Be Careful What You Wish For | Hey Arnold! x Puella Magi Madoka Magica Crossover

Chapter 13

Helga opened her eyes to a scene of chaos. Somehow she found herself standing in the middle of witch's labyrinth... but how did she get here?

It didn't matter. What mattered to her was that she find Phoebe and get the heck out.

"Phoebe!" Helga's voice took on a weird consistency when she yelled; it was as though she were screaming in a vacuum and an echo chamber at the same time.

She surveyed her surroundings. She was standing on a hard, flat surface...concrete?...no, metal...a desk? She was standing on a giant desk, not unlike the one she sat in front of in school. In fact, the entire labyrinth greatly resembled a large-scaled classroom, except that is spun in an infinite loop, as though it were in a wind tunnel.

Several yards away, in the very centre of the loop, Helga spied a figure sitting hunched over on a stool. Unlike everything else, the figure was not rotating, instead remaining fixed in the same spot. The figure's back was to Helga, and it looked to be wearing a large conical hat...a dunce cap?

"Phoebe! Don't worry, I'll get us out of here!"

Simone and Cookie were closer to the figure; they were standing on a giant teacher's desk just a few hundred metres away, also located in the centre of the loop.

"There's our target," announced Simone. "This one's mine."

Simone ran at full tilt along the length of the desk, and was halfway across when she was ambushed from above. Several giant rubber stamps appeared overhead and began slamming down on the desk in an attempt to crush her. Simone was able to dodge the first wave, but discovered she was getting pursued by a persistent round rubber stamp that impressed a giant red letter F on the desk. She eventually lost her footing and fell, making herself vulnerable to being crushed.

Just as the stamp came crashing down, however, Simone used her powers to halt it in its tracks. She could only keep it up for a few seconds, but it was enough time for Cookie to POP! to Simone's aid, grab her, and POP!them both out of harm's way.

Even when out of danger, Simone was struggling to catch her breath; using her powers had exhausted a considerable amount of her magic. Cookie looked concerned, but her friend quickly brushed her off.

"It's nothing, I'm fine," Simone insisted. It was then that she noticed Helga in the distance, very slowly making her way from desk to desk.

"New plan, Cookie - I want you to kill that pig-tailed little brat."

Helga felt disoriented; she had no way of knowing if she was right-side up or she was upside-down, whether or not she was flipped 180 degrees, her centre of gravity was firmly placed on the desks onto which she hopped. This was important – even though the desks moved in alternating rows either clockwise or counterclockwise, should she make an error and time her jumps wrong, Helga would fall through the space between and into the void, lost for all eternity.

Just as Helga was preparing to leap onto a another floating desk, Cookie popped into her path unexpectedly. This caused Helga to stop in her tracks, but before she could turn around and run, Cookie swiped at her with her pugil stick, knocking her to the right and causing her to slide toward the edge of the desk. Helga saved herself by grabbing on to the edge, but she could only do so with one hand, as her other hand was still injured from when Simone had slammed down her heel.

As Helga hung on for dear life to the edge, Cookie teleported several feet in the air above her initial spot and chucked her pugil stick so that it hurtled towards her. At the speed it came down, Helga had only two options: let go and drop to her doom, or stay put and be flattened to death by the force of the pugil stick. Helga chose the latter, hoping that the weapon would miss its mark.