“Does it look okay?” Emi asked.

  The girl turned her head from side to side in front of the mirror in Adah’s room.

  “It looks like it normally does,” Adah said. “To be honest, I doubt anyone else will notice until we point it out to them. The real question is whether you’re okay with it. Do you feel good about this plan?”

  Emi stared into the mirror and touched the hairpin that held back the hair above her left ear. Adah had given her this new pin to replace the crisscrossing ones that she and Ami usually used to style their hair. The pin had a simple decoration attached to it: a black heart that Adah had painted a silver crack onto. With the way the length of the pin jutted out from each end of the decoration, it gave the impression of an arrow piercing and breaking the heart.

  “I think so,” Emi said. “The way you explained it—I’m okay with that.”

  “The nice part of starting something new is that you get to control the conversation about it,” Adah said. “To some degree, anyway.”

  When Emi came to ask for her help—rather, for her to not help—it had surprised Adah. The twins had always seemed like the types to want to handle their problems on their own. Or, if they had to rely on someone else, they’d turn to each other first. As she listened to what Emi had to say, she realized the mistake she’d made in thinking that way.

  There was a difference between doing something through your own effort and doing it alone. Every member of their team valued the former, but Adah was the only one truly comfortable with the latter.

  Since the IndieMagie, Adah was confident she had learned a lot about how to be an effective strategist for her team—both in battle and in this industry. However, on the social side of being a captain, she had been slower to adapt. Emi had called out Adah’s assumptions during their conversation, and that had finally made it clear why Emi had come to her over anyone else.

  Adah could approach the situation as Emi’s captain.

  Sure, she and Emi were also friends, teammates, and housemates, but their relationship had another layer above all that. As her captain, Adah could play a role for her that Ami, Rika, or Seb never could: that of her leader.

  Without ever meaning to, Adah had assumed that role for the twins in particular. In fact, it had been Ami and Emi who had taken the first step in creating that kind of relationship. They had come to her shortly after she became Twilight Heartbreak and asked for it, even if none of them had realized it at the time. The twins weren’t just asking to join her on missions, they were asking her to lead them.

  That relationship added a bit of distance to their interactions, and a presumption of greater objectivity to any of Adah’s decisions involving the twins. As their captain, it was expected she’d consider what was best for the team, not just her personal opinions. That was why Ami had started to listen to Adah more willingly, like during their talk about waiting to fight a B-Rank. It also meant Adah bore more responsibility for the outcomes of her decisions, like how making Ami play defense during the IndieMagie had backfired on them.

  In the end, the relationship balanced on a mutual trust. Adah’s teammates would follow her guidance and embrace her vision for the future, all under the implicit agreement that Adah would also work to understand their own views and try to lead them toward the common ground between everyone’s goals. If the scales ever tipped too far in one direction—whether Adah was ignoring the thoughts of her teammates or putting too much stock into them—the relationship would crumble.

  Emi had come to Adah in order to put her ideas into that equation of trust. She wanted Adah’s affirmation as a leader, but she also wanted to make it clear how important her desire to stand out was to her. She was communicating what she needed for that mutual trust to feel balanced, and asking Adah to lead her through the process.

  Once Adah had understood that, an idea had shot through her mind like a lightning bolt.

  It was a captain’s approach to solving Emi’s problem, but that had been exactly what Emi was searching for. She wanted to stand out through her own efforts, but that didn’t mean she wanted to stand alone. Why not give her a role in this team that no one else could fulfill?

  Adah had been grappling with a related problem lately. During the IndieMagie, their team got to ride the wave of the Unchained Underground branding that Secretary Thibault promoted. Now, she and Rika were developing an identity as a musical pair under the Heartshot name. Spotlight Sunbright, however, lacked any kind of theme whatsoever.

  Before Adah had rebranded as Twilight Heartbreak, everyone’s names at least matched under a general theme of “brightness.” But even back then, their team was a mishmash of attitudes and styles. Adah and Rika’s spells were light-based, while the twins’ were water-based. Rika had her cover channel, but none of the rest of them were doing anything creatively. Basically, without any context, a random person probably wouldn’t have guessed they were on a team together. Despite their team’s growing recognition, this problem was actually getting worse.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Adah had been looking to Apex Vox for inspiration. They were a trio built from the ground up to be a cohesive unit, making it obvious at a glance that they were teammates. Likewise, their theme was clear and straightforward. You could explain “animal-eared singers who like to fight” to a toddler and they’d get it.

  What was the equivalent pitch for Spotlight Sunbright? Emo cosplayer and her would-be girlfriend try to hold onto the leashes of two mastiffs who just want to playfight all day? It was funny, but it wasn’t something the average person on the other side of the country could get invested in.

  Their team needed a thread to link everyone together. A theme other than being underdogs. A story that elevated their characters above day-to-day life.

  The idea Adah had been toying with for Heartshot, in which she was corrupting Lyrika, had led to another. This second idea didn’t have to be a theme for just one song or one pairing—it could work for everything.

  They could craft a narrative of dark fantasy around their team. They could lean into the kinds of characters and tropes you’d find in a novel. They could tell the story of Twilight Heartbreak’s origin as a reformed villainess and frame their team as an unlikely party of adventurers brought together by a common quest. They were already fighting beastly monsters with magic; it’s not like they’d have to bend reality very far to craft a compelling narrative.

  This approach would go against the mainstream trends of cutesy idol-like magical girls in a way that suited their team, while simultaneously opening the door to cast each of their personalities in a different light.

  Adah could more easily embody the darkness of Twilight Heartbreak if she could distance her character from reality. She could add a layer of performance art to her identity that encouraged a suspension of disbelief for their whole team.

  Rika could become the fairy of a misty woods, who charmed the hearts of all wanderers who heard her songs. Faced with the improbable challenge of capturing the broken heart of a dark witch, she left her woods alongside Heartbreak.

  Ami could become the brawler, who had made her living prize fighting in a gambler’s den until she was betrayed by the very boss she had made so much money for. To seek revenge and give a purpose to her rage, she joined Heartbreak and Lyrika.

  Emi was now a silent assassin, shrouded in mystery but known for never failing a job. That is, until she was set up by an old customer in exchange for coin. After narrowly escaping her own death, the wordless killer known as Raindrop chooses to work with a leader she can trust instead of serving as a hired knife.

  Once Adah got thinking on it, the ideas flowed faster than she could jot them down. She hadn’t felt so inspired since she’d been a kid.

  Though, they were merely ideas. Their team would have to undergo a major rebrand, and Adah would need the buy-in of her teammates, Grace, and even Michel to bring the ideas to fruition. After all, she couldn’t ask fans to believe in this story if their team was still operating under an agency called “Spotlight Sunbright.” Their imaginations could only ignore so much of reality before the story turned silly.

  Still, Adah believed in the idea. Even if their team couldn’t commit to it fully yet, this approach could help Emi achieve her own goals in the short term.

  Adah and Emi could embrace their own characters and form their own “party” in the meantime. Another sub-unit, like Heartshot.

  This was where, at last, the hairpin came into play. It would be a symbol of this change in character. If Emi was on board, they could tease the hairpin on social media similar to how Adah and Rika were teasing their first song. They could change up Emi’s profile picture, get Seb to write a mysterious announcement post that alluded to a new character, and build up anticipation around the “new” Raindrop.

  Yet, it wasn’t a reinvention of Raindrop. Emi could still be Emi, and therefore Raindrop could still be Raindrop. That was the whole point.

  Adah intended to stand aside for Emi as she had requested. When they unveiled the “new” Raindrop, it would be the same old Emi, fighting in the truest expression of her style. The only difference would be the story around her.

  Somehow, Emi had patiently sat through Adah’s entire explanation, only fiddling with the hairpin occasionally.

  “So I’m still Raindrop,” Emi said, “but Raindrop is a murderer?”

  “Not a murderer,” Adah said. “An assassin. We definitely don’t want to say ‘murderer.’”

  That was an entirely different character.

  “An assassin with a halberd.”

  “Look,” Adah said, “you had to adapt your weapon when you went from killing nobles in their castles to killing Cruelties on the battlefield. What’s important is how you fight, not what you fight with. You want to show everyone your style, right? Raindrop fights with finesse, with flair, with a little bit of cockiness. She’s so fast, she’s stabbed you before you hear her knife leave its sheath.”

  “But it’s a halberd.”

  “It’s also a hammer and other things!” Adah paused to calm herself. “My point is: that’s the kind of fighting you want to show the world. What your character gives you is a reason for people to watch. You don’t need all the drama and fanfare of someone like Iris to get people to take an interest in you. All you need is a simple and clear identity. Something that makes people think, ‘That sounds cool,’ then when they watch you, you are cool.”

  Emi turned back to the mirror and inspected her new hairpin again.

  “When it’s new, you get to control the conversation,” she repeated. “If we tell people I’m this character, that’s what they’ll see me as?”

  “That’s the general idea,” Adah said. “You have to back it up, though. Branding isn’t mind control. But if you live up to it, you’ll carve out your own identity among all these other magical girls. Something nobody else can take from you. I’m hoping eventually we can all do that, then we’ll get to tell our stories together.”

  Emi looked deep into the mirror, as if it were a portal to another world. Perhaps she was imagining herself as this new character. Adah waited for what felt like minutes, but Emi still gazed into the mirror.

  “We’ll only do this if you want to,” Adah said. “I had the idea, but it’s your decision. Whether it’s this or something else, I’ll help you however I can.”

  If Emi didn’t believe in the character herself, no one else would either. If she could see in that mirror a future where she could tell a story that enraptured an audience through her fighting alone, then Adah could help her make that a reality.

  “Draw the curtains,” Emi said.