Strength ~ This Magical Girl Is A B★tch!

The classroom door hung crooked on its hinges, one fluorescent light overhead buzzing like a dying fly. The desks were scattered like broken teeth. Posters peeled off the walls, corners singed. Everything stank of ozone and burned paper. You stood in the middle of it — breathing hard, trembling, the red glow still fading from your fingertips.

The monster was gone. Gone for real.

“We did it! You did it! You were amazing—absolutely—but also WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ARMS."

It hurt to hold them up. Cuts along both of them. Scraped ones. There were bruises, too — on your wrists, your shoulders, even your knuckles. But your brain had locked onto something else entirely: the mess. Chalk dust. Splintered desks. A flipped chair. The floor was awful —scattered and wrong.

Too. much.

You stretched your fingers open, ignoring the sting. You could clean it. Fix it. That’s what you always did. It wouldn’t feel over unless it was fixed. But the second you tried—Your knees buckled. Your legs folded too fast, too weak. You hit the tile hard. Your arms didn’t catch you.

You felt your clothes melt away into your normal ones, the transformation undoing itself in a wave of sparkling light. A heartbeat later, a little thump beside you — Strength, now fully out, scrambled across the floor with wild, floppy limbs and jingling bells. He nearly tripped over himself, gloves smacking your cheek as he tried to shake you awake.

“Nononono don’t pass out—don’t you dare—Hey! Do something!”

You didn’t move much. Just blinked once. Maybe twice. That was all you had left in you.

“You always do this, y’know! Always trying to clean up first like a little janitor superhero and then—THEN—then you collapse like a rag doll!” He climbed awkwardly onto your shoulder, smaller than your head but full of buzzing, frantic warmth.

“…next time we bring tape… and snacks… and maybe we don’t fight in math class...”