Brittany stared in wide-eyed horror at the spot her classmate had occupied just seconds ago, the sinking feeling in her stomach only being monetarily interrupted as bile welled up at the back of her throat.

"Fuck..." She mumbled, a half formed thought expressed out loud. Fuck being sick she needed to—

As if the curtain between her rational thoughts and body had parted, she suddenly felt a need to clean the blood off her hands... And her clothes... because she had just killed someone... there had to be blood. Inching her neck down stiffly to catch a glimpse at her trembling hands, she watched as the tick purple-tinged gore that tainted her gloves surreally flowed back on itself, foaming and effervescing violently until nothing remained.

It evaporated into nothingness—just like Beatrice did!

That was the final push to send her mind and her body over the edge. Britany curled her across her chest defensively and sunk to her knees before finally throwing up.

The blood might be gone, but she could still feel it, staining her body and soul. Her new magic could do many things, but it couldn't change the reality of the situation, the same reality that crashing down on her shoulders like a thousand tons—

“Hey, new girl!” Brittany flinched, startled by the chipper voice. “Nice job!”

The green-clad teenager quickly sprung to her feet, turning aggressively to the source of the noise, tears still welling up in the corners of her eyes.

“Woah.” Another voice called, and soon a wall of red and white appeared on Brittany’s left as Starlight Red carefully paced towards her. “Hey, what’s wrong, new girl? You beat the monster.”

Brittany's eyes rapidly snapped back and forth between the two new girls crowding close to her, the frown on her face deepening as she finally parsed Starlight Red's words. "Monster?" She spat back before blinking rapidly, in such a short time the girls had come so much closer, too close—practically on top of her. Why did they have to get up in her face... judging her? “Get away from me!” The rich girl in a mixture of panic and disgust snapped, magic rushing from her body like a gale.

She just wanted to push them away, but she'd done far more than that. The ground cracked under her feet as the pair were tossed backwards with force akin to an explosion.

Ignoring the surprised yelps, Brittany flew off with an anguished scream. She just couldn’t deal with anything at the moment, so she ran away, blindly flying until she somewhat recognized the area she ended up in; it was difficult to see it in the air, but she was flying right above the street that her home was in.

She wasted little time flying in through her bedroom window, rolling on the floor with pained squeaks as her transformation abruptly dropped. Left sopping wet and bruised, Brittany broke down crying harder than she ever did before.

Brittany couldn’t focus, couldn't breathe. The world around her was nothing but gray and static as the panic overtook her. She was a murderer. She killed her classmate.

Was Beatrice lashing out in pain inside the hydra? How much agony had Brittany put the other girl through? Who was the witch? Who had done that to Brittany’s classmate?

“I killed her.” Brittany choked out a whimpering whisper. Some witch had magicked Beatrice into a monster, and Brittany killed her… someone pitted the new magical girl against her own classmate, and now… Now…

Before the anger could even try to overwhelm the sheer panic drowning the teenager’s mind, Brittany found herself growing warmer; a comfortable kind of warmth, like a hug from someone you loved. It brought a much needed respite to the girl’s fraying mind, the horror of her actions slowly simmering down until they became just painful instead of blindingly agonizing.

Slowly, Brittany became aware of a soft vibration, like when one feels it when a person plays an instrument in the next room, and as her ears stopped ringing, she realized what it actually was.

“C-Claire?” The teenager whimpered, half-blindly feeling around so she could wrap the woman who raised her after Brittany’s mother’s unfortunate passing in a tight hug.

Brittany couldn’t quite hear the reply, just the soft tones of the maid’s voice; the woman gently rocking the distraught girl as she sang.

“Claire…!” The rich girl wailed, burying her face on the older woman’s lap to pour out all her emotions; screaming—almost howling—as her tired mind finally found someone of trust to fall apart in front of.

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Brittany felt numb; barely even aware that the maid was moving her around, the older woman’s soothing voice truly doing wonders to help the teenager get through all the mental anguish of the day’s events.

It felt as if hours had passed before Brittany truly became aware of her surroundings; head twitching upwards as if she had jostled awake. The girl looked around in mild confusion, recognizing her position as inside her bathtub in the lavish bathroom adjoined to her room.

“I’m naked.” She realized, looking down to find herself up to the neck in the warm, flower-scented waters of her bathtub. “Claire?” Brittany blinked blearily, jolting as she sharply looked to the left, meeting the head maid’s relieved green eyes.

“Lady Greene,” The woman said, tone wavering with worry. “How do you feel?”

“I’m naked.” Brittany repeated herself, hugging her legs to her chest before hiding her face between her knees. “Ugh. I feel gross.” She shuddered out, trying and failing to properly convey her disgust; still feeling too shocked to feel much of anything else.

“I diapered your bottom, Lady Greene.” Claire hummed in mild amusement, glad that her charge was well enough to talk. “And I raised you as well, there is nothing about you that I don’t know.”

A noise between a chuckle and a sob left the girl after those words. How could Brittany convey that Claire was wrong? That the young rich teen had become a magical warrior that should’ve been limited to Bethany’s insane Japanese cartoons—Anime, Brittany could hear her BFF correcting—and that she had killed someone? How could she look her surrogate mother in the eye and say those things? How could she make Claire worry about this?

“Sure.” Brittany spoke, tone empty. Using her legs to hide her tears, the teenager just stared down at the bath water. She had to say something; something that would explain her situation, just something—any excuse—so Claire would leave things be…

“Beatrice is dead.” The heiress ended up sobbing out, curling up tighter around herself.

“Oh my…” The Head Maid gasped softly. “Brittany…” She uttered, gently reaching a hand out and laying on her charge’s back.

“It’s my fault.” Brittany kept choking the words out, feeling as if she was being strangled for it. “My fault…”

Claire said something else to that, something soothing, something that helped Brittany calm down, but the teenager was far past the point of what her mind could handle; physically tired and emotionally exhausted, the girl merely slumped over to the side, asleep.

When she next awoke, it was somewhere close to midnight, so she merely changed her position in bed and went back to sleep, too sad to do much of anything else.

This was how her weekend mostly went by; sleeping and feeling miserable in her room. The only reason Brittany even ate anything was because Claire all but force-fed her.

Eventually, though, Monday came up, and Brittany forced herself to get up and go to school. She had a perfect attendance record to keep, after all, and her pride wouldn’t let her miss a class for something like…

“Uh, Brit? You lookin’ kinda pale, there.” The Greene girl’s best friend, Bethany Azalea, asked, briefly breaking Brittany out of her mental turmoil. “Are ya sick? Your whole ‘best of the best’ thing isn’t worth your health, ya’know?”

Brittany made a noncommittal noise, merely trudging into her classroom, immediately noticing the empty seat where Beatrice usually sat… but it wasn’t the only one; three other seats besides that one were empty.

The heiress fought to keep silent, cursing herself for not even knowing the names of the people that were now missing. She only remembered Beatrice because the girl had once given her flowers.

And now she was gone.

With a shuddering breath, Brittany took her seat, absent-mindedly adjusting her skirt as she did so. She barely even registered her friends sitting around her; Bethany in front and Cassandra on the left. They all sat at the back right corner of the room, which left Brittany a little out of the way, something she was just fine with; she had enough attention from the businessmen trying to get in her father’s good graces by cozying up to her.

Did they not realize how weird it was that they all wanted to approach a teenage girl? If anything, that only made Brittany’s father mistrust them more.

“Girl, for real, what’s up?” Beth demanded, turning around on her seat to address her BFF.

Brittany let out a sigh. What could she say? Beth never judged Brittany, no matter what she said, and she highly doubted her fellow blonde would start now, but… It was one thing to talk about finding other girls pretty, but murder?

Instead of going into detail—On anything—Brittany merely hummed again. “Later.” She whispered. “Let’s… get through class first, I don’t wanna think about anything besides…” A small, embarrassed blush formed on her face. “What class do we have today?” Normally, she’d be right on top of everything about school, but after what happened, she was glad to have had the presence of mind to even put on her uniform… Or rather, Claire reminding her that she couldn’t go to school in her pajamas.

“It’s science.” Cassandra was the one to answer, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder as she fixed Brittany with concerned green eyes. “And you better tell us what’s wrong during lunch, or I’ll punch you.”

Brittany let out a wet snort at that. “Sure, Cass.”

“Alright class!” A male voice called; a rather young-looking man stepped into the room, holding a folder under his arm. “I’ll be your new science teacher, Thomas Oliver—And yes, I’ve heard all the Power Rangers jokes, so if we could skip them, that’d be cool with me.” He stated as he wrote ‘Dr. Oliver’ on the greenboard. “Now, unfortunately, your previous teacher didn’t leave any notes on where she stopped teaching you all, so if anyone could tell me…”

Brittany ended up tuning out the rest of the class—It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the subject anyway, she could always just read up on it later, if she ever needed it, so she could afford to just be there. It wasn’t as if she could concentrate, anyway.

She hated fiction, they made tragedy look so easy to deal with. She really could’ve used some of that sociopathy every protagonist seemed to have. But no, she had to keep on going. She was a Magical Girl, and if she didn’t protect the town, no one else would, so the best she could do was try and hold off her inevitable breakdown for as long as possible before addressing it.

She could only hope things would get easier to deal with.