The nation’s state of emergency came to an end halfway through the evening, a few hours after twilight had turned to darkness.
The television broadcasts had resumed at some point while Adah and her team were out on patrol, but according to Grace’s summary, the news wasn’t much more informative than a black screen. The news anchors described what had transpired during the S-Rank battle in vague terms: three magic users had lost their lives; the Cruelty threat was contained and ultimately eliminated; activity throughout the nation confirmed this was a one-off occurrence. They made no mention of the names of those who had died and no reference to the humanoid Cruelty at all.
The four regional Secretaries of Magic would make a joint formal statement around midnight, once their offices had fully assessed the day’s events. That would be the next time the public learned anything new about what had happened today. Since Elise would be busy preparing that statement, it would probably be the next time Adah learned anything else as well. All of her questions for the Secretary would have to wait until tomorrow at the earliest.
That was okay—Adah had her own conference to hold tonight anyway. She needed to make good on her promise to Ekki, and to fulfill her duty as the de facto leader of Region 4’s coalition of magic users. The time for secrets was long over. If another Cruelty like today’s arrived in their backyard, Adah didn’t intend for anyone to take it on alone. This region had become her home, and it was the one place in the world she had proved she could make a change.
After the state of emergency ended and their patrols with it, Adah invited all of the coalition teams to the Last Light agency office. Their little lobby didn’t make for the best venue for such a large meeting, but it was private and remote enough for their purposes. What’s more, it had been half a day—if not longer—since any of these magic users had eaten. After flying around for that long, Adah was sure everyone could use a good meal. Grace and Seb had prepared a small feast while the teams patrolled, though none of the dishes were particularly fancy. They had to make do with whatever bits and pieces they could assemble. The grocery stores got cleared out by panic buyers before every S-Rank appearance, after all. Still, the food was warm, tasty, and plentiful, so no one levied a single complaint as they chowed down.
The eleven magic users of Adah’s alliance spread throughout the agency lobby, sitting wherever they could find a spot. Rika, as a gracious host, claimed some space on the floor in between Ekki and Dystopia, each of whom wound up on a folding metal chair brought out from the back office. Ami and Emi hopped onto Grace’s desk, one of them on each side of her computer monitor. Hyperia, Elegia, and Seliah crammed onto the lobby couch, while Iris took the leather chair for herself. With Grace and Seb sitting behind Grace’s desk, that left just Adah and Clair, both of whom chose to stand by themselves.
Despite how packed the lobby was physically, the atmosphere was quiet and strained. Everyone ate in silence, not making a sound except for that of plastic utensils sliding against paper plates. Adah chalked some of that silence up to how hungry everyone appeared to be. They all stuffed their faces, leaving little room for conversation.
Yet, she was also aware of their eyes—eyes that often strayed in her direction.
Iris and Clair didn’t bother hiding their stares, as if hounding Adah to say something. However, she refrained. She wanted everyone to eat their fill before she said a word. Once they had full stomachs and empty mouths, she would tell them what she needed to. Then, they would have the energy to think about what she had said, and the freedom to ask any questions they wanted to.
As the plates emptied, the room grew quieter. When they had food in front of them, everyone had known how to keep themselves busy. But now, what they saw in front of them was Adah, and all they could think about was all that had happened during the last day and a half. Now, no one hid their stares. All the eyes in the room looked at Adah.
That must have meant it was time.
Since she was already standing, she didn’t waste any time addressing the tiny crowd.
“Thank you all for listening to my request earlier,” Adah began. “I realize it may not have made a lot of sense at the time. I know I only added to the pile of questions on everyone’s mind today. I’m hoping you leave here tonight with less questions. Or, at least, only as many as I have myself.”
The eyes continued to stare at her in silence. That must have been another sign—this time, to continue.
“When I asked you all to work together, for us to make this little alliance, I told you our goal was to destroy the Cruelties,” she said. “But I never told you why I felt so strongly about that goal. Today, you found out why. I knew—actually, all four of us knew—that the Cruelties were creating a new weapon. More importantly, we knew that weapon was based on humans.”
“So that’s really what that was?” Dystopia was the first to speak up.
Adah nodded and said, “The first time we saw one, it wasn’t anything like that. It was just a shadow that looked like a person. All it did was talk.”
“Screamed,” Emi corrected, shivering as she did so.
“That first humanoid was unsettling but not dangerous,” Adah explained. “Still, we knew that if the Cruelties were creating something like that, then it was only a matter of time before they weaponized one. Unfortunately, we were right.”
“And you kept this to yourself until the damage was done?” Iris said.
“The Secretaries know,” Rika said from her spot on the floor. “All of them. They’re the ones that wanted us to keep quiet.”
“You really pick the worst times to follow orders,” Iris muttered, but said nothing more than that. She crossed her legs and leaned back in the leather chair.
“It’s because of the government’s response that I wanted to bring us together,” Adah said. “The plot against Thibault, too, was mostly about this. Mostly. What I mean is: the Secretaries had no plans to do something about these new Cruelties. They were more interested in maintaining the status quo. I formed this coalition so that we could find a way to do what the Secretaries won’t.”
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Elegia raised her hand and said, “These ‘humanoids’—do you know how they became weapons? Today’s abomination appeared to be using magic.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Adah said.
“Mine, I think,” Ekki spoke up. “At least today’s did. They couldn’t replicate it exactly, but I knew I recognized it. The way the horse moved and the trail of fog it left behind—I wouldn’t mistake those. If it’s not mine, it’s close enough that it might as well be.”
“It’s bad enough they kill humans, now they want to copy us, too!” Hyperia shouted. “It’s so gross I could barf!”
“I must agree,” Elegia added. “If they think appearing as a human will increase my sympathy toward them, I’m afraid it will only have the opposite effect.”
While the youngest and eldest member of Fifty Flip each got fired up, Dystopia sat still in her chair with a frown on her face. Seliah, who was rapidly losing space on the couch she shared with Hyperia and Elegia, wore a similar expression.
“Regardless of what kind of magic it was,” Adah raised her voice in an attempt to bring order back to the room, “the fact is that the Cruelties figured out how to weaponize the humanoids. It used to take them longer to build those portals the humanoid appeared out of. Now they can create hundreds in an instant. And once the humanoid arrives, it can do a hell of a lot more than scream. The Cruelties are learning. They’re getting stronger and, after killing those three boys, I’m worried that process might speed up. I’m worried things are going to get worse. If we don’t eliminate the Cruelties for good, I’m almost certain they will.”
With those words, the lobby went silent once more. Even Iris looked at the floor, contemplating what Adah had said. Remembering what she had seen today.
“It’s not a goal to dream about anymore,” Adah continued. “It’s one we need to plan. We need to find a way to make it happen. We have to destroy the Cruelties. To do that, I’m going to need your help.”
Clair, the only person standing except for Adah, clicked her tongue. She was leaning against a short section of wall right beside the front doors with her arms crossed.
“If we held a vote to make you our leader, I must have missed it,” she said. “And if we did, I’m not sure I would’ve cast mine for you.”
“I’m only trying to give us a direction to go in,” Adah said.
“I can see that,” Clair said with a snort. “Telling us what our goals are and what we need to do next—don’t you think that’s for us to decide?”
“If you don’t want to go with the group,” Ami joined in, “then you can go away.”
Adah raised a hand instructing Ami to back off before the two girls could ramp up their argument.
“It’s okay, I get it,” Adah said. “I’ve only told you what I think. I should hear what you all think, as well.”
To Adah’s surprise, it was Seliah who answered first. The tiny witch leaned forward from her place on the couch so that she could see past the two Fifty Flip members obstructing her view. As the smallest person in the room, with no teammates by her side, it had probably felt to her like she’d been squashed down by everyone else’s presence. Though, as Adah had recently learned, Seliah was the last person to let something like that keep her from doing what she wanted to do.
“I trust Adah,” she said. “I don’t know what to call it, but you treat magical girls differently than most people. I wouldn’t call it caring about us—ah, um, not that you don’t care about us—but what I mean is that you think about us more than most people. You’re almost like a manager who’s also a magical girl.”
Clair’s sour face made it clear she wasn’t buying Seliah’s words, and even Hyperia looked up at the ceiling as she tried to figure out what the girl meant. Dystopia, however, stood up in order to add onto what Seliah had said.
“It’s somewhere between the way someone would analyze a chessboard and the way they’d crush on somebody.”
Then she sat back down, as if everyone would understand her words any better than Seliah’s.
While most others in the room shared confused looks, Iris let out a trademarked dramatic sigh. She waited until everyone turned their attention to her before speaking.
“You’re not a very articulate bunch,” she said. “Heartbreak has a personality disorder. Maybe a collection of them. I’ll leave it to a professional to diagnose you, but it won’t matter. You’re beyond help.”
“Thank you for your contribution to the discussion,” Adah said.
“I only came to understand the severity of it recently,” Iris went on. “It’s a compulsion. When someone tells you that this is the way things are done or need to be done, you can’t help but try and break it. When you meet someone, your brain gets filled with ideas of what they could be, instead of what they are now. It’s not anything like chess. You’re searching for which threads you can pull to unravel everything. Where is the joint in the wood you can most easily snap? What would it take to send the house of cards toppling down? That’s the way you think.”
“Iris,” Adah said, but before she could tell the DreamRise captain to save the rest of her words for later, Iris shook her head vigorously.
Iris pointed at Seliah and said, “I agree with the witch, Adah. Don’t mistake me. It’s the way that the rest of world operates that I can’t trust. Thibault, Sirk, and all of the rest of them—they see people as a currency. Magic users and citizens alike. We are tokens for them to spread between their coin machines. When one of us becomes a hit, our fans spill out onto the floor, and the Secretaries scoop them up. They stuff them in sacks and calculate their gains. It’s the person who wants to pick that system apart whom I can trust. You see the fans as what they could be, and what they could do when they combine their will. And you…”
Iris’s words drifted away. She stopped speaking with her mouth partway open, her eyes wandering around the room. She, too, had leaned forward in her chair, almost as if she was about to launch out of it. Now, she crossed her legs again and slowly sunk back into the leather.
“You see us the same way,” Ekki picked up where Iris had left off. “If I think about it, every fight we’ve ever had was because we saw two different ways of doing things. It took me a while to realize you weren’t mad because you weren’t getting your way, but because you thought my way of doing things hurt both of us. And Iris is right—that’s exactly the reason I can trust you. I know you won’t let anything go. It would piss you off too much.”
“Are these endorsements?” Adah had to ask, though Ekki only smiled back at her.
“Try having her as a captain,” Ami said. “I never get away with anything.”
Adah didn’t bother reminding Ami that if anyone on the Last Light got away with doing whatever they wanted, it was absolutely her. Even her own twin struggled to contain her at times.
Despite that truth, Rika and Emi nodded in unison. So much for team comradery. Or maybe this was comradery? The team members uniting against their captain?
“I’m also quite fond of Heartbreak,” Elegia said.
“Ditto!” Hyperia followed close behind.
Seliah and Dystopia had already made their feelings known, so that only left Clair. Did she still have an issue with this coalition moving into its next phase?
“Whatever,” the tattooed girl said. “If you want to burn everything down, I don’t have any reason to complain about that. Not yet, anyway.”
Though she had a few qualms with everyone’s perception of her, Adah felt they’d gotten one point absolutely right. When it came to the Cruelties, or humans like Sirk, she was far too mad to let anything go. She planned to show them both how they’d underestimated humanity.
The only question left was…
“So, we all agree on what we want to do,” Dystopia said. “How exactly are we supposed to do it?”
“Anything but another carnival,” Clair grumbled.
Adah shook her head.
“It’s time we remind everyone what kind of heroes magical girls—and boys—are supposed to be.”