair down fixing it back. “Good to hear, if need be I can stay with you tonight until the act is finished if you need. Hold your hair out of the way and be emotional support.” I start to make another thumbs up, but then stop and just leap onto her pulling her into a hug. “AH!” Tikki did not expect that and took a step back, nearly falling backwards.
“Enough horseplay girls! Back in the van!” Miss Gretchen ordered as she marched out to the van. I let go of Tikki and shyly head for the door pushing it and immediately slamming into it. I step back as I rub my head and pull, successfully opening the door and making my escape.
I take a seat at the far side of the backseat, Clarice and Marcia following after me. “You okay Sophia? That sounded like it hurt..” Clarice asked.I make an “Ok” hand sign.
The van takes off and we head back to the Marrowvile office. It’s a quiet drive back besides Marcia humming some song or tune. Gretchen tells us we need to pick up the posters we are gonna be hanging up from the office. Apparently the team has already gone ahead while we were eating and made them with our new name. It makes me feel like I’m part of something very professional. 
A ringing in the van makes Marcia pause her humming tune. Gretchen’s right hand reaches down for a phone built into the console, Tikki in the passenger seat is leaning in trying to hear what is being said on the other side as Gretchen brings the phone to her ear. She bobs her head as she listens to the voice on the line, only saying “Okay. Understood.” before she places the phone back in the console. She looks up in the rearview at us saying, “Hope you girls are ready, we got a Spawn on the south side of town.”
A Spawn! A real Spawn! Not one trapped inside the testing lab, a real one that’s out there and destroying stuff! My first real battle as a Magical Girl! I’m nervous of course, but also brimming with excitement to actually get to fight a Spawn with Fool’s Knight.
“Sophia and Marcia I want you two to stay in the van for this one. I want Clarice to take care of this one with Tikki on support. Understand?”
My heart sinks. I’m about to write a response asking why but Tikki seems to sense it and answers before I can write anything. “Just watch and learn for this first battle, okay Sophia? Next time you can totally fight it, just see what it’s like having to fight a natural Spawn in a town with potentially people around.”
I reluctantly sigh and nod. Marcia wraps an arm around me hanging on my shoulder, “I’ll point out all the mistakes Clarice makes while she fights, we’ll have a great time!”
“Please...Don’t.” Clarice sighs. King pats her on the head with his tiny green hand, “Not too worry Clarice I’ll make quick work of this foe, no damage will come to your new overalls.” Clarice’s frown curves into a slight smile. “Thanks King.”
“Are your overalls seriously what had you so worried?” Marcia prods.
“Yes! They are brand new I’ll have you know! Had I known there would be any dirty work I would have worn something I didn’t mind dirtying.”
“They’re overalls, aren’t they made for working?” Marcia was grinning ear to ear.
“Well these ones are for looking good in!” Clarice’s cheeks were beginning to turn pink.
“Trying to impress a boy or something? Trying to get some boys hanging your poster in their closet?” She was laughing at this point, swinging her legs.
“Maybe! It doesn’t matter! So what if I want some fans with my poster! We all need fans now don’t we!” King was petting Clarice’s cheek.
“Enough girls!” Gretchen shouted back at us.Silence fell once again across the van.
As we enter the south side of town I can’t help imagining what it’s going to be like seeing a real Spawn. I also really can’t wait to see how Clarice and King fight! It’s a mystery I’m excited to solve.The sounds of panic and evacuation begin to be audible. We’re getting near the danger zone.King is shadow boxing in the air as he warms himself up, Clarice is doing some breathing exercise. Tikki for her part doesn’t seem to be acting any differently, she is the most experienced of all of us so I suppose she just doesn’t get nervous anymore.The van comes to a stop. “You’re up.” Gretchen barks, Tikki jumps out of her door and Clarice climbs out from the back. The two of them take off around the corner heading towards the sounds of terror.