As the sample size of fans Adah and her teammates met increased, the spread of their personalities started to align more closely with her expectations.
Around half of the people she met fell into the “hardcore” category. They were the types she saw most often on the discussion boards and in her social media comments. Not all of them were hoping to be abused by Heartbreak, though. Some declared themselves proud Rally Force members and just wanted to pose with the twins, while others seemed most interested in swooning over the pairing of Heartbreak and Lyrika. A portion of these fans brought notebooks and even random objects like a stuffed pig for the magical girls to sign, which made Adah wish their team had whipped up some merch before the carnival. Sadly, that had been too ambitious on top of the event’s quick turnaround.
The remaining half of fans was split down the middle between children and what Adah was calling a miscellaneous category, which really just meant “the average person of Region 4.” In truth, the average residents were the ones who had made this whole carnival possible. They may not have all cared to wait in line for an hour to see some magical girls, but they had lent the carnival enough gravitas and attention that it was starting to feel like a regional tradition, like it had been the way they rang in the new year for decades.
This group would become even more important later that night. If the Last Light’s finale could unite them all behind Twilight Heartbreak, then they would guarantee the regional government paid attention.
As the meet-and-greet session concluded, that was all that was on Adah’s mind. Even as she yelled a final goodbye to the fans who had gathered by the gazebos, she ended by insisting they meet her again at tonight’s concert.
Her supposedly lengthy break went by in a flash for much the same reason. She and Rika ended up talking shop with Sheffa the whole time. Since the rabbit girl was the only one of them who had ever performed in concert before, Adah and Rika wanted to pull whatever advice they could out of her. Even though much of the girl’s advice boiled down to “have fun,” Adah did feel more prepared thanks to hearing it.
By this point in the day, the tech crew had completed their buildout of the concert stage, and Adah and her teammates couldn’t resist sneaking a look before they met Lina for their wardrobe. Maybe a few more lights and speakers had been added to the stage since the last time she saw it—she certainly hadn’t been counting them—but what she and the rest of the girls were most interested in were the new decorations.
Seb had taken the most cost- and labor-effective approach when designing the stage elements, relying primarily on the kind of backdrop you’d find in a local theater production. That wasn’t to say the set looked cheap, only that he’d been smart. The centerpiece of the stage was a giant cutout of a delightfully Gothic castle, replete with thin spires and flying buttresses, standing at least fifteen feet tall and covering half the width of the stage. The cutout was drawn in a style just cartoonish enough to help its features stand out from a distance. The main castle was flanked on each side by an additional cutout of a stone tower, which extended another five feet higher than the main castle’s spires. Floating amidst this grim and gray architecture was a colony of cardboard bats, suspended above the stage by invisible wire.
If this was meant to be Heartbreak’s abode, she was certainly pleased with it. Her producer-in-training had earned himself some praises when this was all over. Perhaps Adah would have Emi deliver those.
For now, the four members of the Last Light needed to return to the marquee tent to be attended to by Lina, Colette, and Kritika once more. The magical girls would be performing in the same outfits as their photoshoot, which meant the designer wanted to help them prepare. Lina fixed her attention on Adah first, as had become tradition, taking her into a changing area to make sure the clothes still fit as they should. Thankfully, Lina had brought with her the safety shorts she alluded to a while back. The ruffled lace bloomers were no different than shorts to Adah, and the way they extended beyond her skirt even made her outfit feel a bit fairylike.
“You look like a snowflake but you still have a full range of motion,” Lina said to her. “Aren’t I brilliant? I have chills just imagining it. A crystal doll in the sea of night. How are you going to shine when those lights turn on? I want you to stun me, Heartbreak.”
“I’ll do my best, but you’ve already seen me in this outfit plenty of times,” Adah said as she put her range of motion to the test. So far, Lina was right.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the designer said. “Do you think you’ll look the same tonight as you did in that studio? No, you won’t even feel the same. You’re traveling to another world tonight.”
“You do love your extravagant metaphors,” Adah said.
“It’s no such thing,” Lina said. “You have your ticket. The train is about to arrive, and you’re going someplace the rest of us can’t. The world is about to be blacked out, with all the light fixed squarely on you. The crowd will see nothing but a dazzling gem up on that stage. A girl who couldn’t possibly be human—under those lights, in these clothes, every facet of her appearance is unlike anything they’ve seen before. Even better, some of them already love you. A magical girl like you, in a position like that… well, I’ll be shocked if you still feel like a human afterward.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Now you’re being ridiculous,” Adah said. “When I get home tonight and collapse onto my bed, I’m going to feel plenty human.”
“Maybe,” Lina replied, reaching up to place the outfit’s tiara on Adah’s head. “But maybe not.”
☆☆☆
As the first one to get dressed and have her hair and makeup finished, Adah had some time to kill while Colette and Kritika took care of her teammates. She wanted to take that time to clear her head a bit. Once everyone else was fully made up, they’d start their sound check, warm up, and then move right into the concert itself. These would be her last few minutes of downtime until the carnival ended.
Having spent the past hour sitting still inside that tent full of event staff, Adah was desperate to get back outside and away from any people. Luckily, Iris had shown her that little grove hidden behind the concert stage. She told Rika to call for her on a magic channel when their sound check began, then rushed out the back of the tent.
Though, she soon discovered she had company in the grove. Dystopia Flip, still transformed, was leaning against a tree and smoking a cigarette.
“Oh,” Adah said upon seeing Dystopia. “Sorry, I didn’t expect someone else to be out here.”
Dystopia let her hand holding her cigarette fall to her side and said, “It’s all good. I can go somewhere else.”
“I didn’t mean that either,” Adah said. “You don’t have to go anywhere. I’m just trying to distract myself for a minute.”
“Is that so? Are you nervous?”
Dystopia brought her cigarette back to her lips, then turned her head to blow the smoke out in the opposite direction from Adah.
“Not nervous, no,” Adah answered. “It’s more like… you know when you’ve got a dozen different things you want to do over the weekend, but there’s no way you’ll get to them all? I’ve been thinking about everything I want to do during this concert. There’s so much, I can’t even keep track of it all.”
“You put all this together,” Dystopia said, looking around. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“One way or another, probably,” Adah said. “Thanks.”
The two of them stood in silence for another couple of minutes. To keep her outfit clean, Adah couldn’t sit down or even lean against a tree, so the grove made for a less comfortable lounging area than she had anticipated. Still, being out here was relaxing. The noise of the carnival sounded quiet at this distance and made for an almost hypnotic ambiance. Adah and Dystopia stared up at the sky, which had already turned dark thanks to winter’s short days. Dystopia continued to smoke, though she went long stretches during which it seemed she had forgotten she even had a cigarette between her fingers.
“Doesn’t that slow you down in fights?” Adah asked after the girl took another drag.
Dystopia looked at the now stubby cigarette in her hand, then toward Adah.
“I don’t smoke as much as you might think,” she said. “Anyway, I’m gonna quit when this is all over.”
“What, like the concert?”
Dystopia laughed, though if it weren’t for her smile, Adah would’ve mistaken it for just another exhale.
“No,” she said, “I mean all of this. One way or another, magical girls won’t be around forever. When that day comes, I’ll quit.”
“You mean when we destroy the Cruelties for good,” Adah said. “That’s when you’ll quit.”
“That—or you’re right about them getting smarter and they end up killing us all,” Dystopia said with a shrug. “Either way, I’ll never smoke again.”
She extinguished her cigarette in the dirt and tossed it in a nearby garbage can. Even though Dystopia was finished smoking, she returned to the grove and stood against a tree near Adah. If there was ever a time the girl’s guard could be lowered, it was probably now. Adah took a gamble.
“You never did tell me why you became a magical girl,” she said. “I think I have an idea of the reason, but I’m curious.”
“If you think you know,” Dystopia said, staring through the darkness at Adah, “why do I need to tell you?”
“Sometimes it’s better to hear things in someone’s own words.”
Dystopia sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. That was progress compared to the last time Adah had posed this question.
“I never wanted to become a magical girl,” she said. “I wanted to kill Cruelties. And this was the best way to do that. Does that answer your question?”
“But you don’t get pleasure out of it,” Adah said. “Not like your teammates.”
“No,” Dystopia said. “I get my fix through other means.”
That was all Adah would get out of the girl tonight, but that was fine. It was enough to understand her.
“What about you?” Dystopia asked.
“Huh?”
“You want me to spill my heart to you, but I still don’t know what you’re in this for,” she said. “You say you want to get rid of the Cruelties, but this concert is what you come up with? I’m not saying it can’t work, I just don’t get it. I don’t get you.”
What was she in this for? Why had she come up with the idea for this carnival? Why did she become a magical girl?
Each question had a different answer. Her reason for pushing forward through four years of obscurity, her reason for busting her ass almost every day for the past six months, her reason for getting up on that stage tonight—that reason evolved day after day.
She certainly hadn’t become a magical girl to get punched in the face by an insufferable rival, nor to be dropped out of the sky by her own mascot, and most definitely not to declare war on a Secretary of Magic. But, if she had known that was what she was getting herself into at the start of this, she still would’ve applied to that no-name Spotlight Sunbright magical girl agency.
Every answer—every reason—evolved from the same seed that had been planted in Adah’s heart long ago.
“I just thought I’d be good at it,” she told Dystopia.
And that hadn’t changed one bit.
Dystopia laughed—again, nothing more than an exhalation—and stared at Adah. Then, her eyes drifted over Adah’s shoulder. Adah turned around to see her three teammates poking their heads out the back of the tent, beckoning her over. Guess Rika didn’t want to bother with a magic channel.
“Looks like now’s your chance to prove it,” Dystopia said.