After Elise left the agency office, Grace and the girls stuck around the lobby to debrief. The night was well past midnight now, but their discussion couldn’t wait until morning. Adah’s brain, at least, was overflowing from her internal debate over whether or not to support Elise.
The four magical girls stayed quiet for a while, from a combination of exhaustion and indecision, until finally Grace broke the silence.
“One thing she’s definitely right about is our timing,” Grace said. “If you want a say in who the next Secretary is, you need to send a message to the region soon. We’re not on our own timeline anymore.”
That was the downside of Elise’s attack on Thibault. The fact it sped up his removal also meant it put Adah and her team on a timer. However, Elise had put herself in the same situation. If she was still meeting with Adah and asking for her support, that meant she knew she wouldn’t be the governor’s first choice for Thibault’s replacement. They were both up against the clock.
“What do you think, Grace?” Adah asked. “Can we trust her?”
“That depends what you mean by trust,” she said. “But as far as what kind of person Elise is, I don’t think she’d be a negative for the region. The other employees within the Department trusted her, and she kept her word to them. She’s been willing to meet with us and answer our questions, too. If I had to describe her, I’d say she approaches most interactions with some kind of personal objective or plan, but not in a deceptive way. I don’t think she would pretend to cooperate with us. You know what you’re getting into with her, for better or worse.”
“At the same time, she’d probably tell us upfront when she doesn’t want to cooperate,” Adah said with a sigh. “If she doesn’t see the value for her, she won’t be interested.”
That approach to relationships reminded Adah of a certain magical girl. The difference between Iris and Elise seemed to be that emotions didn’t play much of a role in Elise’s decision-making.
“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” Rika said. “It sounded like the safety of the region was something she valued. She wants to make us better at killing Cruelties. If we believe her, then it could be a good thing that she only wants to focus on her own goals.”
Ami clicked her tongue and fell back onto the lobby’s couch. She let herself sink into the cushions with her arms splayed out across its back.
“I just can’t think about her without thinking about that asshole,” she said. “She was there when he was screwing us over. I have a hard time letting that go.”
“Thibault is who the governor picked,” Emi said. “The worst thing to do is let him pick someone again.”
“That’s a fair point,” Grace agreed. “We already know what kind of Secretary we’d get by sitting this out. Putting forward a candidate we aren’t one hundred percent confident on is still better that letting one through that we have no faith in.”
The problem was that both twins made good points. They needed to pick someone to put forth for the role of Secretary, but their best option still wasn’t a perfect option. As much as Adah wanted to reduce the equation to a single value, she just couldn’t do it. She pressed the back of her hands against her eyes, hoping that might relieve some of the pressure building in her head.
“What’s the matter?” Grace asked.
Adah shook her head and said, “I wish there was someone else we could talk to, like Ketzia or someone. Maybe someone else would see something we don’t. They would know what the right call is.”
“I don’t think anyone knows, Adah,” Grace said. “All you can do is make the best decision based on what you do know. And if—despite your best effort—you’re wrong, you do what you can to make it right.”
Adah and Rika were squeezed onto the lobby’s single chair together, so Adah let her head drop onto Rika’s shoulder. Except this wasn’t the usual, comfortable sideways tilt. She more or less faceplanted forehead-first onto Rika’s shoulder, and she had no intention of moving.
“Either way,” Grace said upon seeing Adah’s dejection, “it’s not something to decide tonight. Let’s all sleep on it. Tomorrow, we’ll decide, and you’ll make your move.”
☆☆☆
Whether or not a night’s rest cleared anything up in Adah’s head, she couldn’t say. What all that sleep did do for her, however, was remind her of something important. She remembered one of the main reasons she had wanted to replace Thibault in the first place. After the man’s recklessness over the past few months, with him putting the region and its magic users in mortal danger so often, her concerns had shifted. But now she remembered.
Back during her negotiations with Thibault over her team’s payment for the C-Rank missions, Adah had made one additional request in private. That discussion had taken place between the two of them, so she had assumed they were the only two people with any stake in their agreement. She had assumed they were the only two who knew Thibault was feeding her data about the humanoid Cruelties.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
But Elise may have known.
The woman had positioned herself such that any information that passed through the Department went by her. Most likely, she had set eyes on any data or reports that had come across Thibault’s desk. If Elise did know about the humanoid Cruelties, Adah had a chance to secure the next Secretary’s cooperation before she even assumed office.
So, the first thing Adah did upon waking up the next day was call Elise directly. Her call rang through to Elise’s voicemail, so she hung up and tried again ten minutes later. Voicemail again. Adah kept on calling intermittently as she worked through her morning routine. After brushing her teeth, she called. After washing her face and getting dressed, she called. Over and over, she got Elise’s voicemail. Surely Elise was just as busy today as she’d been yesterday, but Adah only needed a few minutes of her time. Besides, it was in Elise’s best interest to pick up the phone, too.
Eventually, while she was brushing out her hair, Adah did get through to Elise.
“I don’t have much time to talk,” Elise said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be quick,” Adah said. “I only have one question: do you know about them?”
“Please be more specific.”
“A couple of months ago, I fought a bat Cruelty that created these gray portals,” Adah said. “Do you know what comes out of those portals?”
Elise didn’t answer at first. A static noise buzzed through the phone speaker, followed by some muffled background noise, and finally silence. When Elise spoke, her voice was hushed to the point Adah had to strain to hear her.
“I can’t say for certain what they are,” Elise said, “but I know what they resemble. Humans.”
“And dealing with those—in an optimal way—that’s part of your responsibility to the region, too?” Adah asked.
“Correct,” Elise said.
Now Adah paused. All she could do was make the best decision possible with the information she had. She would never find a perfect situation for achieving her goals. Grace had needed to remind her of that, but it had been the theme of Heartbreak’s whole career. She was a magical girl borne out of an imperfect situation, who had managed to continue to march forward despite all her stumbles. Working with Elise was another imperfect opportunity, but it could still be a good one.
If the Cruelties were optimizing their attacks and learning all that they could about humanity, then humanity needed to do the same. Elise could be someone capable of leading that effort. Any other concern Adah had, she could deal with after.
“Okay,” Adah said, “Whatever you need to do to make sure this works, get ready to do it.”
“I understand,” Elise said. “I will be in touch.”
Elise hung up immediately. Adah sat on her bed and stared at her collage of a wall—the hanging whiteboard, the pin-dotted map, and the sparkling Pureheart posters—with her phone in one hand and her hairbrush in the other. The only thing left to do, she supposed, was to explain her thoughts to her team.
The four magical girls and Grace gathered in the agency lobby as they had the day before, and Adah filled them in on her thought process and her conversation with Elise. As much of it as she could explain with Grace around, at least. Now that the Last Light was gaining power in the region, Adah would soon feel comfortable breaking her vow of secrecy to Ketzia. Until Elise was confirmed as Secretary, however, Adah didn’t want to take any risks that could jeopardize the woman’s ascent or her cooperation.
The team’s discussion last night had already leaned in favor of Elise, so now that Adah came out in support of her, they quickly reached a unanimous decision. All that was left to do was call upon their newfound army.
The Last Light’s battle cry would take the form of a social media post, one that Adah would also instruct the coalition teams to show their support of. While traditional media could help broaden a magical girl’s appeal to the mainstream public, the internet remained her best option to reaching her most committed fans. Adah needed her fans to see her request as soon as possible, while making it as easy as possible for them to spread the word.
With the help of her teammates and Grace, she crafted a post to set their fans to work.
“To all who consider themselves allies of the Last Light:
The resignation of Roland Thibault represents an opportunity to reshape the Department of Magic into an office that serves you all. There will be those who seek to replace Thibault with more of the same, but there are far more of us than there are of them. I said we would need your help soon, and that time has come.
The person who can best help the magic users of this region fulfill our duty to you is Elise Godard. She has helped us in the past, and I can vouch that she is committed to helping us in the future. I ask you to raise your voices in support of her, like you raised them in support of us on that dreamlike night.”
Below that call to action, she included details of how the fans could reach the governor’s office or those of the representatives who would vote on the next Secretary’s confirmation. This was a more old school approach, but Adah really only needed her fans to demonstrate they were willing to follow her commands. Heartbreak had proved herself to be a magical girl willing to cause chaos, so she simply wanted to show that she had enough support to ramp up that chaos if she didn’t get her way. Once the governor got that message, it would be up to Elise to convince him that appointing her wouldn’t only be a good way to avoid trouble, but also to gain the support of the citizens in this region.
“What do you think?” Adah asked her team after she’d drafted the post. “Too cheesy?”
“In character,” Emi said, to which Rika and Ami nodded.
“Fair enough,” Adah said. “If this works, then we’re going to turn the Department of Magic on its head with the press of a button.”
“No,” Grace said. “We’re going to do a lot more than that. More than we can predict, probably. This goes beyond a feud with one man now. We’re going to be playing our hand against the whole country soon. If this ends up working, a whole lot of attention is coming your way—good and bad.”
“Well,” Adah said, “I always wanted to be a famous magical girl.”
The attention was the point—not for any vain reason, but for how it would help Adah and her teammates fight. If they got cold feet over drawing the ire or suspicions of some humans, how could they expect to take on the toughest Cruelties?
Another challenge wasn’t something Adah was afraid of.
She published the post.