Despite having been parked for several minutes, Marie didn’t climb out of her car until after Gadget did, hidden as she was behind the car’s windshield.

  The huge bees bumbling around didn’t immediately react to Luc stepping out of the car, which was a good sign. They also looked more like honey bees than wasps, which was another good sign, but Marie couldn’t stand bees. They were always too interested in her, and she’d been stung too many times even when trying to avoid them.

  Couldn’t the job description have mentioned something about bees? It felt relevant. Extremely relevant.

  Gadget glanced over, raising an eyebrow as Marie moved around the front of the car, one hand lingering on the hood as though she’d stay safe so long as she was still touching it.

  “Afraid?” Gadget asked, eyebrows wagging as she proffered the question.

  Marie felt her heart leap, both at the accusation and the look. She definitely hadn’t picked Gadget because of her looks, she’d never consider something as shallow as appearance when it came to picking a mentor or rival, but…

  She shook her head, the word clicking in place. “No!” A quick burst of laughter escaped her lips. “Why would I be afraid?”

  Gadget shrugged and easily turned her attention back to the soccer field, leaning casually on one leg as though this was just another day. She was so calm about all of this, as if nothing ever shook her. This was what Marie desperately needed to learn. The confidence. The preparedness.

  “So what’s the plan?” Marie asked, rubbing her hands together. How did one even go about capturing and relocating a hive of magical bees?

  How had they gotten that big to begin with? Magic could have strange effects, but shouldn’t someone have noticed before they got this large?

  Gadget shot her another look. “I’m not sure why you’re asking me,” she said. “We’re not a team.”

  “Right.” How could she forget? They were rivals right now. Marie needed to prove herself, show Gadget that she knew what she was doing and they could make an effective team. Once that was done, they could join forces. “I know that. I was just testing you.”

  She caught the roll of Gadget’s eyes as she strode forward, stopping where the concrete ended. She sucked in a deep breath and connected with the magic that had chosen her, letting it flow out and surround her.

  Transformation always felt a bit like a tickle, leaving her skin tingling. Her outfit changed from the uniform her school required to the baby pink leotard and mesh skirt she’d picked for her magical girl outfit, down to the ribbons winding up from her flats. They weren’t exactly pointe shoes, but those weren’t especially practical for fighting monsters. The wings were the last thing that manifested, a heavy piece of technology that settled onto her back and shoulders like a backpack. Real feathers swanned out on either side of her, fluttering slightly with each step.

  Her braids stopped dancing in the air as she stepped onto the green, cringing as the bees immediately noticed.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” she whispered under her breath, more to herself than anyone else. “I’m here to help. Just here to help…”

  Walking slowly into the center of the field, Marie wracked her brain for ideas, coming up empty even as she tipped over the bucket and shook it to free anything that might be stuck. How was she supposed to relocate the bees with a purely physical power? She wasn’t like Gadget, who could build all sorts of tools to use. She had her body, and the perfection that was her power, and a wand that had been made for combat. Maybe if she set it to stun…?

  Yeah, that would work.

  ******

  Marie’s transformation was nothing short of spectacular. While Luc’s was hardly more than mundane, Marie truly looked the part of a magical girl. The image lingered against her eyelids long after the effect ended and they watched her walk into the center of the field, bees swarming all around her. Her wings acted as a shield, keeping the bugs away from her body.

  “Please do something cool,” Maisey said, pulling out her phone. “Because she looks amazing, and you…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Luc muttered. Maybe once she got paid for all the jobs she’d taken this week she’d be able to afford a better outfit, depending on how good her bonus was from being Marie’s rival and if her mother was able to pay the electricity bill this month.

  “Do you know what her official name is?” Maisey asked. “Actually, nevermind, found it. Kinda odd, if you ask me.”

  “What is it?” Luc asked, crossing her arms over her chest. She would anticipate something egotistical from her, that wouldn’t be strange.

  “Magical Girl Limit,” Maisey said, tilting the phone over for Luc to see the girl’s social media page. “Because ‘She will always surpass her limits’.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Okay.” Luc stared at it for a moment longer before shrugging. Marie’s name or slogan was none of her concern. She had bees to capture and relocate. Somehow.

  Across the field, Marie’s magical wand flashed and one of the bees dropped to the ground with a quiet thud.

  Luc and Marie both winced.

  “You don’t think she killed it, do you?” At Luc’s shrug, Maisey shook her head and gave Luc a little shove. “Go do something.”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but everything I do needs time to prepare,” Luc said, popping open her trunk. Odds and ends and old tools immediately tried to spill out, only caught by the small net she’d strung across it. That was just a little piece of genius she’d installed after far too many minutes wasted cleaning up after herself.

  It didn’t slow her down now as she stared into the trunk, trying to piece together a plan. A part of her wanted to construct a type of armor or protection first, but the bees weren’t behaving aggressively. They were honey bees, not hornets. She didn’t need to worry about being attacked by the bees so long as she didn’t do anything to upset them.

  What she needed was something to calm them further.

  She’d visited a honey farm once in elementary school, one of the few field trips her mother could afford to send her on because it was local and cheap. They’d gone out to the farm and a woman in one of those bee keeper outfits had talked to them about bees and how honey was made, blowing smoke on them to make them go to sleep before opening up the box they lived in and pulling out a honeycomb.

  So that was step one. Make something that smoked.

  Maisey walked around behind her, phone held up at different angles as Luc dug through her trunk. There had to be something inside here that would work.

  “Aha.” She slid out of the car, landing back on the concrete with an old hairdryer in hand, the cord tangled around something deeper in the car.

  Well, she didn’t need the cord anyway.

  She opened her utility belt’s largest pouch, hanging directly over her left hip, and pulled out a pair of scissors. She snipped off the cord at the handle, then cut off a small piece of electrical tape to cover the frayed wires inside.

  Turning it around, she used the scissors again to snip at the wire covering over the blowing end, opening it up enough to shove something inside it. Now, she just needed something to light on fire.

  “What are you doing?” Maisey asked as Luc ran over to the nearby playground, grabbing a piece of mulch off the ground. She shoved the wood chip into the front of the hairdryer, and grinned as she sprinted back to the car. Now she just needed something to trap a bee in.

  Not just a bee. The queen. That was the other thing the beekeeper had explained. Wherever you moved the queen, the rest of the hive would follow.

  The same should happen here, if she got lucky.

  She’d be willing to bet Marie didn’t know any of this, considering she was still struggling as Luc finished rigging an old laundry basket into a cage for the queen. Now, she just needed to find her.

  With a lighter she’d picked up for another job, Luc lit the piece of mulch, smoke immediately pouring from the damp piece of wood. Then she poured magic into the hairdryer and it whirred to life, blowing the smoke all around them.

  Armed and shielded by the smoke, Luc walked out into the field with confidence and a smile on her face.

  The humming of the bees grew violently loud as she walked onto the soccer field. She tensed for a moment as they flew around her before realizing none of them were actually interested in her. The ones nearby grew slow and sluggish under the effect of the smoke, and the ones who weren’t were violently interested in Marie.

  She was not doing well. Luc might have felt bad, if Marie hadn’t brought it on herself. Punching bees wasn’t a good strategy to relocate them, unless her plan was to anger them all and then run. But even then, they’d probably lose interest after a few miles.

  Finding the queen was going to be an issue. She needed to find the hive first.

  She turned her back to Marie, trying not to let the girl distract her, and ignored Maisey on the side of the field, still filming. Smoke billowed around her, burning in her eyes and filling them with tears as she strained to see through it.

  Where is the hive?

  It had to be around here somewhere. The bees wouldn’t travel far, especially not this many of them. It also had to be somewhere the bees could actually fit for the queen to hold her court.

  Pointing her smoke gun at the ground for a moment, Luc scanned the park, trying to piece it together from memory as much as from sight. She’d never been taken to the park much as a child, and even that was a long time ago, but when her eyes landed on the swinging pavilion, she knew she had the right spot.

  Breaking into a sprint, she sprayed smoke in front of her as she ran, slowing only when she hit the concrete steps in front of the pavilion. Bees hummed all around it, buzzing in and out. The interior of the space had been filled with honeycomb, orange-gold honey seeping into the wooden base. What happened if you ate magical honey?

  The noise grew downright deafening as Luc stepped up to the platform, shoes sinking into ankle deep honey. That was going to be a bitch to clean up.

  Her thumb pushed up the dial on the hairdryer handle, smoke growing into a cloud around her as she directed it at the hive. If Maisey could see anything, it would be a miracle.

  Luc had no idea how she was going to find the queen until her eyes landed on the creature, visually distinct from all the other bees around it, not least because she was three times their size.

  This clothes basket was going to be a tight fit.

  She slid the smoke gun’s handle into the free holster on her right hip, getting both hands around her rigged trap, and approached the queen.

  “Nice and easy now,” she whispered, and dropped the cage over the queen. She didn’t so much as buzz in protest.

  Luc straightened, staring at her captured prize. “Huh. That was easier than I expected.”

  She closed up the end of the trap and turned the basket over, settling it against her hip and walking out of the hive. The bees who’d been sending to the queen trailed along behind her, dipping and bobbing lazily in the smoke stream.

  Marie stopped and stared as Luc walked back to her car, even the bees she’d been fighting with abandoning her to follow the queen.

  Maisey stared in amazement as Luc settled the basket into the trunk, slowly lowering her phone.

  Slamming the trunk shut, Luc turned and faced Marie, unable to stop herself. “Try harder next time. That wasn’t even a challenge!”

  “Ooh, that was good,” Maisey said. “Wait, say it again so I can record it.”

  Luc turned and stared at her. “Really?”

  She nodded eagerly.

  With a sigh, Luc repeated the line, feeling her face go red as Marie stared. The moment Maisey gave her a thumbs up, she retreated to her car to drive the bees back to the commission building.

  Her heart hammered in her chest as she caught Marie staring after them in her rear view mirror. Maybe challenging her was a bad idea. Something told her she'd find out.