My First Fight!

Tikki and Clarice are out of sight from where the van is parked. I look at Gretchen but she’s showing no signs of getting out, a magazine in her hands taking her full attention. I thought we were going to be watching the fight? I turn and look at Marcia who seems oblivious to what I am thinking. I write out “ARE WE GOING TO WATCH THE FIGHT?” on my board and show it to her.
My message seems to snap her out of whatever daydream she was in. “Oh yeah! We totally should try and find somewhere to see the fight from!”Gretchen shoos us off with her right hand as she continues reading.
We climb out from the van, Marcia starts walking in the direction Tikki and Clarice disappeared in, I follow after her hoping she knows where she is going. She wanders down the street scanning our surroundings, she spots something and picks up her speed. I keep up with her as she enters into a parking garage. I don’t have the ability to ask where we are going or why since we are on the move, so all I can do is trust her. We climbed two flights of stairs into the garage’s third floor roof. She walks over to the far side and has a satisfied expression. “We’ll be able to see from here Soph.”
Joining her at the edge I spot Clarice holding King in front of her pointed at a strange looking man? It takes me a second from this distance to make out the discrepancies with the person in front of her. The wrong way he moves as he breathes, the swaying, and the size of his upper body frame vs his lower half. So that’s a humanoid Spawn!? I knew they didn’t always appear like beasts, but this is the first time in person I’ve seen one that looked so human!
I can’t hear what Clarice is saying from here, but I certainly hear the growling scream the Spawn makes as it begins to charge at her. Clarice's left hand throws something at him as she holds her stance with King in front of her. They look like little balls?
“Watch what happens after she throws those marbles Soph! This is the cool part next!” Marcia cheers.
I can make out two marbles in the air, what’s odd is they aren’t moving? They froze in place in the air in front of the Spawn. The Spawn for its part doesn’t slow down and charges forward running into the space between the two marbles, as he passes he comes to a stop making a loud screaming roar. His arms are suddenly at his sides, held out practically touching the two marbles on either side.
I spin around putting my face next to Marcia’s with a shocked look, trying my best to get her to explain more. “Move your face goofball, you don’t wanna miss anything!” She pokes my cheeks. “Clarice and King are able to give objects gravitational pulls, so right now that Spawn is stuck between two small planetary pulls. Either the two pull him apart or he pulls them together and they make a…explosion thing.”
The Spawn's arms stretch out, they seem to be being ripped from his shoulders. What a scary power Clarice has! The Spawn screeches again, and suddenly his arms have ripped off being spun and clinging to the marbles, the Spawn free lunges forward right at Clarice! It’s jaw stretches and there are just so many bones in there, I slam my own eyes shut not wanting to see this Spawn bite down on Clarice.
There’s a loud whoosh sound and Marcia lets out a “Wooow”. I open my eyes and see the Spawn stumbling backwards armless and engulfed in flames. Looking back at Clarice I see she is unharmed sitting on the ground after being knocked off her feet, between her and the burning Spawn is a fireball in human form wagging its finger at the spawn. Is that…Tikki?
Tikki is not just slightly on fire, her power is nothing like I imagined when I heard about it. I know her bones light on fire, I know her skin melts as the flames pierce them like they were candle wax, but this is just unbearable to look at. Her bandages cover up so much of her face, but in the heart of the flames I can see the gleeful expression of a demon. Glowing white eyes beneath the flames, taking one step at a time towards the Spawn.
Three marbles fly across the air and freeze in space around the burning Spawn, then they begin orbiting around it. Stones and gravel slide across the ground towards the Spawn, it has begun to experience its own gravitational pull. This has a serious reaction with the flames covering the Spawn, they stop rising off of him, now balling up over his body, air being sucked in fueling the flames even hotter. All at once the Spawn is transformed into a ball of fire akin to a sun. If it is still screaming I can’t tell anymore, no sound escapes.
Tikki’s flames stop and she drops to her knees before crashing into the pavement. Clarice runs over to her side and cradles her in her arms.
“Come on Soph, let’s go help her. We gotta put something on those burns.” Marcia calls as she leaps up and takes off towards the stairs. I try to keep up with her but she’s incredibly fast compared to me at least. By the time I get to the ground floor and outside to where Clarice was, Marcia has already begun rubbing some sort of cream on Tikki. My attention is grabbed by what remains of the Spawn, no ash or flames, just a purple sparkling storm being encircled by the three marbles. It had burned up till it was just its pure chemicals I guess.
I come over to Tikki’s side to see if I can help apply whatever this cream is. Her bandages and clothes had burned right off, Marcia had already covered her with her windbreaker to not let her be so exposed. Without the bandages I could now see just how burned up her skin was, how deep and long the burns really were. Her hair somehow lies along the ground untied and unharmed. Marcia squirts some of the white cream into my palms, I rub it all along her legs wherever I can see bubbling flesh.

Gretchen finally arrives at the scene, although her attention is first towards the purple sparkling dust. “Clarice if you-” She begins but King understands immediately what she wants, he waves his little hand and the floating dust suddenly packs together under a tighter pressure, forming into a thickly packed ball. Gretchen catches it as it suddenly drops from where it had been floating, catching it inside a small jar. She pockets it and then finally turns her attention to Tikki’s condition.
“Marcia grab her legs, we’ll move her to the back of the van and get her back to the office for better medical attention.” I help holding her up between the two of them as we all make our way back to the van that is parked closer by now. We secure her in the trunk across a spinal board, strapping her in for safe keeping. She seemed in a relatively good mood for someone covered in burns, she didn’t say much, but she did give a crackling skin smile.
The van took off towards the office, Marcia took the vacant passenger seat while Clarice and I stayed in the backseat. “YOUR POWER IS REALLY IMPRESSIVE YOU TWO!” I hold up towards Clarice and King.
Clarice rubs her cheek shyly, “Shucks that wasn’t even really anything.” King nodded, “Wait till you see us collide two gravitational forces each orbiting in opposite directions!”I don’t know what that means exactly, but it sounds cool and so I give them a large smile and grin nodding.
It’s really cool how well Tikki and Clarice/King’s power can combo together like that. I try to think of any way me and Fool’s Knight could do anything like that, but I’ve got nothing. In the end I guess all I can really do is stronger offense, no crazy tricks to that. I suppose that’s just the power gap between a B like me and their A and S powers. Still, I won’t give up on combining forces for a special combo attack! I just gotta keep my eyes open and wait for an idea to strike me.
The van ride back becomes silent the rest of the way. I can’t make sounds obviously, and now neither can Tikki, but a silence falls over the others as well. I can’t help replaying myself complimenting Clarice and King, had they seemed off? My insecurities tell me I might have missed something, was this silence a somber one? Tikki was fine, right? This was technically our first win as The Coven Bred Guardians, even if it was only half the team in the battle! We should be celebrating the start to our bright future, this van should sound like a school bus headed back from a tournament where we won the conference! So why doesn’t it?
When I first met Tikki she was covered in bandages headed down to a medical bay for a check up, she must have gotten hurt a lot due to her power, this can’t be anything that out of the ordinary for her! Maybe Clarice and Marcia are just enjoying some restful silence? Clarice was just in a fight, and Marcia did a lot of running and helped carry Tikki, they might just be tired! Gretchen is silent too, but I already knew she wasn’t the most friendly sort of person.
I realize my chest is beating pretty heavily, thumping almost audible to me. I close my eyes and focus on my breaths, my heart rate slowing after some exhales. Has silence always made me this uncomfortable? I don’t remember feeling so shaken by silence any time in my room, so why do I feel like this in their company?
I sit there for a moment and compile my thoughts. After thinking about it I can only really come to a few conclusions. I think that it is true that I haven’t yet given myself time to grieve my voice. It seems like many Magical Girls grieve their lost boyhood, their lost lives, but I may be the first to have to grieve the capability of speech.
It really isn’t fair when I think about it, well no illness is I suppose. I had an idea of what life I was going to be able to live, and then one unavoidable sickness strikes me and I’ve lost everything? But if that wasn’t cruel enough I was born again like…this? To have my body change is one thing, to have my flesh reshaped while I lay unconscious inside a cocoon, but to then have that body fail to properly give me the means to voice myself? It just seems far too cruel. I have feelings, I want to voice them, I know what it feels like to be heard and now I have forever lost that. I would never have chosen to be born this way! It is as if I was born and lived in a world of color and now without any sin of my own I must now live in a world where I can never see color again. I have a right to feel frustrated! I-.
I think I miss singing.
I took it for granted in my past life, I should have enjoyed it more. I could have gone to karaoke, I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could have even gotten a group together and all gone together.Now, I sit among three amazing new friends, but they will never know my voice. If I wanted to tell them something spur of the moment I would first need to write it down, then try and get all of their attention for them to read it.If Clarice who is right beside me shut her eyes for just a moment I would have to shake her just to get her attention so she could hear me.
I think what truly has upset me is just that I’ve lost the ability to be in control. The conversation ends when they choose it to, I can’t speak to draw them back in. If someone were to take my board from me, to rip it from my fingers, I would only be able to do gestures to express myself. I feel powerless just thinking about it, but that just means I need to not let it happen. I could still learn ASL, management or whoever said not to but I could still choose to. It might let me communicate quicker, even if the others don’t know it they’ll eventually pick up small means. I nod to myself deciding this is what I want to do, I want to overcome this. I can’t just live in fear of these things, I need to be brave and face it head on as much as I can! I can be a better me!
The van pulls back into the parking garage of our building. Two workers are waiting for us to take Tikki off somewhere. We don’t get a chance to even ask to go with her, she just disappears in an instant as the workers carry her off.
Gretchen tells us all we can return to our rooms. We all take the elevator back upstairs, Clarice and Marcia say their goodbyes for the night and I make a similar gesture.
Entering into my room I want to plop right down onto my bed, but as I head for it I barely am able to curve my path towards my small trash can which I vomit into. I had forgotten about this coming. All the fighting had allowed the coming sickness to slip my mind.You don’t realize just how much you’ve eaten until it’s in this sickening form.
I passed out on the ground, I overdid it and my body just wasn’t able to keep up with me. My body is so much frailer than it was before, I have to learn this painful lesson now so I don’t ever have to experience this again.
In my floor sleep dreams I am able to speak again, I sing a song with the others on a stage surrounded by adoring fans. We are each adorned in a cute costume, each of us assigned a color for our costume to make us more recognizable. It feels nice hearing all those voices cheering my name. It was a very good dream.