"Oh my God, go away!" Lucy shouted in irritation

"Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, you brat!"

"I WILL EAT YOUR LORD, YOU STUPID JUNKY!"

Ah, what an iconic scene. Lucy, the daughter of the Grand Witch being chased by a Catholic priest. Quite literally a tale as old as her life itself.

This time, however unlike 9 years ago, was entirely her fault. Instead of her life being threatened, it was most likely for simple discipline.

3 days ago, Lucy arrived in the City of Nexus. A large city located in Nevada to attend a school that her cousin teaches at. Today being the first day of the year, she finally decided to explore the city while heading to school and during that exploration of hers, she found a church.

AND instead of laying low like an intelligent Witch, what does she do?

Vandalism. She vandalized the church. Petty, yes, but she was also much too kind to actually do anything violent to these people despite them trying to assassinate her.

"I JUST WANNA TALK! GET BACK HERE!"

"AND SCOLD ME SO I'M LATE FOR SCHOOL?! FAT CHANCE, MAN!"

This was an obvious excuse. She had plenty of time before school started. She just didn't want to spend time with a priest.

Dashing through the alleyways, just barely not hitting everything imaginable from walls to fences, trash cans, old boxes, etc, she just couldn't get away.

On top of not knowing the layout of the land and just kind of winging it in the general direction of her school, this priest was REALLY fast.

Due to Lucy's training as a witch, even at the young age of 14, she could nearly run at an Olympic level and this random priest was catching up and even outpacing her at times.

"Guess. we're doing it this way." She mumbled to herself.

Looking around, the area she was in was a tight space between two particularly close buildings, both having several things sticking out of their walls. Be it piping, windows, or whatever, Lucy could use them.

Surely this priest wasn't fast AND an acrobat, right?

Jumping up onto a low-hanging windowsill and further catapulting herself upwards, reaching the somewhat flat roof of the building that was next to her.

Originally, she was gonna continue running but after glancing at the main road she simply couldn't...

There wasn't anyone. Not a single person, not a single car. A complete dead zone.

"What the..."

Narrowing her eyes, she thought about releasing her Mana into the surroundings to search for life but she quickly decided against that as there was a priest chasing her who didn't know she was a witch yet.

Her next thought was to call her cousin. School had yet to start so she was probably available.

And... No signal.

"What?"

While she sounded confused about the whole situation, she did actually know what caused this. What confused her was who the hell did it.

The [Shadow World]. A realm parallel to their own. It appeared 7 years ago, originally being something only Magical Sentinels and the Invaders they fought could use. Only a few years later Mystics from both the Witches' side and the Church managed to reverse engineer the spell and gain access to this world as well.

It was actually extremely convenient for the Devil and Holy factions as they didn't need to reveal themselves to the outside world. It also made their battles grow ever more violent as they didn't have to worry about the mundane people finding out about them... That was irrelevant though.

That being said, escaping one wasn't easy. You either had to be stronger than the one who cast the spell or force the caster to let you out via negotiation, torture, or even murder.

This man. He's only a low-ranked priest. He shouldn't be capable of setting something like this up.

Speaking of, the Priest in question finally caught up to her forcing her out of her thoughts.

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"I don't suppose you did this, mister priest?"

Confused by what Lucy was talking about, the priest also looked around.

"What makes you think I'd do something like this? Rather, what makes you think I can?" He questioned genuinely.

Turning around dramatically, Lucy's long hair swung after her nearly blocking her site. Unfortunately for her, it didn't completely block it as she only now noticed how attractive this guy was.

Aside from the white and gray priest robes he wore and the bronze cross necklace, he was a tall young man of Germanic descent, he looked no older than 20 with long black hair that fell to his waist and hid a dark red color underneath it, implying his hair was dyed black. His eyes matched his supposed natural hair color as well, being a dark red.

Being a young girl, she was naturally enamored by the man's beauty but quickly covered up her slight blush.

"Well, you started chasing me for no reason! You must have done it!"

Feigning ignorance, Lucy pointed at the man accusingly to which he looked quite irritated.

"Firstly, my name isn't YOU. It's Utopia. Secondly, You were drawing phallic images on the side of a sacred building."

"Clearly not sacred enough for you guys to not try and kill a little girl..." Lucy scoffed.

"What?"

"Nothing. So, if this isn't you, what happened?"

Utopia also didn't really know the cause of this emergence of the Shadow World.

Well, there was one explanation that both had considered but that was the worst-case scenario.

"It's... Probably a-"

ROAR!!!

"That? It's probably that, right?" Lucy finished Utopia's sentence after being cut off by a not-so-distant, ear-deafening roar.

How surprising, the worst-case scenario.

BOOM!

An explosion could be heard and shortly after, two blurry figures flew onto the street.

An odd flying serpentine creature which has veins pulsating with a red and black liquid inside and a magical sentinel who seemed to have a flower or nature motif to her outfit... Who was losing to the snake... Quite badly by the looks of it.

"Damn it!" Lucy scoffed once again before straight up hopping off the building and darting towards the action like a lunatic.

Utopia, being confused and very surprised that this girl who wasn't much younger than himself was running into danger.

"Oi! What are you doing!"

"Going to help! She'll die at this rate!"

Utopia didn't understand. They were on top of a building, how could Lucy possibly tell how the battle was going?

Of course, Lucy would never tell him she was amplifying her senses using magic. It was something witches could do regardless of how little magic they had and was completely untraceable as long as you used it sparingly.

That aside, being a good person and not wanting to watch an innocent albeit troublesome girl get hurt, Utopia rushed after her without a second thought.

Lucy was growing more anxious as she couldn't keep up with the two fighting and often had to slow down to dodge a stray magic blast or two.

Glancing back and seeing Utopia still on her trail, she let out an annoyed groan.

"Forget it! I'll just knock him unconscious and make him forget what happened afterward!" She cried to herself, fully knowing what she was gonna do was risky as all hell but she couldn't let someone die for nothing. Especially not a magical sentinel whom she respected so much.

Pouring mana throughout her body, her speed began to increase by a full 50% And would probably continue to increase if she wasn't conserving Mana.

With this, she quickly caught up to the battle to the point where she could hear the names of the attacks being fired off.

"Frenzied Growthβ! Surge!"

The flowery magical girl swung her rapier and caused vines to rise from the cracks in the road, holding the serpent still for a few seconds.

Before she could use this time to attack though, Lucy came in and slammed the poor thing into the ground with an ax kick and followed that up with another stomp.

That wasn't even the end though, a bit later before the snake could recover, Utopia came in with a Saber which he got from... Only god knows where... And attempted to cut the snake's head off, falling short and only drawing blood.

"Seriously? A sword enchanted by magic and it only did this much?" He scoffed, moving towards the two others.

The magical girl seemed very confused.

"A Witch... And a Priest?"

"Gaia, now is not the time to question it! WE NEED TO RUN!" said a cat who had fur that matched the magical girl's color scheme.

"Ugh. Run you two! It's too strong for us to beat!"

Both Lucy and Utopia agreed rather easily, despite neither liking to do so. While the snake was already heavily injured, Lucy's mana was limited, Utopia's attacks wouldn't be any more effective than his last, and this Gaia girl was already exhausted.

Utopia and the Magical Sentinel began running first with Lucy staying behind for a few moments.

"Since the jig is up I might as well take a shot at it."

Pulling a Talisman out of her pocket and pouring Mana into it.

"Ignition: Fireball!"

The piece of paper began to burn up and turn into a flaming sphere that shot at the snake.

Not staying to see what the fireball actually did to the snake, she began sprinting toward the other two. Surprisingly though, her speed had far surpassed what it was before despite her not even imbuing magic into herself, allowing her to easily catch up.