The attention their team was receiving online and in the news was addicting, but it was the surge in magic power that the girls were most excited to enjoy.

  Their dedicated weapons were still a little ways off, with their goal of 5000 FP not quite in sight yet. A month ago—or even a week ago—those numbers would have seemed insurmountable, but after last night’s boost they felt inevitable. Their dread over not knowing how to gain fans was morphing into a confidence that there would always be more hearts to capture. Besides, the girls had an easy time staying patient once they discovered the unwritten effects of a higher FP level.

  The four of them woke up early, before Grace’s impending training session, to transform and test their magic now that they had a deeper pool of essence to play with. The Magiapp had informed them of certain tangible improvements: Adah and the twins each saw their second spells upgrade to Level 3. This change increased the cap on the strength of [Nightwind Whip], the number and length of chains in Ami’s [Frigid Fetter], and added spear-like spikes to the crests of waves produced by Emi’s [Raging Ripple] that could more easily pierce a Cruelty’s core.

  Yet, the girls didn’t focus on these new combat capabilities for very long. Upon transforming this morning, they realized they had changed somehow. The look they shared made Adah certain they were all feeling the same thing. There was an underlying electricity to their transformed selves now, a power that either hadn’t been there before or had been too subtle to notice.

  Transforming had always felt freeing, energizing, fun. You could fly—of course it felt freeing. What the girls felt now was different. A gap had formed between their human selves and their magical girl selves. When they transformed now, they didn’t become a version of themselves that could fly and take an extra beating, they became something that hardly resembled themselves at all. At least, not in the way they understood themselves.

  Adah could feel, as a distinct substance, the magic essence flowing in from Izzy. More than that, she felt the power the essence brought with it. She could tell, even without casting a spell, her body possessed enough firepower to destroy a building the size of their agency office.

  And it was in her body. That was what gave all the girls pause. They weren’t wielding a weapon or operating machinery; they had such a power flowing through them like blood. The level of magic woven into their bodies made it hard to feel like a human.

  For Adah in particular, this FP growth brought with it a real change in the way she utilized magic essence. By cresting the 1000 FP threshold, she had earned her third spell. It displayed along with the others in her Magiapp:

  [Parietal Perception] | Spell Level 3: Forge a contract with a demon to activate an auxiliary sense, empowering you to record and display changes in light around a chosen target.

  “Who exactly is this demon?” she immediately called out to Izzy.

  “Don’t give me such an accusatory look,” he said. “Ask your fans why they see you this way; that stuff about a demon is just lore for Twilight Heartbreak. Besides, these descriptions are far from an exact science.”

  That was for sure. This description was the vaguest of her three spells, leaving her no choice but to try it out after she transformed. She decided to focus on Rika as a “target” and see what happened. She felt a switch flip immediately in her head upon casting the spell. When she asked Rika to try moving, a red trail like a ghastly mist appeared in her wake. Adah tried facing away while Rika flew around here and there, and when she turned back to look, a new trail was visible that led her eye straight to Rika. As if she had a set of eyes on the back of her head, the spell was capable of tracking even when Adah’s vision was focused elsewhere.

  While wielding powerful destructive magic was unsettling, the sensation of this new spell was disturbing in an entirely different way. The trail that followed Rika didn’t just appear on its own—it was created in the pit of Adah’s mind, by a piece of her brain she could feel working even though she had no control over it. She felt the magic pulsing, or perhaps squirming, within her skull as if it had created a new organ at the base of her brain. When she ended the flow of magic for the spell, the squirming stopped and her perception returned to normal.

  A shiver shook her from head to toe as the strange sensation left her head.

  “What you are feeling now is something closer to the truth of what magic is,” Izzy said to Adah when she asked about it. She couldn’t get much more of an answer than that out of him, however.

  In actuality, she felt further from understanding magic now, not closer. She wanted to press him for more, but a prior commitment with Grace soon swept her and her teammates away.

  ☆☆☆

  Adah lay panting in the grass behind the agency office.

  Just as Grace had said, they dedicated most of the day to training—specifically, physical training.

  Magic essence empowered magical girls in many physical respects: shielding their bodies from harsh impacts, resisting the whiplash and tension of sudden changes in flight direction, supplying muscles with extra energy, and so on. These effects protected against injuries that would otherwise be inevitable—without them every magical girl would fall out of commission within a week due to concussions or torn tendons—but they didn’t turn you into a super athlete. Magical girls needed a solid foundation of physical fitness to build off of.

  The strength of magic and the strength of a magical girl’s body fed into one another in countless ways. For example, magic didn’t grant you extra endurance as a baseline. You instead burned up magic essence to avoid hitting your natural limits. Therefore, the more conditioned you were in the first place, the less essence you had to use to keep your engine running. Not to mention, when you woke up the morning after a long mission, you would always find yourself in a normal human body and have to deal with the consequences of exerting yourself. Staying healthy was therefore essential to a successful recovery.

  Raw power, fast-twitch muscle composition, VO2 max—anything in the realm of sports science could impact a magical girl’s performance in battle. That’s why agencies at the top of the food chain kept athletic trainers on staff who could help maximize the magnitude and efficiency of their talents’ magic output. Spotlight Sunbright, being near the bottom of the food chain, did not have a professional trainer at their disposal. They had Grace, who—in all honesty—probably worked them harder.

  Although she wasn’t certified in any way, Grace did have a fairly good idea of what she was doing. She had ran track during college and had apparently taken a serious interest in the science behind the regimen her own coach had prescribed her. She had no trouble adapting those workout structures and training theories to this little troupe of magical girls, much to Adah’s chagrin.

  The other three girls stared down at her, their heads each a blessing that blocked the brutal sun from Adah’s view. How were the three of them able to stay standing after a workout like that? The twins she could kind of understand, but shouldn’t Rika be watering the grass with her sweat like Adah was?

  Today’s workout was an absolute favorite of their drillmaster’s—a hellish session of circuit training that had the girls sprinting around the agency building in between sets of bodyweight exercises. Grace would yell out a new exercise like jump squats, the girls would do a number of reps approaching infinity, then run around the building without rest, only to be greeted by Grace yelling another exercise such as holding planks until the sun exploded. Repeat five times, take two minutes to cry and catch your breath, then go another five rounds.

  After forty-five minutes of that, Grace ended their torture and told them to take a cooldown run. The other girls were currently hoisting Adah off the ground to do just that. Somehow, they managed and, somehow, Adah finished the run. Grace gathered them one last time to stretch and share some feedback before relinquishing them for the rest of the day.

  In the past, the girls had built a little routine of walking down the street after a workout to grab a frozen treat or two from a convenience store, but today they each had a different plan.

  “First dibs on the shower,” Rika said. “I want to record something before our party, and I need to be fresh in both body and mind.”

  “Not if I get there first,” Adah joked from her spot on the grass—though at least she was sitting upright this time.

  “We’d better work on that thing for Seb, too, Emi,” Ami said, to which her sister nodded.

  “That thing?” Adah asked.

  “Dating profiles,” Emi said.

  Seeing the confused look on Adah and Rika’s faces, Ami explained, “After the mission, Seb told us we need better branding. Fans know who you two are—Heartbreak’s the goth girl and Lyrika’s a singer—but right now Raindrop and I are just twins. He said he wants to do profiles on us so people can learn who we are. Stuff like our hobbies and goals and favorite movie.”

  This guy was quickly volunteering himself to be their unpaid PR intern. Adah didn’t have an issue with him giving them more publicity, but she wanted to make sure the twins were properly prepared.

  “Just make sure he gives you a draft to review first,” she warned them. “He has a habit of stretching the truth.”

  The twins gave her a dual thumbs-up.

  “What about you, Adah?” Rika asked. “Doing another round of the circuit?”

  The mere thought caused Adah to fall back onto the grass.

  “Not far off,” she said. “Izzy’s going to help me practice flying. I need to be faster. I can’t keep up with any of you.”

  “Forget the pig,” Ami said, sticking a thumb at her chest. “Get some lessons from the master.”

  At that, Emi jumped in front of her sister and started pointing at her own face with both hands. This pointless contest inevitably compelled the twins to race around the building once more to prove who was fastest. They finished neck and neck and demanded Adah pick a winner and, when she would not, rampaged their way back inside while arguing between themselves. Most likely, they would not make any progress on their project for Seb today.

  “Have fun,” Rika said to Adah once the commotion settled down.

  She gave a little wave and then, before leaving, their eyes lingered together. Rika hadn’t mentioned a word about quitting since the battle with the C-Rank, and although she still seemed unsure of her actions and words at times, she was returning to the Rika that Adah knew best. They smiled at each other a moment, then Rika left Adah to her practice.

  “Shall we begin?” Izzy said, appearing as soon as Rika departed.

  Adah groaned like a watermill turning for the first time in a century. She reluctantly held out a hand in Izzy’s direction. Her mascot did the remainder of the work and tapped his snout against her palm to initiate her transformation.

  Magic essence flowed into her body with an intensity she was still getting used to. The power hit her like a shot of adrenaline; her weariness vanished and the world suddenly appeared bright to her eyes.

  To begin her training, Izzy had her slowly fly back and forth a short distance down the street in front of the agency office. Luckily, this neighborhood was as quiet as a graveyard outside any times when people were traveling to and from work. No one was around to watch her, otherwise they might think she was lost.

  “As you move laterally,” Izzy said, “pay attention to how you’re also applying magic to keep yourself from losing height.”

  That much was easy enough. Hovering in place with magic was the first thing magical girls learned about flight in their training.

  “Once you have a sense of that, build up speed until you’re moving between point A and B at your max velocity.”

  Simple instructions again. Adah sped up until she was darting around like she would in a combat scenario.

  “Now cut off the magic maintaining your height,” Izzy said.

  She stopped mid-air and asked, “Cut it off? I’ll just fall.”

  “You won’t fall, you will—”

  Izzy stopped himself short. Apparently something had caught his attention.

  “Twilight Heartbreak?” a tiny voice said from below. Tiny but clear, like the chime of a perfect cup of crystal.

  Adah looked down to see a girl about her age in a simple yellow sundress with a dark leather bag hanging from her shoulder. At first, Adah took her to be a random passerby and started to wave, but the cat snaking between the girl’s legs soon dispelled that impression. This cat had two tails, and Adah knew very well who it belonged to. The captain of the DreamRise team had paid her a visit.

  She floated down to greet the girl face to face. Competitors should introduce themselves to each other properly.

  “That’s me,” she said. “And you’re Petals.”

  From afar, the girl had an unassuming look about her. When Adah got closer, however, she realized it was just the result of a simple beauty. In other words, an intensely and perfectly pure beauty. In the absence of any striking features—save perhaps a mouth seemingly shaped for the sole purpose of blowing a kiss—hers was a face you could watch for hours. Her sand-colored bangs fell across her brow in a way that complemented her ice blue eyes without obscuring them.

  “To my friends, I’m Iris,” the girl replied. “Which means, to you, I’m Iris.”

  She had a peculiar name for a magical girl. All magical girl names were odd in comparison to normal names, but hers was strange even among those, at least structurally.

  Petals of Iris.

  That “of” really threw Adah off. But looking at her now—even before she transformed—a name that stood out in such a way did fit her.

  “Tell me,” Iris said. “What does it mean—your name?”

  That hadn’t been something Adah had ever really put into words. She knew where the name came from, to an extent, but it kind of just popped into her head alongside everything else on her mind that day.

  “It’s mostly about a feeling, I guess,” Adah said. “Like the feeling of the last light of the day.”

  “Is that what heartbreak feels like to you?” Iris asked, her face blank.

  Adah stared back, her mouth hanging open. Is that what heartbreak feels like? How exactly was she meant to answer that? And more importantly—

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but why exactly are you here?” Adah asked.

  Iris walked closer to Adah, her sandals clicking against the ground in a perfect rhythm. Her cat mascot maneuvered between her steps as naturally as if it was another extension of her body.

  “I was just curious to meet the team making all of this buzz lately,” she said in that crystalline voice. “As you know, things aren’t often so eventful around here.”

  “Should I go get the other girls, then?”

  Iris giggled, the laughter ringing out as clear as any word she spoke.

  “Don’t bother yourself,” she said. “This is just a little unofficial business of mine. A way to satiate my curiosity. I find your team so interesting; everyone is so funny.”

  Her voice had the tone of a compliment, but Adah got no impression she should take it that way.

  The two-tailed cat broke away from Iris and sauntered over to Izzy, who had been silently observing the interaction from beside Adah. The two mascots eyed each other as the cat walked over. It strut a circle around Izzy, then returned to Iris without a word. Adah glanced down at her mascot, but he was still concentrating on that cat.

  “Do you like it here?” Iris asked out of the blue.

  Adah looked around, not that there was much to see. The agency office sat at the center of what was essentially a failed industrial park—land that the town had given up on attracting any businesses to and instead opened up for residential housing. Ironically, as people moved in, some small commercial properties did pop up: a convenience store, a bakery, and other local shops that the new residents could make use of. In the end, this place was just like any other small neighborhood in the region’s larger towns, only arranged in a loop rather than intersecting streets.

  Seeing her glance around, Iris clarified, “I mean Region 4 broadly. The ‘quiet corner,’ as they call it. I get the impression you aren’t from here.”

  “That’s right,” Adah said. “I grew up in a Region 1 city. Now that I’m here, I guess I like it well enough.”

  “From the biggest to the smallest. How interesting. It must have been quite the adjustment.”

  Adah paused before answering. The behavior of Iris and her mascot was too strange; it reminded her almost of how the older girls would size her up when she first entered high school. The difference was that Iris seemed to have a particular purpose in mind. She wasn’t trying to intimidate Adah simply because she could.

  Until Adah understood what that purpose was, her instincts told her to play defensive. They were competitors, after all.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” Adah said.

  Iris laughed again, lighting up her whole face. Like everything else, her expressions were so pure and unrestrained. Yet, they didn’t feel like exaggerations. She simply let her emotions play freely on her face.

  “You’re so reserved,” she said. “How fitting for the heartbroken princess. But you don’t need to play that character around me. You can be honest. Even though I love this place, I won’t be offended if you hate it.”

  Adah said nothing. Something was definitely off about this girl. She hadn’t come here out of curiosity; she came to send a message.

  Unbothered, Iris continued on her own. “You must have experienced the kindness of people from this region, though. It’s unlike anywhere else. Even when our team didn’t deserve it, the people here always supported us. They’ve always wanted to see us succeed.”

  It wasn’t worth mentioning that no one in this region knew Adah’s own team existed until recently. Iris surely knew that already.

  “What I’m trying to say is,” the smile fell from Iris’s face as she spoke, “the people here have put all their hopes in us. They know that everyone at DreamRise fights for only one reason. We want to make them proud.”

  “That’s a heartwarming story,” Adah said.

  “It may not be as dramatic as yours, but it’s earnest,” Iris said with a frown. “And now we have a chance to live up to their expectations.”

  There it was. Her real reason for being here.

  “Winning the IndieMagie would certainly make them proud,” Adah said. “If you can manage it.”

  Perhaps realizing she no longer needed to dance around the issue, some mirth returned to Iris’s face.

  “I’m not asking you to step aside, of course,” she said. “But I am warning you in advance that you will lose. I’d hate for your imaginations to get ahead of you, only for it all to end in failure. You should prepare yourselves now because there is no question: DreamRise will represent Region 4.”

  “So much for this region’s kindness,” Adah said, smiling back at Iris.

  “This warning was my kindness,” Iris said.

  “Then I’ll be kind as well,” Adah said, “and tell you to leave instead of telling you to fuck off.”

  Pleased with that, Iris said goodbye by means of tilting her head and showing off her brightest smile yet. She turned and began to walk back the way she came with her mascot navigating around her as smoothly as ever. Just when she was about out of earshot and Adah prepared to mutter a string of furious curses to Izzy, the girl stopped and pressed her finger to the side of her head.

  “Oh, but please do your best to advance past the first round,” she called out, looking over her shoulder at Adah. “We would much prefer to beat you on a grander stage.”

  Then she was gone, and the curses flowed.