“I’m brand new,” Emi declared while shadow-boxing her way around the agency lobby.

  “New and improved,” Ami agreed.

  Once Emi went on the mend, her recovery accelerated exponentially. The day after she first woke up, she got out of bed and tried to leave the hospital on her own three separate times. Eventually, a nurse called Ami in a last ditch effort to convince her sister that she needed to wait until she’d been tested and cleared for release. What that nurse failed to anticipate, however, was that Ami would also need to be convinced to wait. In the end, Grace got both girls to hold back their excitement long enough for a doctor to confirm Emi was fully healed.

  The morning after that, Emi returned home. Her shoulder showed no signs of the deterioration that once consumed it, and she was eager to put it to work. She threw out jabs and hooks one after another without slowing down, while an audience of Adah, Ami, and Grace observed.

  “I want to kill Cruelties,” she said mid-routine with the same flat inflection as usual.

  Grace adjusted her glasses and said, “You definitely have the same bloodlust if nothing else. What did the doctor say at your review?”

  Emi paused with her arm at full extension.

  “‘Go get ‘em, kid,’” she quoted.

  “We really need to move to the city,” Grace sighed.

  Ami laughed and joined her sister, turning Emi’s warm-up into an all-out slapboxing match. They shuffled around the room, only ever landing a hit on each other when one of them would bump into a chair or wall and let their guard down. Before long, they’d basically rearranged all the lobby furniture by way of knocking into it. Their parents must have had their hands full.

  Eventually, Grace clapped her hands loudly over her head and put an end to their fun.

  “Let’s not have you injure yourself on your first day back,” she said. “We need to discuss next steps, too. The IndieMagie application deadline is a week away, and as worried as I am that the three of you will procrastinate filling out your individual forms, it’s Rika who I’m most concerned about.”

  The way Rika had left their meeting the other day—alongside Adah’s expression when she returned downstairs—gave Grace good cause to be worried. Rika’s isolation only seemed to worsen after that. If she’d left her room at all during the past two days, it must have been while everyone else was either out or asleep.

  Adah had approached her door a few more times since then, but couldn’t bring herself to knock again. It was hard for her to identify the predominant emotion holding her back. She was worried and unsure of the right thing to say even if Rika was willing to listen to her, but she was also angry. Or was she upset? Frustrated? The feelings swirled around inside of her like wisps of smoke, and whenever she reached down to grab hold of one, they slipped through her grasp and arranged themselves into a new design. All she knew for sure was that they sucked the air from her lungs whenever she thought of Rika.

  If something didn’t change soon, things would play out exactly how Rika had suggested. By avoiding a decision on whether to give up or continue, the world would eventually make that decision for her. Their team would enter the IndieMagie without her, take missions without her, and head into the future without her.

  Had Rika said outright that she was done being a magical girl and packed up her things, then Adah could accept that. No doubt she’d still be plagued by the same miasma of emotions, but a concrete decision like that brought with it a finality that would eventually stabilize her heart. It was the indecision that left her in limbic limbo and contributed most to her frustration.

  She wouldn’t make this decision for Rika, nor would she allow her friend to avoid making it.

  It was that line of thinking that sparked a new idea. It was an idea borne of delirium, one that she saw like a mirage in the desert, a pool of water that may or may not exist beyond the sandstorm she was trapped within.

  What if she didn’t talk to Rika?

  Adah repeated the thought aloud. Grace looked at her blankly through her glasses and the twins tilted their heads in unison. Since her plan was best explained in private, Adah led them all into the agency’s back office. Below all the numbers tracking their FP and budget on Grace’s whiteboard, Adah wrote out the words: “Operation Spotlight.”

  “If Rika thinks we shouldn’t wait for her,” she explained, “then let’s go ahead without her.”

  “Just like that?” Grace asked. “I thought you didn’t want to leave her behind.”

  Adah shook her head. “I don’t. More than anything, I want to keep going forward with her. That was the whole point of everything.”

  She’d already decided her goal had no meaning if the rest of her team wasn’t fighting for it with her. That included every one of them, but most of all Rika. She had been Adah’s first friend during this journey, and they had dreamed up together so many of the visions of the future Adah held in her heart.

  “I’m hoping I can get her to see that for herself,” she continued. “Rika told me she wants to quit because she thinks there’s nothing special about her, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, there’s a reason she managed to grow while the rest of us were stuck. When she’s in her element, she makes the rest of the world disappear and you can’t help but watch her. That’s her star power. It’s undeniable once you’ve felt it, but she won’t believe in it if it’s just me saying it to her. She needs to get out there and pierce the hearts of a whole crowd of people in that way. She needs to see all those people, all captivated all at once, so her potential becomes undeniable to her.”

  “I think there’s truth to that idea,” Grace said, “but how does going ahead without her help accomplish that?”

  Grace held eye contact with Adah, her face still and serious. Standing in front of her and the twins, Adah suddenly felt like she was back auditioning at agencies again.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m banking on the assumption that Rika actually doesn’t want to quit. My idea is like a forcing function for that feeling. Or I guess you could just call it laying bait and seeing if Rika bites.”

  Grace nodded at her as if to say: get to the point.

  “Let’s announce that we’re entering the IndieMagie even before Rika agrees to it,” Adah said. “And on top of that, let’s say we’re going to take down a C-Rank Cruelty before the competition to prove we deserve the fans’ votes. Like you said, we’re a team with the kind of buzz the IndieMagie was made for. It’s only natural we’d try to build some hype before the competition. This is also the perfect opportunity to highlight Rika herself.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “The twins and I already have some attention on us from what happened at the farm. Lyrika is the magical girl our new fans know the least about. She hasn’t taken any missions with us since I became Heartbreak, so most people don’t even know she’s on the team. So let’s frame the C-Rank mission as Lyrika’s own re-debut. Something like: the prima donna of Spotlight Sunbright joins the party. Then it becomes a trio of hype: the IndieMagie, the C-Rank, and Rika.”

  Grace’s face didn’t budge, nor did she let up on the eye contact. “Except Rika hasn’t agreed to any of this.”

  Adah scratched the back of her neck, growing more sympathetic of Michel’s situation by the second. Grace could be quite imposing when she wished to be.

  “That’s the part that requires a little faith,” she said. “This is the spotlight in ‘Operation Spotlight.’ We’re probably going to have to start the fight against a C-Rank Cruelty without her. Then, once she knows the ball is rolling with or without her, she’ll—hopefully—rush out to join us. That’s when the spotlight turns on. Rika will help us win, she’ll gain the adoration of some new fans, and the plan will be a huge success. Probably.”

  “What do we do if she doesn’t come?” Ami asked. “We’re going to look pretty bad if we say all that and only three of us show up.”

  “More importantly, you’d be fighting a C-Rank while missing a member,” Grace said. “After what just happened to Emi, I can’t let you do something stupid like that.”

  They both made good points—that’s why this hadn’t been Adah’s first idea. Rather than a well-thought-out plan, Operation Spotlight was a gamble. However, if Adah was confident to bet on anything, it was her faith in Rika.

  “Rika’s talking like she wants to be left behind, but I’m not going to let that happen,” she said. “At least, I’m not going to be the one to close the door on her. I can’t claim to know exactly what she’s feeling, but if she knew for sure she wanted to leave, then she’d be gone already. She’s thinking that maybe deep down she wants to give up, but I’m hoping it’s the opposite. Maybe that’s only what she’s feeling on the surface and, when it really counts, she’ll realize she could never quit. If all I can do for her is give her a chance, then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll shine down a spotlight for her and pray she steps under it. It’s her choice if she wants to or not.”

  Adah punctuated her explanation by placing the marker she was holding back into the whiteboard tray. She thought through everything she had said again. It hadn’t been much more than some rambling ideas she’d spouted while trying and failing to organize her thoughts. It was just an attempt to bring order to all the swirling feelings in her heart. If she was capable of making sense of those feelings, and of understanding what must have been the equally schismatic feelings of Rika’s own heart, a plan like this wouldn’t be necessary.

  She looked at the twins and Grace one by one, noting a lack of confidence in all of their faces. They wouldn’t look directly back at Adah, but she got a good enough read of them anyway. With nothing else to say, she took a seat in an open chair. The group of them sat like that for a while, staring at their hands or the floor, until Emi suddenly broke the silence.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  Everyone turned to face her, expecting some kind of explanation, but Emi only gave a thumbs-up in return.

  “Fuck it,” Ami followed in her sisters footsteps. “If Adah thinks it could work, then it’s good enough for me. She knows Rika better than any of the rest of us anyway. If she doesn’t show up, we’ll consider that her resignation letter.”

  That left only one person to convince, by far the one least likely to hop on the train of insanity. The three magical girls had one card in their favor though: they outnumbered Grace. They all looked at their manager at once, hoping to overwhelm her. Grace only sighed in response.

  “This plan is stupid,” she said. “But I get the feeling you’ll only do something stupider if I stop you. I’ll help you find a C-Rank mission, but you’re going to handle it on my terms. I’m giving you thirty minutes, and if Rika doesn’t join you by then, I’ll cancel the job and call for backup. That’s the most leeway I can give you.”

  The girls each cracked a smile, Adah grinning widest of them all. Nothing about her plan had changed, but simply hearing that her teammates and Grace would support it made her grow more optimistic.

  “Let’s go look one up now, then!” Ami shouted. “Maybe we can put this plan into action today.”

  “No,” Grace said, an immaculate sharpshooter of denial. "Emi might feel fine roughhousing, but she still needs to test her recovery on low-rank missions. More importantly, I told you the application deadline is coming up, and I know the two of you will need all the time you can get to finish it. Unless you’re going to surprise me by saying you already filled it out?”

  The twins looked devastated to be singled out by Grace, but could muster no defense. As excited as they were to fight Cruelties, Adah knew them to be equally as demotivated by paperwork. They slunk out of the room like a pair of scolded puppies and disappeared upstairs, surely about to do anything but fill out their forms. With them gone, Grace sighed again.

  Apparently she was still adjusting to the new volume of managerial duties on her plate. Once the twins left, she set her glasses down on the room’s desk and slumped back in her chair.

  “Are you really okay with us going after a C-Rank after what happened?” Adah asked her.

  She must have felt comfortable showing this lounging attitude to Adah, as she didn’t sit up or even replace her glasses before responding.

  “I know I wouldn’t be able to stop you for very long,” she said. “Besides, I want to see how far you all can go, too. It’s not like I’ve stuck around here for the salary; I want us to succeed just as much as you do. Maybe we need to take risks to make it there, but it’s still my job to keep you safe. The truth is I’m scared to send you out that door, so I’m relying on you to make the right judgments as a leader when you’re out there.”

  “Suddenly everyone wants me to be a proper captain,” Adah mused.

  “That’s what you signed up for when you talked a big game about saving this place. The other girls, including Rika, are going to look at you to lead the way.”

  “I’m being ambushed by new expectations every day.”

  “That’s adulthood for you,” Grace said, stretching her arms high above her head and cracking every joint in her back so loud it sounded like the finale of a fireworks show. “One day you wake up surrounded by responsibilities you don’t even remember picking up.”

  Adah looked at the words she’d written on the whiteboard. She’d given her plan a goofy name, like they were grade schoolers plotting to go to war with the kids the next neighborhood over. Yet, a lot of weight rested on that plan. A lot of responsibility. Whatever Rika’s decision ended up being, Adah considered herself responsible for any pain her plan caused. That went for the twins who were risking a fight against a C-Rank Cruelty and for Rika.

  “Adah, one more thing before I sign off on this,” Grace snapped her out of those thoughts. “What makes you think this will work?”

  Grace put her glasses back on—perhaps that was her own transformation into manager mode. She looked over Adah’s face a bit like observing a painting on display.

  “I’m not sure,” Adah said, “but I think Rika’s been holding back. For a while now, I’ve had a sense she wasn’t giving her all. She kept taking a supportive role during missions. That’s not like her. She used to always want to shine the brightest of all of us, so she’d pour all of her magic into her spells. It was like she was saying, ‘Look at me!’ But now she’s trying to be a background character."

  “I guess this plan is my way of telling her she belongs in the spotlight. At least, that’s where I want to see her. I’ll do everything I can to create the perfect stage for her, to show her just how much I believe in her, because that’s the best way I can express myself to her. Magical girls get their power from the will of humanity, right? So this is my will. My way of cheering for the magical girl I want.”

  “What will you do if she does give up?” Grace asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Adah said. “Yell at her, then cry? I’m trying not to think about that option.”

  Grace laughed so abruptly it actually startled Adah a little. The woman collapsed back into her chair with the same abandon Adah crashed into her bed at the end of the day.

  “With those powers, sometimes I forget how young you all really are,” she said, her voice dancing on the tail end of her chuckle.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Adah demanded.

  “I’m counting on you to get the twins to fill out their applications.”

  “You’re ignoring me. I was seriously asking you!”

  “You’ll be all right, kid,” Grace said with the same grin she had the day Adah decided to become Twilight Heartbreak. “This is a division of labor. You make sure you—all four of you—are in tip-top shape. I’m going to find you a C-Rank to take on.”