Carrot and Stick: How to Assist Law Enforcement While Breaking Several Magical Laws - Chapter XVI

Carrot and Stick: How to Assist Law Enforcement While Breaking Several Magical Laws - Chapter XVI

Ehhhh, no, too long.

***

Iris reached into the pockets of her grey coat and grabbed a small totem. It was one of the only ones she had left, but this moment called for its use, didn’t it?

Before her was her enemy and she wasn’t going to hold back against them... her?

She didn’t want to think of herself as too prejudiced, but when she had imagined the enemy, she had casually assumed that it would be some angry old man who thirsted too much for power and who had gone mad diving too deeply into the arcane. 

Instead she found herself across from a girl that didn’t look much older than herself, red hair poking out from an absurdly large hat that seemed covered in frills and lace and small arcane symbols worked into the fabric. The rest of her outfit, however, was entirely... normal. Cheeks reddened by the cold, a little button nose, wide, too-innocent eyes, and clothes that could have been picked off any old bargain rack.

“Um, hi!” the girl said. “My name is Cudd--”

Iris pulled the totem out of her pocket and concentrated for a moment. This kind of artifice was familiar to her, but it wasn’t her preferred way of using magic. Still, she grabbed the magic around her and pulled it inwards, channeling it into the totem until it felt warm, then burning hot in her hand.

She crushed her fist closed, and little bits of baked clay went scattering all over the snowy ground. The wave of magic washed away from her like a shockwave  out of an explosion. It was entirely metaphysical, however. 

Was she ready for this fight? No, not really. She had spent a lot of energy today already, her stores were lower than she’d like them to be. Was she going to give it her all anyway? 

Yeah. Yeah, she was. She owed it to her pappy. 

“Whoa! What was that?” the girl... no, that was wrong. The Master, said. 

“That was just the start,” Iris said. She warred against herself. Part of her wanted to explain what she was planning and plotting here. After that fight with the daemon this morning, she was taking more precautions. This time, no one would escape. 

No monologuing. That was one of the rules. 

“Prepare yourself,” she said as she reached up and tore off her coat. The totem’s magic was already working. People in the area were being pushed away. A slight sense of ‘this place is boring’ and of casual ‘threat’ was pushing at their minds, combined with a strong desire not to look this way. It would, hopefully, keep this fight about as private as could be. It was the best she could manage.

Her coat hit the ground and she shifted, pulling two precious items out of a small leather pouch by her hip.

“Whoa!” the girl gasped. “Are you a magical girl?”

Iris paused. The Master watched anime? Wait, no, it wasn’t time for that. She slid her magical brass knuckles on, then punched her hands together. There was a loud whump as impact magic went off and the small dusting of snow around her flew back. “Prepare yourself for an honourable death, it is the only honour you will ever know.”

The girl clapped, mittened gloves smacking together. “Is that your tag-line? So cool!”

Iris grit her teeth, shifted her pose, then gripped the magic in the air around her and channeled it into her costu-- into her magical raiment. The magic flitted through tiny embroidered lines, firing up precise magical circuits that she’d spent days sewing into her garb, and just like that, she went from being an ordinary girl to the thing that would put an end to this Master.

Iris shot forwards, cracked ice shattering behind her even as she blurred towards the girl. 

“Eep!” 

The girl dove to the side, narrowly avoiding a straight right that struck the air with a whip-crack boom. “Don’t dodge,” Iris said.

The girl rolled, then clumsily got to her feet and stumbled back. “Hey! Wait, I think there’s been a serious misunderstanding!”

“There is none,” Iris replied. She launched another strike at the girl, the air warping ahead of her even as she struggled to pull the magic out of the air and channel it into her knuckles. 

The blow hit the girl dead-on in the chest and sent her flying back to crash into a snowbank with a hard ‘oomph’. 

Iris grinned. First blood was hers.

“Ow... I’m starting to think that you don’t want to talk this out,” the girl said.

“You’ll have time to talk when you’re dead,” Iris said. 

“That doesn’t make sense!” the girl said. She slumped her way out of the snowbank, then wavered onto her feet. Iris grinned. The girl’s thick winter jacket and the snow had absorbed some of the impact, but the hit had been good. “From the abyss, I draw restraint against ruin--”

A spell! Of course, there was no point for them to hide that now. 

Filthy wizards and their filthy spells. They had a massive amount of variation and range with their magics, but when it came to speed...

Iris burst forwards, magic sucked into her boots to move her fast as a blink. She spun, almost losing her footing, but regaining it enough to launch a quick kick into the girl’s side.

The master coughed and fell to the side, clutching at her ribs. 

Good! Time to finish her! Iris pumped energy into her knuckles, the arcane-symbol covered artefacts glowed so bright she almost couldn’t look at them, a symbol of her determination to cave this idiot’s face in.

“Chains... urgh, Chains of Darkness!”

Iris leapt up and back, dodging the first dark line swiping out towards her, then she skipped up and avoided the next two.

“You’ll have to be better than that, Master,” Iris said. 

“I’m not anyone’s master,” the girl said. She grimaced and touched her side. “I’m Carrot Cuddlesworth, and I’m... I’m your eternal dark magical girl rival!”

“Huh?”

“Burst forth cursed flower! Black Petal Thorns!”

Iris hissed as she flipped to the side and avoided a pair of dark blurs, then a third one came from a strange angle and she only barely managed to swipe it out of the air. 

It was a strange, petal-shaped object, though it looked like it was fat and rather blunted. How was that supposed to hurt anyone, especially moving as slow as it did?

“You underestimate me!” she shouted.

“Nope!” the girl said. “I’d never underestimate my self-declared eternal rival!”

“I’ve declared no such thing,” Iris shot back.

The girl grinned, impossibly smug, and placed her mittens on her hips. “I did it for you.”

“That makes no sense!” Iris charged forwards and the girl’s eyes went wide and she backpedaled. 

She raised her hand. “From the abyss, I draw restraint against ruin, Chains of Darkness!”

Iris knew that one, now. She hopped up into the air, ready to dodge only...

Instead of black chains, what came from the girl’s hand was a single one of those blunted petals. It shot out, and Iris had no choice but to punch it out of the air. 

Damned wizard, she’d cast one thing while pretending to cast another! Deceptive as the rest of them!

Then she landed and prepared to bolt forwards only to feel something reached up and grab her leg and something else wrap around her torso.

“Got ya!” the girl said.

“What?” Iris asked. There was a chain around her leg and another around her stomach, both of them anchored around one of the trees behind her. Had the wizard actually cast that spell after all? The petal attack was a distraction, then! “This won’t stop me!” Iris shouted. She pulled at the air around herself, tugging magic in to empower herself all the more.

“Nice! I can do that too!”

Iris gasped as the girl pointed a hand to the air and shouted. “Let the night burn away all impurities. Rite of Dark Purification!”

The magic in the air shifted. Like a strong wind before an active jet engine, it was sucked inwards towards the space above the girl and... did nothing? The magic was just forced to move. It was a lot of magical motion, but to no end.

Iris tugged at the magic, trying to force it into her costume, but it wasn’t hers to grasp. She suddenly felt very small under the grinning gaze of this red-haired fool.

The girl lowered her hand and pointed it at her. “I... don’t actually know what to do now? Like, the magical girl is supposed to win.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe I can hold back more? But not much more, my ribs hurt a lot. Do you think they’re broken? Urgh, you really kick hard, you know?”

Iris stared some more, but the situation wasn’t becoming any clearer. She instead struggled against the chains around her, only to finally realize that the chains had split, and where she had only been anchored to the tree behind her, now more chains were wrapped around the jungle gyms, even plunging into the ground nearby. 

“Okay, so what if I let you loose, and then we both agree to stop with the kicking?”

Iris roared and pulled herself forwards, feet digging into the ground. She heard some of the chains start to clink, links popping apart.

“Oh, wow, you’re strong,” the girl said. “Uh, can we chat? Really-really? I’m not really one for sparring and stuff.”

“I’m... I’m going to kill you!” Iris shouted.

“What? Why?”

“You killed Pappy!”

The girl blinked. “I... really didn’t? I’m sorry that you lost your pappy, but I don’t know who that is.”

“Shut up!” Iris shouted. She moved her free hand to her necklace, the metal around the gem in its centre feeling colder even then the winter air. She tightened her grip and started to channel only...

Both Iris and the idiot girl looked up as a swoop sounded. 

Iris grit her teeth together as a massive form landed atop one of the nearby jungle gyms. “Well, well,” a smooth, cultured voice said. “My lost morsel and another tasty little treat. How very fortuitous.”

***

Carrot found her attention split. As much as she’d like to think that she was getting pretty okay at the whole magic thing, casting so many spells, and of so many sorts, in such quick succession was really straining her abilities, such as they were. 

Fighting the magical girl was one thing, but a second opponent, and a daemon at that? That might be a little too much for her.

The magical girl has been fast. She’d barely been able to keep up with her movements, and that kick had hurt. She’d never been struck before, not really, and she wasn’t sure how to handle being hit now. Her whole side was going to be one big bruise.

“Who are you?” she asked. 

The daemon moved its beak open a little, in a way that kind of reminded her of a grin. “Is the second morsel curious? I am but a humble lieutenant in my great Master’s army.” With a swish of its wings, the daemon mimicked a bow. “You may call me Ghost before you, too, become a spirit.”

Carrot shook her head, then touched the hem of her hat. It was dripping a bit of water. When had it started to rain?

She turned towards the magical girl. “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked.

The girl’s face went beat, angry red. “What?” she asked before letting go of her necklace to point at the big daemon owl. “That thing is my enemy!” 

“Oh, well, I think he’s mine too,” Carrot said. “So, uh, truce?”

“Oh, the morsels want to fight together? Poor things, don’t you know that it’s far too late for that?” Ghost asked.

Carrot didn’t much like the sound of that.

***