Dragon's Breath: A Modern Winx Club Rewrite

An Unexpected Event Part 2

Mitzi was the last person Bloom wanted to see right now.

She giggled, flipping her long, perfectly groomed hair behind her. "What happened to you? Aw, did the wild animals mistake your hair for a nest again?" Sarcasm laced her nasally voice.

Bloom felt her anger rising to the surface again. "Mitzi, leave me alone! You don't know what you're talking about," Tears threatened to spill out, and the last thing she wanted was for Mitzi to think that she was crying because of her stupid insults.

"Poor little circus freak! All alone, no friends to comfort her." Mitzi's giggles morphed into full on laughter, her body shaking.

"I have plenty of friends, Mitzi!" Tears flowed down Bloom's face freely now, stinging her skin. Her hands started to burn, and she felt like she was on fire with rage.

"Imaginary friends don't count, Bloom." Bloom hated being spoken to like that, slowly and sarcastically, like she was some child who couldn't understand anything. She hated Mitzi, and she hated Andy, and she hated Selina. "What, did that Andy finally fess up and dump you? It was about time. I mean, everyone knew he and Selina were hooking up. Everyone but you, I suppose..."

Bloom couldn't handle it anymore. She felt like she was burning, and she wanted to do anything she could to get the fire off of her, away from her, towards Mitzi. With a shout, Bloom threw out her hands, yelling for Mitzi to stop.

A fireball shot out of her hands.

Nearly grazing Mitzi, it eventually fizzled out into the air. "What the hell? Are you hiding some kind of flamethrower? Ugh, what? I'm gonna tell the whole school about this, just you wait. Everyone's going to be talking about the freak with the flamethrower who attacked me!"

Bloom wasn't listening. What the hell was happening to her? She had just thrown a fireball. A glowing, terribly hot ball of freaking fire. Was she some kind of monster?

Overcome with emotion, Bloom started running again, this time into the woods bordering the town. She ran for what felt like hours, her lungs heaving and her legs burning. She ran through trees and bushes that tore through her clothes and her skin and muddied her face until finally, for the second time today, she collapsed into a pile of tears and regret.

Why wasn't she good enough for Andy? She could've changed for him, if he'd only asked. She didn't mind dying her hair or wearing black. She could've even taken up an instrument, if he'd only just asked. And why did it have to be Selina? Out of every girl in Gardenia, why Selina?

Sobs wracked her body, so loud she could barely hear anything around her. So loud, she could barely hear the screaming girl behind her.

A screaming girl? Still sniffling, Bloom turned around. At the sight of the blonde girl dressed head to toe in sparkling orange, she forgot all about Andy and Selina and even Mitzi. The girl was shooting something out of a scepter, something that looked a lot like her fireballs! Maybe she could get some answers out of this girl!

A roar came from behind the trees, and suddenly Bloom could see what the girl was shooting at. An ogre ran towards them, the ground shaking as it charged. There was a stench accompanying it, much like burnt skin and sewage. To her surprise, the girl didn't seem scared. She simply turned up her nose and used two fingers to pinch it shut. "Stupid stinky ogre. You couldn't have taken a bath before attacking me? You'd think those witches would cast a spell to make you smell better. Hey, spell and smell rhyme!" She giggled to herself, pleased with her realization.

That was when the ogre smacked her right into the sky with a sickening thump. Bloom's heart dropped. There was no way she would survive that.

The sparkling girl stayed in the air, though. She had... wings? Was she a witch like those she mentioned before? No, she seemed to have some sort of disdain for them... Well then, what the hell was she?

A scream broke through her thoughts. The girl was fine, but she dropped her scepter. It lay on the forest floor, and the ogre was much closer to it than she was. There was no way she could get to it before the ogre would. Bloom had to help, but there was no way for her to fight it off. She would have to use her fireballs.

Okay, she could do this. She would get the scepter back, save the... weird witch girl, and get some answers as to what she was. How did she get the fireball before?

Anger.

She focused. Before, she had been angry about what Mitzi was saying. Now, she focused on the ogre. It was about to ruin her only chance at answers. And that scepter clearly didn't belong to it! How dare it try to take it from the girl!

Bloom's hands released another fireball. She was thrown backwards with the force of it, her back slamming into a tree behind her, sending shooting pain up her spine. The fireball didn't hit the ogre, but it had to jump back to avoid it. This gave the girl just enough time to dive down and grab her scepter.

When it was safely in her hands, she aimed it towards the ogre. Bloom's head was spinning from the force of being blasted into a tree, and she could barely keep her eyes open.

"Begone, nasty!" A beam of light hit the ogre, who vanished, and thankfully took its stench with it. But the Earth was spinning a lot faster. Was that because of the blasts? Or maybe that was just her head. The girl rushed over, out of breath. "You'll be fine, relax, nothing a little magic couldn't fix. Why are you on Earth, though? Did you sense the magic blast? Wow, you're a mess. Come on, cast a healing spell already!"

Bloom's voice was barely a whisper, her vision going dark around the edges. "What the actual," she wasn't one for swearing, but this was a special situation, "fuck?"

Then, she passed out.