The members of the Last Light spent the rest of the evening absorbed in their celebration. They enjoyed the time as friends, not as magical girls. They put aside any clips or photos of their battle with the spider Cruelty, and didn’t check their phones for the rest of the time they were together. Their conversation turned from discussion of the mission and the twins’ new augmentations to a whole range of topics—shows they’d been watching, who was visiting home during the holiday season, even retelling random stories from years past.

  It was as though completing this mission had temporarily freed their minds from all their concerns. At least, that was the effect the celebration had on Adah. She could let go of, at least for a time, the pressure that compelled her to always be plotting her next move. Now that she had a proper success under her belt, her mind steadied itself with a different kind of confidence than she’d ever experienced before. She’d been pushing herself along with a hardheaded belief that she could climb the ladder of this cutthroat industry, but at last the world had given her enough feedback to prove it.

  The opportunity for her and her teammates to rise above their competition had become a fact she could look at, that she could observe in their daily lives. That fact was what had lifted some weight off her mind.

  It was only after their celebration came to an end, long after Grace and Seb had left, that Adah looked at any fan reactions to the day’s events. On her own account, she’d shared a group photo of her team huddled together with the caption: B-Rank? What did you expect?

  The replies, as with all her posts lately, featured a mix of longtime fans and newly acquired doubters.

  sayachi: i dont know if we’re supposed to go crazy over magical girls actually doing their job, but it makes me wonder why things were so fucked up last time. maybe that thibault guy really is a piece of shit

  chshr: i cant say it any other way, that was just a clean fight. makes me wonder about the guy who got injured last time. somebody else’s fault?

  obscureZen: As expected, a mission of this caliber is no trouble for the Last Light if evil forces aren’t meddling with their plans.

  butanonakukoroni: B Rank? Eaten. Last Light? Eating.

  doc__salt: when i saw the twins in action, i thought: it’s not yuri, it’s something even more powerful. true sisterhood

  tasokare_wota: Heartbreak even hit him with the emote at the end ??

  jubbly2277: everyone called me crazy but this secretary definitely has his nose in that powder, how else can you explain it

  One fact was clear from the difference in reception their team received after this mission compared to the hydra battle: the tides of public opinion were turning in the Last Light’s favor. They hadn’t won over all their haters yet, and probably never would, but any discussion about the hydra mission would likely take on a different tone moving forward. Adah and her team had made a compelling case that the problem with Region 4 wasn’t its magic users but its leadership.

  At the same time, they’d proved beyond a doubt that they were capable of handling B-Rank missions. The disaster of their last mission had cast a shadow over their upward trajectory, which they had now dispelled. No one who wasn’t hating just to hate could doubt that the Last Light would continue to grow, and therefore continue to stay at the top of Region 4.

  Yet, climbing to the top of a region’s rankings wasn’t the same as leading it. If anything, standing out from the other teams in the region could even isolate them if they presented themselves the wrong way. It was easy to be viewed as nothing but a competitor to dethrone when you stood in first place.

  Adah still needed allies. If she proceeded wisely, she could leverage her team’s momentum to recruit those allies.

  Here, Thibault had been right again, only in the wrong way. One team lifting up another was the best way to promote regional growth, but it had to be a genuine effort on both teams’ parts. Thibault had used cooperation as a guise to pit the Last Light and DreamRise against each other, to the detriment of both. Adah needed to prove to her fellow magic users that her own ambitions were purehearted. At least, purehearted enough that other teams could trust her not to undercut them.

  To do that, she’d have to start small, working with just a few teams at first. If she could connect with the other rising stars in the region, she could build a miniature alliance of teams who could later vouch for her intentions. Teams that were growing in popularity had their own incentive to work with the Last Light, as well. By working together in earnest, they could also piggyback off of the Last Light’s own momentum.

  If all the strongest teams in the region banded together, it’d be even easier to convince the smaller ones to support Adah’s cause.

  Once they had built an overwhelming force—along with all their fans—their voices would be loud enough that the regional government couldn’t ignore them. Then, they’d have the power.

  The time had come to see who else in this region was ready for a change in leadership.

  ☆☆☆

  The easiest way for Adah to see what teams were trending toward the top of popularity in Region 4 was to watch who was taking what missions. The mission board would show who had registered to work it once it had been claimed. This info had been how the interregional teams had tracked which missions Adah’s team had taken back when they’d been blocked from accepting those jobs themselves. Now, Adah was putting it to use for some reconnaissance of her own.

  The nature of the mission ranking system made it simple to find the region’s other most successful teams. With such a limited number of them capable of handling a C-Rank mission, Adah only had to browse through those jobs to put together a list of potential rising stars. Once she had her list, she could take a closer look at their social media accounts, news about them, and any fan communities related to them.

  Her digital stalking revealed three other teams to be leading the way in terms of growth recently. They may not have built quite the same size of fanbase as more established teams, but for now Adah was more concerned with a team’s momentum than their overall popularity.

  The first of these teams was no surprise. DreamRise had fallen behind the Last Light after they’d struggled to convert their second place finish in the IndieMagie into further momentum, but there was no debating they were the other major player in Region 4. It’d be critical to show the public that their two teams were unified, at least when it came to standing up to Thibault. They didn’t have to—and Adah predicted they likely wouldn’t—play nice outside of that.

  That said, Adah couldn’t broach the subject with DreamRise just yet. Until Ekki recovered, Iris wouldn’t shift one bit of focus away from helping him get better. And if he never recovered, then who knew what would become of DreamRise.

  After placing any discussions with DreamRise on hold, the next most promising team was a trio by the name of Fifty Flip. They had a curious tagline—“Exist in Extremes”—which Adah quickly came to understand the meaning of as she researched more about each member.

  Their members followed a strict naming pattern, a trend that had once been common among magical girls but fell off in favor of names dedicated to showing off each team member’s unique style. The Fifty Flip girls probably didn’t have any worries about standing out. They were unique in the extreme.

  Their captain was a girl of roughly Adah’s size who went by the name Hyperia Flip. Adah’s first thought upon seeing her photos was that she was aggressively cute. She had all the charm of a little sister with none of the annoyance and a round face that seemed to perpetually be smiling. Hyperia loved to post short videos to her accounts, always speaking to the camera in a sing-songy voice that bordered on childish. In terms of extremes, she was right on the edge of becoming obnoxious. Since Adah had a lower tolerance for the overly cutesy angle than most, Hyperia probably hit the bullseye for a lot of classical magical girl fans.

  At the opposite end of the cutesy spectrum was Elegia Flip. The woman looked to be about Ketzia’s age, if Adah had to guess. Being in your late thirties wasn’t old by any reasonable metric, but it was unusual for an actively working magical girl. Most magic users retired from active team rosters by that point, opting for one-off missions by themselves or with other members of their generation. What was even stranger was that Elegia was technically a new magical girl. Like every member of Fifty Flip, she had only started working this past year.

  Being the opposite of Hyperia didn’t mean Elegia was grotesque or anything like that. She was just mature. She played an older sister or motherly type of role when she appeared in Hyperia’s videos, and spoke to her teammate in a soothing, slow voice. “Slow” was really the perfect descriptor for Elegia. She never overreacted, never rushed ahead, never raised her voice, and never seemed out of her element. She took things at her own pace, and the whole world around her seemed to acquiesce to that desire.

  Their final member didn’t seem like the type to take any interest in magical girls at all. Dystopia Flip could perhaps be described as a more extroverted version of Clair from DreamRise. She was covered in tattoos and piercings to a more extreme degree than Clair, with both her arms fully covered by sleeves of artwork, and was all too eager to share photos of herself drinking or smoking at random spots around Region 4. Some of the photos were even clearly on rooftops that she could only have reached by transforming and flying.

  Dystopia was as close to a rebel magical girl as there could be, to the point she easily could have fit in as another member of the Last Light. That gave Adah hope that the whole Fifty Flip team would be receptive to the idea of working together. They would be the first that Adah would try to connect with, once she’d gotten some advice from a certain sage mentor of hers.

  As for the third team Adah had her eye on, they couldn’t truly be considered a “team.” Orbit Promo and their singular magical girl, Celestial Seliah, had made an unprecedented rebound since Ami had first met the tiny witch girl.

  That incident at the shopping center had given Seliah an FP boost similar to Adah’s own breakthrough, allowing her to leapfrog from bottom-barrel missions to D-Ranks in a single jump. The girl hadn’t wasted the opportunity, grinding as many of those missions as she could physically handle while also staying active every single day on social media. She had built herself a cult fanbase comparable to the Raindrop Rally Force—smaller in scale, but no less passionate. In fact, Adah guessed there was even a bit of overlap between the groups.

  Despite all her growth, Seliah had yet to find any new teammates. When Adah had asked Grace about it, her manager suggested Orbit Promo had most likely downsized their operations to accommodate just a single magical girl. Most likely, Seliah was working on her own, with a hands-off manager above her as a mere legal formality. With all that responsibility on her own shoulders, Seliah had still managed to grow her fanbase to the point that she had recently completed her first C-Rank. And she’d done it solo.

  Seliah was positioning herself to be more than just an ally to Adah. She could become a rival in her own right.

  Adah still had a few days before her team was booked for Lina’s photoshoot. With all the other pieces in place, there was only one step left to take before she reached out to her potential allies. It was time to visit the witch of the woods—only this time, Adah would be flying, not driving.