The day after Adah and Ami eliminated the Cruelty by the river was a much needed break day for the Sunbright girls. They had no training or coaching scheduled for the day, and no missions that required their attention. In fact, Grace had even ordered the team to let DreamRise take any work that might show up. Proper rest was as important to success as hard work, she told them.

  Adah still intended to make use of her time to further one of her own goals. Though, this goal wouldn’t be something she could achieve through rigorous training or repetitive practice—it was a challenge she faced on a more strategic level. Her ultimate goal—the one she had written across the top of the whiteboard—was to destroy the Cruelties for good. In order to do so, she’d have to study them the same way they were studying humanity.

  The data Secretary Thibault had provided her about the appearances of the humanoid Cruelties was her current focus. The humanoids seemed to be the greatest mystery surrounding the Cruelties in Adah’s mind. Beyond what they represented—given each one could only exist in exchange for the death of a real human—they acted strangely compared to other Cruelties.

  The one that the girls had seen with Ketzia could speak, or at least imitate language. That had to be a sign of a different kind of intelligence than what Adah had witnessed in the other monsters. If not that, than it must have been a level of mimicry that had resulted in the monsters learning something about humanity. The humanoid hadn’t said a random string of words—it had cried out for help. Now that the shock of the moment had faded, Adah wasn’t convinced the Cruelty had retained the full humanity of the person who had died to create it. But she was sure that being based on humans did make these Cruelties unique.

  Adah wanted to know the entire truth, including the details Ketzia and even the mascots didn’t know.

  That said, her current method of investigation was haphazard.

  She had bought a large, fold-up map of the whole nation of Letria and its four regions, and pinned it to a cork board she had hung on her wall. She had to take down a few posters of Pureheart Chu to make space for the board, but they could reclaim their rightful place once she had learned all that she could about these Cruelties.

  On the map, Adah stuck in red thumbtacks at every location a humanoid Cruelty had appeared. So far, she only had information about those in Region 4, but she hoped to convince Thibault to stick his neck out for her and ask for the other regions’ data as well.

  Among the locations she had recorded thus far, most were spread throughout the Brume Forest in the northeast of the region. That was the same woods that Ketzia’s cabin sat in. As Adah looked over the thirteen tacks she’d stuck throughout the forest, she realized it had probably been Ketzia herself that had dealt with most of these appearances. Beyond those, there were another six that had appeared in other remote corners of the region. A total of nineteen over the course of a decade.

  Adah knew the number of human casualties from Cruelty attacks was higher than that—much higher. During the early years of the invasion, humanity was unprepared to properly fight back. The mascots had an abundance of magic essence at their disposal, but their ability to actualize it into weapons capable of killing Cruelties was insufficient. That had led to the alliance between the races: humans served as catalysts to amplify magic into a form strong enough to destroy even the toughest Cruelties.

  Yet, the Cruelties had arrived over thirty years ago. Had it taken them two decades to figure out a way to utilize the essence they took from humans? Even then, they had only produced so few humanoids compared to all those who had died. Surely the other regions had seen appearances of their own, but Adah couldn’t imagine their data would be drastically different from Region 4’s. That was another oddity that needed investigation.

  As Adah looked over the map again today, pondering such questions, someone knocked on her door. She went over to open it. On the other side stood Rika, unwilling to give up her lounging outfit of gym shorts and a camisole even as the autumn days turned cold.

  “I thought this would be a good time for us to talk,” she said.

  “Totally, come in,” Adah said.

  She stepped aside to let Rika in, who then closed the door behind herself.

  “You’ve been so busy lately,” Rika said. “It feels so different from back in the day. I wasn’t sure when we’d get a chance to meet.”

  “Everyone’s busier now, aren’t they?” Adah said. “It’s good, though. All of the practice and the missions—it’s going to pay off.”

  “True, but you seem even busier than the rest of us.”

  Rika’s gaze shifted to the map that hung from Adah’s wall. She raised her eyebrows and walked over to take a closer look at it.

  “What’s this about?” she asked. “Looks like you’re hunting a serial killer or something.”

  Adah joined Rika in front of the map. “I guess I am, in a sense. I’m tracking where all of the portals from the humanoid Cruelties have appeared so far.”

  “Just their locations?” Rika said, turning to face Adah. “What for?”

  “I thought maybe there’s a pattern to it,” Adah said with a shrug. “Maybe I’ll learn something about the Cruelties if I lay it out like this. I don’t know. It keeps my mind busy, at least. Makes me feel like I’m doing something about the problem, since there’s nothing else I can do about it right now.”

  With the portals only spawning in remote locations, she certainly couldn’t reach any new ones that may appear before they were destroyed by Ketzia or one of the other magical girls tasked with taking them out. Even if she could, it’s not like she would want to interfere. Despite her curiosity, she had to admit it was probably best if the humanoids were eliminated as soon as possible. The Cruelties hadn’t sent them here as peacemakers—the more monstrous variants hadn’t slowed down their attacks on humanity.

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

  Adah had considered going against her promise to Ketzia, and suffering any consequences the Department of Magic may seek to inflict upon her, by spilling the secret to the public. There didn’t seem to be any benefit to that approach either. The humanoids weren’t some scandal that the politicians wanted to cover up, they were simply a problem that had no answer yet. Alerting the masses would only disrupt her ability to study them, making learning about the portals an even more difficult task.

  So, this mapping was the most Adah could do for now. As her team grew stronger and more famous, she hoped to make connections with those in the government who may know more than Thibault. He was, after all, leading the regional department with the least power in Letria.

  “Have you figured anything out yet?” Rika asked. She reached out to the map and touched the red thumbtack Adah had pinned most recently. That one marked the humanoid they had all seen together with Ketzia.

  “I’ve come up with a lot more questions, if that counts,” Adah said. “For now, that map is just a side project. Rather than talking about that, I want to hear what you had in mind. Sorry I made you wait—things picked up fast with the Secretary.”

  The two of them sat down on Adah’s bed. It had been a while since they had talked alone in one of their rooms, Adah realized, and the last time had been a tearful conversation. The two months since Rika had talked about quitting had gone by in a blur. The two of them had spent so much of that time interacting as magical girls instead of normal people. At Ketzia’s cabin, during the photoshoot with DreamRise, throughout the IndieMagie, and in this recent flurry of missions, it felt like they had been in their transformations more often than not.

  With no glowing red aura around her and no impending Cruelty attack to prepare for, Adah was able to take a good look at Rika again. There was a sharpness to her face that hadn’t always been there. Her eyes were more catlike and her cheeks more narrow, like some fluffy cloud of youth had fallen away to give a clearer view of her features. In the span of just two months, she looked so much older. Had a change like this been what Adah had seen when she looked at herself in the mirror the other day?

  “I’ve been thinking about my goal,” Rika said. “I can’t have fans who like me more than anyone else if I’m just copying other girls’ music. I’m ready to put out some songs of my own and introduce the world to Lyrika for real. Even if it doesn’t work out right away, I need to take that first step if I want to get any better.”

  “That’s great, and it’s going to work out better than you think,” Adah said. “Everyone who likes you now is going become an even bigger fan, and everyone who doesn’t won’t be able to help themselves once they hear your music. Though I’ll always be your biggest fan.”

  “Well, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk about. I was hoping I could ask my biggest fan for a favor.”

  “Of course,” Adah said with a joking bow. “Anything you want.”

  “Be careful,” Rika said. “‘Anything’ is a dangerous offer.”

  “Try me. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

  Rika looked at Adah with those piercing eyes of hers. Although Adah had been trying to bait a reaction out of the other girl, suddenly she was the one feeling bashful.

  “Let’s test that sometime,” Rika said. “But for now, you’re thinking along the right lines when it comes to my favor. I wanted to ask you to do some songs with me. Heartbreak and Lyrika as a pair.”

  “Like sing with you?” Adah asked. “But I’m awful.”

  Rika shook her head. “You’re improving fast, even after just a couple of sessions. You’ve definitely got some talent for it. You’re unpolished, but that’s a good thing. Heartbreak’s voice should be a little rough.”

  “Still, shouldn’t I leave the singing to you? At least until the fans get to know you for more than just covers.”

  “I thought about that,” Rika said, “but I keep running into problems. I’m not asking for your help as a crutch—I still want to stand out on my own. It’s just that all my ideas for songs lately would work better with two people. So I was thinking, if that’s what my brain wants to write, why not go along with it? Maybe it’s my subconscious trying to remind me that the fans want to see Heartbreak and Lyrika together.”

  Rika had a point. Adah had realized something similar during the photoshoot with DreamRise: marketing themselves as a romantic duo was almost like a cheat code. With that approach, she’d been able to take control of the shoot. She could completely understand how writing songs for the two of them together would grease the gears of Rika’s creativity. Once you adopted that mindset, the ideas flowed freely.

  The benefits went beyond the appeal of shipping, too. The pose Adah had put herself and Rika in back at the photoshoot was way more interesting than the bland modeling they were doing before that. That extra element of romance or allure, of thinking as themselves as a duo, could breathe new life into any creative endeavor of theirs.

  And if they went about this the right way, they could debut a whole lot more than just a new song.

  “As long as you fix my voice in post,” Adah said, “I’m in.”

  “Oh, I’ll make you sound like an angel.”

  “A fallen angel,” Adah corrected. “We can’t sand down Heartbreak’s edges too much.”

  Although Adah had originally wanted to be a magical girl so that she could become a hero as strong as Pureheart, it wasn’t as though the entertainment side of the industry held no appeal for her. Growing up, there had been plenty of other magical girls whose music she played while drawing all night, and plenty of crappy TV dramas she’d forced herself to sit through just because a certain idol was starring in them. She wasn’t immune to the charms of show business, so naturally she had imagined herself in other girls’ shoes from time to time.

  Dipping her toes into music alongside Rika was probably the ideal way to do so. While Rika held her hand on the artistic side of things, Adah could focus on marketing them both. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but making music together would appear to the fans as the next logical step for them as a duo. This was essentially the next chapter in their story.

  Rika seemed to be thinking on the same page, as she said, “Then I’ve got a follow-up favor for you, too. If I write the song, can you think up a name for us?”

  “A name?”

  “When idols split into subunits, the unit gets its own name,” Rika said. “Like Team Strawberry or Shiomiru. If we’re going to release something as a subunit of Spotlight Sunbright, we need a name like that.”

  Adah didn’t recognize either of the teams Rika mentioned, which meant they probably weren’t magical girls. Still, she nodded and tapped her head.

  “I’ll think of something perfect,” she told Rika. “We’re going to need a music video as well. I can recruit Seb to help with that. I think I might also know of a generous donor who would love to fund a nice camera for us.”

  “Such a devious schemer. I leave it in your capable hands.”

  The girls laughed and continued to brainstorm ideas about their duo’s theme. Some of the ideas were just jokes, but some—even if they started as jokes—were interesting enough that Adah jotted them down in the notes app in her phone.

  In the midst of their giggling and joking, someone else knocked on Adah’s door. This time, the guest didn’t wait for Adah to open it.

  Grace pushed the door open in a hurry.

  “Ami’s in trouble,” she said.