The whole point of all her hard work over the last two months was so that Adah’s call to action would have an impact. If the post she published that morning didn’t stir up the whole region, then she would have counted that as a failure. Despite knowing that ahead of time, when the impact she was hoping for arrived, it even knocked her over.
Politics was another machine, like a concert, with most of its gears hidden within the walls of drab office buildings constructed a century ago. Now that she had set that machine to work, Adah realized just how swiftly it could move.
Within an hour of sending out her post, Adah received another text message from Elise saying that she’d been called to the governor’s office. That must have meant the calls had flooded his office already. News of that meeting reached the media’s ears not long after, no doubt “leaked” by Elise or one of her friends in the Department of Magic. Only fifteen minutes after Elise’s text, the first news crew arrived outside of the Last Light agency office. Five minutes after that, a dozen cameras were pointed at the building’s front doors, waiting to get a word with the magical girl who had just thrown her hat into the ring of regional politics.
Adah had prepared for the media’s interest, at least. All of her past statements about Thibault had made for such great television that it was inevitable the news would try to get her in front of a camera again. She just hadn’t expected this many reporters to pounce on the Last Light’s home turf this quickly.
She transformed into Twilight Heartbreak and conferred with Grace one last time—not that her manager could offer much in the way of advice. This was uncharted territory for all of them. In any case, Adah would meet the media alone. The Last Light needed to distill their message into a single theme, and converge all inquiries into their team to a single point of contact. The best way to do that was to have Adah represent them all. If anyone—especially anyone from the governor’s office—wanted to get in touch with the Last Light, they’d have to go to Adah. In this way, she could more easily control the flow of information from their agency.
So, Adah stepped outside to face the wall of cameras, reporters, and microphones that had gathered in front of their building. As soon as she cracked the front doors open, she was barraged by questions from all directions. She couldn’t possibly respond to all of them, so she took Emi’s approach to dealing with the media and waited until she heard a question that she felt served her purposes before opening her mouth.
While she waited for the right kind of question, she inspected her fingernails with a bored expression on her face. She had done it as part of her Heartbreak act, but once she started looking, she really did get distracted. Her nails were trimmed short and left unpainted, since it was a pain to try to maintain anything fancier than that while fighting as often as she did. Yet, she had the power of magic on her side. Perhaps she should provide Izzy with an alternative inscription design for a “formal” version of Heartbreak. That way, she could transform into a fancier outfit with more elaborate accessories for occasions like today. Lina might throw a fit over it, but Adah wouldn’t mind having the designer’s white outfit as a transformation option, too.
At any rate, one voice from the crowd in front of her finally shouted out a question worth answering.
“Some people, including other magic users, feel concerned that your support of Ms. Godard will cause her to show allegiance to you over the general public,” a fully bald reporter said. “Should they be worried?”
Adah seriously doubted the man or his organization had actually heard another magic user make such a comment, especially since most of the high profile teams in Region 4 had already joined her coalition. But rather than press him for his source, she took the opportunity to address these unattributed concerns.
“Elise is single-minded in her commitment to protecting this region,” Adah said. “That’s what I admire about her, and that’s the only reason she earned my support. Even if she felt any allegiance toward me, my allegiance belongs to my people. Now who would be concerned about that?”
The bald man looked as though he wanted to ask a follow-up question, but now that Adah had opened her mouth, the rest of the press wall yelled their own questions even louder. Adah fielded a couple more inquiries that suited her taste, but kept her responses short. Today’s news shouldn’t focus on Heartbreak. The conversation needed to be centered on Elise. The more the media talked about her as a likely candidate for Secretary, the more real her appointment would become. Secretary Godard would be spoken into existence by the end of the day, if Adah and Elise played their cards right.
Thus, rather than distract from that story with her own theatrics, Adah wrapped up her interaction with the press.
“That will be all,” she said, making a shooing motion with her hand.
Despite that, the questions kept pouring in. She hadn’t expected to get through to them the first time around. Though, she’d heard you weren’t supposed to repeat commands to a dog more than once.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I said,” she raised her voice, “that will be all.”
The crowd of reporters hushed after that, though they didn’t yet disperse. Of course, they weren’t used to interacting with a magical girl who would be so curt with them. Adah didn’t need them to leave right away, but now that they had quieted down, she could head back inside and they’d soon get the message that it wasn’t worth waiting around for her to return.
Back inside the agency lobby, her teammates and Grace were also watching news coverage of this Secretary shakeup. To her relief, Adah’s comments had yet to appear on the screen. She needed a little more distance from her own remarks than that. Instead, a panel of four well put-together men and women sat at a desk and debated Elise’s merits as a candidate for Secretary of Magic, as well as the controversies surrounding Thibault that had occurred while she was his assistant. The cavalier attitude with which they flung snippy comments back and forth reminded Adah more of a halftime panel at a basketball game than genuine political commentary.
“I guess the whole region is talking about Elise at this point, huh?” Adah said. She wormed her way back into her spot next to Rika while still in her Heartbreak transformation.
“Oh no, this isn’t regional,” Grace said. “This is national news. A change in Secretary within our little region would have been dumped in their slow timeslots normally, but it looks like a magical girl putting forth her own candidate has caught their attention.”
“Or maybe it’s got them worried,” Rika said, pushing Adah into the arm of the chair and reclaiming more space for herself.
“You’re the second person to mention people getting worried,” Adah said. “All I did was post a message.”
“That’s all, is it?” Grace mused.
“Technically, anyway,” Adah mumbled.
“They’ll go this crazy over replacing the Secretary,” Ami said, “but that stoplight on Ward Street’s been broken since the leaves changed colors. Why can’t they fix that as fast?”
“Fixing stoplights doesn’t make careers,” Grace said. “Although, if you made enough of a stink about it now, someone in Public Works might take care of it. They wouldn’t want to be next on the Last Light’s chopping block.”
“Let’s cause a ruckus,” Emi said, and then bumped fists with her sister. These two were the real conspirators inside the Last Light.
Regardless of what the news or local politicians thought of them, the truth was that Adah and her teammates had acquired a newfound power—a power that went beyond political schemes.
The girls’ FP levels had ramped up almost exponentially in the lead up to the carnival, hitting an inflection point over the past few days. The four of them had been so focused on preparing for their concert that it wasn’t until today that they realized they had blown past their next FP threshold.
Twilight Heartbreak:13,002 🠅 32,449
Lightburst Lyrika:12,654 🠅 27,217
The Frostfist Berserker:12,711 🠅 26,777
The Raindrop Reaper:12,711 🠅 28,063
Although Adah felt a rush of dopamine upon seeing her numbers skyrocket like this, quantifiable progress couldn’t quite compare to the overwhelming intensity of performing in front of the size of crowd she had at the concert. Now that she and her teammates had gotten a taste of that thrill, they all hungered for more. Ami had not-so-subtly mentioned “their next show” over a dozen times yesterday in her eagerness—a feeling which Adah felt just as strongly, even if she managed to hide it better. Even the idea of recording and publishing final mixes of their new songs got Adah giddy.
Thirty-thousand FP was impressive, but what Adah really craved was a crowd of the same size.
Still, this kind of growth came with its own unique rewards. All four of the girls had grown beyond 25,000 FP, meaning they had earned themselves another augmentation. This new augmentation would apply to their second spell, and would once again be a selection between two options. For Adah, this meant an upgrade to her [Nightwind Whip]. For Rika, Ami, and Emi, it would apply to their [Renova Railgun], [Frigid Fetter], and [Raging Ripple] respectively.
The twins were particularly excited to make their selections. Adah’s whip remained her most used spell and had become almost emblematic of Twilight Heartbreak alongside her scythe. The same could be said of Rika’s railgun, which was inarguably the team’s strongest offensive spell. Meanwhile, both Ami’s icy chains and Emi’s shockwave attack rarely saw use in actual combat. This augmentation offered the twins a chance to revitalize these underutilized spells.
As the news crews vacated the agency front steps and the panel on the television grew dull and repetitive, this moment seemed like the ideal opportunity for the team to explore their augmentation options and make their selections. Discussing their choices would make for an effective distraction as they waited for any real updates from Elise, and would give them something to do as they holed up indoors for the day. Other than Adah’s brief remarks, their plan was to stay out of the spotlight until the dust settled within the Department of Magic.
“With a jump like this,” Ami said as she pulled out her phone and opened the Magiapp, “we’ve gotta be right on Apex Vox’s tails, right?”
A little while back, Sheffa had mentioned she and her teammates had all gotten close to the 25,000 FP mark themselves. They’d surely surpassed that by now.
“Maybe,” Rika said, “or maybe they’re growing even faster than we are. At the carnival, Canto was telling me that they’d just been invited to Ivendawn Idol Fes. You don’t get to perform there unless you’re on the cusp of really making it big. And I mean really making it.”
“Who’s to say we won’t be on the cusp ourselves soon enough?” Adah said as she leaned forward to grab her phone off the coffee table. “Another concert or two and we might get invites of…”
Once she opened her phone, Adah lost track of what she was trying to say. Her mind emptied itself—not from shock or fear, but rather some feeling that was harder to explain. What she saw on the screen made her incapable of thinking like Twilight Heartbreak. In fact, the message she read made her feel like a teenager again.
“What’s up?” Ami asked.
“Bad news?” Emi said.
Rika peered over Adah’s shoulder to see what the issue was, then merely added, “Oh, this should be fun.”
“My parents would like to visit,” Adah said.