Since Emi had the farthest to travel in order to get well out of the scorpion Cruelty’s attack range, Adah and Ami had plenty of time to organize themselves. Ami flew behind a house on the Cruelty’s left flank. Once Adah made a commotion, Ami would be right nearby to swoop in near the scorpion’s legs. Adah positioned herself on the monster’s right flank, hiding behind the far side of a home’s sloped roof where she could keep an eye on each of the twins.

  Emi had been traveling down one of the streets parallel to the road the Cruelty stood in, but now that she was a good hundred yards ahead of it, she shifted into its path again. Unless the monster had been holding back earlier, that kind of distance would take it a while to traverse. Emi wouldn’t be in danger, she’d just give the scorpion something to watch.

  The Cruelty shifted its attention towards Emi as planned, and with a clear target in sight the monster slowly marched in her direction. Despite searching for Ami after that initial stinger strike, the scorpion had luckily remained in the center of the street. It advanced towards Emi as if down a runway, allowing Adah to plan her attack free of any worry about collateral damage.

  She watched the monster as it walked toward Emi, trying to get a read on any aspect of its behavior. Even something as minor as the order in which it moved its legs might prove useful during this fight. They had learned some of the Cruelty’s capabilities, but they couldn’t risk another surprise like the sudden speed of the stinger. Still, she couldn’t let the scorpion advance too far. The farther it got from her and Ami, the less likely their plan was to succeed.

  If Adah attacked the scorpion on its right side, that would minimize the potential for any retaliation against Ami as she swooped in from the left. Even though the strategy made sense in theory, the two of them would need to stay on their toes. The strength of a C-Rank Cruelty was uncharted territory for them.

  After the scorpion had taken a couple of steps, Adah felt more confident it had shifted its full attention towards Emi. She spoke to Ami through their magic, preparing to synchronize their execution as closely as possible. Ami still couldn’t move as fast as usual, so they would need to make use of every second Adah’s feint could buy. Once Ami gave her the go ahead, she flew out above the street and charged up her [Nightwind Whip].

  She figured the stronger her attack, the better job it would do of disorienting the Cruelty. Plus, she hadn’t had a good reason to really unleash her magic in a while. As her FP rose, she could feel the flow of magic essence more vividly whenever she transformed. [Nightwind Whip] still capped out at a certain strength as a second level spell, but she could now comfortably attack at full power multiple times without exhausting herself. She’d cast the spell enough times at this point that its hallmarks, the way it darkened the sky and the smoky cloud that formed above her, no longer felt like mere side effects but theatrics she could control as deftly as her own body.

  This was magic, in a way that firing off stars with her [Sparkling Strike] never was. Her whip was a way of expressing herself, not just a tool for dealing with monsters.

  Almost immediately after the wind began to howl, the Cruelty stopped dead in its tracks. Apparently C-Ranks were smarter than the weaker ranks as well. The scorpion attempted to track the direction of the airflow and rotate in Adah’s direction, but its heavy limbs moved too slow for that. Before it had shifted position much at all, Adah unleashed her whip against the monster’s spine. The impact left lingering black smoke as always, through which Adah could just barely see the damaged exoskeleton of the scorpion. Her whip had chipped away a chunk of carapace, exposing the monster’s core within, but already the chitin was repairing itself. Adah could waste no more time watching, though, and fled out of range of the monster’s attention.

  In perfect time with Adah’s swing, Ami flew towards the monster’s hind legs and held out her right arm like a wing. With a flourish of her hand, she splashed a trail of water leading from one leg to the opposite one as she flew underneath the Cruelty. This was the first aspect of her new [Frigid Fetter]. The spell required a water source, and allowed Ami to provide such a source on her own. Once the water trail was sprayed out, she clenched her fist, activating the spell’s next stage. The water flash froze into chains that bound the scorpion’s legs exactly like the shackles Adah had in mind.

  Ami popped out of the black cloud left behind by Adah’s attack for just a moment, then rushed back under the scorpion to lock the next set of legs together.

  If this kept up, Ami could snake her way back and forth down the length of the Cruelty until it was completely immobilized. But the beast had other plans. Adah’s attack proved but a minor inconvenience to the Cruelty and only managed to distract it for a short while. No sooner had Ami froze the scorpion’s second set of legs together than did it suddenly lift its front half up into the air in a grotesque yoga stretch.

  Ami, sensing what came next, wisely sped into the open space behind the monster. She escaped not a moment too soon; the next second, the scorpion slammed its front four legs into the ground once more. The road buckled underneath the impact, leaving four craters where the monster’s legs landed. After stomping, the monster hissed with the otherworldly echo shared by all Cruelties. The noise sounded like the scratch of a needle on a record player layered on top of itself a hundred times over as it bounced off the walls of a deep well. The sound sent a reflexive shiver through Adah.

  “Looks like that’s only gonna work once,” Ami said, the light in her eyes already a bit hazy from the magic upkeep required to sustain the two icy chains.

  The three girls regrouped in the distance behind the scorpion and watched it thrash about. With its hind legs bound, it suffered a severe loss of agility and could only rotate on a pivot. It took a step rightwards from its front legs, shifting its view in that direction and finding nothing, then did the same to the left. The creature was fully alert to their game now. Even if its best response was simply to stomp around, that still made Ami’s job impossible—particularly with the new strain on her focus.

  Maybe if Adah and Emi baited themselves in front of the scorpion? She could try blinding it or at least distracting it by firing a [Sparkling Strike] towards its eyes. Although, to get close enough for a proper shot, she’d be putting herself in plausible range of the stinger. Could she damage the stinger itself then? A strong enough whip might incapacitate the scorpion’s best weapon.

  One look at the part of the monster she had hit with her last salvo curtailed that idea. The segment of carapace Adah had damaged was now completely regenerated. The ability to repair its own defenses wasn’t a surprise—the mission details said as much—but the speed of regeneration posed a serious problem. Adah could chip away at the carapace, but what were they going to do about destroying the core beneath it? Based on the glimpse she’d gotten earlier, they’d only have a few seconds to strike before the core was shielded once more.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “You said four chains takes all you’ve got,” Adah said to Ami. “How about two? Does that leave enough for a shield?”

  Ami winced again and ran her tongue along her bottom lip. “Depends what you have in mind.”

  Adah gestured towards the sky with her right hand. Ami immediately shook her head.

  “Not a chance.”

  Wishful thinking. Ami had handled the impact of Adah’s whip once before, so she’d thought perhaps she could do it again. With a protective barrier beside her, Emi could position herself right where the whip would strike the Cruelty, then immediately pierce the exposed core before the carapace regenerated. Adah hadn’t expected Ami to pull off a miracle twice, but had to ask anyway.

  Instead, she could try timing her own follow-up attack, like she had with the whale Cruelty. The scorpion was unlikely to stay still once it felt Adah charge up her whip again, but maybe her aim was sharp enough to shoot a star through the same hole her whip opened up. Though she hadn’t been very successful with the wolves and—even if she could reliably hit a tough target—there was no guarantee her stars could destroy the core. Even D-Ranks demonstrated a wealth of resilience against [Sparkling Strike].

  Rather than herself or Emi, what about a third option?

  “Izzy,” she called for her mascot. “What’s the clock at?”

  He answered without bothering to pop back into a physical form, “You’re just past twenty minutes. Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  “Sure does,” she said with a grimace.

  She could have asked more questions. How long had it taken them to fly here? If you factored that in, when would Rika have to leave the agency to make it here in time? How many minutes did that equation leave them with?

  But she couldn’t worry about any of that at this point. She could only hope and fight.

  Rika would do what she would do.

  The three of them, here on this mission, had to focus on what they could do.

  “It’s walking,” Emi suddenly spoke up.

  Indeed, the scorpion was moving, though this particular movement deserved to be called “dragging.” With its hind legs shackled, all it could really do was haul itself forward with its front legs in a sort of crawling motion. Nonetheless, it was making progress. It had come out here to hunt prey and wouldn’t give up that mission on account of three pesky magical girls.

  What’s more, it had likely spotted a crowd of suitable targets gathered on a corner down the road. Their chatter and flashing lights were hard to miss.

  “Let’s not fuck this up,” Ami grunted.

  “The tail,” Emi said.

  “The tail?”

  Emi looked at her sister and held up two fingers. “Two chains on the tail. Then it can’t run away.”

  Adah had been so fixated on the scorpion’s legs, and so concerned with the stinger as a weapon, that she hadn’t even considered going after it as another limb. If Ami stuck two chains in the ground like stakes, they could keep the Cruelty in place and neutralize its strongest threat in one go. As long as they were quick about it, the Cruelty wouldn’t be prepared to disrupt them in the same way it had when they went after its legs. Slamming the front half of its body down did nothing to defend its rear.

  “Raindrop’s quick on her feet and quick up here,” Ami said, ruffling her sister’s hair into a mess and leaving her hair clips completely out of place. Emi tried get even by returning the favor, but Ami took it gleefully like a petted dog.

  Adah brought their focus back to the task at hand.

  “Emi goes with me,” she said. “We’ll get in front of the Cruelty like we want to stop it, then Ami moves in to set up the chains. Once you start, we break left and right and look to provide any follow-up support.”

  “No whip this time?” Ami asked.

  “I’d spook it. We need to finish locking it down before it knows what’s happened.”

  The twins nodded in unison, then broke off into their separate positions. Adah caught up with Emi a ways ahead of the scorpion. The crowd of media was less than a hundred yards behind them at this point. Even at this subdued pace, it wouldn’t take long for the Cruelty to be upon them, but they seemed completely nonplussed. Seb, at least, had enough sense to retreat from his rooftop position and join the rest of the media. Had he stayed, he’d only be a step or two beyond the stinger’s range now.

  Noticing the girls in front of it, the Cruelty halted its advance. It seemed to have grown wary of them, if only a little. Adah couldn’t help but think of the whale Cruelty and how it had observed her—learned about her, even. The caution of this scorpion was another reminder that these higher-ranked monsters were capable of adapting to what magical girls threw at them. The thought left Adah feeling vulnerable, floating out in the open air as the scorpion watched her.

  Although the monster stopping was ominous, it also provided a good opening for Ami to rush the tail. She flew close behind the Cruelty while Adah and Emi split off in opposite directions, traveling in wide arcing paths as if they meant to pincer the scorpion from each side. Ami started building her first chain from the road, shooting up to the monster’s tail with a stream of water materializing alongside her. Adah and Emi’s distraction was working well enough—the Cruelty remained stationary and ready to react to their possible attacks. This gave Ami plenty of time to finish her chain and freeze it, a straight line from street to stinger.

  After a delay so short as to be nearly imperceptible to the human eye, the stinger shot forward again, shattering the chain as if snapping an icicle off an awning. The ice burst into so many tiny shards, a miniature hailstorm on this late summer’s day. Ami’s chain vanished even quicker than it had appeared.

  Adah shouted for an immediate retreat. That stinger attack had served only to free the scorpion’s tail, but the chaos caused by that disruption of their plan made staying near the monster too dangerous. The girls regrouped once again, and the Cruelty resumed its advance with renewed vigor.

  “Can you make two chains at once?” Adah asked.

  Ami shook her head, her exhaustion plain on her face. Adah had to remember the slam she’d taken earlier, not to mention the fact she had been doing most of the spell casting today.

  Meanwhile, their plan only seemed to add to the Cruelty’s haste. The two shackles on its legs held up, but the monster had clearly grown less concerned with every subsequent effort from the girls. It crawled forward with a singular focus.

  From this distance, Adah couldn’t quite see how the media crews were reacting, but the fact they hadn’t moved made her nervous. The reason they were willing to set up so close to the action, even near something as dangerous as a C-Rank Cruelty, was because they had learned to trust that magical girls would win. The magical girls people believed in, ones like Pureheart, could handle any enemy and make every onlooker feel safe. Victory seemed to come natural to magical girls like that.

  But what was Adah doing? Could she really protect these people?

  Beyond failing to reunite their team, a much more consequential failure was looming as this mission dragged on. The real reason they were here—why they had magic powers at all—was to defeat Cruelties. They had exhausted their ideas and just about exhausted their time. Perhaps this was the limit of a team such as theirs. And if it was, she needed to admit it.

  “Adah,” Ami said to her. The rest of her meaning was clear from the cold look on her face and the heavy breaths she took in.

  It was time to face reality. They couldn’t afford to experiment or gamble any longer. The ideas Adah had asked them to throw at the wall weren’t sticking, and each attempt to subdue the Cruelty risked disaster. They wouldn’t be able to protect anyone who was pierced by that stinger; they couldn’t count on a miracle escape like the one that had saved Emi. There were some tactics they had yet to try—perhaps Emi’s [Raging Ripple] could open a path to attack—but if they failed, then that would only give the scorpion more time to advance.

  Between the immediate risk to themselves and the impending danger for the onlookers, the cost of failure left no room for doubt. Adah had to swallow her pride and call in another team.

  As Adah made up her mind, she noticed something strange. The sun was setting—at midday.

  At least, a light like the sun shone at the horizon. The light burned red, though not with the weakened luster of the evening sun but with a supreme intensity. The false sun grew to the point of blinding, yet Adah couldn’t look away. She shielded her eyes and squinted until, all at once, the light pierced her heart.