Peanut Allergy

Desdemona “Demona” Edmon’s alarm clock beeped and booped more than a foulmouthed character during a pre-watershed broadcast. That could only mean one thing, and one thing only – School. Oh, how Demona detested school. Even the word made her feel like she was going to projectile vomit.

“Craaaaap,” the young girl groaned, pulling herself out of bed. “I don’t wanna go…”

Demona sighed as she changed out of her pajamas and into more appropriate schoolwear, grabbing the hair-ties that she always kept beside her bed and placing them on top of her small horns. Her peers didn’t know that she was half-demon, and she wanted to keep it that way.

“Daddy, I’m off to school now,” she called out to her father, putting her shoes on and departing in the process.

Lesson 1 – Peanut Allergy

Demona’s school was far from ordinary. Instead of studying the quadratic formula, the periodic table of elements or some other BS that would never be of any use to her, Demona was studying magic. More specifically, she was studying how to become a magical girl. Of course, this wasn’t a career path that Demona had chosen herself. While she was currently able to keep her life as a supervillain hidden, that wasn’t always the case.

Once upon a time, she completely snapped, losing agency over her actions and letting loose on the town with her demon powers. Due to her adolescence, Demona was spared from the death penalty, under the condition that she was to undergo rehabilitation. And thus, she was entered into the prestigious Spelarus Girls’ Academy of Magic and the Occult, under the school’s rehab program for former-criminals. As far as her father and her school knew, she had given up her evil ways in her pursuit to become the best magical girl that she could be. Bleh.

×××

Demona huffed as she took a seat. The only thing she hated more than school was her archnemesis Carrotcake, but only by a hair. Being part of the rehabilitation program made her rather unpopular among her peers, who were training to fight villains just like her. She knew her place in the pecking order, and she owned it – She was at the bottom of the social ladder and was the least popular girl in school, other than…

“Heeeeey, guys,” a bubbly voice called out, as its owner burst through the classroom door. “Whoopsie, I showed up late again! Super sorries~!”

“Nabokov,” Demona groaned through gritted teeth, as the scatterbrained girl sat down beside her.

Lolita “Peanut” Nabokov. She was somewhat of an… eccentric girl. Light of no-one’s life, and certainly not the fire of anybody’s loins, she was clumsy, loud and just generally annoying. Her mere existence drove Demona round the bend, but since Peanut was one of the few people who actually liked her, Demona had to tolerate the other girl’s antics.

“Hey, bestie,” Peanut grinned, digging her elbow into Demona’s ribcage.

“Keep your voice down,” the demon whispered. “We’re in class.”

“Hmm,” Peanut muttered, grabbing a sheet of paper and writing something on it. The second that Demona turned away, she felt a paper airplane crash into her head.

“Gah! Nabokov, you’re sitting right beside me,” Demona snapped. “How stupid are you‽ You could’ve, I dunno… HANDED ME THE SHEET OF PAPER LIKE A NORMAL PERSON‽”

“Desdemona,” the teacher growled, “I am in the middle of a lesson here! Don’t make me send you to detention again…”

“S-sorry, sir…”

Demona shot Peanut a death glare and mouthed some obscenities at her.

“Ooh, are we playing charades?” Peanut asked enthusiastically.

“The only ‘charade’ here is your intelligence,” the demon grumbled. “Honestly, I have no idea how you managed to get into this prestigious academy…”

“I’ll have you know that I placed at the bottom of my class in entry exams,” Peanut retorted.

“That’s not something to brag about, Nabokov!”

“Hey, I still passed, didn’t I‽”

“Yeah, barely!”

The two girls argued back and forth for the remainder of the class. Unsurprisingly, they were sent to detention for the rest of the school day.

×××

“Sigh,” Demona’s dad frowned.

“Did you just… audibly say the word ‘sigh’?”

“You can’t keep getting yourself sent to detention,” he huffed. “It’s very unbecoming of a magical girl.”

“Right, I’m a magical girl,” Demona scoffed.

“Not with that attitude you’re not,” her father scolded.

Well, yeah, that was kind of the point. Demona would rather die than become an enforcer of good. She would much prefer to spend her time in detention with Peanut than attend some class about how to wear a puffy dress without making her butt look big, or whatever it was that her teachers were trying to lecture her about.

“Look, Demona sweety, I’m worried about you,” the girl’s father said. “If you keep getting yourself into trouble, your grades are gonna tank. I just want you to be the best magical girl that you can be.”

The man tenderly placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, to which she promptly shoved it aside.

“Well maybe I don’t want to be a magical girl? I never asked to be a part of this stupid program…”

“But, honey--”

The demon girl walked off to her room, leaving her father scratching his head in confusion.

×××

“What’s the old man’s problem?” Demona asked in frustration as she threw herself onto her bed. “Doesn’t he remember what happened to Mom? How could he possibly think I’d want to be a magical girl‽”

As Demona lay on her bed, she slowly began to drift to sleep. Thoughts of her classmates entered her brain – Lolita, Priyanka, Neveah… When she finally managed to take over the world, would Demona have to fight them? Would she be able to fight them?

And so, the rest of Demona’s day was spent pondering about such a hypothetical scenario, before she fell asleep and had a dream about noodles.