Any sense of self-consciousness of being seen as I burst through that bathroom door were gone in the urgency of the moment. Any little details like how the transformation felt were completely gone to me, and all I could think about was if I was too late.

I ran onto the restaurant floor, and saw there, at the table, were the three daemons still bickering about who it was that they wanted to eat first. I breathed a sigh of relief, but let myself relax even a little bit too soon when the middle daemon caught my eye.

"'Ey! We got ourselves a lil' guest here!" The daemon called out. "Forget these nuggets, I haven't gotten myself a good meal like this in a couple hundred years!"

"Who says you get to eat her?!" Another one of the daemons snapped.

"Because I saw her first!"

"Relax, we're goin' to share," the third said, rubbing its meaty, clawed hand down its face.

"Fine by me! First to kill her gets the biggest piece!"

"Great," I said, gripping my large paintbrush staff with both hands. "I forgot I still needed to fight them."

"What, you thought you could just scare them off?" Ping said.

"Maybe they're the cowardly type!"

"And if they report that there's a Magical Girl loose in the city?"

"Okay, maybe fighting them is the best idea."

The two daemons behind the table leaped face-first, passing through my coworkers as they did so. The third was the first to approach me, however, sliding along the floor with its weird shadowy-stalk of a lower torso. Whatever these things were, however, didn't seem to be very smart or very good at fighting, as it made to wrap me into some sort of hold with both arms, but as I ducked down instinctively the daemon found itself only hugging empty air.

"Hey! She's a slippery one!" It snarled.

"Quick! Hit it now!" Ping said, and without needing to be told twice I gripped my paint brush with both hands like a baseball bat, and from my crouched position I swung with all my strength at the daemon's shadow-stalk. Strangely, however, the brush passed through in a puff of black smoke, and I found myself falling backwards onto my rear from the momentum.

"What are these things?" I asked Ping, and as I said so the daemon turned into a inky black blob and melted into the floor, sliding backwards before reforming back into its usual, ugly self.

"Ugh, sorry, I should've realized sooner," I heard Ping say. "We call them Wall Goblins, they're really nothing special. Usually just used as scouts or spies, that little melting trick is basically the only trick they have."

"Okay? So how do I beat them?"

"You don't!" By now, the other two daemons had caught up, and melting into similar inky blobs leaped in my direction. From my position, the best I could do was throw my body backwards into a reverse somersault. The two daemons crashed into the floor in a shower of ceramic shards, however when I opened my eyes I couldn't see the daemons, only a pair of black pants with an apron draped down the front.

"Ah! Excuse me!" I said to the waitress who couldn't hear me, scrambling to my feet and backing away, only to find myself passing through another person and letting out a yelp. "What's going on?!"

"It's because of the Veil Curse!" Ping insisted. "We can't do anything to them! They can't hear us, touch us, nothing!"

"So then how can the daemons kill us?!"

"Hey you pronounced it correctly!"

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!" The three daemons weren't letting up, and once again they made another leap at me, this team all three at the same time.

"I don't know! They made the curse, so ask them!" Ping yelled.

I swung my paintbrush again, and on the brush itself I could see a spray of sparkling red paint emanate. The paint splashed against the three daemons, and worked in knocking them back, but before the paint could start to hurt them they just simply turned into their shadowy forms again and the paint splashed against the floor uselessly with sizzling sound that gave off a sickly sweet smell.

Sliding forward and taking physical form, the daemons slowly advanced on me, until soon I could feel my back bump against the bar. There was nowhere else to run. The daemon on the right lunged at me with one arm, and in an effort to dodge I through my right side back, grabbing onto a hanging light to keep myself from falling over. The cord on the light did not break, and as it leaned back the light angled towards the daemons. As it shined in their eyes, all three began to curse like sailors and back away.

"All I have to do is shine light on them?!" I asked Ping, as I grabbed at a second lamp to shine in their direction. It worked in making them back away, but it didn't seem to hurt them otherwise.

"Well, yes, but," Ping said slowly. "I've only ever seen the sun kill these goblins! They don't like light, but discomfort is all those dinky lamps are going to do!"

"Great! So I can't win!"

"Try the paint! If you could make the paint burn, maybe it can do something else!"

Ignoring the discomfort of the light, the daemons continued to advance anyways and coiled backwards to leap at me once again. I let go of the lights and grabbed my paint brush, focusing on the paint like I had done before. I had no idea how magic worked, or how I even got it to burn in the first place, but like any good book or cartoon I had watched as I kid I did my best to picture the sun in my mind and everything about it. The daemons took another leap at me, and once more I took a swing with my paint brush.

This time, the paint that came from it glowed with a bright yellow brilliance, and even as the daemons hesitated, turning into their shadow forms in an effort to avoid the attack, their bodies vanished in puffs of black smoke as the paint passed through the effortlessly, leaving a smell like burning sulfur in the air.

"Did... I do it?" I asked Ping, bewildered that it was actually that easy.

"Looked like shadow goblins dying to me!"

I let out a sigh of relief, and found myself falling backwards into a bar stool that a rather depressed looking gentleman was already sitting in. After a few moments, I pushed myself from the bar and made my back to the bathroom.

"Then, looks like I saved the day," I said to Ping.