"Or killing people, sometimes.  And yes."

Jenny walks down the alley, bauble in her hand.

After they go a few blocks, it's somewhat brighter.

"I think I know where the witch is," Diana chimes in.  "Or, rather, that I can derive it from what the astrolabe's showing me.  ...Lila, do you know how to use your weapons?  Jenny, tell us about how we fight."

Lila nods.  "I've fired a crossbow before."  She reaches to her belt, remembers that her crossbow's vanished with her magical skirts, and shrugs.  "Does the magic make it different, Jenny?"

Jenny nods.  "It gives you some more skill and strength with your weapons.  But if you've used it before, I think that helps."  She hasn't talked with too many magical girls about their personal histories, and the ones she has talked with tended to brag.

"So the witches have a barrier around them, to hide themselves from the world and let their despair leak out.  Sometimes you can see a cloud like some fog or smoke, or sometimes they look like they aren't there.  Once we pierce the barrier - then it's a crazy world with whatever theme twisted to horror, like a kitchen or a playground or something.  We need to get to the center with our weapons and kill the witch there."

They come to an intersection; Jenny frowns at her bauble and, guessing, turns left.

Diana frowns at Jenny, having sensed her uncertainty and decided that this needs to be done better - does something twisty with her astrolabe -

"This way.  That way won't get us there in time," she states with surety as she continues straight.  "We'll be guessing at alleyways for too long."

Jenny frowns.  She could've wished for something about tracking, maybe?  "You sure?"

"Mhm."

She waves her astrolabe at Jenny; it sure does appear to - have sprouted some very intricate machinery that is tracking their location in 4D? - as they move relative to another known point.

"Gotta get there before it eats someone else, you know?  That's important.  Not on the scale of saving the universe from itself, but - every life saved is important.  Every life brought back is important, come to think of it - I'm not there yet, but I'm damn well planning to make it there someday - though it's much better to be prophylactic in your interventions rather than reactive, mostly, so I hope it's not...

"...Who am I kidding, it's always already urgently needed here or I'm already a bullshit-tier time-traveler faking my observable universe so I Wished with the appropriate intent and intensity.

"...Not sure which I'd prefer.  Leaving aside the outside guess of wishes not needing to bother with such piddly little things as self-consistency in time-travel.  Which - right now, nothing's impossible.

"Is there some reason we're not in uniform right now, incidentally?"

Jenny's mouth drops open.  If that's a real map, it's going to be a lifechanger.  "How'd you get that?" she breathes.

"- Eh, why should we be when we're not going to be using magic at the moment?"

"...Magic...?  I did - want tools.  Properly useful ones."

"...We could stumble across a Barrier -- okay, not a Barrier, not like this, but a familiar that needs obliterating - at any moment, and taking the time to transform only then would be risky?  Seems better to be transformed than not, unless there's - some concern I don't know about."

Well, if she's obviously a magical girl on someone else's hunting grounds, she might get into a fight... but then, she's in her own territory, with two other girls with her.  She should probably tell them about that sometime, though.

Shrug.

"Let's do it!"

Lila clutches onto her gem and focuses, picturing her beautiful new MAGICAL!!! dress.  She feels a similar urge to move in some incomprehensible way - and she does, and she feels all the magic around her.

With a burst of light, she's in her shimmering grass-green dress again, with her crossbow hanging at her side.

Jenny transforms a moment later, into the same poofy skirt and red blouse she was wearing when Lila and Diana first caught sight of her.

Up close, the blouse looks straight, almost like a military uniform shirt.  Her sword is hanging at her side.

Diana presses her astrolabe to her chest, the key that extends from it set at the base of her throat; there is a thrumming, fluorescent flash, and then -

She is dressed for war.

It's still the same outfit, really - but the stylization is different; it's the same sort of difference that you'd see between a dress uniform and combat gear, though hers isn't camo-painted, and the deliberately sharp - and sometimes even sharpened - edges where, previously, space-age smooth curves reigned, bears out the true purpose of it.

(There is also a camera on the back of her helmet, for combat awareness purposes; someone that is paying careful attention could notice the light from its projection changing on her face.)

She pulls the astrolabe - now on a chain, without the key - out from beneath a fold of her armor plating, consults it, nods sharply, and sets off at a jog.  "Boggling later, Jenny; witch-fighting now."

Jenny does stare, but only for a moment.

Then she shakes her head.  "Well, that's going to give a workout to the muggle-veiling magic.  But OK, let's go."

"Cosplay!", she rejoins chirpily, much like one Captain Jack Sparrow says 'Pirate!'.  "Regardless.  Witches to stab.  Let's save our breath."

As they walk through the city, Lila spins and twirls every so often, sometimes letting off sparkles from her feet as she dances.  She has magic!  She's on an adventure!

It's Jenny who stops them, by a dumpster behind a restaurant where Diana's astrolabe is clicking disturbingly fast, and Jenny and Lila's soul gem baubles are shining disturbingly bright.

"The witch's here."  Jenny draws her sword, and points with it behind the dumpster, where the shadows seem to be shifting a bit as they watch.  "See how it's a little too dark there?  Let's go in - and stay together."

"Mhm.  You lead, Lila takes center, I hold the rear?  Keeps the ranged attacker out of the scrum, has the person who knows what she's doing in front."

Lila is nervously holding her smile while running her fingers up and down the crossbow, walking through in her mind every step of how to fire it.  "Ready.  But... what will we be fighting?  What will it look like, I mean?"

"Yes, good plan, Diana.  Yell if you need help.

"I don't know, Lila.  It's different for every witch.  There'll be something like animated something - one time it was kitchen pots and pans, another time trees, another time dogs - and then the witch at the center of the labyrinth.  Whatever it's like, we'll need to get through and kill her."

She squares up her shoulders, draws her sword, smiles - like always at the start of a fight, whatever she might be feeling afterwards - and steps in.

Diana pulls out a nebulous blur of possibility from its hiding-place, hefting the resulting spear in her hands because it is one of the easier weapons to learn, and follows Lila in.

Her expression?  Grim determination.

As they step through the shadow, they're suddenly in something like an exaggerated school classroom!  A huge clock and bell hang from the front wall, ticking off the seconds with a chilling throb.  Pencils poking up from the desks look razor-sharp.  Half-readable papers hanging in the air drip something that looks like blood.

Jenny slices at the papers with her sword.

They come alive and start folding themselves into airplanes and dive at all the girls!

Lila jumps back, almost tripping over a chair before she looses the trigger of her crossbow.  Her bolt pierces two of the planes, which sink to the floor in clouds of ink-or-blood.

But more are coming - and some of the pencils are flying at them, too.