Adah stared at the army of gray that waited at the bottom of the concrete stairs. They all stood at attention, as if they’d been led to the steps of the Department of Magic in preparation to lay siege to it. She squeezed her eyes shut one more time out of desperation, but when she opened them the army still stared back at her.
The cameras and their flashes had vanished as well. Now she saw only the occasional gray silhouette holding a weapon by its head, aimed at Adah and ready to strike.
Three disparate feelings hurtled toward a crossroad in her gut: a fear that begged her to flee the scene; a panic that urged her to attack the horde first; and a nauseating dissociation that made the world swirl in her eyes. None of those feelings slowed down, and inevitably they came crashing together in the pit of her stomach. Acid bubbled to the top of her throat, but she managed to swallow it down.
She must have taken too long to get her bearings—some murmurs and whispered spilled out from the crowd. None of those words echoed. That was enough to ground Adah in reality. If these had been humanoids, those words would have echoed. That’s what she told herself over and over until her heart stopped racing.
This was just a vision, an illusion. She’d been through a fast-paced battle, siphoned a lot of essence, and now stood before a nerve-wracking crowd. She’d been thrown off-center. That’s all this was.
That had to be all this was.
Adah opened her mouth and focused her gaze on the empty air just above the heads of all those people in the crowd. Their gray silhouettes turned to a blur at the bottom of her vision, and Adah did her best to put them out of her mind.
She began to speak, hoping to lose her worries within her own words.
“I didn’t think I’d ever be standing here,” she began. “I didn’t think I’d see all of… you… standing before me.”
Adah paused to swallow down more stomach acid.
“But a lot has changed in the last year,” she said. “The world has changed, and what it means to be a magic user must change in response. That’s what I—and all of the brave people behind me—are here to show you this evening. I mean, that’s what we’re here to tell you.”
She took a deep breath, and tried to remember exactly the words she meant to say next.
“We don’t represent any one team of magic users, but a coalition of them. We’re united by choice, to work together toward a common goal. And that goal is to protect all of… you. By destroying the Cruelties, including… those humanoids.”
Adah wanted to abandon the stage, to pass the mic to Iris or Elise or anyone who would take it. She wanted more than anything to shut her eyes and not open them until she was back home again, in her bed with nothing to see but the ceiling above her.
But she had to press on. She had to finish. She was the leader of this coalition, and this was her responsibility.
She forced the words out of herself, each sentence messier than the last, until finally she’d emptied out all that she needed to say.
Finally, she was allowed to turn her back on that gray horde and look at her teammates.
Their faces were not gray. They were only worried.
☆☆☆
“Not your finest work, Heartbreak,” Iris said.
Adah couldn’t argue with that.
“What Elise said threw me off,” Adah said. “I didn’t know how to follow up something like that.”
That was a convenient excuse. Admitting she’d had another vision was one thing, but admitting it had terrified her wasn’t something she was ready to do yet.
Yesterday’s vision was also different from the rest. Usually Adah saw images that weren’t real, either through flashes in her mind or dreamlike departures from reality. This was the first time an illusion had been laid on top of what she was truly seeing. If her visions were still evolving, even after she’d seemingly gotten them under control, then Adah wanted to study them even closer. She began to write down what she saw in a journal, starting with yesterday’s humanoid illusion, on the theory that some new pattern might reveal itself to her. Even if she didn’t learn anything, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a record of all her visions.
“What’s done is done,” Dystopia said with a shrug. “So what do we do next?”
That question was precisely what Adah had gathered this group at her agency office to discuss. She had wanted a representative from each coalition team to attend—Iris came as DreamRise’s captain, Seliah of course represented herself, and Dystopia came on behalf of Fifty Flip. Hyperia and Elegia were running a livestream today instead, sort of as a casual press conference exclusively for their fans. Hyperia’s streaming endeavor had grown to consistently reach several hundred viewers, so it was wise to make use of that loyal audience whenever possible.
Today’s subgroup of coalition members would debrief from yesterday’s official presser, then plan their squad’s next moves. Even if Elise had placed so much focus on Adah, the coalition’s real objective was to turn all of its magic users into threats against the Cruelties. All the while, they’d search for a way to eliminate the monsters for good.
“For starters, we’ll take on more A-Ranks when the conditions are right,” Adah said. “We’ll have to balance that with the missions we take as individual teams. Dani, it’d also be good for your team to take on a B-Rank yourselves when you’re ready. Get used to fighting the higher ranked Cruelties in a smaller group. Ultimately, we want each of our teams to be able to handle A-Ranks on our own.”
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“And you’ll keep collecting the cores?” Seliah asked.
“That’s the plan,” Adah said, glancing over at Iris. “Even though I don’t agree with the way Elise framed it.”
Iris sighed and said, “You don’t have to convince me of it. I know how your ego likes to manifest, and this doesn’t match up. However, I warn you that I’ll break rank before I become another Secretary’s pawn.”
“And I’m not worried about that,” Adah said. “My commitment is to all of you, not Elise. We’ll cooperate with her only as long as our goals align.”
Though, Adah felt a pressing need to confirm what exactly Elise’s goals were, and which of those goals were hers versus Kodriel’s. Izzy might be able to provide some insight into what the Keteriel was thinking. Perhaps Margot could fill in any other gaps.
“That’s the mission side of things, anyway,” Adah continued. “We’ve got to keep up with other magical girl activities, too. The tide is changing, but the truth is that most of the world isn’t with us yet. The majority of people still want their concerts and movies and fashion. Some of them probably want it even more than before, to forget about what happened to Desiire. We still need FP to fight the Cruelties, and the fact is there’s more FP in that kind of idol work than anywhere else. We have to keep tapping into it.”
That said, between their takedown of the cerberus and what Adah did manage to say at the press conference, all the coalition members had seen a sizable bump in their FP levels. Adah and her teammates had a chance to update their numbers on the back office’s whiteboard with their first major jump in a while.
Twilight Heartbreak:32,449 ^ 48,546
Lightburst Lyrika:27,217 ^ 39,111
The Frostfist Berserker:26,777 ^ 37,868
The Raindrop Reaper:28,063 ^ 39,223
Although they hadn’t crested any new breakpoints, Adah was getting awfully close to unlocking her fourth spell, and the other girls weren’t far behind. The past few breakpoints had all involved upgrades to existing parts of her arsenal rather anything as flashy as a weapon or new spell, so a spark of that same excitement she’d felt at the beginning of her journey as Twilight Heartbreak flashed inside of her chest once more. After so much time defining herself by her scythe and whip, she was ready to show off something her fans had never seen before.
The coalition was getting the attention they sought—some of it good and some of it not so good, just as always. For every fan who was excited to see their favorite magical girl taking out an A-Rank long before she was expected to, there was a hater poking holes in the very concept of the coalition.
What happens when one of them gets more famous than the others?
They’re basically a bunch of industry plants propped up by more popular girls.
I don’t get it. Are they just a big team of magical girls? And some guy?
I can’t buy into the “change the world” bullshit when they’re just using this to show off their new outfits.
It was that last kind of comment that gave Adah the most trouble. And she wasn’t the only one struggling with it.
“How are we supposed to balance it?” Dystopia asked. “Kinda hard to criticize the rest of the industry if we’re still acting like idols and models. What makes us any different?”
“I had a thought about that,” Seliah chimed in. “It’s something I was thinking about before I teamed up with you all. I mean, I never got into the idol stuff to begin with. All I ever did was fight Cruelties. So I tried to think about what I could do, as somebody with that kind of reputation, and I got to thinking about the First Generation. In the beginning, all they did was fight Cruelties, right? Then Aino and the others started acting like heroes and putting on a show, and people really liked that about them.”
“And that brought us here,” Dystopia said. “With all our problems.”
“Not exactly,” Seliah said, shaking her head. “I think Aino figured two things out. First, it’s like Adah said—people still want a distraction from what’s going on. Or you could call it something to look forward to. If all people think about when they see a magical girl is the fact that Cruelties exist, and that another might attack soon, then magical girls almost become scary. You wouldn’t want to see soldiers marching down your street, right? But if magical girls also represent something happy, something to look forward to, then it’s easier for people to support them.”
“And the second thing?” Adah asked.
“Regular people can’t fight against the Cruelties,” Seliah said. “Even guns and bombs don’t work; it takes magic to break through their cores. I think Aino knew that was the worst part for people—they couldn’t do anything without magic. Isn’t that feeling why some of us became magical girls, too? But the First Generation found another way for people to fight back. Maybe you couldn’t be a magic user for one reason or another, but you could help them. You could show up to an event or watch them battle, cheer for them, and the next time you saw them, they’d be even stronger. That feeling made people want there to be as many concerts and events like that as possible. Those were their opportunities to fight.”
“War bonds from the heart,” Iris said as a smile crept across her face.
“Like we’re their champions, riding off to represent them in battle,” Adah said. “Sprinkle in some of the regional pride lingering from the carnival and that angle could work. We can even expand on that idea—we’re working hard toward our goal, but we can’t do it without your support. Every day we fight for the future we want, celebrating every victory along the way. Something like that.”
“So a concert would be more like a send-off party,” Seliah said. “People used to sing and dance before warriors went into battle, right?”
Dystopia hung her arms over the top of her head and thought for a moment before adding, “If we find the right words, it has legs.”
“I know somebody who can help with that,” Adah said.
Hopefully Seb was ready to pile some more work onto his plate. Soon enough, he’d be as busy as Adah was. Somehow, she didn’t think he’d mind.
“Then I leave it to you, Adah,” Iris said, standing up from the leather chair she’d claimed for herself. “I’m meeting Ekki for dinner and if I keep him waiting any longer, he’ll grow cold.”
“Finally going on dates, huh?” Dystopia said, taking the opportunity to stand as well. “The times really are changing.”
“Call it what you like,” Iris said. “To us, it’s simply another day.”
The two of them walked to the front door together, Dystopia teasing Iris along the way. They seemed to have grown closer while Adah wasn’t watching. Perhaps another side effect of all that inter-team sparring.
“It appears this one will be stalking me for now,” Iris said once the pair of them reached the door. “I’ll be in touch soon, Adah. You and I have more to discuss—alone.”
“Lucky you,” Dystopia said. “Let me know when the next training or mission is. I’ll fill in Sammy and Elegia on what we talked about.”
Adah waved goodbye, and the two girls and their banter soon disappeared around a street corner. Their departure left just one tiny witch in the agency lobby, alone with Adah. Seliah stood up, but she didn’t make her way toward the front door. She looked at Adah with a furrowed brow and clenched fists.
“I’d like to talk to you,” she said.