Interview with a Cruelty Attack Survivor - The Return of Twilight Heartbreak

  The title wasn’t exactly what Adah had asked for, but the blog was getting the results she wanted.

  After Lucas agreed to share the story of what had happened at the farm from his perspective, Adah reached out to the boy who had posted the photos and video from her fight against the whale Cruelty. He was their best bet for getting this story out into the world and, more importantly, telling it the way they wanted to.

  The boy with the camera was named Seb, and beyond his social media circle of diehard magical girl fans, he also ran a blog where he wrote his thoughts about up-and-coming or underground magical girl groups. It seemed he and his circle were hipsters, the very kind of fan Adah used to hate growing up. She’d always found herself defending Pureheart online against fans who hated mainstream magical girls, not that someone as popular as Pureheart needed defending. Now that Adah’s own team was one of those underground groups, she found a new—perhaps convenient—respect for fans like Seb.

  She pitched to Seb the idea of interviewing Lucas. The story had a few beneficial angles for him: an exclusive interview with someone who had a near-death experience with a Cruelty; a powerful narrative around a selfless, relatively unknown magical girl; and the continuation of his encounters with the mysterious rising star Twilight Heartbreak. That’s how she framed it for him, anyway.

  What he ended up writing was a little sensationalized. The blog featured lines with a slight dramatic flair, such as:

  “A wolf chomped onto each of Radiant Raindrop’s limbs, threatening to tear them off and take them away as a personal snack while the rest of the pack devoured her torso.”

  “Twilight Heartbreak didn’t hesitate to do what was necessary. If her teammates would become the bait in the rat trap she’d set up, so be it. She snapped her whip down ready to deal with whatever carnage came.”

  “Slight” was a slight understatement, but he did know how to speak in a language his audience wanted to hear. The results in the Magiapp proved that. Only a day had passed since the blog went live, and already Adah and the twins saw a spike in their popularity. Ami was all too eager to update Grace’s whiteboard.

  Twilight Heartbreak

  FP: 201 ?? 287/5000

  Dazzling Dewdrop

  FP: 70 ?? 189/5000

  Radiant Raindrop

  FP: 72 ?? 202/5000

  The appeal of twin magical girls that fought as shield and spear wrote itself, and Seb had no trouble connecting that thread with the story of the recently reinvented magical girl Twilight Heartbreak. Bundle that all together in a climax of teammates putting complete trust in each other at the height of danger, and his readers started to take a real interest in the Spotlight Sunbright team. Their story was beginning to come to life, and a real path toward their lofty goal was opening up.

  Most importantly, the boost in magic power accelerated Emi’s recovery. This morning, her mascot cleared the last of the Cruelty’s antimagic from her body and she woke up. Adah and Ami went to visit her and, although she seemed to be looking at them from far behind her own eyes and her brain worked slow to process her thoughts, she was in much better shape. Emi described her current state as like a lucid dream. She felt like she was on the precipice of escaping that dream, even though she accepted her teammate’s assurances that she was truly awake. That feeling must have been a lingering effect of the Cruelty’s pull on her being.

  Emi was conscious enough to recognize how her FP had risen, though. After giving her sister a spine-snapping hug, that was the first thing Ami wanted to talk about. It was difficult for Emi to read anything herself, so Ami read aloud the descriptions of the new spells they had unlocked. She started with Emi’s:

  [Raging Ripple] | Spell Level 2: Strike a surface to project rippling echoes of magic waves in all directions that disrupt and disable enemies.

  They’d have to wait until Emi was fully recovered to see how the spell worked in practice, but gaining another area effect spell in addition to [Nightwind Whip] was a huge boost to their team’s arsenal. Likewise, Ami’s own spell shored up a different weakness of theirs:

  [Frigid Fetter] | Spell Level 2: Conjure chains of ice by crystallizing water particles, binding foes and objects in place.

  Despite, her best efforts, Ami hadn’t been able to resist testing out her spell before Emi returned home. Creating the chains took some prep work—the water that formed their shape needed to come from somewhere—and Ami’s current FP limit capped her at maintaining four simultaneous chains. Still, an effective source of crowd control would pair perfectly with Adah and Rika’s spells.

  Ami probably would have stayed with her sister until visiting hours ended, and even found a way to sneak back into Emi’s room after, but Grace called them as the sun began to fall. She asked Adah and Ami to come back to the agency—apparently Michel had succeeded in his mysterious plan.

  ☆☆☆

  Everyone except for Emi gathered in the agency lobby, scattered over lobby’s couch and chairs. Michel handed each of the three magical girls and their manager a sheet of paper. He must have already told Grace what his plan entailed, since she observed the faces of Adah, Ami, and Rika rather than look at the paper in her hands. Adah had been watching Grace’s reaction for a sense of what to expect, so she now looked down at her own sheet.

  The logo at the top of the sheet jumped out at her right away—partly for how recognizable it was and partly for how shocked she was to see it. An arch of interlocked, multicolored hearts and stars curved over the text “IndieMagie.” She’d seen this logo year after year ever since she was a kid; near the end of the summer, it showed up everywhere from billboards to digital ads. As the premier competition for up-and-coming magical girls, the IndieMagie necessitated that kind of brand promotion.

  Adah’s career had been stuck at the bottom of the ocean floor for so long that she’d forgotten all about competitions. Like everything else involving magical girls, attracting an audience was key, so girls who lacked a following of their own were ineligible to participate in most competitions. Different competitions catered to different levels of teams, typically only accepting applicants within a range of FP levels, agency size, or years of activity, but none of them would bother wasting time on girls with something as low as double digit FP.

  Likewise, different competitions focused on different aspects of the industry. Some were entirely combat-focused, including controversial tournaments that had magical girls spar against each other using their spells. Others were closer to traditional talent search competitions, and could be decided at live events with judges or entirely online through fan votes. Then there were the general competitions, which took into account all kinds of magical girl activity. The prizes for winning spanned money to record deals to clothing collections to merch collabs—anything the competition organizers and sponsors saw an opportunity to capitalize on.

  While not the largest competition overall, the IndieMagie stood out for its focus on magical girls at the lower end of popularity. The IndieMagie excluded any agencies with rosters larger than five magical girls, as well as set an upper limit on FP of 5000, making it a true showcase of new and growing talent. Competing teams advanced through rounds of elimination, with early rounds decided by online fan votes and the finals determined in head-to-head showdowns at a live event. Teams in the IndieMagie could advance on any basis: combat ability, star power, visual appeal, or simply by knowing how to engage their fanbase. For the early rounds, getting the most fan votes was all that mattered.

  The IndieMagie was one of the best ways for the general public to learn about more underground magical girls. The contest aggregated all the burgeoning teams worth keeping an eye on, and made it easy for casual fans to discover new teams to cheer for. With that kind of attention, it was basically assured that the winning team would be catapulted to mainstream popularity. That kind of opportunity brought out the fiercest competition.

  Michel seemed keen on capitalizing on that opportunity. The sheets he had handed out were all application forms for the IndieMagie. However, he might have been a little too keen in this case.

  “Hold on,” Adah said. “We aren’t even eligible for the IndieMagie—not as a team, anyway.”

  While the competition had one of the lowest barriers to entry, requiring each team member to only reach an FP level of 200, half the Spotlight Sunbright girls still sat below that threshold.

  Their producer crossed his arms and smiled. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I worked some of my connections. They’ll accept our application as long as you all hit the threshold by the time the competition starts. You’re all nearly there, right?”

  His appearance had improved from the level of a vagrant to that of a long-term insomniac since last week. That must have been a necessary part of his plan. He seemed to only know how to get things done in a roundabout way, which was probably why he struggled to run this agency like a proper business.

  He was right, though, about their levels. Ami and Rika were the only ones still below 200, and they could both surpass that with one good boost in popularity. For Ami, the momentum of the blog and subsequent social media chatter might already be enough to push her that high over the coming days. That only left Rika, whom Adah was sure would have just as easy a time climbing that last stretch.

  If she wanted to.

  “I’m not sure about this,” Rika said with a strained smile. “Everyone else might be okay, but I don’t know if I’ll grow that much in time.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Ami said. “Adah’s actually getting pretty smart about this stuff. She’ll figure out how to get you over—just look at Emi and me.”

  Rika shook her head. “This is different. You and Emi did something incredible, that’s why people like you. It’s not that simple for me.”

  Grace looked over at Michel and said, “I thought his idea was crazy at first, too, but after the way the twins surged in fans, it might be exactly what you girls need. You’re becoming the kind of team the IndieMagie was designed to highlight. The whole idea is to showcase teams that might be new or a little weird but that have a small, passionate fanbase. That’s essentially what you’re becoming.

  “Now, the chances of us actually winning are basically zero, but the format of the IndieMagie works in our favor. The first couple of rounds just narrow down a regional representative. Out here in the countryside, there’s only a handful of teams even eligible to participate, so you’ve got a good shot at passing the first round or two based on that alone. That kind of exposure is a good way to pick up a bunch of new fans. That’s the real goal of this plan.”

  The first round of the competition was open to any team that fit within the FP requirements. Fans from each region would then vote for teams within their region to advance to the second stage. The two teams with the most votes would advance and go head-to-head in the second round with another cycle of voting. The winner of that became the regional representative, and would face off against the other representatives in a series of challenges to determine an overall winner.

  Adah had always felt that being located in Region 4, by far the most remote and rural of the nation’s regions, held their agency back. Now at last, a benefit of pastoral obscurity had presented itself.

  Grace smiled, an expression that was rapidly losing its rare status at this agency. Her eyes narrowed and a playful swagger spread across her face as she revealed the full extent of the plan she and Michel had concocted.

  “What’s more,” she said, “your goal to slay a C-Rank Cruelty works out perfectly for us. Overcome a new challenge like that right before the competition and you’ll look like a team with momentum on your side. People can’t wait to hop on the train of a winning underdog.”

  Grins spread across Adah and Ami’s faces to match Grace’s. Rika looked between them, her own expression muted.

  “That, too,” Rika said quietly. “I don’t know about any of this.”

  She stood up abruptly and opened her mouth as if to say something more, though no words came. Everyone in the room looked at her in silence, perhaps because they wanted to give her a chance to speak or perhaps because they weren’t sure what they should say. A few seconds passed like this, and in the end Rika glanced down at the paper in her hands, frowned, and hurried upstairs without saying anything more.

  “I would have thought she’d be excited,” Michel said.

  Grace turned to Adah and asked, “Has Rika said anything like this to you before?”

  “She hasn’t said much of anything to me lately,” Adah said, already standing up. “Let me check on her.”

  Adah made her way upstairs and stopped in front of Rika’s door. She brought her knuckles up to the closed door and, after a moment’s hesitation, knocked.

  Cautiously, Rika opened her door and allowed Adah inside. Rika walked back into her room without a word and sat on her bed, so Adah closed the door behind her and stood facing the other girl. She looked at her teammate’s downcast face, searching for a hint of how best to approach her.

  A degree of self-isolating frustration wasn’t unheard of for Rika. When she was in the middle of recording a difficult cover, she could retreat into herself a bit. Adah had learned that sometimes the best course of action was to leave her be when she got stuck. If Rika came downstairs still in the process of tearing her hair out, you were better off letting her beeline to the fridge for a soda than trying to cheer her up with a hello. Usually, Rika could judge for herself when she needed to keep pushing forward versus when she needed to cool off by talking to someone else.

  Lately, however, everything felt extreme. Rika’s stubbornness when working on a song was usually endearing—even at its most intense. Adah could always look forward to the eventual moment when Rika would open her door with a sigh of satisfaction at the cover’s completion, as if emerging from a sweltering sauna. These past couple of weeks, though, she had grown more and more convinced that moment of relief would never come. When Adah saw her lately, rather than looking embroiled in a battle to tame a wild beast, Rika just looked defeated. This wasn’t the frustration of wanting the beast to hurry up and give in, but of thinking that no matter what you tried, the beast wouldn’t give in.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Rika, her tone carrying her true thought: something is clearly wrong.

  “I don’t know,” she answered curtly. Then, after a deep breath, she added, “I’ve just been trying to figure some stuff out, but the more I think about it, the worse I feel.”

  Historically, their positions had been reversed. Rika could always sense when Adah was reaching her own boiling point, and would come tear down her walls to force the issue into the open. She seemed to know when things would become too much, or maybe the timing didn’t matter at all, and she simply had the confidence and consideration to support Adah no matter how messy Adah’s feelings might get. She tried to think of how Rika approached her at her lowest points, so she could employ the same mindset now.

  “Maybe if we talk about it together, you’ll understand something you couldn’t before,” Adah offered.

  “I’m trying to figure out what it is I’m even doing,” Rika said. “Like should I even be doing this? Why did I want to be a magical girl, and why was it so important over any of the million other things I could have done? What am I trying to get out of it, and why haven’t I gotten it yet?”

  “And you haven’t been able to find a good answer?” Adah asked.

  “The answer is: I don’t know,” she said. “The conclusion I’ve come to is that I don’t know if I’m meant to be doing this. There’s nothing special about me, no reason I should insist on being a magical girl after all this time. Even with singing—it should be the reason I stand out, but it’s not. It’s just something I do alone in my room. No music agency wanted me because I couldn’t even give them the one thing I’m supposed to be good at.”

  Rika laid back, falling flat onto her bed. She draped her arms over her eyes and took a deep breath. After that, she didn’t make a sound and just held her breath, letting it out some time later in an slow, shaky exhale.

  “There’s something I don’t quite get that everyone else seems to understand,” Rika said. “How do they all do it? I’m supposed to figure it out, I guess, but I can’t. I can’t figure any of it out. Why is it that the songs I’m most excited to share do the worst? Why did some other girl cover the same song as me and blow up, even though it was only her first video? I’m not even jealous, I just want to know, so maybe I can do whatever it is that’s working so well for them. But I just don’t get it.”

  Her voice quavered more and more as she went along. Quick gasps for air broke up her sentences. After each breath, her voice steadied for a moment, only to tremble violently a few words later, hanging precariously off a tightrope spanning the clouds. Adah’s own chest tightened, prompting her to climb onto Rika’s bed. Rika accepted her gesture and shifted to rest her head in Adah’s lap, though she continued to hide her eyes behind one of her arms. Adah began to gently pet Rika’s head, smoothing out her hair.

  “I don’t get it either, you know,” Adah said. “Even what I’m doing with Heartbreak, I don’t actually get it. We’re all just trying to figure it out.”

  “I’m just not sure I can keep trying,” Rika said. “Whatever it was that made me think I could do this—if it was ever there—it’s getting away from me. I feel more sure of it every day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take this whole thing with Emi. Why didn’t I go on that mission in the first place? When you knocked on my door, I was so sure I didn’t want to go, but what the hell is that about? Shouldn’t I have been excited? But I genuinely felt like it was better if I didn’t go. Then, when I heard what happened, there was a voice in my head, maybe another Rika, who was telling me what a mistake I made. That felt bad, too, but at least it meant I still cared. I was still the person I thought I was.”

  “You had no way of knowing how that mission would turn out,” Adah said.

  Rika grabbed her wrist, putting an end to Adah’s stroking of her hair. She moved aside her other arm and revealed her teary, swollen eyes.

  “That’s exactly the problem,” she said. “I shouldn’t have wanted to sit it out even if I knew for sure that you guys would be fine. That’s what I kept telling myself while Emi was in the hospital, but I couldn’t even stay mad at myself for skipping. Every time I got frustrated, my brain would come up with some excuse, some reason why it was okay. Who cares what the mission was or what did or didn’t happen—I should be pissed at myself for skipping regardless. I should be, but I’m not.”

  She looked up at Adah, and with their faces this close, it was clear how the usual intense light in her eyes had faded. Adah saw more into the heart of Rika through those eyes, rather than the other way around.

  “It’s the same with the IndieMagie. It’s like deep down I want to miss out,” Rika whispered. “If I fall far enough behind, then I can just quietly fade away. I won’t have to ask myself these questions anymore. I won’t have to fail or get hurt anymore. I can just let myself be forgotten until I quit and disappear.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like that, though,” Adah said. “We can figure everything out together, as a team. We’ll get stronger together.”

  Rika squeezed her eyes shut and rolled off of Adah’s lap. She stood up, rubbed away her tears like scrubbing a tough stain out of a carpet, and looked down at Adah with a tensed face.

  “To be honest,” she said, “I wasn’t that sad when I heard this place with going under. Losing the agency would be like an easy way out for me, but if you saved it then that meant I’d have to make a choice. Did I want to keep trying or not? I guess what I’m doing now is me trying to avoid that choice again. Maybe what I’m saying is—if I don’t have it in me, you should just let me go.”

  Like a coin balanced on its ridge, Rika stood there, just a breeze away from toppling over. For now, she held herself upright and fixed her gaze on Adah.

  “So what?” Adah said. “You want us to just let you disappear, like you said? That’s basically having us make the decision for you.”

  Rika said nothing in response, but whatever facade she was attempting to keep up was cracking. Fresh tears were already welling in her eyes.

  “Well that’s not going to happen,” Adah told her. “If you want to quit, you’re going to have to say so yourself. Until then, we’re still going to treat you like part of the team because that’s what you are.”

  Adah had hoped those words might break through, but Rika remained as she was. A dark thought dropped in Adah’s stomach with a sickening splash. Maybe Rika really was out of reach. Maybe Adah couldn’t help her at all. Maybe it wouldn’t be very long before she did quit.

  “I think you should go ahead without me,” Rika finally muttered.

  The girls looked at each other, though from the stiffness of Rika’s face, it seemed she was doing her best to not truly see Adah. They stayed like that a while longer, just looking past each other in silence, until Adah couldn’t bear it any longer.

  She got up and left the room without a word more, leaving Rika behind.