“Are you sure you want to do it here?” Seb asked, scanning the area. “Nobody’s going to see you.”

  “That’s the point,” Adah said. “We’re going to control when and how they see it. You only get to do a grand reveal like this once, so I want to make the most of it.”

  Today’s mission had taken them to a stretch of marshland far south of their agency office. Most of the year, this meadow was partially flooded by spillover from one of the tributaries that fed into the larger river that Adah and Ami had fought the water strider on. Now that the days grew colder and the air drier, the earth here was drying out as well. Soon, the marsh would harden and freeze over, leaving only small pockets of ice that would mark the ground like a zebra’s stripes.

  This land was part of a nature reservation and, between its remote location and how difficult to navigate the terrain was, any Cruelty that spawned here was unlikely to draw any attention.

  Indeed, Adah and Seb were the only people here today. Seb even said that he’d seen no one along the forest trail he’d ran down to arrive at the marsh. They stood at the edge of that small forest, atop a wooden observation platform built for reservation visitors to look out over the marsh and watch the local wildlife. The view from up here was ideal, with an uninterrupted sightline of the whole meadow.

  Though, they weren’t here to watch the songbirds and dragonflies. They were here to finally unleash the power of Adah’s scythe.

  Momentum had been building up behind their team for a while now, and it was time to cash in on that. They had gained recognition locally, and Ami’s heroics had reminded the rest of Letria of their existence, too. A one-off event like that wouldn’t be enough to establish a lasting presence on the national stage, though. Most people would focus on the drama of a Cruelty appearing near a crowd of humans—they wouldn’t stay invested in the magical girl who was there to defeat it.

  Spotlight Sunbright had a window in which to appeal to this national audience before the next breaking story shoved them out of the news cycle, and therefore out of everyone’s mind. What their team needed wasn’t a gimmick or some shallow trick to go viral, but a product of substance. Something that would stick with them, that they could return to over and over instead of resharing once and moving on.

  The music video Adah and Rika wanted to make could be the perfect product for that.

  The video was an opportunity to show off more of their team—both in terms of members and in terms of talent. People who took a passing interest in Ami’s fighting would then be exposed to a team full of a whole range of unique personalities, and who were just as flashy off the battlefield as they were on it. Even if only Adah and Rika appeared in the video, it could be a gateway to becoming a fan of their team as a whole.

  And what better way to stick in someone’s head than music? Adah had no doubt that a song written by Rika, and backed up by Rika’s voice, would find its way onto the playlists of idol fans nationwide. She was less confident in her own voice, but whatever she lacked in vocal ability, she could make up for in style. That was where her scythe came into play.

  Recording a whole song and video would take time—too much time. They needed to grab the attention of as many fans as possible as soon as possible. Fortunately, a group’s first music video was the sort of release you’d tease ahead of time anyway. The conditions for energizing Sunbright’s existing fanbase were also already in place.

  Speculation over Adah’s scythe had climbed to its peak now that Ami had shown off what Poseidon’s Pugni were capable of. Ever since their team returned from their training camp with Ketzia, their dedicated fans had more or less made a game out of predicting what new techniques the girls had up their sleeves. Rika and Emi’s bomb-batting was the first combo they had shown off, leading fans to theorize on spell and weapon interactions between every possible pairing of team members. Funnily enough, the fans had some cool ideas of their own, despite not knowing the intricacies of the spells as well as the girls did.

  Yet, the scythe always roadblocked that theorycrafting. The fans could surmise Adah’s weapon was harvesting some kind of power from the Cruelty cores, but had no reasonable guesses for how she might utilize that power. Of course, Adah still wasn’t sure of that herself.

  Why not kill two birds with one stone? Give the fans something to chew on, while learning more about how her weapon worked.

  That line of thinking had led her to this marsh. Well, not necessarily this marsh, but she had been waiting for a Cruelty to appear somewhere she could unleash the scythe’s power in secrecy. While there could be advantages to showing off its strength in front of a crowd, Adah had come up with a more intricate tactic: reveal her weapon’s abilities in two stages, with the first reveal leading directly into the next, more exciting and elaborate one. Maybe this had some official name that all the professionals used, but she was simply calling it “iceberg marketing.”

  Today, she had recruited Seb to capture the scythe’s offensive capabilities on camera. He would film her in high fidelity—thanks to the new camera Thibault had funded—as she defeated this Cruelty with Beleth’s Bloodletter. Adah would then take a frame from that footage, one where she looked particularly badass, and share it online. She’d add some kind of mysterious or enticing message to it, along with the date on which her and Rika’s video would debut. Her fans would finally catch a glimpse of what the scythe’s true power was, and would work themselves into a fervor of anticipation as they approached the mystery date.

  Except, when the day arrived, the fans would get way more than they ever expected. The full footage of the scythe, a new song from a brand new musical duo, and a whole music video to go along with it—everything would be revealed all at once. If the photo of her using the scythe was the tip of the iceberg, then the release of the music video would be the massive block of ice hidden beneath the water.

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  By combining all these elements of her growth as a magical girl into one big reveal, Adah hoped to make an impact greater than the sum of its parts. Her fans were invested in learning more about her weapon, and she was sure if she and Rika teased a song, they would get excited over that as well. But if she leaned on both interests at once, could she generate even more buzz?

  Adah had learned what she could by studying the region’s strategy for promoting the Unchained Underground project. Whoever was behind that marketing campaign had tried to chain one effort into the next: the photoshoot led into the press coverage of the K-Rank Cruelty led into the fan meet. It was a sound strategy, one Adah knew from experience would work. She wanted to try something a little different. Her iceberg approach was built upon the same foundation—linking one promo to the next—but aimed for a bit more shock and awe.

  In Adah’s mind, if she had limited chances to shine on a national stage, she couldn’t afford a slow and steady buildup. She needed to streamline to the fireworks finale.

  It wasn’t like the sole purpose of the music video would be to unveil Adah’s scythe, either. In Adah’s spare time, she had drawn out some storyboards for how the video might go, using her familiarity with Heartbreak and Lyrika to imagine the best angles and sequences to highlight their charms. The throughline of the whole video would be a juxtaposition of Adah’s scythe with Rika’s railgun. Assuming the scythe’s power was appropriately cinematic, a shot of that attack paired up with a full-strength railgun would stun anyone who saw it.

  They weren’t at Pureheart Chu’s level yet, but Adah knew that [Renova Railgun] shone with a majesty that could rival even the most elite of spells. An image of a fully charged red streak through the sky, cutting both a Cruelty and the frame in half… Adah almost shivered. She could only hope her scythe looked half as cool.

  Seb had a talent for photography, which she figured must have been transferable to videography to some degree. Regardless, she had a plan to help him get the perfect shot.

  “With this variant, I should be able to drag it until right about there before you’re in danger,” she said, pointing to a spot not more than thirty feet to the left of the observation platform they were standing on.

  “Isn’t that a little close?” he said.

  Next to him, the video camera they had purchased with Thibault’s funding was secured atop a tripod at roughly Seb’s eye level. Adah had left the selection of equipment up to Seb. He knew his stuff better than anyone at their agency would. The only instructions she gave him were: one, make sure you can film a really cool music video with whatever you buy; and two, spend all of the money they’d been given. Bad luck to waste budget after it had been allocated.

  “You’re a brave guy, aren’t you?” Adah said. “Didn’t you climb on someone’s roof when we were fighting that scorpion?”

  “Yeah, and I nearly broke my ankle climbing down when that Cruelty started charging down the road.”

  “Oh, please. It wasn’t charging, it was crawling,” she said. Though, when she remembered how badly they had botched that mission, she thought maybe his concerns were justified. “Anyway, it’s just a D-Rank today. I asked for one specifically to avoid any danger if the scythe doesn’t do what I expect it to. Besides, I wouldn’t let the camera get damaged.”

  “You get meaner when those horns are on your head,” he said. “You know that?”

  “That’s the point, Sebbo,” she said with a wink. “Even if Heartbreak’s words hurt, she still has the soul of a hero. I won’t let this monster touch you, so just focus on getting a jaw-dropping shot.”

  He sighed but repositioned the camera to capture the area she had pointed out all the same. He held out his hands to represent Adah and the Cruelty as he talked through the scene.

  “So the great hero Heartbreak will be here, and the Cruelty will be there, and then what?” he said. “You shoot something at it or fly in and slice it or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Adah said. “I think it’ll be a projectile or an explosion or something, but all the Magiapp tells me is that I can unleash the energy to ‘devastate my enemies or surpass my limits.’”

  The mascots were masters of utilizing magic essence for their own needs, but there was still much they didn’t understand about how essence interacted with other beings. That was true for humanity as well as the Cruelties. Just like Izzy and Lesh weren’t sure why the Cruelties were creating humanoids, the Magiapp could only determine a general outcome for weapons and spells.

  That led to some potentially dangerous confusion about the potential of a magic user’s arsenal, but also left the door open to the kinds of creativity that Adah and her teammates took advantage of in their combo attacks. Certainly nothing in the description of [Aspis Meniscus] mentioned filling Ami’s shield with other spells. That imaginative use of magic was what the mascots and Magiapp couldn’t predict. Testing out your spells and practicing their use cases was therefore essential—first for understanding their limits, then for breaking them.

  Today, Adah would find out what Beleth’s Bloodletter was capable of.

  The marsh fit the occasion. The sky was a dreary gray, hidden behind a patchwork of clouds that seemed to mirror the pools of water that spilled throughout the meadow. The cattails, rushes, and grasses that covered the marsh had all faded to a pale brown in the colder weather. Assuming the scythe lived up to its namesake and meshed with the rest of Heartbreak’s theme, its unleashed attack would surely be something grim. The pitch black trails of magic from the scythe’s siphon function would strike a bold contrast to the lifeless grays and browns of this environment. Hopefully the weapon’s attack would be as intense in its shade.

  The only way the scene could look better was with some dramatic lighting. Maybe that was something they can edit in during post-production. Heartbreak looked best at twilight.

  “I was worried you might have changed,” Seb said, “but you’re clearly the same girl who gave me a piece of her shoe for no reason. Some things you just do by feel, don’t you?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked. “If you could feel what I feel, you’d want to trust it, too.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” he said, his eyes bright behind the lenses of his glasses. “I wouldn’t want to work for some overproduced magical girl anyway. That’s what I like most about taking shots of you four. It’s like hunting tornadoes.”

  “Save the flattery for Emi,” Adah said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “And focus up. The guest of honor has arrived.”

  Adah hopped into the air and flew over the railing of the observation deck. She positioned herself a bit forward from the spot she had pointed out to Seb. Once she had the Cruelty’s attention, then she could set up the perfect shot.

  Out in the marsh, a gray lizard materialized. Its legs sloshed through the marsh water as it assessed its new surroundings.

  Adah held out an arm and called upon Beleth’s Bloodletter. The scythe appeared in her outstretched hand, and its smoky blade crept out like a stranger’s breath on a dark winter night.

  “I’ve fed you plenty of hearts,” she said to it. “It’s time to return the favor.”