A concert was more like a machine than Adah had ever realized. To put on a show was like putting together an engine, and if the people producing the show had done their jobs right, then its pistons and valves would function on time and in sequence. The difference was that, instead of mechanical parts, a concert was made up of lights, backing tracks, microphones, and performers. As the Last Light’s very first concert kicked off, Adah recognized that this show had been built by some capable engineers.
Even though Adah’s segue hadn’t been an official cue, whichever member of the tech crew was responsible for timing the concert’s backing tracks had understood her intentions perfectly. Once the four magical girls had lined up and Adah had announced the first song’s name, there had only been a brief pause before the music played. The break was long enough for the girls to take a breath in and prepare themselves, but not so long that the song’s arrival could catch them by surprise. The music played at the exact moment they were ready for it.
The stage lighting kicked into gear at the same time. What had been more or less atmospheric lighting during Adah’s intro was now a performance in its own right. The main flood lights illuminated the magical girls and left them sparkling like the gems that Lina had alluded to, while the beam lights shot through the air and crisscrossed the stage in a kaleidoscope of colors.
Back when she’d been just a fan of magical girls, Adah had learned that these lights could either be operated live or pre-programmed depending on the show. Whichever was the case here, the crew once again exceeded her expectations. As each member of the Last Light sang her lines, the colors of these beam lights changed to match and filled the stage with a glow in her hue.
Though, the girls weren’t exactly singing this first song.
I-Die-Idol was a fast-paced song that had Adah and her teammates constantly tossing lyrics back and forth between themselves. As the name suggested, it was a classic idol concert song, focused on ramping up the crowd’s energy and giving each member a chance to deliver a cute or cool line, rather than showcasing their individual singing ability.
Of course, the Last Light had to give a song like that a bit of a twist. I-Die-Idol was upbeat and spooky all at once, like something skeletons might party to in their graveyards on a haunted night. That kind of vibe in the instrumental freed the girls up to really let loose with their vocals, as any rough edges or harsher tones could be passed off as contributing to the song’s atmosphere.
The song was the ideal opener for that reason. This was everyone’s first live performance, and easing into the show with a song that didn’t require them to hit any difficult notes or worry about delivering a sustained verse helped take the pressure off. However, the song was equally as useful when it came to working the crowd.
With the music’s high energy and the fact that each girl only had to sing a sentence-length stretch of lyrics every fifteen seconds or so, Adah and her teammates could focus on the physical aspects of their performance. The concert’s finale was the only song the girls had fully choreographed and practiced, but they did have a rough plan for the rest of the setlist. When it came to I-Die-Idol, the plan was to make use of every inch of the stage to get the crowd hyped. They’d run around between their lines, constantly switch formation, jump up and down aimlessly—whatever they felt like doing.
And so far, everything was going according to plan. Each magical girl brought her own style to the song, with Ami and Emi even managing to make their lyrics sound like an extension of their usual riffing. Rika’s performance tonight wasn’t yet as clean and targeted as it had been during their practices, but she still kept a smile on her face the whole time. By the time they reached the instrumental interlude about two-thirds through the song, Adah thought they’d already succeeded in kicking off this concert.
Some of her teammates, however, weren’t yet convinced.
As the almost hyperpop beat played over the speakers and the girls gathered at center stage to close the song out, Ami spoke to the rest of the team over a magic channel.
“Ya know, I just remembered we’re transformed,” she said. “That means we can do this.”
Ami didn’t bother explaining what she meant—she showed it instead.
When the beat transitioned and the final stretch of the song began, Ami launched into the air and flew straight above the crowd. Emi obviously refused to be left behind, so she flew in pursuit of her sister. The two of them carved circles above the crowd and yelled their next lines into their microphones, more concerned with being louder than each other than anything else.
Adah and Rika didn’t want to be outdone either. Though, in one magical girl’s opinion, they took a wiser approach to their flying theatrics. They remained on stage, where the lights could continue to shine of them, and spun upward into the air together. They stayed linked together by holding hands, and stopped their spiraling ascent at the top of the stage’s castle cutout.
The two of them would deliver the song’s final lines, and Adah wanted the whole crowd to be able to see them clearly as they did so.
“I’d rather die than be another one of your idols,” Rika sang.
“But that’s ‘cause I’m gonna be your one and only!” Adah finished.
At that moment, the twins returned to the stage and rejoined Adah and Rika by the castle’s peak. On the final beat of the song, they screamed together into their microphones.
“Right?”
Whether that had been something they’d planned ahead of time or that struck them in the moment, they got the result they must have wanted. The crowd shouted back, affirming their loyalty to their favorite member in a dozen different ways. A lot of them even thrust their penlight to the sky, as if showing off its color might prove their devotion. Adah wouldn’t say she disliked such a gesture.
“So far, so good,” Rika’s voice sounded in Adah’s head.
“Now something a little tougher,” Adah replied through the same channel. “Good thing we got the nerves out.”
The tech crew even had a read on the girls’ intentions moving into their second song, Ceramic Heart. This was a slower song, something more akin to an intense ballad. The gentler pace would give the audience something to contrast with the faster songs in the setlist, while allowing the girls to show off how far their singing abilities had come. If I-Die-Idol was about jump starting the crowd’s energy, Ceramic Heart was meant to capture them and transport them someplace where they could think about nothing else but the Last Light. This song served as their journey into a dream world.
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As such, the show needed a short lull between the two songs. The girls would need to float down to stage level again, and the crowd would need to calm down from the last song’s climax. If they rushed right into Ceramic Heart, the magical girls would wind up on the back foot and the fans would feel jarred by the sudden transition.
Luckily, the crew gave Adah and her teammates exactly the right length break between songs.
The instrumental intro for Ceramic Heart already set expectations for the rest of the song. The slower, slightly melancholic melody hushed the crowd as they readied themselves to hear something with a little more artistic finesse than last song’s shouting match. Ceramic Heart centered on Twilight Heartbreak as a character, and as such, Adah had the most major singing role in it. The other members all had their own highlights within the song, but it was Heartbreak who led and closed the performance.
Rika had written the song to expose a more fragile side of Heartbreak, a magical girl who so often acted either abrasively or with an air of superiority. Though, the words Rika chose had to come from within herself, and Adah was sure the lyrics reflected something of the girl’s own pain. At the heart of the lyrics was the titular motif: a ceramic heart that had shattered into shards. Those shards could easily slice apart your skin, no matter how carefully you picked them up.
Yet, the song concluded on the belief that it was still worth risking the cuts to put the heart back together. The superficial wounds would heal in time, but the heart would remain broken if no one suffered through repairing it. If left unattended, those shards could even be swept and tossed away.
Adah’s performance of it was a chance to show off her own abilities. Ceramic Heart had been the song she’d practiced most for, excluding the concert’s finale. As she worked her way through the song, singing the notes Rika had believed she could, Adah felt herself slip into the same dream she was meant to transport her fans to.
In the end, perhaps she and her fans were building that illusory world together—a place where she was an idol. She needed to believe, whatever doubts she harbored about her abilities, that her voice was a sound her fans were willing to cheer for. She needed to see herself as they saw her.
That was the same challenge Rika was facing tonight, only her doubts weighed on her heavier than anyone’s.
Rika hadn’t faltered, but even Adah had to admit her partner had yet to shine. She was flowing alongside the concert thus far, riding the waves of her teammates’ energy. Hers was a solid performance—something her fans would surely enjoy—but Adah knew it wasn’t what she was aiming for. Rika wouldn’t be satisfied until she’d pierced every heart in that crowd. She’d regret anything less.
As Adah brought Ceramic Heart to a close and the crowd erupted into claps and cheers once more, her own heart raced. Though, this feeling wasn’t anxiety. She could recognize stage fright—or something like it, anyway. She’d gotten all too familiar with it while auditioning for different magical girl agencies. In those moments, the pressure had taken control and Adah had become a passenger as her instincts and muscle memory carried her through the audition.
What she felt tonight was more like a thrill.
Adah was in control and, as she grew more comfortable with her performance, she realized it wasn’t just herself she had control over.
As much as she hated to admit it, she’d taken a page out of Iris’s book for this song. The pace of the music and the long stretches of lyrics she got to sing allowed her the space to mess around a little. She played with her facial expressions, tried pitching her voice up at the end of a line, and experimented with how she moved across the stage. The crowd reacted to all of it. This was the kind of skill Iris had honed—a mode of crowd work that she kept up all day long. Adah had no plans to go to such extreme lengths herself, but visualizing how Iris might appeal to her fans did help in this moment. With this, the crowd became another instrument for Adah to conduct.
That, she realized, was the level of comfort Rika was reaching for. But, for one reason or another, it evaded her.
Adah wanted to pause the show and tell Rika that whatever these fans loved about the concert so far, they loved it because of her. These were her words being sung and her melodies being played. If this concert belonged to anyone, it was Rika.
But Adah must have lost herself in the ending to Ceramic Heart. Before she had time to gather her thoughts, the backing track to the next song, Pretty Cutie Aggression, started up.
This song ramped the show’s energy back up, though not quite to the hectic levels of I-Die-Idol. It was more of a middle-ground to the songs that preceded it, with both an upbeat tune that fans to jump around to and enough space in the lyrics for each magical girl to show off her personality. It was full of the kind of fanservice the Apex Vox girls had spoken about. Adah and her teammates got to go wild with cheesy or overly doting lines that couldn’t have worked in any other context. Tonight, though, the idol illusion had taken over. The fans just wanted to hear words that would make them want to scream and cheer, and the Last Light was ready to give some to them.
In her songwriting process, Rika had given all the other members a chance to brainstorm these “ad-lib” lines with her. They’d be delivering those lines, so they needed to be able to say them with all their heart, like Mari had explained. This posed no issue for the twins; playing around with words came naturally to them. Leading up to the concert, they had been eager to show off their specialty.
When the time came, they didn’t disappoint.
This was a song suited to the Last Light more than any other. It played up the brazen aspects of their fighting styles and personalities, with each verse-chorus cycle eventually returning to the argument that—despite the aggression—the four girls were still cute. Heartbreak naturally lent herself well to this idea as a princess who was equal parts cute and cruel. Rika also got to show off a different side of herself: an explosive passion hidden behind a sweet exterior. Something like a bomb planted inside a teddy bear. On a certain shopping date, Adah had discovered what could happen when you cut the wrong fuse.
The twins ran with this idea to a degree that surprised Adah. They planned to bounce their lines off each other, leveraging what the fans thought they understood about them to reveal something new instead. They were aiming for something sly, bratty, and charming all at once, culminating in a pair of lines that even Adah wanted to scream in response to.
“Maybe I do pick too many fights…” Ami said, abandoning her rough mode of speech for a pleading and insecure tone of voice.
A few beats of the instrumental played in between Ami’s first line and Emi’s follow-up, during which Emi looped her arm through her sister’s and the pair of them walked to the front edge of the stage.
“But you’ll let me win them all, won’t you?” Emi spoke clearer and with more color than any of her fans had ever heard before. Adah was sure this was a new side of Emi for them because it was new to her as well. Beyond a doubt, those words would be seared into the brain of every Rally Force member.
Pretty Cutie Aggression served its function as a crowd pleaser. In fact, the song might have been extra effective on account of none of the fans having heard it before. Every song besides Adah and Rika’s duet was brand new tonight, but this was likely the easiest for a first-time listener to follow along with. After all, they really just had to appreciate four cute girls.
“That’s halfway,” Ami said to the team through a magic channel as the crowd cheered.
“More or less,” Adah said. “But the second half’s when the real show begins.”
“What are you talking about?” Ami said. “I get to relax!”
While she was right about that—Ami would get a break from singing during the two duets and Rika’s solo—the pressure would start mounting for everyone else. Duets called more attention to the performance of the individual members, simply as a result of the number of people involved in the song. Of course, that went doubly so for Rika’s solo.
Even once they made it through that stretch of the show, their toughest challenge would be waiting for them. The finale had to lay the groundwork for Adah’s call to action. If they fumbled bad enough there, then any speech Heartbreak gave to close out the show would lose all impact.
Adah and her team had four songs left, and each one would be a battle—for Emi, for Rika, and for the Last Light.