This Doesn't Feel Like the Right Place

The air outside was thick and tense. As the sun set, eerie shadows of buildings and street lamps stretched long across the streets. It cast the whole city in a scary dappling of light and dark, only made scarier by the fact that it was completely empty.

Starlight Heart was only sixteen, but she felt the responsibility of being the oldest one in her little group weigh on her every time Lilylala or Clarion tightened their grips on her hand,

“So, what are your powers, exactly?” Starlight Heart asked Lilylala and Clarion.

“Well, it’s not really my power. A fairy gave me this just to borrow for a year.” Lilylala fished that teal and yellow device out of her pocket again. It looked like a radio, but rounded and plasticky like a child’s toy. “But it lets me become a grown-up and do all kinds of different things. I mostly use it to help solve problems! But I thought it would be good to be a detective right now since, um, I don’t really know what’s happening.”

Starlight Heart gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “That’s a good idea! We definitely need to find some clues about what’s going on here.”

Clarion beat her wings, and in the dark, Starlight Heart could see that they glowed faintly when they moved, shedding little shining dots of pixie dust.

“I just do regular magic. I don’t really know what you mean by powers.” Clarion said with a sniffle.

Starlight Heart kicked herself internally. She had been focusing on Liliylala since she was young, but wherever this girl came from, it was clearly a long way away. She was a fairy, but not like Starlight Heart’s mascot fairy. A real life fairytale type fairy.

Starlight Heart tried to keep her voice gentle. “I don’t think anyone else here does the same kind of magic as you. Can you tell me what kind of things you normally do?”

“Um, I take care of the forest. I help the princess. Yesterday, I used my magic to ask the moss to show me where a bunny family had gone. We thought they got eaten, but they were just taking a trip to the lake! I feel bad for that bear the princess hit on the nose! But that’s my princess, she’s always a little stubborn!” As she talked about her home, Clarion became more and more animated. Starlight Heart breathed a little sigh of relief.

She wanted to keep the girls in good spirits. For the sake of their emotions, yes, but also because it would be easier to get them to help her out that way. And having a task to accomplish kept people from freaking out in the face of something extraordinarily bad. She had learned that the hard way, but, well, you tended to get pretty good at crowd control when you kept having to fight monsters in the middle of beaches and theme parks and your own high school. Asking a frightened bystander to film for the school’s insurance purposes gave them something else to focus on, even if the school never really needed the video.

“How far into the air can you fly?” Starlight Heart asked.

“As high as I need to, I think. I’ve never tested it, but, um, I can at least fly to the top floors of the castle. So maybe like that?” Clarion pointed to a building near them. It wasn’t the very tallest Tokyo had to offer, but it was honestly higher than Starlight Heart had been expecting.

“Okay, here’s the plan. You should fly up into the sky and scan all of the streets for people, or anything that seems strange, while Lilylala and I search on the ground.” Starlight heart pointed down a street to their left. “We’ll head in this direction. You go the opposite way for a little bit, then come back and meet us again and tell us what you find.”

“I think everything here is strange, but… Okay. I’ll try my best.” Clarion let go of Starlight Heart’s hand and beat her wings a few times, starting to rise into the air. Before she got too high, she gave Starlight Heart a worried look. “Don’t go too far without me, please.”

“We won’t. Thank you for helping, Clarion. You’re being brave.” Starlight Heart said. Clarion gave a small smile at that.

“Good luck!” Lilylala added. Clarion smiled at her too, then flew away in the opposite direction. Starlight Heart squeezed Lilylala’s hand and kept the two of them walking in as straight a line as she could, walking away from that abandoned building they had woken up in. She figured that at some point, far away from that scary place with the disembodied voice, she would find something normal.

The two of them walked in half-silence for a while. Despite their best attempts to search, the streets were empty. She thought back to the announcements in the warehouse. That voice had told all of them to be magical girls, or something like that, but how were they supposed to do that if there was no one around who needed help, and no monsters to fight?

Starlight Heart tried to break up the tension by asking Lilylala about her life and home, but she was a little too nervous to really carry a conversation. Starlight Heart couldn’t really blame her, though.

She was in the middle of asking Lilylala’s opinion on cookies when she ran into a building or something. She took a step back, refocusing on the obstacle in front of her, but- there was nothing there? She stepped forward again, and again, she felt something hard blocking her path. Now that she was focused, she could see a faint red shimmer in the air whenever her body made contact with the invisible obstacle. She stepped to the side, feeling out the air in front of her, but it extended as far as she walked.

“There’s a wall…” Lilylala said to her.

“It’s some kind of force field. Keeping us trapped here. Sh- crap.” Starlight Heart remembered she was talking to a ten year old. Even in the most dire of situations, she didn’t want to send her back home knowing some new curse words. What would her parents think? And even now, Starlight Heart was still sure that they would all escape and get back home somehow. It would just require a bit more creative thinking.

“Let’s turn around.” Starlight Heart said. “We can find Clarion and ask what she’s seen. Maybe she can even fly over the wall.”

Privately, she doubted that. Whoever made this didn't seem like the kind of person to let them escape that easily, but it was still worth a try. Lilylala seemed to agree.

It was scarcely a few minutes before they found Clarion, making a beeline straight for them in the sky. She was full of an energy they hadn’t seen before, shedding glitter as she flew excited circles in the air.

“What happened?” Starlight Heart called out to her. She skidded to a stop in the air, flitting above them like a hummingbird that refused to perch.

Clarion’s voice burst out strong and confident, ringing down to Starlight Heart and Lilylala as clear as a bell.

“The forest! I found the forest!”