“Home, sweet home,” Sheffa said.

  She led Adah into the Apex Vox agency lobby, pushing open the building’s double doors like an outlaw barging into a saloon.

  The scene that greeted Adah looked more familiar than she had expected. The Apex Vox office mirrored her own agency’s lobby in many ways, with a reception desk front and center and a lounge off to the right. The lounge featured two full couches, which was technically double what the Last Light offices could boast, but they appeared as well-worn as the one Adah had spent so many nights sitting on.

  The most striking difference between the two buildings was the decoration of the Apex Vox lobby. The walls were all painted a pristine sky blue with a small section of white all across the top. The couches were a shade darker than the walls, and were adorned with their own pure white accent pillows. Mounted to the front of the reception desk was a metallic sign featuring the Apex Vox logo: a bluish mountain with a snowy peak. Even though the lobby and its furniture were no fancier than Adah’s own agency, the cohesion of the room around those brand colors gave it atmosphere of quality and professionalism.

  “Home?” Adah asked. “You live at your agency, too?”

  Sheffa pointed at the ceiling and said, “Sure, dorms are cheap. Our team may be on the come-up, but we’re not rich. I would’ve sent a chauffeur for you if we were.”

  Adah had traveled by train to Alliment, the small city in Region 2 where the Apex Vox office was located. Sheffa had walked to the nearest station to meet up and guide her to the office. All in all, the trip had taken around an hour and a half, which had shocked Adah. When Apex Vox had came to watch Adah and her teammates, they had gone through the same journey. They were willing to spend all that time just to introduce themselves to a team that had just started to make a name for themselves?

  Sheffa must have been serious about wanting an ally in the industry, and just as serious about believing in the Last Light’s potential.

  Adah felt a twinge of melancholy. If they had all gotten to know each other earlier, maybe the past few years would have gone differently. Both teams could have been a hundred steps ahead of where they were now.

  It was a fantasy Adah could only indulge in for a moment. The steps right in front of her now were the most important ones.

  When Adah had reached out for advice captain-to-captain, Sheffa had suggested they meet up in person. These things were easier to understand when you could see the other person’s face, she had said. Though, she also admitted she wanted an excuse to hang out. Since Sheffa had traveled to her last time, Adah had no problem traveling to Region 2 this time. Besides, it would be a good opportunity to see firsthand how another agency went about their day.

  That said, the Apex Vox office was even emptier than Adah’s own agency.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  Sheffa spun around, looking in all directions. She had on a gray wool pea coat today, the unbuttoned sides of which swung this way and that as she turned.

  “Hmm,” she hummed. “Nora should be around here somewhere, but the other girls are out. Mari’s got a tournament and Canto is at her parents place. That cat’s got a real soft spot for her family. She turns into a little kid again whenever they stop by. Must be an only child thing.”

  Adah had no comment on that, being an only child herself, but she was curious about Mari.

  “Mari’s competing without you?” she asked. “Is it not a team tournament?”

  Sheffa laughed and shook her head. “No, no, this isn’t a tournament for magic users. It’s video games. She loves strategy games, like controlling the little armies and stuff. I guess you’d call her a semi-pro? Maybe that’s why she’s the brains of our team.”

  “How does she find the time for that on top of being a magical girl?”

  Sheffa laughed again. “You’re one to talk. Didn’t you just relaunch your whole team in the middle of covering all your region’s missions? Plus you got that song coming out. When is that, again?”

  “This weekend,” Adah said, though the release date still felt like a mirage that would vanish as they approached it. “We just sent our first revisions to the editor.”

  “Exciting! Don’t show me anything—I want to see it for the first time with everyone else.”

  Perhaps realizing they had been standing in the middle of an empty room, Sheffa slipped off her coat and tossed it over the arm of one of the lobby’s couches. She sat down and gestured for Adah to take a seat herself. Adah took a spot on the opposite-facing couch.

  “Though,” Sheffa continued, “I know you didn’t come all the way here to talk about music. We’ve got peace and quiet—why don’t we get our work out of the way? Then we can have some fun.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Just like before, Sheffa didn’t waste much time getting to the point. When they last spoke, Sheffa hadn’t worried about what Adah might have thought of her, and had said what she wanted to say without hesitation. If that was how she approached their conversations, then Adah would try to do the same.

  “We’ve got a little team conflict brewing,” Adah said. “At first I thought it might be isolated to the twins, but I think it’s affecting everyone. I feel like we’re pushing ahead so fast that some cracks in our teamwork are starting to spread. But at the same time, none of us want to slow down.”

  “Car starts shaking on the highway,” Sheffa said.

  “Something like that. I thought it’d help to hear about your experience. Your team didn’t debut that long ago, and you jumped straight to winning the IndieMagie. Now that it’s over, how do you keep from feeling like you’re stagnating? You made fun of me for being so busy, but I feel like I have to be. I can’t afford any wasted days.”

  “You’re talking like I’m some kind of coach,” Sheffa said. “Aren’t you older than me?”

  “That’s why I’m asking you,” Adah said. “You’re not an industry veteran. You’re not that far ahead of where our team is. We can relate to each other better because of it. That’s why you wanted to be friends, right?”

  Sheffa paused, tapping her chin with her forefinger. Her gaze drifted toward the ceiling as she thought for a bit, then she nodded once like a punctuation mark to her ideas.

  “You’ve got a point, Heartbreak,” she said. “But more importantly, we’ve got similar goals, and we’ve got them for the same reason.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” she said, “why do you want to be the strongest?”

  “I want to get rid of the Cruelties once and for all,” Adah answered. “That’s the only way to truly protect humanity.”

  Sheffa nodded again and said, “It’s similar for me. If there’s a Cruelty attacking something or someone I love, I want to be strong enough to stop it. However strong it is, whatever variant it is. Whether I’m alone or with my team. Even if I’ve got the flu. So, you see? Our reasons are similar. It’d be a different story if you were after fame and riches or, I don’t know, something less cliché.”

  Sheffa’s reasoning made sense. For all the more superficial qualities they had in common, Adah and Iris couldn’t get along at all. Even though they probably had a similar goal—to rise above everyone else—their motivations were different. The only piece of motivation they did share was a desire to stomp on each other’s heads. Not a great basis for friendship.

  “The same goes for my teammates,” Sheffa said. “We get along because we’re driven by the same purpose. Take Canto and Mari, for example. They couldn’t be more different when it comes to personalities, hobbies, you name it. And they love to fight. But even if they want to tackle problems in complete opposite ways, they both know they’re aiming for the same outcome.

  “Our whole team has no doubt when it comes to our motivations. We all know the future we want to create, and we have complete faith that the three of us are the exact people we need to create it. That foundation is unshakable. So, when the two of them fight, I don’t have to worry. They both know they aren’t fighting about the thing that matters most to them. As long as they know that, they’ll always be pulled back together sooner or later.”

  Sheffa shrugged and stretched her arms across the back cushions of the couch. Her eyes were watching Adah, but Adah had gotten lost in her own thoughts by now.

  Was her team bound by some kind of universal motivation? Adah had written out that goal—Destroy the Cruelties—across the top of their whiteboard, but had they all agreed on that goal for the same reasons? Even if they had implicitly, had they ever said so out loud?

  Had they built the faith that Sheffa had talked about? Did they all know how they fit into achieving that goal? Did they believe that they were the exact right person for the job, and that their teammates all felt the same way about them?

  Adah herself was worried about stagnating. All of her teammates were surely busting their asses for the same reason—they didn’t want to fail, to be the reason the team failed. That wasn’t the right mindset at all.

  The way Sheffa had spoken about her team made it sound like they all felt that achieving their goal was inevitable. Adah needed to instill that same confidence in her own teammates.

  Adah was about to thank Sheffa when a clacking sound echoed out from a stairwell at the far end of the lobby. Nora, the Apex Vox manager, was making her way down the wooden steps. When she saw Adah had arrived, she gave a tiny wave.

  “I hope you’ve made yourself at home,” Nora said, smiling as gently as ever.

  Adah nodded, and she could feel a little blush spreading into her cheeks. Something about this woman and her aura of kindness was disarming.

  “Thank you!” Adah said, perhaps a bit too eagerly. “Sheffa’s been a great host.”

  Nora walked over to the lounge area and picked up Sheffa’s coat. She draped it over her arm and carried it to a standing coat rack beside the office’s front doors.

  “Sheffa is a very straightforward girl,” Nora said as she walked. “You can see all her strengths and weaknesses at a glance. It’s extremely endearing.”

  “The weaknesses are easy,” Sheffa cut in. “Because there’s nothing to see.”

  Nora hung Sheffa’s coat on the rack, then slipped a hand into its pocket. She pulled out a keyring with three silver keys linked to it and tossed them across the room to Sheffa. The girl caught them in one hand. While sticking out her tongue, she spun the keyring around her finger.

  “Maybe it won’t be long before that’s true,” Nora said. She returned to the lounge area and sat down beside Sheffa. “Every so often, I look at you and see that another weakness has disappeared.”

  “You’re going to embarrass me in front of my guest,” Sheffa said.

  Nora put a hand to her chest and said, “I’m hurt. Should I find you a mission then? So you can escape this embarrassing manager?”

  “Yes, please!” Sheffa said. “D-Rank, if you can find one. We need to be able to talk during it.”

  “Huh?” Adah said, looking between Sheffa and her manager. “But we aren’t teammates. Is it okay to take a job together?”

  For now, she put aside the fact she had no idea they would be taking a mission at all.

  “It’ll be registered under our agency,” Sheffa said. “You’ll just tag along. No one needs to know you helped me out.”

  “If there are people there, they’ll know.”

  “It’s a D-Rank in Region 2. No offense, but nobody here wants to check that out. And if we’re both okay with it, then who cares either way? So do you want to have some fun?”

  Of course she did.