Riding the waves of magic like a professional surfer, Aziza gently glided onto this new world, this parallel version of Earth, with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. Once she realized that she was essentially an astronaut, Aziza joked “One small step for me...”.
Aziza's mirth did not last very long however when she looked all around her new world. It was in utter ruin.
She had landed in what appeared to be a small town. Judging by the palm trees and the coast which she could see gently rolling in the distance, blissfully unaware as to the horrors that had been wrought, she guessed this was California. Aziza had never been to California before.
“Bully for me, my first trip here is being a demon exterminator.”
This town had seemingly been abandoned, which the young sorceress supposed was a good thing. If any major battles were to take place here, and Aziza had a feeling that was a guarantee, at least nobody would get hurt. Empty cars were parked haphazardly in the middle of the street with their front and passenger doors ajar, as if the riders had been forcibly removed from them or they chose to run on foot for some reason. Judging by the enormous footprints that had caused parts of the road to collapse, Aziza wondered if King Kong or Godzilla had been the reason. Most of the windows of various stores, apartments, and complexes were smashed, the glass all sitting on the pavement in a display of utter carelessness, and those were the buildings that hadn't completely collapsed into piles of rubble. Fields of what had once been grass, perhaps to play baseball on, were now barren and unable to grow anything, not too different from the Arabian desert that Aziza used to ride around in before the responsibilities of being Sorceress Supreme had left her too busy for much free time. She could even feel an unnatural heat in the air, and a hint of sulfur.
“That's not good” whispered Aziza drolly.
Aziza wondered if a bomb had been dropped on this town. Some of this seemed like good old regular collateral damage, like from a bomber. She knew from people who had fled from Syria to know what a bombed out city looks like. But all of this despair paled in comparison to the moaning, the shuffling, the sheer dreary sounding hopelessness of the monsters that were surrounding....(Aziza could barely make out the name) Glendale High.
From the sky, these creatures concentrated around the high school had looked like demons, but when she passed through the front gate, one could clearly see that they had once been human. Aziza saw a slug like creature the size of a large bear standing near the left hand corner of the front yard. It had diseased looking gray skin with brown spots covering most of its body, and a trail of disgusting green slime trailing behind it. Its body appeared to be at attention, waiting for anyone to enter the grounds before it could presumably attack the intruder. Cautiously, still covered under magical camouflage, Aziza approached it. Upon closer inspection, Aziza saw that the slug's face was that of a human teenage girl, maybe only a few years younger than Aziza herself. This creature's eyes were human. They were red and swollen. The slug creature had just gotten through crying in the recent past. She thought she heard a stray thought of a girl begging for help.
Indeed, her magical senses had not lied to Aziza. All of these monsters were once human. She could now hear other thoughts in the heads of these bizarre monsters, most pleading to be let free from their bondage. That they had lives to live that were stolen from them. Others asked merely if they could die, having given up on ever being rescued. Others were furious, screaming against the dying of the light for their creator to kill who did this to them. Aziza kept hearing the words “Kylie”, “Sorceress”, “Revenge”, “Halloween” and “Freak”. Aziza for all of her newfound magical power was not Sherlock Holmes- she couldn't simply piece together random pieces of information and come up with a logical conclusion as to what happened here, but at least this was a start. Her first step was to look for somebody named Kylie, who presumably was a sorceress that hurt these kids.
“Poor devils” she said, genuinely feeling sorry for the androdynous looking person sitting in the corner who was furiously masturbating, sparks coming out of their head. Their eyes betrayed a stunning loneliness.
Aziza walked up to the front entrance of the school, as her senses indicated that the highest concentration of magic lay inside there. Each step she took felt more foreboding than the last. Aziza, who had been bored for months, was finally in actual danger, and besides wanting to help these people and find out what the heck was going on with her version of Earth, she had to admit that she was itching for a fight. Regina Chung, the other Sorceress Supreme, constantly rejected Aziza's pleas to have some magical sparring sessions, saying that she was a scientist, not a superhero or an MMA fighter. Regina said that she wanted to understand magic, not use it to engage in juvenile wish fulfillment fantasies. Aziza called her an old stick in the mud, and they mostly kept their distance unless they needed each other ever since.
The moment that Aziza opened the door, she could feel that she had tripped some kind of alarm- a magical alarm- because a rather powerful spell began to take hold of her. Aziza could feel her body starting to transform into something hideous, something presumably like the teenagers outside had been transformed into. Her shoes were beginning to feel tight...
Aziza shut her eyes and concentrated. She remembered that she could not call upon Innanna for help this time, but in the months since becoming one of the Sorceresses Supreme, Aziza had made contact with quite a number of other gods and goddesses and had even become friendly with a few of them. She said a silent prayer to one of them, pleading them for the Sorceress Supreme to briefly invoke their power for her own ends.
More quickly than she had even expected, Aziza heard her prayer answered She could feel the invisible but omnipresent tendrils of magic which had been wrapping around her body slowly begin to loosen their grip. Aziza whispered her invocation even harder, more fiercely, with more burning determination, and before she knew it, the magic tendrils seemed to turn to dust and fade away. With a small magical wave of her fingers, Aziza had even returned her own transformed her size six feet back to normal. Aziza smiled in the way somebody who is the best there is at what they do tends to smile.
Confidently, she walked inside the school with a mild strut, the heavy front door loudly slamming shut behind her.
“Nice try, whoever you are!” Aziza shouted loudly to whoever could hear.
The hallway of the school, just like outside, was completely trashed. The lamps that dotted the ceiling contained broken lightbulbs. Books, papers, pens, pencils, binders and other school paraphernalia all lay strewn around open lockers. Graffiti with sexually charged jokes behind them and frankly pornographic imagery painted the walls.
“Tsk tsk” said Aziza, shaking her head. “Such disrespect”. This NEVER would have been tolerated in her home country. Americans spoiled their kids too much, Aziza thought. But then she began to wonder who could have done this. She speculated that whoever had this much power to bring ruin upon an entire town also probably had a lot of repressed issues they were dealing with. “I'm probably about to face a psycho. Just great”. Aziza didn't want to face a psycho. They were unpredictable. They couldn't be reasoned with or relied on to make a decision steeped in rational self-interest. And Aziza didn't exactly know how magic worked in this universe either. She was on the bastard's home turf, playing by his rules...
As Aziza quietly strolled through the school, not exactly sure what she was looking for, she tried to feel exactly where the source of this magic was coming from. She could feel something strong on the second floor...
**
Savannah stood before the President. She hadn't had time to change before stepping through the portal straight to the Oval Office, so she was still in her casual yellow sundress. Seeing all the military brass dressed in official regalia and her out for a day at the beach, she felt a bit silly. Then again, this entire situation was silly. A pair of secret agents vs a coven of evil witches. Even the video games which Savannah occasionally played during the rare times when she wasn't on a mission or shacked up with Katerina weren't this over the top.
Not every U.S President had been informed about the existence of paranormal activity that went on in the world, and of those who were informed, not all of them had been informed on quite how MUCH was happening at any given moment. Not since Savannah had been employed, anyway. Most civilians had rolled their eyes dismissively back when Drumpf kept complaining about a “deep state”, but she wasn't wrong about the existence of one, just naive about their intentions.
The Great Change had forced the hands of people like Savannah Tullio. Now everyone and their grandmother knew that reality altering magic existed, and President Rodham had been enthusiastically and voraciously learning more and more about how the hidden side of reality works every day, much to the chagrin of many of the senior agents who were more comfortable operating in the shadows. Savannah was worried now that the cat was out of the bag, the world would now be seeing an escalation in women like Ophelia Thorfinnson, alienated losers playing with power that made nukes look like Legos.
Savannah briefly stared at Rodham. The President was beautiful, gorgeous even, and that made Savannah laugh a little bit inside. She couldn't believe that she was having a daydream about fucking Rodham, with Rodham's lipstick smeared across Savannah's mouth as she deep throated her, both covered in each other's spunk, because Savannah was by no means a Rodham supporter. She had hated Drumpf during the election too, more so in fact, but Savannah was actually quite a bit more conservative politically than she let on to her family and friends, who had all supported Rodham out of Democratic tribal solidarity. To Savannah, Rodham was just another hypocritical sleazebag whose bottom line was lining her pockets at the expense of the Republic, and now that she knew about the occult, would no doubt be using it to further her own ends. But that was neither here nor there.
“So” stated Rodham, “apparently this Opehlia Thorfinnson and her flunkies are apparently planning to raise an army of demons tonight at Midnight on the East Coast. Except she needs two people to sacrifice in order to complete the ritual.”
“Yes ma'am, that is correct.”
“To what end?”
“We're still trying to solve that question, ma'am. We still haven't been able to grab a hold of the grimoire that she has in her possession. How she got a hold of it, I haven't the faintest idea, but that's the key to knowing what we're dealing with.”
“It's been said that our friends on the other side...”
Savannah smirked at the choice of phrase. “Friends on the other side” was a line from a song from The Princess And The Frog, which was her daughter Ada's favorite movie as a child. Ada was in college now with her girlfriend. Savannah hadn't seen her in months.
“...are not familiar with the demonic entity that Ms. Thorfinnson has pledged herself to.”
“That is correct. The agency has contacted all the usual suspects, and it's a no go. This demon, god, whatever...apparently is a new player in town. That is why it's crucial that we do everything to stop this ritual from being completed. Better the devil you know...”
“...than the devil you don't. Very good. There is a magical force field around Ms. Thorfinnson's home. Specialists have been trying for weeks to disable it, but Ms. Thorfinnson seems to possess, shall we say, above average talents in her field.”
“Yes ma'am” said Savannah curtly. She was getting antsy. “She is a very formidable woman that I look forward to taking down, but I've dealt with worse before. She's merely a highly talented amateur.”
“Hitler was also called a highly talented amateur.”
“Hitler”, Savannah countered, “was a mentally ill junkie with decent rhetorical skills, belied by being in the right place at the right time. Ms. Thorfinnson has none of the those advantages. She has no social or political pull outside of her little gang. She is obviously deranged, she doesn't even try to hide it from anyone as far as we can tell, and once she fails in her goal, and she will, she has nowhere to run. Madam President, you don't need to worry. She's not going to leave her home except in handcuffs or in a bodybag. Same goes for her flunkies.”
“You already know this, but it will only be you and your partner Ms. Ivanova in there. Can you handle this without getting killed?”
“I'm just a soldier, ma'am” said Savannah. “Dying is what I've been preparing to do my whole life.”
**
Cat finished packing her gym bag to the brim with her personal belongings. She told Hannah about her Dad-Mom's creepy behavior for the last few days, and the mysterious couple that had randomly stopped by. This in itself wasn't unusual, because Cat was used to seeing her mother meet with strangers at all hours of the day, but in a way, Cat had gotten used to those particular strangers faces. They weren't familiar, but at least she remembered them. She could halfway predict them. Sally always asked for lots of sugar in her coffee. She heard the one named Tallulah that she came from Florida. These two had just appeared out of nowhere. Cat asked over the phone to her girlfirend if she could stay overnight. Hannah did her one better and insisted that she at least stay the entire weekend, to which Cat was relieved. Cat half expected that when she came back, her home wouldn't even be here anymore, just a smoking outline of where her house USED to be. Don't know why, just a feeling.
The gym bag's zipper would barely close, it was so packed, and when Cat tried to lift the bag's strap over her shoulders, Cat took two steps before she thought she would collapse under the weight of it. She was going to have to carry it by hand then. For nearly four blocks. Shit!
She tried to descend the stairs as quietly as she could. She remembered when she was just a little kid, back when she still thought her dad-mom loved her. Cat, then Josh, would sometimes play hide and seek with Oliver, and Josh would often run down the stairs to look for a hiding spot without her father hearing a sound. Oliver used to call Josh his sneaky little ninja.
“Where do you think you're going?” asked Ophelia from the living room couch.
Being a sneaky little ninja was back then. This is now. Cat was really creeped out by her dad-mom. It's like she could hear every sound in this house sometimes.
“I'm just going to...Hannah's house. Is that OK, Mom?”
Ophelia stared at her daughter for what seemed like an eternity. Cat felt like her mother was trying to read her mind.
“Fine. Go ahead. Just remember to call me when you get there.”
“Thanks!” said Cat, trying to put on an enthusiastic face, but both mother and daughter both knew that their relationship was strained. The love wasn't genuine anymore.
Her Mom-Mom was sitting next to her, almost like a prop. Cat wondered if she should convince Mom-Mom to come with her.