"Do you think we'll be too late?" Ping whispered into my ear as we boarded the elevator.

"I would really rather not think about it," I whispered back, and tapped my foot incessantly as I waited for the elevator to get moving. "Okay, we'll be ready for when the door opens, got it?"

"You mean we're transforming now?"

"Yes!"

By the time the elevator doors opened and the others in the cab got moving, I was stepping out in full Magical Girl garb, paintbrush staff in hand.

"Alright you filthy daemon scum," I said, trying to keep myself in the right mind to fight. "Where are you..."

The problem right now, however, was that the lobby itself was absent of anything out of the ordinary. Other white-collar workers milled about their usual business, sat in waiting chairs thumbing through their phones, talking on headset phones and looking like they were just talking to myself.

"Oh, I should get one of those," I muttered to myself. "Then it won't look so weird whenever I'm talking to Ping."

"Focus, Sue!" Ping insisted.

"R-right," I said, realizing how quickly I had let my guard down. I quickly glanced towards the front desk, and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw, still sitting there and staring at her phone as she flippantly told someone which floor they were looking for, was Violet.

"Oh thank god," I said.

"Don't relax just yet," Ping said. "This might just mean we beat them to the punch!"

As Ping said this, another elevator door pulled open and the two daemons I had seen before stepped outside with the crowd.

"I knew you hit the wrong number!" The lizard said. "Unbelievable, you'll be lucky if we get chastised for being late! If anything goes wrong, I definitely blame you for it!"

"So we had to go to the top before we got to the bottom, big deal!" The meatball said. "I knew if we hit all the buttons we would eventually get where we needed to go, and I was right, wasn't I!"

I took a deep breath, remembering how I managed to fight off both the shadow daemons and that weird eyeball thing and brandished my paintbrush. "Too late for what?" I asked the daemons, who didn't realize at first that I was actually talking to them. "To get your butts whooped?"

"You know, we'll have to work on your one-liners," Ping said.

"Shush!" I shushed back.

"Oh great, she must've heard about our plans," the lizard moaned, smacking the meatball on the back of the head. "I told you to keep that big mouth o' your's shut!"

"Oh whatever!" The meatball tried to hit the lizard back, but was too short to easily reach. "Like you weren't blabbin' the whole time during patrol!"

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't sayin' any IMPORTANT DETAILS durin' our conversations! I heard you SO MANY TIMES tell me 'yeah, we're gettin' the gloomy receptionist'! I blame you!"

"That's 'cause you kept askin'! MAYBE if you kept the details in mind, I wouldn't need to keep reminding you!"

"So..." I whispered to Ping, "do I let them fight? Or... no, actually, don't answer that."

Not one to let an opportunity pass me by, usually, I gripped my paintbrush and swung a wide arc in their direction, letting a spray of red paint fill the air.

"Look out!" The meatball shouted, pushing the lizard out of the way and getting covered tip-to-toe in the red paint. The daemon immediately burst into flames, and the smell of cooked sausage filled my nostrils.

"I got one!" I cheered, hopping in victory.

"Polpetta!" The lizard shouted in distraught.

"What the hell?" I heard Violet say, looking in our direction with suspicion on her face, but not looking at any of us in particular. The whole ordeal must look like a mess of blurs to her.

"It's not over yet," Ping said, and they were right. Polpetta was still standing, flames roiling from his body, but standing nonetheless.

"Oh now I'm mad!" Polpetta growled, and took a deep breath in. From his mouth, the small daemon spat out a flaming glob of bile. With a yelp, I jumped out of the way and watched the bile splash on the floor, drops spraying onto my body and leaving little pinpricks that gave a harsh burning sensation.

"Okay! Okay fire was a bad idea!" I announced, running for cover, surveying the scene until I noticed... "Wait, where's the other one!?"

That's when I ran into thin air and bounced off, landing on my rear. In front of me, the air seemed to melt and warp until I could see the chameleon right there.

"Just 'cause we ain't no execs, doesn't mean we're no chumps in a fight," the lizard said with a cackle, as he reached down and, with all four of his arms, grabbed mine and lifted me from the floor. "Maybe the boss won't be so mad if we bring him what he's lookin' for, eh?" Even Polpetta seemed to be grinning at this prospect, though I couldn't really tell.

"Let... me... go!" I grunted, struggling against the lizard's grip.

"Yeah, or what?"

As I flailed on the spot, my leg kicked out and my foot connected, square on the space between the lizard's legs. Did daemons even have "parts"? Immediately the lizard's grips on my arms released and I dropped to the floor. Wasting no time, I stabbed forward with my paintbrush and covered the lizard's body in the same red paint, the daemon squealing as the magical fluid burned through him.

"Lucertola!" Polpetta cried. "You'll pay for what you did!" He braced his little legs and inhaled once more, preparing another volley of the flaming bile. Without thinking, I twirled the staff in my hands as I turned to face the daemon, and as I swung the brush with an overhead swing.

The paint at the tip of the brush turned to a bright blue colour, and as the paint splashed over Polpetta in a cascade, a rush of cold fog and hot steam burst from the spot. When the air cleared, all that was left was a perfect, frozen statue of the daemon.

I kept the paintbrush gripped tightly in my hands. Even with the threat gone, I didn't feel like I or Violet were safe from danger at all.

"Sue! It's fine! You did it!" Ping tried to reassure me, but it didn't help.

"No, that was too easy..." I said. "There's no way it should be that easy..."

"And you're right," Grigori's familiar drawl sounded through the room, a voice only Ping and I could hear. There, above the front desk was a large, black cloud of smoke that began to form and, staring down at me was Grigori's smug visage. "So, you must be the little resident pain in the neck that's decided to appear and start playing hero."

"Stay away from my-- coworkers!" I said, picking my words carefully. "I don't know what you're planning, but it clearly didn't work!" Whoa, I sounded pretty cool just there.

"Do you really think the goal of my little operation was to kidnap one human?" Grigori said with a chuckle. "Honestly, my first time with an adversary and I thought they would be smart."

I felt my face flush at this. "He was trying to root us out!" I heard Ping say.

"Right you are, little sprite," Grigori said. "It's no effort at all to torment you humans, you're already under our heel! But really, obviously I had a back-up plan, and what I'm looking for isn't really to take a life, but for leverage." The cloud of smoke shrunk, then expanded and revealed a larger room with a familiar figure, passed out in a chair.

Jonathon.

"No!" I cried out.

"Oh, so he is someone you know," Grigori said with another chuckle. "I suppose that would be useful information if this one wasn't such an annoying social butterfly."

"What do you want with him?!"

"You, obviously," Grigori said. "I'm giving you until the end of this week to turn yourself in, peacefully. Bring me the sprite, and I will wipe your memories clean of this whole ordeal. You will get to return to your life as if nothing happened."

"And if I don't?!" I said, glaring at Grigori. "Wh-what if I'm okay with letting you kill him?"

Grigori laughed. "As if someone who ever qualifies to be a Magica would ever be okay with something such as that. But yes, he will die, and regardless if you're okay with that or not, so will you."

The cloud of smoke returned to Grigori's face and all humor had left his expression. "Let me remind you, Magica, this world is our's. You might think you can save a few lives, but you will never overthrow us. You have until the end of the week, and if I don't see you in my office with the sprite by then, then expect all of Pandemonium to come crashing down on your front door." The humor returned to Grigori's face. "Until then, I look forward to seeing you."

The cloud of smoke dissipated, and the sounds of a busy lobby came rushing back to my ears. I felt myself slide down to the floor and collapse on my knees.

"What do I do?" I asked Ping.