Friday morning.

I knew I didn’t have much time before the game started, which meant I would need to skip my first handful of classes so that I could travel back to Canterlot after my meeting. She didn’t know I was coming, neither of them did, but when Photo Finish and I went back to her place the night before to strategize, we both agreed who we wanted to be on our team more than anyone. She wasn’t exactly who I was hoping for to be my first choice, but there was no doubt that she would completely level any of the competition we faced from Last Gambit.

Fleur De Lis, also known as the magical girl Night Seam. Her power: to turn anything she touched black.

Honestly, I had to negotiate with Photo Finish to make her our first priority. She was only the second most talented girl in Platinum City, just behind Marrow, who had not only better leadership skills, but had a much better power, and she knew how to use it better than anyone. The problem with that, though, was that I didn’t feel like I could ask Marrow to join our cause. Even if the fate of Equestria depended on it, I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for help from the person who had made my life a living hell until I moved away from Manehattan altogether.

Our destination was Crystal Prep Academy in the center of Manehattan, the rivals of my own school. Fleur De Lis, Lulu Lemon and Le Blanc all attended this prestigious academy, but my hope was to find Fleur De Lis as quickly as possible, avoid any confrontation from the other two and get out before I ran into any problems. Unfortunately since everyone wore a special school uniform at Crystal Prep, Photo Finish and I stuck out like a sore thumb, causing everyone’s eyes to turn in our direction as we walked through the corridors.

“Are we really sure we want to be here after all?” I asked, turning towards Photo Finish and trying not to notice the scowls the other kids were giving us.

“You vant to save Equestria, no?” she replied, facing forward as if none of their stares phased her. “We vill need help from experienced magical girls. If we are to be playing in Everfree City where zey are already familiar wiz ze area and our powers, zen we need to find magical girls who are already strong.”

“Right, but… They’re probably just going to say no anyway. Maybe we should just--”

“Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to come back home.”

I knew that voice, but I wish I didn’t. It carried the most alluring tone, like whenever she opened her mouth, her words were sung by a flock of birds singing the most beautiful songs in the world. Unfortunately, the person behind that voice was one of the most despicable human beings to ever walk the earth.

Or rather, one of the most despicable magical girls to ever walk the earth.

“Le Blanc,” Photo Finish said, addressing the person approaching us. “So good to see you again.”

Of course Le Blanc would be the first to find us. She had long, slender legs, beautiful, flowery white hair, a large chest, thin waist, clear, pink skin, and a face that seemed to be carved by angels. Everything about her was completely flawless. She was just as close to Lulu Lemon as Fleur De Lis was, which meant that if she was here, the other two had to be close by. Unfortunately for me, though, I didn’t want anything to do with her, even if she was the third most talented magical girl in Platinum City.

“Photo Finish! Tripsie.” She sounded less pleasant when she said my name, throwing me a dirty look that only I would see. “So what brings you two to Crystal Prep Academy? Have you two finally decided that you wanted to transfer?”

“We’re here for Fleur De Lis,” I said quietly but bluntly. “Do you know where she is?”

“Sorry. I don’t. Guess you made this trip here for nothing. How sad. Tata! I’ll miss you!”

She knew we weren’t leaving that easily, but that was all part of the game for her. She wanted to toy with me as much as she could until Lulu Lemon eventually showed up, who would take the bullying to an entirely new level. It honestly surprised me that she could be so openly hostile towards me in front of Photo Finish without a second thought, but at this point, it was probably just second nature for her.

“Le Blanc,” Photo Finish said with seriousness in her voice, making the preppy school girl turn her head with curiosity. “You know we vould not be here unless zis was serious. You know vut zis is about.”

She hesitantly rose a suspicious eyebrow, but then she smiled coyly, folding her arms in a way that couldn’t be more demeaning. “If that’s the case, then we should probably have Lulu here, don’t you think? I mean, if it is as serious as you’re making it out to be.”

Of course she wouldn’t make it easy. As Photo Finish looked in my direction, it seemed like she was communicating exactly what she was telling me the night before: we could still use Marrow. The last thing I wanted was to invite her into our plan to take on Last Gambit, but it sounded like Le Blanc was the gatekeeper to Fleur De Lis, and to get to her, we had to get permission from Lulu first. Maybe, though, there was something else we could do.

I tilted my head in Le Blanc’s direction, causing Photo Finish to raise an eyebrow in confusion, seemingly unable to pick up on the subtle cues I was trying to send her. Again, I rolled my eyes and tilted my head towards her again, looking at her with urgency in my eyes, and this time, Photo Finish’s mouth opened slightly, apparently able this time to pick up on my silent messages. When we turned back to Le Blanc, however, she was giving us both the stink eye, her face contorted in disgust and confusion.

“Uh… What are you two doing?”

“Actually, Mädchen,” Photo Finish began, smiling at the girl who was otherwise giving her a repulsed expression, “we ver hoping zat perhaps we could talk to you about somezing. You are quite talented yourself.”

Le Blanc’s face was slowly changing from disgust to curiosity, hesitantly becoming more open to what we were saying. “What is this about? I mean, I know what it’s about, but why do you need us? Can you not take care of it on your own?”

“We can’t,” I said humbly, bowing my head in humility. “There’s a girl in Canterlot who has some kind of crazy grudge against Platinum City. You wouldn’t know about it because Dis--*ahem* Because You-Know-Who wiped our memories. The main point is that if we don’t do something, it might not just be Canterlot that’s in danger. It could be all of Equestria.” I almost spoke one word too much, but luckily Photo Finish nudged me on the shoulder before I gave too much away. Le Blanc, though, seemed more pissed off than ever.

“What did you do to piss someone off that bad, Tripsie?!”

“You don’t understand!” Photo Finish intervened. “It’s more complicated zan zat! Our memories--”

“Oh, and about that. What memories have been wiped?! How do you two know about this when the rest of us don’t? Are you sure it’s not your memories that have been screwed up? That does sound like something that would happen to you, if I’m only being honest.”

I expected Le Blanc to be mean to me, but I’d never seen her be this cruel to Photo Finish before. Then, taking out my magical phone before her insults could continue any further, I held it out towards her and said plainly, “Go ahead and ask him yourself.”

Le Blanc looked down at my phone, then looked back at me and chuckled. “You’re joking… right?”

“Zis is no joke, Mädchen. If you vill not let us speak to Fleur, zen let us speak to you.”

Le Blanc’s eyes continued to move in a triangle around Photo Finish, my phone and myself until she eventually placed her hands on her hips and said, “I’m listening.”

“Vut we are dealing wiz is unlike anyzing we’ve ever seen before.”

“Allegedly, but go on.”

“Imagine anozer one of him, only zis one wants revenge.”

“Wait, there’s another one?! What did you two do to piss this one off?!”

“Oh, don’t think you’re off the hook on this one,” I said bluntly. “Our memories might be warped, but Trixie believes that you’re just as responsible as we are.”

Le Blanc immediately walked forward to meet me up close, pressing her chest against mine as she looked down angrily into my eyes with a scowl that made even her look ugly. “You’d better watch your mouth, Tripsie. If we get pulled into a problem that you started, I promise on my father’s life that I will fucking murder you. Now tell me what the hell you did to make this thing so angry.”

“No.”

Suddenly, all three of us turned our heads. Before Le Blanc and I got into a physical altercation (which I had been waiting on for years), another girl in the hallway stopped us before things got too heated. It wasn’t a teacher, faculty member or hall monitor. Instead, it was a girl just as beautiful, just as stylish, just as tall, and just as angry as Le Blanc was, the girl who I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid, standing next to the girl we came looking for.

“Tell all of us.”

Lulu Lemon, also known as the magical girl Marrow, and by her side was Fleur De Lis, who looked equally as unhappy to see us. Then, upon seeing her leader come to rescue her, Le Blanc gave me a haughty smirk and took a few steps back to join them, folding her arms as all three of them waited for me to speak.

I clicked my tongue, looking away in anger as I mumbled, “You’re one to talk, seeing as how you were the one who asked him to wipe our memories in the first place.”

Lulu immediately took a step forward to beat the shit out of me, but Fleur De Lis held out her arm to stop her in her tracks. Lulu may have been able to get away with something like that at Manehattan Middle School, but Crystal Prep wouldn’t be so tolerant of violence, especially when it was towards students of another school.

“What’s this about, Trixie?” Fleur asked calmly. “Why did you come to our school?”

Finally, I had the chance to talk directly to the person I had come to see, but now I had no idea what to say. All of the talking points that Photo Finish and I had practiced the night before were now completely out the window thanks to Le Blanc’s intervention.

With a long breath to calm myself down, I looked directly into Fleur’s eyes and said, “We need your help. All three of you if we can get it.”

“Help with what?” Lulu asked, folding her arms.

“There’s another girl in Canterlot. She says that we killed her friends, and the reason we don’t remember it is because our memories were wiped.”

“And how do you know about this?”

“Because there’s someone else like him in Canterlot, or rather, in Everfree City.” Le Blanc looked confused, but Lulu and Fleur seemed to understand immediately what I was getting at. “Her name is Autumn Blaze, and she has a serious grudge against You-Know-Who. She told me that he wiped our memories, and when Photo Finish and I confronted him about it, he basically confirmed it. Plus, he said that you were the one who told him to do it in the first place. Do you at least remember that part?”

Lulu put her hand to her chin as she thought, but shook her head after the memory failed to reach her. “I don’t remember, but I trust in the decision I made. If what you’re saying is true, then I must have done it with our best interests in mind.”

“And zat is ver we think we know vut happened,” Photo Finish added. “Apparently, zer was some kind of feud between Manehattan and Canterlot zat involved everyone we know. Zer is even a possibility zat zer were more girls from Platinum City zat we do not know about.”

“And that’s why Trixie believes that our memories were warped, so that we could forget about what we did and continue doing our jobs without hesitation.”

Lulu put her hand to her chin again, thinking over what I said as she mulled over the possibility in her mind. “That does make sense now that you put it that way. Tell us about the enemy. Is there anyone else we should be aware of?”

“There are,” I began hesitantly, “but we don’t know who they are yet. We only know there’s going to be five of them besides Autumn Blaze and the other girl.”

“What’s her name? How do you know there’s going to be five of them?”

I knew this was going to take forever if I continued like this, and the more questions I answered, the more Lulu began to lose her patience. If I wanted to get any of them onto our team, I was going to have to appeal to her first.

“Her name is Cozy Glow, and she’s the leader of the Everfree City girls. We’re about to have a game with them, and this game is going to decide whether the seal placed on Autumn Blaze that keeps her bound to Everfree City will be broken or not. Apparently I’m the only one who can break the seal, and this game was the only thing preventing You-Know-Who from basically sending me back and forcing me to open it.”

“That bastard,” Fleur said, clenching her fist and gritting her teeth. “He doesn’t care about our safety or well-being. He thinks that lives are just a game, and we’re just his toys that he can use and manipulate however he sees fit.”

“And so now you need our help,” Lulu said, putting a period on the backstory. “You want us to join you in fighting these girls to prevent the seal from being broken, which would ultimately lead to another psychopath wreaking havoc on Equestria.”

Finally! She understood!

“Exactly! The game is set to start this Monday afternoon. Trixie believes you should all be out of class during that time, so we could--”

“Out of the question.”

I raised an eyebrow, looking into Lulu’s eyes with as much incredulity as I could. I then looked over to see Photo Finish’s reaction, and she seemed to be thinking the same thing. How could the ruler of Platinum City turn her back not just on its own magical girls, but also on possibly the fate of the earth?

“Lulu,” I began, still trying to think of a way I could possibly emphasize the severity more than I already had, “Trixie doesn’t think you understand.”

“No, you’re the one who doesn’t understand!” Lulu was now approaching me, but this time, Fleur De Lis wasn’t holding her back. I quickly began to back up until my spine hit a locker behind me, shrinking even further as Lulu hovered over me with her face pressed into mine. “You’re going to take care of this. You’re the one who can undo the seal in the first place, so this is your responsibility, you got that?”

“And if Trixie loses, then it’s your responsibility too!”

“Which is why you’d better not lose. If Autumn Blaze breaks free and you’re still alive, I promise that I will make you wish that you were dead for every fucking second that you breathe. This is exactly why I never wanted you to be a magical girl in the first place, and I still don’t know why I didn’t kill you back when you first got your powers.”

“Lulu!”

The girl in front of me quickly turned around to see that Fleur De Lis had cut her off, preventing her from saying any more taboo words in the middle of a school hallway. Lulu then nodded and turned back to me with a scowl, leaning into my ear so that only I would be able to hear what she said next.

“If you have any more fuck ups, I’ll have Graveyard Girl finish you off herself. Now leave Crystal Prep, and never come back.”

Finally, Lulu backed away and joined her friends, leading them away while I was left to calm my heart back down, but not before Le Blanc looked back in my direction, giving me a sardonic wink before walking away.

Graveyard Girl. It was Le Blanc’s magical girl name. Her power was the ability to kill someone on the spot just by touching them, and out of all the members of Platinum City, she was the least hesitant to take someone else’s life. If Marrow ordered her to come after me, she wouldn’t sleep, eat, or do anything else that would possibly distract her from finding and killing me. My death would be her number one priority, and I didn’t doubt that Marrow would go to a length like that if I ever made her mad.

All three of them wore bright pink in the daytime, but when they turned into magical girls, their outfits were all pure black. It would have been funny… if it wasn’t so terrifying.

Photo Finish then quickly helped me stand up straight, pulling me off of the locker that my back was pressed against and turning towards the three girls walking away, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Vut has gotten into zose girls? Especially Lulu. I had no idea zat ze leader of Platinum City was--”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, looking away in anger. “It was a stupid idea to ask for their help. Trixie regrets coming here in the first place.”

“So… who else should we try to contact?”

“None of them. Marrow is just going to tell the other girls not to join us, and they all trust her judgement a lot more than they trust mine. Let’s just go.”

This whole trip turned out to be a bust. We travelled all the way to Manehattan just to be a few moments away from a fight, all because we thought we could somehow convince one girl to join our side. If we had just been able to talk to Fleur in private, there was still the possibility of being able to bring her to our side, but after everything that just happened, there would be no way to convince her now.

Finally, with my head hung low, I put my hands in my jacket pockets and began walking away. Photo Finish obviously wanted to at least come up with another strategy before we left, but I didn’t want to be there anymore. What point was there in staying?

“Wait.”

I turned my head and looked at Photo Finish, but for some reason, she shrugged her shoulders in confusion. That’s when I realized that the voice hadn’t come from her, and looking just beyond her shoulders, I saw a girl a little bit further down the hallway, closing her locker and looking back at us.

“Umm…?” I mumbled. “Were you… talking to us?”

“Keep your voice down!” she whispered, looking past the corner to make sure none of the fearsome threesome had turned their heads back. Then, after a sigh of relief, she tiptoed discreetly until she knew that the other girls had disappeared beyond earshot. “What exactly were you girls talking about?”

“Oh! Uhhh… We were talking abooouuuttt…”

“Hair accessories!” The girl and I then looked over at Photo Finish with bewildered expressions, making her blush bashfully. “I’m sorry. I thought I vas being useful.”

The girl then turned back towards me, putting her hands on her hips in a way that mimicked the girls who we just saw walk away. She had yellow skin and purple hair white white streaks. Her image was just as perfect as the others, complete with expensive designer earrings and a beautiful pearl necklace. Even with a school uniform, it was obvious that she came from a higher up family just based on how she looked and carried herself about.

“You’re Trixie, aren’t you?”

“Wait… Upper Crust?”

I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize her sooner! Upper Crust was one of the first friends Lulu made besides Fleur and me when she first moved to Manehattan, and Lulu made sure that the two of us never spoke to each other. I didn’t know her that well besides the fact that she came from a welltodo family, and fortunately, she never bullied me despite the fact that she spent all her time around Lulu Lemon. Even though she was friends with my worst enemy, however, she was nowhere near as close to her as Fleur and Le Blanc were.

“What was Lulu talking about when she brought up magic and powers and such?”

I quickly turned towards Photo Finish, but she held up her hands defensively. “You are on your own for zis one, Mädchen.”

“Please,” she pled, grabbing hold of my hand. “Be honest with me. Does this have something to do with the day Le Blanc was kidnapped?” My jaw dropped in surprise. The day Le Blanc was kidnapped was around when she, Lulu and Fleur De Lis all got their powers. How much did Upper Crust know, exactly? “I just want to know why the three of them having been acting so differently since that day.”

“Different how?” I asked, tilting my head in curiosity.

Upper Crust sighed defeatedly, dropping her gaze in sadness. “We used to be the best of friends. We still are, to a degree, but something changed on the night of Le Blanc’s kidnapping. I don’t understand! Fleur De Lis went with me to find her father while Lulu went after the kidnapper, so why is Fleur so close with them but not me?! I knew something was amiss, but I’ve never been able to figure out why. After the Friendship Games, however, and after discovering that magic truly exists, I didn’t want to rule anything out. That’s what this is about, though, isn’t it? Lulu, Fleur and Le Blanc can all use magic, can’t they?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

“Yes,” Photo Finish said bluntly, making me flinch in fear. “It is true. We are magical girls, and so are zey.”

“Photo Finish, Trixie reeeeally thinks this is a bad time to--”

“Zis is ze only time, Trixie. When else are we going to be able to find someone who we can speak so openly about ze game we have coming up? It’s not like we planned on losing our options for literally everyone in Platinum City.”

She was right. Now that we couldn’t recruit Platinum City girls anymore thanks to Marrow’s annoyance with me, we needed to start looking for alternatives, and it wasn’t going to be very often where we could bring up magic so openly. Not only that, but she seemed interested already. We probably wouldn’t even need to push very hard to get her to join us.”

“Platinum City? Where’s that?”

“Photo Finish, do you still have your teleport gem?” The girl beside me quickly pulled out a red necklace from underneath her striped shirt, making me scoff in annoyance. “Why did Discord let you keep yours? He broke mine as soon as I moved to Canterlot.”

“Oh, zis one is new. He gave it to me ven you were stranded in Everfree City.”

“Ladies,” Upper Crust interrupted, switching apprehensive looks between us. “I absolutely adore your accessories, but does this have anything to do with what we were talking about a moment ago?”

I nodded my head. “Do you think you’d be OK missing your first class?”

Upper Crust chuckled boisterously. “Darling, I’ve been looking for an excuse all morning.”

“Then hold onto my hand. You’ve never seen anything like what you’re about to.”

Upper Crust did as I said while Photo Finish’s gem began to glow, but right before we disappeared, I saw a figure hiding in the shadows, smiling deviously. Before I had the chance to examine any further, however, the lights around us began to change color, and we were already on our way to Platinum City. My first time back in over a year...

Author's Notes:

Fifth day of Trixmas

G&PT: 2 magical girls (Photo Finish and Upper Crust)
Last Gambit: 2 magical girls (Vignette Valencia and Adagio Dazzle)