“It’s pretty ****ed up, yeah. They showed that guy getting killed on live TV. Like, what the hell?”
“Of course something needs to change. This is public safety we’re talking about. It should be the government’s number one priority.”
“The whole thing never should have been shown on TV. These are supposed to be soldiers, not gladiators in an arena.”
“Both my daughters want to be magical girls. It’s all because of the way the media glamorizes them. You people treat them like celebrities, then try to brush it under the rug when you send them out to die. Well, I’m not letting that happen to my kids!”
“Didn’t Region 4’s Secretary resign over less? I guess the governor’s just waiting for people to forget about it. There will be another scandal or something next week anyway.”
“Maybe if they had more bootcamps and less concerts, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.”
“I called the Department of Magic over a dozen times this week, and not once could I speak to anyone who knew what was going on. What do I even pay taxes for if I can’t voice my opinion?”
“I always said they were treating this like a game. Now look at ‘em.”
Elise clicked a button on the remote and shut off the television in her office.
“It goes on,” she said, “but you get the idea.”
“And that’s what you’re going to show to Sirk?” Adah asked.
“We probably won’t need to,” Elise said. “I’m sure he’s heard enough of this. It’s still important to do our research, though. Each of their complaints can become a talking point for us. We’ll speak their worries back to them in their own words.”
Elise had tasked someone at the Department of Magic with editing together a montage of soundbites following Desiire’s battle against the S-Rank Cruelty. The video was a combination of street interviews with average people, panel discussions with news pundits, and clips from online content creators, but it held to one consistent theme throughout. People were fed up with the Department of Magic.
Adah knew from her own social media that there were plenty of people who held more sympathetic views of magic users in the aftermath of that tragedy, and it would be a while before the diehard magical girl fans gave up their support. Still, Elise’s montage wasn’t a handful of cherry-picked clips. The backlash against the Secretaries was growing, not fizzling out, and Elise intended to fan those flames.
Adah had called Elise to update her on what their team had learned about the humanoid Cruelty, but the Secretary pushed their conversation in a different direction. Elise wanted to meet again so that she could propose a new plan to Adah. It was time, she had said, to strike back against all their enemies at once.
Putting pressure on the other regional Secretaries was the first step of that plan.
“So, we show Sirk that the people are turning on him, then use your detection system as leverage over him?” Adah summarized.
But Elise shook her head.
“Sirk is not Thibault,” she said. “He won’t break over public opinion, and the governor will not turn against him. In Region 1, the hierarchy is reversed—it is Sirk who holds sway over the rest of the government. His Department of Magic is the economic engine of the region, in large part due to his leadership and connections. Although he will need to respond to the outrage around this incident, it will not break him. But although his allies won’t abandon him easily, the reverse is less true. He will shed dead weight without a second thought.”
Adah had no doubts about that. The way Sirk had spoken about Ren and Locke was proof enough. In his eyes, people either had enough value to keep them around or they didn’t.
“Our target is not Region 1,” Elise continued, “but Regions 2 and 3. Secretaries Carrol and Borzage are too accustomed to following Sirk’s lead. Now that he will need to play defense for the moment, they will become a burden upon him. They have no plan and offer nothing to assist Sirk. Region 4, on the other hand, has a tool to resolve his troubles and help him regain the public’s favor. As we become more useful to him, the other regions will seem more and more like a burden. This is the first step toward a redistribution of power, so to speak.”
“Should we really be cozying up to Secretary Sirk?” Grace asked. “It seems like that will only make it easier for him to stand in our way.”
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“Yeah,” Adah agreed. “Buying his favor is just going to fuel his ego.”
“His ego is useful to us,” Elise said. “Like an addiction, if you feed it once, he’ll want you to feed it again. That opens up opportunities—both to work with him and against him. It also means that, if you are ever the cause of his withdrawal, he’ll do anything to get rid of you. This is the means by which we’ll weaken Secretaries Carrol and Borzage. Once I am the only one standing by Sirk’s side, we will have the power to dictate how Letria combats the Cruelties. It is a necessary step toward mobilizing the rest of the nation in pursuit of our goal, and therefore a necessary step toward destroying the Cruelties.”
“Hold on,” Adah said. “As much as I hate to admit it, we do still rely on the other regions for help. Is it smart to go pissing them off at this point? No one in our region is ready for an A-Rank Cruelty, and I’m not about to make the same mistake we did with the hydra. Weakening the other regions makes the whole country weaker. There are good teams in those regions—teams that would be happy to help us. They aren’t our enemies.”
“We need fewer dead magic users,” Grace said. “Not more.”
“This has been accounted for,” Elise said. “The goal is not to knock those teams down, but to climb above them.”
Before she explained further, she picked up the phone on her desk and tapped one of the quick dial buttons. She exchanged a few words with the person on the other end, then set the receiver back down.
“Thibault was correct that Region 4 needed to usher in a new era of magic users,” Elise said. “He was wrong about what that era would look like. The world does not need more of the same, hidden beneath a darker coat of paint. It needs a kind of magical girl it has not yet seen. A generation on par with the First.”
A gentle hand knocked at the double doors of the office, to which Elise granted permission to enter. A young woman, perhaps even younger than Adah, walked inside with little scurrying steps. She carried a poster board under her arm, though Adah couldn’t get a good look at what was written on it. Adah recognized her enough to know she was one of the Department staff. She made her way to the side of Elise’s desk and then looked at her boss attentively.
“Thank you, Margot,” Elise said to the woman. “Please, go ahead.”
Margot, who Adah began to suspect was Elise’s direct assistant, turned the poster board around and held it upright atop Elise’s desk. There were no words on the board, only a sketch drawn in black and red ink.
The sketch featured a group of a dozen or so people standing in a lineup, each of them dressed in what looked to be altered military uniforms. The details of the drawing weren’t yet refined, more of a rough draft depicting a broad concept, but that was the impressive the design of the figures gave. Many of the people in the lineup held weapons of some sort—a halberd, a rapier, a bow—choices which Adah was sure weren’t coincidental. At their center stood a feminine figure holding a flag laid across her shoulder. From the curly ornaments atop the figure’s head, Adah could guess who she was meant to be.
“What is this?” she asked Elise. She had a likely theory of her own, but it was better to hear it from the woman herself.
“This is the Last Light,” Elise said with a smile. “The sun on the horizon that lingers long enough to keep the darkness at bay. An elite group of magic users tasked with protecting Region 4 above all other ambitions. This is how we will present you to the world. The people want a new kind of power to protect them. If they are beginning to doubt the current era of magic users, we will give them a new one. What is it that commands magical girls but the will of humanity? Our region will respond to that will.”
Adah took a closer look at the board. The rest of those figures must have been meant to represent the other members of the coalition teams. Some of them were easily identifiable by the weapons they held.
“The idea…” Margot started to speak, then bit her tongue. When everyone else in the room watched her and waited for her to continue, she took a breath and began again. “The idea was to make you into heroes. We would keep the idol elements from everyone’s current designs, but ground them in something that commands respect. I mean, these aren’t real uniforms, but they could look like they are. You’ll still shine like an idol would, but it’ll be your discipline and dedication that make you stand out. Um… that was my idea for it, anyway.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, either. The coalition teams wouldn’t unite under one agency—not unless the Last Light stumbled upon a lot of cash and a lot of extra staff—but they could unite under one banner. Setting them up as an official squad would act like a formal declaration that their teams would work together to protect the region. It was the antithesis of how Sirk managed his region.
“If we’re going to do something like this,” Adah said, “I want my designer to handle the uniforms.”
While it was presumptuous to call Lina “her designer,” Adah didn’t imagine she’d take issue with it. Lina had salivated over when playing dress-up with four magical girls; she’d faint if Adah offered her the opportunity to do the same with a dozen.
“Whatever you need to bring this vision to life, you need only ask for it,” Elise said. “Our Department will play our part, as well. We will help train you and maximize your potential. And naturally, you will lead this task force.”
There was no point in acting humble about it now. After the S-Rank, the coalition teams had made it clear that they were willing to follow Adah’s lead. Elise was only recognizing that.
“On that note,” the Secretary said, “we will also be changing how we handle missions in our region.”
“You want to optimize them,” Grace said. “Do you have any more details on what that would look like? Will I be saved from staring at the mission portal half the day?”
Elise nodded at Grace, then set her sights on Adah.
“There is that element to it, yes,” Elise said. “But I was thinking about Heartbreak specifically. Our goal is for you to participate in as many missions as possible.”
“That and leading the squad is kind of a lot, no?” Adah said.
“I should clarify,” Elise said. “When I say ‘participate,’ it is more a collection process. You won’t need to join the battles, only clean up the messes afterward. We plan to feed your weapon as many Cruelties as possible. With that power, you will become the region’s absolute guarantee. You will hold the sun upon your back, so to speak, and you will not allow that light to go out.”