The wind howled in Seliah’s ears. Even though she was sitting at her desk in the warmth of her bedroom, the sounds of the outside world always found their way past the old windows and thin walls of the Orbit Promo agency building. Tonight, the winter season was unleashing its death throes. One last night of ripping winds and bitter chill before the buds formed on the trees.
That howling kept Seliah company as she scrolled through a folder of video files on her computer. She sat with her one knee pulled up to her chest, which she leaned against as she focused on her monitor. She worked her way through the videos, pulling them up one at a time until she found one with enough detail to be worth studying, then let it play. As she watched, she swapped the mouse in her hand for a pen so that she could jot down notes in a small journal laid out in front of her keyboard.
Each of these videos contained battle footage of the other Region 4 coalition teams. Seliah had downloaded them from social media and the fan forums. Mostly they were recorded by fans on shaky cell phones, though she found some higher quality footage ripped from newscasts or the more serious hobbyists in the region. Some of the videos were too short to be useful, but there was also the rare full recording of a Cruelty fight.
Seliah had even made a request to Ami—she’d like to have videos of each coalition member casting their spells in isolation. Without the chaos of a real battle, they’d be able to film good, clean footage—from multiple angles even. So far, only the Last Light had filmed their spells, but Ami had promised to collect the rest even if she had to beat the other teams into submission.
Seliah had told her she didn’t need to—and shouldn’t—go that far.
All of this, from what the Last Light had filmed to what she had collected on her own, was Seliah’s library. She would study all of it, and piece together a complete picture of the coalition’s capabilities from what she found. There wasn’t enough time to practice with everyone in person. Not for Seliah to learn what she needed to. She’d have to put in the work on her own, using everything at her disposal, in order to stand alongside her allies.
They were taking on an A-Rank, after all, and Seliah had yet to fight even a B-Rank on her own. She wouldn’t allow anyone to get hurt on account of her being under-prepared.
As she watched a loop of Adah casting her [Sparkling Strike] over and over, trying to internalize the range and timing of its gravitational pull, Seliah heard the flapping of wings from behind her. She broke her attention away from her computer and spun around to find her mascot, Shikk, touching down on her bedroom floor. The raven with a white underbelly had a single granola bar clenched in her beak. The bird lifted her head up, a gesture that implored Seliah to take the snack, which she did.
“It’s not like you to stray from your schedule,” Shikk said. “You should have eaten something by now.”
Seliah tore the wrapper off the granola bar and snapped a bite off of it with her teeth. The scent of honey from the snack made her stomach growl, so she chewed and swallowed as quickly as she could. Shikk was right—she should have a proper dinner soon—but Seliah felt as though she was close to a breakthrough in understanding how Heartbreak liked to fight. She’d keep watching just a little longer. After all…
“I’ve got no time to waste,” she told Shikk. “Adah says she’s got her visions under control again. The Secretary’s given us the green light, so now it’s just a waiting game. It won’t be long before the right A-Rank shows up. I have to learn everything I can before then. I can’t let anyone down when the time comes.”
Shikk flew up and settled atop Seliah’s desk, just to the side of her computer monitor. Standing upright like this, all of her white feathers revealed themselves, and she looked like an entirely different bird than the raven she usually appeared as.
“You are one human out of eleven,” she said. “The weight of the mission will be spread across all of your shoulders.”
“You’re right,” Seliah said. “I’m just one, but I’m the odd one out. The Last Light and DreamRise have both taken on multiple B-Ranks at this point. It looks like Fifty Flip aren’t far off themselves. And all of them have teammates they can rely on during the battle. If I want them to be able to rely on me the same way, I need to work extra hard.”
She couldn’t let herself be a burden during the mission. If she misunderstood something about someone else’s spells, she could get in their way, maybe even cause them to get hurt. Having more magic users in a battle didn’t necessarily make that battle easier to win. Just as a well coordinated team could amplify each member’s strength, a poorly coordinated group could impede the individuals that made it up. Combat against Cruelties was often chaotic—formations broke and plans often got altered on the fly.
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In a messy situation where a split second decision could mean the difference between life and death, would the rest of the coalition rather have Seliah by their side or a teammate they knew well?
“Then you have all the more reason to consider Heartbreak’s offer,” Shikk said. “She is serious about her goal, and committed to her team. Trust in your friends.”
Were they her friends? Maybe that was true for Ami and Emi, but it was different for Adah. She watched Seliah with a strange look in her eyes—probably the same look that tinted Seliah’s own tonight. Adah was always observing her, and Seliah could feel Heartbreak’s analysis on her skin, like she was back at Lina’s studio with a measuring tape wrapped around her waist. Adah was always sizing her up. Always scheming.
But that wasn’t the problem. That wasn’t why Seliah had hesitated to join the Last Light. Adah was almost certainly right—both Seliah and the other girls could accomplish more together than they could apart. Seliah had no doubt that joining them would benefit her. The problem lay within herself.
“I need to trust myself before I can join them,” she said to Shikk. “Until I have the same level of faith in myself that those girls have in each other, it’s going to haunt me. Joining a team at this point would only guarantee that I’m haunted forever.”
Shikk waited a moment before asking, “Have you not proved it to yourself already?”
“It’s not that easy,” Seliah said. She set the remaining half of her granola bar down on her desk; she didn’t feel much like eating anymore. “I haven’t forgotten that feeling. Every mission, it comes back to me.”
That day at the shopping center. Those long moments before Ami took control of the situation.
“When you told me that Cruelty was coming—one that I knew I’d never be able to defeat on my own—I wasn’t worried about myself at all. The only thing I could think about was all of those people who were about to die. They’d see that Cruelty coming for them, and then they would look up and see me: a magical girl about to save them. Except I wouldn’t be able to. They’d look at me, and pray for me to do something, but I wouldn’t be able to stop what was about to happen. They’d scream at the end, as if I’d forsaken them. And is there any difference between failing them and forsaking them?”
“It was an abnormal situation, and not your fault,” Shikk said. “You were not there for a mission. No one could blame you for being unprepared for an opponent you did not plan to encounter.”
Seliah wrapped her arms around her leg and rested her chin against her knee. She looked at Shikk, who watched her with tiny, black eyes. Shikk’s form may have been intimidating to someone meeting her for the first time, with her double set of wings and her pitch black outer plumage, but Seliah had almost started to think of her mascot as an older sister.
Back when she first became a magical girl, Shikk had asked if Seliah wanted her to take on a different form. Whether it was a form that matched Seliah’s own theme or simply one that Seliah found appealing, Shikk didn’t mind accommodating her wishes. That had caught Seliah off guard, so she had told Shikk to stick with whatever form she preferred. What else was she supposed to say to an interdimensional being who had lived for millennia? At the time, Seliah was fresh out of high school.
But Shikk’s willingness to help Seliah went beyond making a good first impression. The raven was always offering to grab her a water bottle, or to perch someplace where her wings could shield Seliah’s eyes from the sun, or some other favor such as that.
“This is a war we are fighting together,” Shikk had said early in Seliah’s career. “Yet our kind can do little to help in the battles that will win that war. I only wish to find another way to help.”
Seliah didn’t realize until much later that not all mascots shared Shikk’s mindset. She had gotten lucky by pairing with her, just as she had gotten lucky to meet Ami.
“It’s not blame that I’m worried about,” Seliah said. “Being able to browse missions and pick one that works for you. Joining a team and having a manager or other staff to support you. Things like that are conveniences that favor humanity, but they aren’t guaranteed to us. The Cruelties have shown that they won’t play by rules that are convenient for us. The attack on the substation and the humanoid Cruelty’s ambush were only the beginning. We have to be ready to fight opponents we didn’t expect to fight, and the consequence for failure will be much darker than a poor reputation.”
“Humanity faces its reckoning,” Shikk agreed. “So I urge you not to run from an ally who understands that. You wish to be ready for dark times? Heartbreak is the one preparing for such a future.”
“And what do you think of Heartbreak, Shikk?” Seliah asked. “Do you think she can lead us through that reckoning?”
“You will find out if you fight alongside her,” the raven said.
Of course that was her answer. Seliah thumped her chin against her knee a few times.
“That is enough of this,” Shikk said. “You’ll go hungry at this rate. Order your dinner. I will bring it home, so that you need not interrupt your studies. A fair compromise?”
Seliah leaned back in her chair. Her stomach gurgled again.
“If you fly into a restaurant and ask for food, they’re going to shoo you out with rolled up newspapers,” she said.
Shikk guffawed.
“In this town?” she said. “Our neighbors know me better than they know you.”
“What do you mean they know you?”
“Do you think I simply hide away while you train all day?” Shikk teased. “Humanity is far too interesting for that.”
Seliah realized it once again—she had gotten very lucky to pair with such a mascot.