I'm Blue, Does That Mean That I'll Die?!

There I was, the only person standing between this evil magical girl and my coworker. Judging from her transformation sequence and the fact that she had a Hollow, I figured it was a safe assumption that she had one of the Flower Powers. Her words “By the power of ice and snow, I'll destroy you!” shot through me like an icy arrow.

“Listen, we don't want any trouble…” I tried to tell Marie. “Just let us go, and we'll just forget this whole thing ever happened.”

“Oh, but darling, why would I ever do such a thing?” Marie asked us in the fakest sweetheart voice I ever heard. “You're a special prize for the Dark Master.”

“Special prize?” I asked in response. “I don't know what you're talking about!”

“Don't play dumb, Flower Girl,” Marie scolded me. “You've been causing a lot of trouble for our Coven since your powers awakened.”

“T- A- Ayame, what is she t- talking about?” Masuda asked me, full of fear in her voice.

“Nothing,” I quickly answered. “Look, you must have confused me for someone else.”

“You seem to have had a lapse in memory, darling,” Marie then told me with icy cold sarcasm in her voice. “Perhaps this will help jog your memory. Eternal Freeeeeze!!” With a shower of tea leaves, she then shot a bolt of ice at Masuda's feet, without any dancing, no less! In less than a second, Chihiro Masuda's feet were frozen to the concrete, with the ice slowly creeping up the rest of her body.

“A- Ayame… I suddenly feel very c- c- cold…” Masuda told me.

“If you had bothered to bring your Hollow with you, you might have been able to save your friend,” Marie taunted me. “Now your lies will kill her. When the ice completely covers her body, her heart will no longer be able to sustain its own heartbeat.”

I hated to admit it, but Marie was right… Trying to keep my normal life and my magical life separate was only putting the people I care about in harm's way.

“Summon H-” I tried to chant, but something had zapped me before I could complete the spell. Whatever it was, it didn't come from Marie's direction. I then saw a group of hooded figures, most likely her fellow Coven members, begin to surround us in every direction. We were trapped…

“Visceron,” Marie called out to one of the hooded sorcerers, “do the thing.”

“As you wish, mistress.” The hooded figure named Visceron then chanted “Render Pain.” Suddenly, every little bit of my body shouted out in pain all at once. I tried to fight against it, but I was no longer in control over my own body. Visceron, while dancing the twist, turned my entire body to face my coworker, forcing me to watch as the ice spell slowly continued to creep over Masuda's body.

“The Mesmer doesn't work on magical creatures,” Marie explained, “but torture does. Now, you will watch your friend die due to your hubris.”

“Chee…” I struggled to say through the tears and the intense pain. “I'm… sorry…”

“T- This isn't your f- f- fault, A- Ayame…” Masuda told me. “W- We got in a l- little b- bit over our h- heads… D- Don't b- b- blame yourself…”

I could feel the individual bones in my body grind and pop against each other. My skin started turning blue due to the bruising the torture was causing. I hovered about a meter above the ground, helpless to do anything about my own situation, let alone Masuda's. The ice by now had crept up over her waist.

The only thing I could hope for now is that someone would intervene…

After a couple more minutes of torture, I was barely able to keep myself awake. My own body wanted to give up on itself. But I couldn't give up… Even though I needed a miracle… I knew it couldn't end here!

Without even a second thought, I had allowed the magic to completely take over my body. But something strange happened; instead of the pain getting worse, it completely went away. The torture curse had released its grip on me. Now that I was back on the ground, I had turned to look at my attackers. A large purple bubble sitting inside an iris flower hovered between me and them, absorbing all of the power of the torture curse.

“That's impossible!” Marie protested. “No one's ever been able to withstand that kind of magical torture.”

I wasn't even sure how I was able to do it. One moment I was in immense, completely intolerable pain, and the very next, I was back on the ground, pain-free. Upon observing the bubble, I realized it was very similar to the bubble I supposedly cast in order to save Aichi from the truck when we first met.

“Summon Hollow,” I said while performing a little bunny hop dance. Aichi immediately appeared at my side.

“Ayame?!” Aichi asked. “What's the troub- Oh, dear Frith! You look absolutely horrible ~woof! What happened?!”

“No time to explain,” I told him in response. “Flower Power! Rise up, pretty pretty please!”

“Stop them!” Marie ordered the hooded sorcerers. But it was too late for them.

The iris sigil appeared at my feet, and slowly rose as it transformed my outfit into the battle outfit, hakama first, then kimono second. The bows and ribbons were next to appear, beautiful as always. Finally, my staff appeared in front of me. I was ready to fight. On top of that, the transformation had completely healed me from all the damage the torture spell dealt to me.

I raised my non-staff hand into the air. With a couple of twirls, I said, “I'm the cute defender of justice! Magical Intern Ayame!” Completing my pose, I twirled my staff a couple of times, did one more spin, and said, “For the sake of all that is cute and fluffy, stop this evil at once! Please?” That please was accompanied by me cupping my hands together and attempting to do a pleading puppy face.

“~woof! That never gets old!” Aichi complimented me on my entrance.

“Aichi, have you got a spell that can free her from that ice?” I asked him, pointing to the nearly completely frozen Masuda.

“Better yet, ~woof, you have a spell that can free her from that ice,” Aichi explained. “Just use your Flower Shower spell ~woof.”

“Render Pain!” All of the hooded sorcerers chanted at once, each of them dancing the twist in order to cast the spell.

“Pulse Field!” Aichi quickly responded, casting a large shield between us and them.

I turned around to face Masuda. I reckoned she was too cold to even notice my transformation. “I would ask you to hold still, Masuda, but you're kinda already doing that.” A few leaps and some spins later, iris petals were now shooting out of my staff right at the ice, shattering it on contact, and freeing Masuda from the curse. Unfortunately, the ice spell had already taken a considerable toll on Masuda's strength, rendering her unable to move.

“Two against thirteen,” Aichi told me. “I don't like those odds, ~woof.”

“You wouldn't happen to have a sleep spell handy, would you?” I asked him.

“Better yet, we can both cast it together ~woof,” Aichi replied. “Just follow my lead.”

Following Aichi's lead, we lined up for a line dance. Slide to the left! Slide to the right! Take it back! One hop! Two hops! With all the appropriate steps performed, the electric slide, to be precise, we gathered up the mana necessary to cast “Sleep Pollen!!” all over the battlefield. With our combined magical power, the sleeping spell was way too powerful for the hooded sorcerers, causing them to fall asleep immediately upon contact. However, being someone with one of the Flower Powers, Marie was much more resistant to the sleeping spell.

“Blizzard Bluster!!!” In a shower of snowfall, the sleeping spell got knocked back at us!

“Aichi! She's reversed our spell!” I shouted through the wind and the ice.

“Don't worry about it, ~woof,” Aichi insisted. “We cast the spell, so it can't affect us!”

“Did you two really think some low level sleeping spell could defeat me?” Marie asked us scornfully.

“No, we just figured it would help even the odds,” I answered with a bit of a smile on my face.

Before either of us could react, though, Marie had zapped me with the “Eternal Freeze” spell, locking my feet into place. For good measure, she then cast it again, speeding up the process of me becoming frozen solid.

“Ayame!” Aichi shouted.

“Don't worry about me,” I told him. “Flower Shower!”

I tried to cast the same spell I used to break Masuda free from the ice, but nothing happened. Marie began cackling like a witch once again, reveling in my apparent failure.