The next day I woke up feeling weirdly OK. I had been expecting something like a hangover after pushing myself so much, but instead I felt like I'd just taken a really long nap. Then I turned to look at my arm clock and saw that it was 1PM.

  "oh, well that expins that." I said. It looked like my body was going to get enough rest whether I wanted it to or not. I sat up and saw Margaret sitting on the bookshelf. She had managed to pull a book off the shelf and was reading it as I woke up.

  "Oh, you're awake." She said. "I must say, i thought you would be sleeping all day after st night."

  "Yeah," I said as I got out of bed, "I felt that way too. How long have you been up for?"

  "Since dawn." She said. "Oh, and your father was knocking on your door earlier. He slipped something under the door and then left."

  I walked over to the door and saw that there was a sticky note that had been slid into my room. I picked it up.

  Hey Alex, I went to py golf with some friends from work and do some grocery shopping. And hey, remember you have school coming up, so stop sleeping in so te. -Dad

  "Ok," I said, "at least he doesn't suspect anything."

  "You don't want him to know about what you did?" Messa asked as she turned a page in her book.

  "Yeah, I doubt he'd be happy to hear I threw myself into a raging fire st night." I said. "At least I got the pce to myself to recover. Do you, uh..."

  "What?"

  "Well, I was gonna ask if you wanted breakfast, but you're a figurine, so..."

  "Don't worry, I can eat."

  "How does that work?"

  She raised an eyebrow at me.

  "Magic. Right. Forgot."

  I let her ride in my hand as we walked to the kitchen. I got some Eggos out and started cooking them as Messa wandered around and gawked at the appliances.

  "Well, if you don't know what a microwave is, that gives us a clue about when you got put into the wand." I said as I set two ptes of waffles down on the table. Messa started attacking her waffle as I pulled out my phone and started googling some stuff. I tried googling "magic + Bckbriar", but that led me to something I did not expect to see so early in the morning.

  I got up from the table and went to the living room. I turned on the TV an flipped over to the local news channel.

  "I'm here at the site of a forest fire that took pce st night just outside the town of Bckbriar," the reporter said, standing in front of a field of bckened grass, "where eyewitnesses say that a witch stopped the bze before it could go out of control."

  The report cut to a shaky video from someone's phone, but it was clear enough to make out me standing in front of the fire, dousing it with water before I did my spiel and took off into the sky.

  "This video has gone viral on social media, leading to plenty of debate about the authenticity of the footage." The reporter said. "I'm here with Maria Powers, a local high school student and eyewitness to the events st night."

  The camera panned over to show the girl in the bomber jacket I'd helped st night.

  "Ms. Powers, what exactly happened here st night?" The reporter said.

  "Well, I was sitting next to my boyfriend," she said, "and then there was this explosion out of nowhere--"

  "An explosion?"

  "Yeah, it was crazy, so I just started running and then I tripped but this girl helped me up, she was like, in a goth dress and wearing a witch hat, and then she just waved her wand and all of a sudden everything was flooding, and it was, it was crazy."

  "Did this girl give a name before she left?" the reporter asked.

  Maria took a second to take a breath after rambling for so long. "Brightmoon," she said, "she said her name was Brightmoon."

  The reporter looked back into the camera. "Just who is this mysterious Brightmoon?" he asked. "Is she the real deal--"

  I turned off the TV. OK, so now everyone had seen me in a dress waving a pink wand around. That's cool, that's normal, I was fine--

  Alex, calm down. I thought. There's literally no way that they know it's you. You're fine. You're fine.

  Despite my fwless job at calming myself down, I still felt like I had to get out of the house for a bit. I walked back into the dining room to find Messa had cleaned off her pte.

  "Wow, that was delicious." Messa said. "Can I have another?"

  "Later," I said, "right now I need to get out of here for a bit. Get some fresh air."

  "Can I come along?"

  "Sorry, Messa, but I don't want someone to spot ya and ask too many questions."

  "Well then what do you expect me to do all day?"

  ***

  After I had shown Messa how to use the internet (and had given her very strict instructions on what not to do and which websites to avoid) I had hopped on my bike and ridden down towards the town square. Now that church was over the town was bustling with activity; families walked throughout the town square, incoming students were getting the y of the nd, and people were just generally going about their normal business. I rode along the side of the street, and every time I passed a group of two or more people, I kept hearing the same topic of conversation.

  "Hey, so what do you think about this witch girl?"

  "Have you seen that TikTok yet?"

  "Dude, you don't actually think that--"

  "C'mon, there's no way it could be faked!"

  I squirmed a little in my bike seat. It was weird to have everyone talking about me so...openly. Granted, it wasn't me me, but still.

  I thought about where to go as I rode for awhile, and eventually found myself in front of Al's Alcove. It'd started off as a comic shop in the 50s, but it had slowly expanded to incorporate new media every time something came along; VHS and video games in the 80s, CDs in the 90s, and DVDs in the 00s. Al Sr. had died a few years ago, but Al Jr. was still keeping the pce going.

  I locked up my bike on a rack outside and headed into the store. The smell of old comic book pages hit me first, followed by the smell of the snacks the tabletop gamers were eating as they pyed at the back of the store. To my left was the comic book section, with bins of back issues and walls covered in new issues and manga volumes. To my right was the entrance to the video and music section. In front of me was the front desk, where Al Jr. was sitting and reading a volume of Chainsaw Man. He looked up as I walked in.

  "Hey, Alex." Al said.

  "'Sup, Al?" I said. I looked around and saw that the store had a bit more people than usual. "Business seems to be booming."

  Al chuckled. "It's the darnedest thing. Everyone's been buying up anything magical girl reted I have. Must be because of that girl on the internet."

  "Oh, yeah, I saw that video on the news." I said."What do you think about it?"

  "Well, I believe someone did something to put out that fire," he said, "but magic? C'mon."

  "Yeah, same here." I said. "It'd be crazy, right?"

  Al nodded. "So, what brings you in?"

  "Oh, I just wanted to hit the town before school starts. I'm just gonna browse for a while."

  Al nodded and went back to his manga. I walked into the video section and started looking around aimlessly. I could still hear people talking around me, and I was the only thing on their mind. I tried to look for some crazy horror movie or obscure anime but I was too distracted by the whispers of people around me over the video. Everyone had an opinion, and soon it felt like their comments and thoughts were surrounding me, turning the air into mosses. I decided that this was worse than staying inside and turned around to head for the door when I ran into--

  "Matt?" I said. "What're you doing here?"

  Matt had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He was wearing a white hoodie with an oni mask emblem on the chest. He had his hood up, covering his very short red hair. He was nky, taller than me by about six inches. His face was long with a pointy chin, and he had a pair of gsses with round frames.

  "I'm getting out of the house for once." Matt said. "This magical girl thing's got me antsy."

  "Oh yeah?" I asked.

  "Yeah. You really want some chick running around with that kind of power?" he said.

  I just shrugged. I didn't want to give too much away.

  "Well, I'm not gonna be able to rest easy knowing there's someone who can just wave a wand and do whatever she wants." Matt said.

  "Alright, how about we just browse then?" I said. "We can just forget to weirdness and hang."

  Matt nodded and we wandered the store for a while looking for anything interesting. We came up empty, and we ended up leaving together a few hours ter.

  "Hey, see you tomorrow at school, man." I said. Matt just waved and walked off towards his house on the other side of town. I rode back towards my pce. It was weird to hear such...open hostility from a guy like Matt. I'd overheard people being skeptical about whether or not my magic was real, but I hadn't heard anyone act like I was a threat. At least Matt didn't hate me. I could live with him not liking Brightmoon; it was no skin off my nose.

  I turned onto our street and saw Dad's car in the driveway. I felt my stomach twist slightly at the thought that he stumbled into my room and found Messa, but I calmed myself down quickly. I always locked my room, and Dad never poked around in my things, so I just put my bike in the garage and walked inside.

  Dad was sitting on the couch watching football. He was still wearing his golf clothes, and he looked up as I walked in.

  "Hey, look who left his cave." Dad said.

  "Ha, ha." I said. I grabbed a soda from the fridge and decided to take a seat next to him.

  "So what did you get up to?" Dad asked.

  "I just went to Al's." I said. "Ran into Matt, and we walked around a bit."

  Dad nodded. I took a sip and decided to take a risk.

  "So, uh, Dad," I said, "you hear about that magical girl stuff?"

  "Oh yeah, the guys on the course were talking about it." Dad said. "Crazy stuff."

  "I heard some people in town worried about, like, what that Brightmoon girl could do."

  "Ya know," Dad said, "I feel like if she was willing to throw herself into a wildfire to save some kids she can't be that bad. She means well, at least. That's whats important."

  I felt some part of myself being soothed by Dad's words, and I id back into the sofa. We watched the TV together for a bit and then I got up to go back to my room.

  I walked into to find Messa sitting on my desk, scrolling through YouTube. She turned to look at me as I walked in.

  "Hello, Alex." she said.

  "Hey, Messa." I said. "Hope you weren't bored while I was gone."

  "Not at all!" Messa said. " I started watching some moving pictures about 'magical girls', as you called yourself, and then I found out about 'yuri', which I have found...very fascinating."

  I paused for a second. Instead of resp0nding I elected to flop onto the bed. It almost felt...weird not to feel my boobs- Brightmoon's boobs, I reminded myself, it felt weird not to feel Brightmoon's boobs when I did that. That's when I figured that I should probably see how people were handling me online. I got up and sat down in my chair. Messa sat on the side of my desk as I scrolled through posts on TikTok, Instagram, even Facebook. It wasn't anything I hadn't heard in town, but I noticed a video that made me pause. I clicked it.

  "We out here in Bckbriar," the guy in the video said, holding up his phone so that it caught the town square, "and tonight, we're gonna be on the hunt for this Brightmoon chick so I can figure out what her deal is. And hey, if you're watching this, hit me up at--"

  I closed that video and realized there were fifty more like it. The town would be packed tonight.

  "Well," I said, "looks like I'll be staying in tonight."

  "Alex, you can't just take a break from helping people."

  "Mess, if I go out there there's gonna be mobs trying to run me down. I'll just wait for things to cool off and then I'll get back into action."

  "But what if something happens?"

  "If it does, then I'll go." I said. "But school starts tomorrow and I'm gonna need to get some sleep or I'll end up being te." I checked the time. Still a few hours till I really had to go to bed.

  "Hey Messa, wanna show me some of the stuff you found online today?"

  Messa beamed and showed me some anime that she'd found online. I took a seat in front of my computer as the intro began to py.

  ***

  "Well, Ms. Beauregard, this is a wonderful thing you're offering our school."

  "Oh please, Principal Crk, I assure you that you've earned it."

  Dorothy was walking though the halls of Bckbriar High with Samantha Crk, the principal. The red brick walls and the green lockers lining the halls made it look like the pce came straight out of a TV show. The walls were mostly bare, but there were banners overhead celebrating the school football team and other such pointless distractions. Altogether unassuming, but Dorothy knew there was something incredible hiding just beneath it.

  Eliza had sent her news reports about the fire, revealing it was part of some party thrown by the high school students. That narrowed down the range of Brightmoon suspects considerably, and she had just the excuse to ingratiate herself into the community.

  "The Tempest Education Betterment Fund has been a pet project of mine for a while." Dorothy said. "We don't have our finger in many pies, but that's only because we're so selective about the schools we support. Bckbriar High has been on our radar for a while. It's close to our headquarters over in Manhattan, the nearby university has some promising research coming out of it tely--"

  "Ms. Beauregard, I am not blind."

  Dorothy stopped in her tracks. "I'm sorry, did I do something to offend you?"

  Crk csped her hands behind her back. "I'm sure this Brightmoon character has piqued your interest."

  Dorothy chuckled. "Ah, it appears you've caught me."

  "Tomorrow is going to be bad enough." Crk said. "We'll probably have press trying to break down the doors to this pce to figure out who she is."

  "Principal Crk," Dorothy said, "while I do have a sort of...scientific curiosity about this 'Brightmoon', I can assure you it's not what you think. Bckbriar was already on our shortlist for school to receive support from Tempest, but the emergence of this...'magical girl' served to make our decision easier. This school--no, this town is going to have the whole world watching it soon. Your students will be under an immense amount of pressure, and so it seems that our money would best be spent here, making sure that you're well equipped to face the unique challenges that this school year will bring."

  Crk sighed. "I suppose that you're right. Lord knows we barely get anything from the state. Some extra cash would be nice."

  "It would be more than just cash, Principal." Dorothy said. "Top of the line Tempest equipment, unique networking opportunities for the seniors; if you say yes then you are giving these kids a much brighter future."

  Principal Crk wrung out her hands for a moment.

  "Alright," she eventually said, "I suppose I wouldn't be a very good principal if I didn't accept."

  "Excellent,' Dorothy said, "I'm gd we could come an agreement."

  ***

  Alex found himself a little embarrassed to admit that he'd gotten so swept up in the magical girl anime they were watching that he didn't notice the Discord message from Matt for a good few minutes. He tabbed over to see what the fuss was about.

  MattedFur: Just got this weird email from the school. What do you think is up with this?

  Alex scrolled down and saw that Matt had attached a PDF. He opened it to find that it was a brief letter from the Principal.

  Students of Bckbriar High,

  There will be a special assembly tomorrow to announce a new program for all students. Those in the Computer Science and Robotics clubs are asked to report to the auditorium instead of first period in order to be briefed on this program.

  Signed, Principal Crk

  At the bottom of the letter were two symbols. One was what Alex thought to be the town seal or some other barely used symbol like that.

  The other was the logo for Tempest International.