Adah and the twins had been happy to respect Rika’s wishes during her solo, letting her do as she wished with the stage she had earned. But now that the song had ended, and Rika stood in the afterglow of her performance, they couldn’t possibly leave her up there alone.
The twins beat Adah to the punch and rushed onto the stage. They pounced on Rika from both directions, trapping her between them as they each wrapped an arm around her back. Since the twins had gotten so far ahead of her, Adah chose to approach Rika with slow and deliberate steps in contrast to Ami and Emi’s excitement. Perhaps that was more in line with Heartbreak’s character. Though, she wasn’t sure how believable her acting would appear. After all, she wanted to fangirl over Rika even harder than the twins.
“What do you think?” she asked Rika magically as she walked across the stage. “Did you make your dream come true?”
“You have to be kidding,” Rika answered with narrowed eyes and a smile. “This was only the first step.”
“Good, because I haven’t seen enough of you yet.”
The only downside to Rika wearing Lina’s sparkling ruby of an outfit was that the glowing tails of fabric that usually revealed the state of her heartbeat were nowhere to be seen. As cute as her partner’s stomach was, that was the kind of exposure Adah was craving in this moment.
“Bah, save the flirting for later,” Ami said. “After watching you three have all the fun, I’m ready to get back into the action. I can’t sing as good as any of you, but I’m pretty proud of how I learned this dance.”
In her excitement, Adah must have not have kept her channel with Rika as private as she’d thought. Ami was kind enough to interrupt her before she said anything truly embarrassing. More importantly, she raised a valid point: this concert wasn’t over yet.
Adah’s teammates had fought their own battles over the course of the night, but now they had to face their final challenge together. All their effort—along with the work of the carnival Committee and all the magic users who had joined their alliance—had built up to this finale. If they failed in this ultimate mission, they wouldn’t walk away from tonight having gained nothing, but they would have missed their best chance to achieve something more important than growing their fanbase.
What Adah had felt upon seeing that first humanoid Cruelty near Ketzia’s cabin, or when watching Ekki nearly lose his life to the hydra, or after rushing to destroy the vulture Thibault had sprung on her without warning…
That was not a superficial anger.
That wasn’t her ego telling her she knew better than everyone else. Nor was it her greed salivating over an opportunity to seize power. It was a real frustration, not far off from despair, that Adah was certain would spread to more people if left unchecked.
These weren’t problems that would go away on their own. The Cruelties were discovering new ways to attack humanity week by week. The Secretaries of Magic were compromising the safety of their region for their own shallow ambitions. Magic users were fighting among themselves rather than uniting against their real enemy. It was only a matter of time before all of this boiled over. These weren’t symptoms of the “dark side” of the industry, but a disease that would have consequences for innocent people.
Tonight’s finale was the Last Light’s best shot at fighting back.
Adah stood and faced the crowd, her teammates linked arm in arm behind her. As she watched the lights in the crowd turn into a multicolored sea again, something about this concert became clear to her. Everything else that had happened throughout the night, even every personal battle that had played out on this stage, had been preparing the girls for this final fight.
It was something Rika had said earlier that made Adah understand. They all believed in each other, and that was what let them push forward. The four of them had gotten this far together. Not in some vague, pie in the sky way, but in a way Adah could point to.
The twins had come to Adah during those first days after she became Twilight Heartbreak and asked her to lead them into a new future. Rika had made up her mind to give this career one last shot, and saved the team from that scorpion Cruelty. Emi found her voice and Ami used hers to say what she really meant. All of this happened because the four of them had worked together. Even the very idea of Twilight Heartbreak was a seed planted in Adah’s mind by Rika. Each of them was a product of her teammates.
In this finale, too, Heartbreak wouldn’t stand alone. The Sisterhood of the Last Light would stand together.
“Listen up,” Adah addressed the crowd. “We have one last song for you and, after it ends, one last request. I wanted to tell you to scream until you tear your throats to shreds, but I need you hold off a little longer. You’ll know when it’s time to tell us how you feel. Do you understand?”
Hundreds of voices shouted out that they did. In truth, they didn’t really understand Heartbreak’s meaning. Not yet, but they would soon.
“One more time, then,” Adah said.
“And all the way until the last light!” Rika finished.
From here on, everything in their performance would be scripted. The girls had planned it all out over a month ago, placing every piece exactly how they wanted it. They’d rehearsed the choreography a hundred times, if not more, during that process. Every apparent ad-lib had been agreed upon ahead of time, all for the purpose of leading their audience precisely where they wanted them to go.
The lyrics to The Last Light were no longer of Rika’s own making. The team had worked together to put into words what they had experienced over the past half year and to decide how best to stir the same feelings in their fans that they felt in their own chests. Even the tempo of the beat and the shade of the melody were designed to drive this concert straight to its final call to action. The ramping speed and pained notes of the chorus sounded almost like an alarm, and even a first-time listener would be able to recognize the distress in the girls’ pleading, frantic voices. Each of these elements was balanced just enough to keep the song pleasing, even a bit catchy. Their fans would want to listen until the end despite the conflicted feelings that possessed them.
This finale would be a precise attack on their hearts.
The song began with the ticking of a clock, which counted the seconds until the beat came in proper. Adah and all of her teammates knew exactly which tick to wait for. On the thirteenth, Ami broke out of their single file formation and strode to the front of the stage.
“Come on!” she shouted to the crowd, and on the next ticking of the clock, the beat kicked in.
This opening section featured some of the most intense dancing of the whole song. Since they didn’t have any lyrics to sing yet, Adah and her teammates could focus entirely on moving their bodies. Their moves were quick and almost stuttering as they twitched their arms and legs in rapid movements to the frantic pace of the instrumental track. After fifteen or so seconds of pure dancing, Adah broke apart from her team to start their vocals off.
“Mirror, mirror surrounding me,” Adah sang the opening line of the song. “Trapped in your endless cage, I’m nothing but what you tell me to be.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Part of the impact of this song needed to come in the form of its choreography, which the girls had crafted to be as intense as they could manage with their limited experience. As a group, they had standard formations. If lined up horizontally, Adah and Rika would be at the center with Ami on Rika’s wing and Emi on Adah’s. When lined up vertically—or more accurately, in a straight line toward the crowd—they’d go in the order of Adah, Rika, Ami, then Emi. A diamond formation put Adah nearest the crowd with Rika at the opposite corner, then Ami on the crowd’s left and Emi to the right. The Last Light’s choreography involved a constant, repeated assembling and breaking of these formations.
So, although Adah had delivered her line at the front of the diamond her team had formed, she immediately cycled out to the far edge of the stage as Ami took her place at the center.
“Chant your magic spell, cast another curse on me,” Ami followed up. “The best part about humans is that they bleed.”
Throughout this verse, all of the girls except the one singing would maintain their dance sequence even as they cycled between stage positions. These swaps weren’t always practical, either. Even though Rika and Ami should have been the only ones to move as the former took over singing for the latter, Adah and Emi also swapped from one wing to the other. All this cross-stage movement could look chaotic to the crowd, but it was all planned. With only the four of them on stage, they needed to keep this pace up to add as much energy to their performance as possible.
“A gloved hand pulls a lever and opens the trap door beneath my feet,” Rika sang. “Down that hole, humans and demons meet.”
Then it was Rika to stage right and Emi to the front, with Ami taking her sister’s place and Adah assuming Ami’s.
“How am I supposed to understand this darkness corroding me?” Emi sang. “All I know is it hurts—it hurts!—and it’s taking over me.”
Emi’s second “hurts” was delivered in a gruff yell that almost peaked her microphone. This was yet another attack on the crowd’s attention. It wasn’t enough that they heard Emi’s words, they needed to pay attention to them. Once they understood the meaning, their minds would do the rest of the work Adah and her teammates needed them to do. Not just for Emi’s lines, but for all of The Last Light.
Thus far, the team’s plan was achieving its intended effect. That was the benefit of only having one choreographed song—it would at least stand out. Even this late into the concert, the girls had something new to show their fans. Maybe it was because Adah had primed them to let out all their excitement during this song, or maybe it was due to the performance itself, but the fans were in a frenzy.
Adah and her teammates didn’t let up for the rest of the song. After every other challenge they’d faced throughout this concert, performing to a strict script was simple for them. Despite being the longest by track length, this song passed by quicker than all the rest. Before they knew it, Adah was singing the last line of the night.
“Fighting against a darkness that is filled with hate, not the calm and quiet of night, gives us no choice but to hold onto and protect the last light.”
And then, their concert was over. As the music faded away, they had no next song to prepare for. No one needed to leave the stage or rush back on. No cues for the tech crew or sips of water to sneak in before the music started back up. They were done.
The music they had all worked so hard on was replaced with a droning noise, an undecipherable ruckus that filled Adah’s ears like crashing waves. She only recognized this noise as applause upon seeing the bodies in the crowd move.
Adah wanted to bask in that noise a little longer. It would have been so pleasant to enjoy this applause, wave goodbye to their fans, eat all the fried dough and drink all the cider they’d missed out on during the day, and then fall asleep in Grace’s car.
But Adah had one more job to do today, and she needed to capture her fans’ excitement while it was at its peak.
She advanced to the edge of the stage, as close as she could get to the crowd. With a raised hand, she waited patiently for the fans to quiet themselves. Once she had silence, she began to speak.
“My friends and I—not just us on stage, but Seliah and Fifty Flip and even DreamRise—owe so much to all of you,” Adah said, perhaps slipping out of her Heartbreak persona for a moment. “We all work hard, sure, but if all of you don’t cheer or clap or scream our names at the end of that work… it doesn’t amount to much. After all, what’s a princess without a kingdom to rule over? Well, in this case, it’s more like—what’s the point of being a princess if you don’t do right by your people?”
A couple of fans in the crowd yelled out some corny responses to that—something like, “Rule us however you like!” That was fine for now, since Adah was only warming them up. But soon, they’d need to get serious.
“There’s been a phrase I haven’t been able to get out of my head for a long time now: ‘the will of humanity,’” Adah continued. “I wonder if people other than magic users think about it that much. It used to upset me. Why should I care about the will of other people? I’m the one fighting Cruelties when I could be sitting on my throne being pampered. Why should anyone’s will matter but mine? Recently, though, I’ve come to understand it in a different way.
“The will of humanity—your will—is the only reason I can fight at all. Your support is the only reason Raindrop is still with us. Or that cocky knight, for that matter. But it goes beyond saving my friends or giving me power. I’ve learned it’s a responsibility I owe to you all. In a sense, you’ve chosen magical girls like us to defend you. Our power isn’t related to how much you like us but how much you trust us. When you come face to face with a Cruelty, you want to know that the magic users you’ve chosen to support will have your back.”
Her shift in focus had quelled most of the goofiness in the crowd. Most of these fans would have seen Ekki at some point during the day, and the reality of the cost of battle would not have faded from their minds yet.
“However,” Adah said, bringing Heartbreak to the foreground once more, “there are those who neglect this responsibility. Not magic users, but those who wish to control us. Those who see power as a prize and not a tool. I don’t need to mince words. You know my disdain for the so-called Secretary, Roland Thibault. Our feud is not about a difference of opinions—it is about a willingness to protect the people of this region, to live up to the responsibility entrusted to us.”
By now, everyone in the crowd understood this was not a typical thank you speech. Heartbreak had something else to say to them tonight.
“Look around you,” Adah said. “Do you see our dear Secretary anywhere? Have you heard him say a word about today’s carnival over the past few weeks? So many of the magic users who risk their lives on his commands are here. So many of the citizens he serves are here. But he is absent, just as he is so often absent from his most important duties.”
The members of the audience all looked around, but of course, Thibault was nowhere to be found. Perhaps Elise was somewhere in that crowd, as she had promised to be, but that would have been the extent of the Department of Magic’s representation tonight.
“It is no surprise, though,” Adah continued. “A man who neglects the responsibility he owes his people would have no interest in being among them. He has nothing to gain from you tonight, so he will not show himself. Just like when, the next time danger strikes, he will do nothing to protect you from it. You are as expendable to him as we are.”
That last line would push the limits of Heartbreak’s speech, but it was necessary to shock the crowd in such a way. Adah needed them to listen closely to what she said next.
“I have to confess that I did not bring you all here tonight merely to put on a show. I must make a request of you all. I must ask for your help. We need your help. As part of my responsibility to you, I have to tell you the danger you are in. So long as Roland Thibault is Secretary of Magic, this region is not safe from the Cruelties. No, not just Thibault, but anyone who puts their own will before the will of humanity. Therefore, what I am asking you is to show me your support once more, and help me oust this fool of a Secretary.”
A chant broke out in the crowd—one that Adah had hoped might occur. Some fans called out her name, suggesting she might take Thibault’s place.
“Calm yourselves,” she told them. “I have a throne that suits me much better than any other could. What I need from you is not a new height for my vanity, but a new era for this region. What we need is a Secretary who shares our values, who will listen to you and me. Is that something you can cheer for?”
The crowd shouted out their affirmations, but Adah wasn’t satisfied.
“Allow me to be clear,” she said. “ I’m asking you to yell it loud enough for the whole region to hear. Or did you forget what I told you at the start of this finale?”
That got the response she desired. The roar from the crowd was easily twice as loud, and it seemed unlikely even a single member of the audience sat this cheer out.
“One more time, for good measure!” Adah shouted in return.
The fans roared again.
“And no matter where we are or when we call, if we need your help—whether it’s the Last Light or DreamRise or Fifty Flip or Celestial Seliah—you’ll show your support?”
Yet another cheer, just as loud as the rest.
Adah’s teammates joined her now at the edge of the stage, lining up in their usual formation.
“Then we will fight for you until the last light,” Adah finished with a bow, and each of her teammates followed suit.
The night’s loudest cheer yet shook the air, and Adah couldn’t contain a small shiver.
She had assembled her army. All that was left to do was to siege her enemy’s castle.