Sitting on a pig’s back wasn’t very comfortable. Perhaps Izzy needed to fatten up so he could become squishier. For now, Adah made herself more comfortable by lifting her weight up with a slight hover. She was still touching Izzy and appeared to be sitting on him, but wasn’t actually weighing down on him.

  It was a silly thing to worry about, but she needed to remove such distractions. Despite appearances, Emi was relying on her for support.

  “I’ve got it tracked,” Adah said to the twin through their channel. “So whenever you’re ready.”

  Down below, Emi was cycling Mercury’s Majesty through its different configurations, from the spearhead to the halberd to the hammer, seemingly at random. She was like a poker player fiddling with their chips, their hands moving restlessly while their mind worked through the situation before them. However confident she was in herself, every challenge was nerve-racking the first time you faced it. Morphing her weapon like this must have been a means of calming her mind and honing her focus.

  Eventually, she settled on the spearhead form. Adah took that as a sign she was ready.

  The lynx Cruelty, meanwhile, crouched low to the ground and took small steps closer to Emi. The monster placed each paw down gently, as if trying not to disturb a snow drift, even though it was walking across pavement. On account of Emi floating stationary in the air, it seemed unsure if Emi was fully aware of it or the threat it posed, so it approached her with a watchful eye.

  Both Emi and the lynx were prepared for a fight. The question was who would strike first?

  Emi provided the answer. She bulleted forward, gunning straight for the lynx’s head with a speed that still surprised Adah after having seen her fly so many times. The twins seemed to always be in a competition to outpace each other, and showed off a new limit to their ability every time Adah went on a mission with one of them.

  Emi’s speed must have surprised the Cruelty as well, for it was late to react to the magical girl rushing toward it. Emi had flown forward as if she knew the Cruelty would underestimate her, as if it was a certainty that she’d reach its face before it leaped away or swiped at her with its claws. The line she had taken toward the lynx was as straight as the spear in her hands.

  Although she had closed a distance spanning the plots of two houses, her flight connected seamlessly into her attack. She transferred all the momentum of her velocity into her spear as she thrust it into the lynx’s left eye. Her weapon pierced the beast’s eye as easily as skewering a grape. The monster yowled, sending out pained echoes that reverberated so loudly Adah had to cover her ears.

  Emi extracted her spear as fast as she had stabbed it into the lynx’s eye, then stabbed forward again without pause. This time, her attack cut through only the empty air. The lynx’s instincts had taken over, and it had flinched away from Emi after her first attack. It scrambled to the side with none of the grace characteristic of a cat, but rather like a foal learning to walk.

  Still, the beast was quick. Even its sloppy dodge took it from one side of the cul-de-sac to the other. Adah caught a glimpse of its damaged eye as it came to a stop—what had once been a glossy black oval was now shredded and flayed apart like a tomato stomped underfoot. Cruelties didn’t bleed, and their anatomy didn’t replicate all the veins and organs required for natural life, but their bodies could be damaged in a similar manner to normal animals. Without regenerative powers, the lynx’s eye would remain like that until Emi destroyed the beast entirely.

  Emi was primed to shoot forward with her spear again like an arrow fired from a bow, but the lynx also rushed to make its next move. A darkness suddenly consumed the circular arena of pavement that Emi and the Cruelty were fighting within. Something like a fog spread throughout the cul-de-sac. Though, if Adah shifted her head in different directions, it became clear that this was no physical fog. It was a strange sensation, like she had some kind of discharge in her eye that blurred her vision, but the blurriness seemed to rotate around a particular point in the world. It was as if the blur was both in her eye and outside it simultaneously.

  Regardless of the mechanics, Adah knew what was causing this disruption of her senses. The lynx had made use of its shroud. For better or worse, it had accepted Emi as a serious threat, and the next act of this play had begun.

  Through the darkness and the blur, Adah could still see the gray trail of the Cruelty’s movements thanks to her [Parietal Perception]. She had no way of knowing what Emi’s vision must look like being so close to the lynx, but the goal of their plan was to bypass the need for Emi’s sight in this battle. Now it was up to Adah to help Emi succeed—both in putting on a show and winning this fight.

  “Moving to the right,” Adah said through their magic channel. “Behind the blue house. Side closer to you.”

  This was the crux of their plan—something more like a gimmick than an actual strategy. Normally, you’d assume a defensive posture after this Cruelty had cast its shroud, whether that meant guarding your teammate’s back or simply flying high enough to put yourself out of the lynx’s leap range. But if Adah could communicate to Emi the lynx’s whereabouts, then that opened the potential to turn the beast’s attacks against it.

  And if done right, Emi would look like the unparalleled assassin she was supposed to be.

  The moment of truth arrived only a few seconds after Adah spoke. Perhaps the lynx variants had learned that their shroud was guaranteed to disorient their prey, and upon seeing a solo magical girl out in the open, this monster assumed Emi was easy pickings. There was no need to exercise caution—it could throw itself at her as soon as it slunk out of sight.

  However, Emi was watching the spot Adah had indicated. Her eyes were fixed on the open space just past the edge of a nearby blue house. She stared beyond the blur, knowing she only needed to wait for any shift of color in the distance. When you knew exactly where the lynx would approach from, you had no need to differentiate one shape from another. You could dodge with certainty.

  From Adah’s perspective looking down on the scene, the blur in her eye oscillated wildly, while the gray trail of the lynx traced a clear, linear path behind all the confusion. At that moment, as the trail of the Cruelty arced toward her, Emi swooped close to the ground and flew in the exact opposition direction. The head of Mercury’s Majesty morphed from a spear to her favored halberd blade as she flew. As the lynx passed over her, she swung up at it, slicing one of its hind legs open just below the bend.

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  The beast yowled again, and the shroud broke apart as its focus shattered. Emi remained near the center of the cul-de-sac, floating upright once more with her halberd resting against her shoulder. She turned to face the Cruelty where it had landed, but hovered motionless.

  The beast stayed still, too, like it was anticipating an attack from Emi. Yet, she only watched.

  The two of them stared each other down for another few seconds before the Cruelty crouched down, favoring its uninjured leg, and summoned its shroud again. The lynx crept around the cul-de-sac; the movement of the gray trail produced by Adah’s spell was markedly slower this time. The damage Emi had done to its leg must have been hindering it.

  Adah called out the Cruelty’s position like she had before. She and Emi had practiced this manner of communication in the days prior, though they hadn’t known at the time what kind of Cruelty they would use it against. The tactic was strictly a means of adding flair to Emi’s fighting by making her appear to have a preternatural sense of her surroundings. Like the elven rogue in a fantasy novel, she would seem to have an omniscient view of her environment, even as she stared straight ahead.

  The idea had come to Adah as a way to combine the smokescreen tactic Ketzia had taught her with the manual vision-sharing she and Rika had practiced. In a situation where Emi didn’t need precise aim but rather the general sense of where her opponent’s attack would come from, Adah could simply describe the angle Emi needed to defend against. The pair had practiced the technique by orienting all of the callouts from Adah’s perspective. Since Adah wouldn’t be moving, this simplified the spatial reasoning—“right” and “left” would always refer to a particular side regardless of Emi’s movement.

  Adah was inspired by a Cruelty she had seen DreamRise fight recently: a variant that looked like a sea urchin, which fired multiple projectiles that honed in on Iris and her teammates from various angles. If Emi faced something like that, and could deflect or dodge all of its attack seemingly by reflex, that’d make for a great highlight reel. Ultimately, the technique still relied on Emi’s agility. Adah didn’t think she could do the same if someone was feeding her information in this situation.

  Getting to show off their idea against the lynx instead of a projectile-based Cruelty worked out even better for them. This kind of direct showdown gave the impression that Emi and the lynx were competing on the grounds of physical prowess—and Emi was winning.

  The lynx jumped out from hiding again, but its pounce was slower and weaker than before. Emi had an even easier time dodging. Instead of dipping below the Cruelty, she spun out like a figure skater across ice, flying in a twirl to the side of where the lynx eventually landed. She transitioned her spin into another attack as she dug her halberd’s blade into the Cruelty’s undamaged hind leg.

  This blow cut even deeper than the first thanks to the strength Emi put behind it. She nearly severed the leg entirely, and the lynx sunk to the ground as she pulled her weapon out of its flesh. The beast looked as though it had collapsed to one knee. As it scrambled to find its footing again and flee, Emi swung her weapon forward once more, morphing its metallic head from its halberd form to a hammer.

  She struck the beast’s leg where the lower half hung from its thigh, obliterating the tattered flesh that held the two halves together. The severed leg skidded across the pavement as another yowl from the Cruelty shook the air.

  In that moment, the lynx recognized escape was impossible. With one leg weakened and the other lopped off completely, it had only one option for survival: to fight head-on, desperately.

  With its rear body slumped against the pavement, the Cruelty began to swipe at the magical girl in front of it. These weren’t deliberate attacks—the lynx was thrashing about like it was drowning. All the while, it continued to cry out in a voice like a ghost haunting a manor’s halls.

  Emi weaved her body between each swipe from the Cruelty. The sight of her evading each attack so effortlessly reminded Adah of how Ami had overwhelmed the water strider. Yet, there was a distinct difference between the sisters.

  Ami had looked as if she was cornering the water strider, even though there had been no corner to back it into. Ami’s movements exerted a clear forward pressure.

  Emi, on the other hand, was like the rain. Each swipe from the lynx looked like it had passed right through her. Each attack was as futile as trying to catch a raindrop between your thumb and forefinger. Her dance with the Cruelty expressed the same inevitability as Ami’s, but it wasn’t one of a runaway train headed for a brick wall. Hers was the downpour. The rain would accumulate and soon water would drench the world. Her power rained down—a force of nature that could not be negotiated with, originating far out of reach.

  The Cruelty could never touch her, but it was inevitable that it would die by her strike. Perhaps that was why the lynx continued to cry. It was the frustration and fear, not the pain.

  “Shut up already,” through their channel, Adah heard Emi’s voice for the first time during this battle.

  In the midst of her dance, Emi had traced an intricate pattern of ice onto the pavement of the cul-de-sac right below the lynx’s head. She clenched her fist now, activating her [Hailstorm Hex]. The tracing, a complex magic circle of criss-crossing lines, glowed a pure white, then erupted with a legion of icy spears that shot up through the lynx’s throat and jaw. The spearheads pierced the entirety of the Cruelty’s head, their glistening tips emerging like a crown atop the beast.

  The yowling stopped, but the swiping continued. The attacks were weak and almost lazy, but clearly this monster didn’t need a brain to continue its fight.

  Yet, after dealing with its full strength so easily, these sloppy swipes didn’t matter to Emi at all. She floated slowly, like walking, around to the belly of the lynx and morphed her weapon once more. The metallic head returned to the shape of the halberd blade. She lifted the halberd overhead and swung down like she was splitting wood. Her weapon’s blade tore through the Cruelty’s belly, and the resulting gash revealed the monster’s core.

  Emi rested her weapon against her shoulder and turned to look up at Adah. Her face was blank, but Adah knew what needed to happen next. The finale of their little show.

  She hopped off of Izzy, who took the opportunity to hide away again, and floated down toward the Cruelty until her heels clicked against the pavement. She glanced at Emi as she touched down. The girl hadn’t broken a sweat.

  Adah had to hold back a smile. Each of her teammates had shown her something impressive over the past couple of weeks. If this was their power at this level, what would they be capable of once their recent work paid off and their FP surged again?

  To help her team get there, Adah still had to play her last role in this battle.

  She held her hand to the sky and called upon her [Nightwind Whip] as she had so many times before. The sky darkened and a black wind of smoke gathered above her hand. Her whip was forming, but Adah didn’t intend to use it.

  Instead, she summoned Beleth’s Bloodletter above her raised hand. The scythe materialized within the smoky magic of her spell and dropped into her open palm. She clasped her hand around her weapon and swung it down with a flourish, relinquishing her control of [Nightwind Whip] at the same moment. The smoke above her dissipated as she readied her weapon to consume the lynx’s core.

  When thinking of how to add flair to Emi’s fighting, one idea had led to another. If they could “hide” Adah’s spell to make Emi appear as though she was fighting without magic, couldn’t they also add a spell to an action that didn’t require one? Why not add some special effects to the summoning of Adah’s scythe? Maybe that would contribute some extra atmosphere to the fantastical setting she and Emi were acting within. Seb’s photos would show whether the idea had been effective.

  With Beleth’s Bloodletter at the ready, Adah approached the lynx. The beast had at last given up hope and stopped flailing about.

  Adah looked over at Emi, who mouthed the word “easy” to her.

  As Adah sunk her scythe’s blade into the lynx’s core, she knew for sure. Whatever role Raindrop ended up playing, she would have no trouble standing out from now on.