With her teammates gathered around the coffee table and offering their full attention, Adah explained her ideas for their team’s rebrand. Since a lot of her thoughts were only partially baked, she worried she might have spent more time rambling than giving her team a clear vision for the future, but Rika and the twins remained focused on everything she was saying. She took that as a sign she was making enough sense to continue on.

  Talking through her ideas, even if they weren’t fully formed, was a necessary part of this process. Adah’s teammates were the first people she needed to tell this story to. In a sense, this was like pitching a TV show. If everyone saw potential in the premise of her story, they could hash out the details afterward in the writer’s room. Or, in the case of their team, during some late night conversations in this very lobby.

  What mattered most right now was everyone’s gut reaction. Did they believe in the idea enough to put in the work to make it succeed?

  Once Adah had finished explaining her ideas—the characters they could play, the narrative that would tie them together, and the ways in which they could tell that story—Ami was the first to respond.

  “So that’s what all this stuff with Emi was about,” she said. “You two were testing out your plan.”

  “Kind of,” Adah said. “The real goal was to let Emi show off what she’s capable of now, and this seemed like a good way to do it.”

  Emi nodded and said, “I like Adah’s idea, and now we know it can work.”

  She held up her phone to remind everyone of the boost in FP she’d gained. Adah hadn’t realized it before, but their team hadn’t orchestrated an intentional jump in popularity like that since they fought their first C-Rank during Operation Spotlight. The gains they’d experienced during the IndieMagie were based on the region’s marketing efforts, and Ami’s recent surge in attention had been unplanned. They were taking advantage of the opportunities they encountered, but it had been a while since they created one strictly through their own effort.

  They all felt that fire in their hearts after seeing Emi’s results. They all wanted to put in the work to create their own success next. That same feeling had driven Adah to make them have this conversation about rebranding, after all.

  “It makes sense,” Rika said. “It’s kind of like what you did with Twilight Heartbreak. You weren’t giving anything up by ditching your old identity. Spotlight Sunbright only has name recognition with our closest fans anyway, and changing up our theme would probably make them more excited to follow us. My only question is about how we pull this off. It’s not like we’re making a movie—we have to live every day as magical girls.”

  “We’d be selling an idea,” Adah said. “Maybe it’s not like a movie, but it can be like a TV show. There’s no script or predetermined plot, but there can still be a reason for people to tune into what we’re doing every week. That reason can be because we’re entertaining.”

  When she had thought through the same question Rika had asked, Adah had needed to take a step back to focus on the big picture. The problem this idea was trying to solve was gaining more fans—so, what made a magical girl popular?

  Some of them were beautiful, with faces and outfits so cute that they’d draw a crowd even without magic. Some had stunning artistic talents, and used their magic to take those talents to even greater heights. Others—like Iris—had a little bit of everything, and filled in any gaps by playing the “game” of this industry better than those around them.

  Adah’s idea might change her team’s outfits, but it wouldn’t make them any cuter than they already were. Although they were practicing singing, dancing, and the rest, this idea wouldn’t unlock some hidden talent of theirs. As for manipulating the industry, the whole point of this rebrand was to go against the grain, to forge their own path in contrast to any other team.

  No, they couldn’t look to any traditional team for their roadmap. The team that they had the most in common with—that best represented what Adah wanted to accomplish—was Apex Vox.

  Those girls hadn’t settled for being the next generation of a somewhat successful but otherwise forgettable music-focused agency. They were cute enough and talented enough—and their agency competent enough—that they would have built a fanbase no matter what. They had chosen to go a step further, though, and prove that they were a team that could fight as well as they sang.

  They had surprised fans who expected more of the same out of their agency. They transformed what could have been simple song releases into these multi-layered events. People tuned into their video releases not just to hear if they liked the new song, but also to see how the girls had evolved in battle since the last video.

  It was pure entertainment, the kind a fan could never get enough of. When someone clicked on an Apex Vox video, they knew they were in for a good time.

  That was what Adah and her teammates could learn from.

  “We could start by announcing our new theme like a big agency would announce the formation of a new unit,” Adah explained. “Seb can write character bios for us, like we’re straight out of a roleplaying game. If we do it right, we can make it fun for the fans. We can turn the fantasy into something they want to play along with. Our music, our social media, our missions—anything we do, we can dress it up in this theme. Even if we all do our own thing, it will all be part of one story.”

  “I get what you’re going for,” Rika said, tapping her finger against her thigh as she thought Adah’s words over. “Some bands do this sort of thing, too. Dressing up like a group of nameless ghouls led by an evil priest or something like that. It could work even better for a team of magical girls.”

  Ami raised her hand and shouted, “I’m in! As long as we have fun, the fans will have fun. And this sounds pretty damn fun to me. It’s about time I reinvent myself anyway.”

  “I already reserved my spot,” Emi added.

  The three of them set their sights on Rika. She had said the plan could work, but had yet to officially agree.

  “What, do I need to take a blood oath?” Rika said. “Of course I’m down. Doing it this way is better than the three of you making a plan without me.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson,” Adah said. “No more majority rule, only unanimous votes!”

  Though, for this to truly be unanimous and make the rebrand a reality, Adah still needed two more votes.

  ☆☆☆

  Michel sat behind the desk with his chin propped up by a tent shape he had made with his fingers. He looked like a caricature of an investor listening to a burgeoning startup pitch their business plan. That wasn’t too far off from the reality of the situation.

  Adah had just finished giving her pitch, though she wasn’t nervous so much as curious about what Michel would have to say in response. Their producer hadn’t involved himself in much of the agency’s daily operations over the past two years. Adah remembered him as being more hands-on when she first joined the agency, but the whole world of magical girlhood had been so new to her back then that her impression may have been swayed by her excitement.

  Then again, maybe those memories were true. Even if the agency hadn’t amounted to much up until this point, Michel had founded the business with his own money and made it—at the very least—functional with Grace’s help. Technically, he had even recruited four moderately successful magical girls.

  If Adah’s memories of his original passion for the agency were real, then his disaffected attitude in recent years was something she could sympathize with.

  But how did he feel about his business today?

  “It’s a dumb name, isn’t it?” he finally said. “‘Spotlight Sunbright.’ Like one of those TV shows for toddlers where they sing alphabet songs.”

  He stopped at that and looked at Adah. She was sitting in one of the metal folding chairs that littered the agency back office, directly in front of the desk Michel sat at. Grace had taken a seat off to the side of the room, in another folding chair, but Michel didn’t look at her. It was obvious he wanted Adah to respond somehow.

  “It, uh… It doesn’t fit us anymore, in my opinion,” she said.

  Michel didn’t adjust his pose at all. Usually he would sit on something he shouldn’t sit on or slump against a wall, so Adah wasn’t sure what to make of this serious demeanor he had put on.

  Was he upset? Was it a bit of self-deprecation? He had come up with that name, after all.

  “I don’t know why I thought I was the right guy to put together a team like that,” he continued. “I guess I wanted to do something with pure intentions for once. Maybe I can’t resist indulging my own impulses, but at least I can dedicate something in my life to a selfless cause. Then, when I die, people might say: ‘That Michel, he didn’t always do the right thing, but his heart was in the right place. Just look at the joy his agency brought to the world.’”

  Now Adah really didn’t know what to say. She turned to Grace, her eyes pleading for a bailout. Her manager sighed and adjusted her glasses.

  “I can see why you only got hired when they needed a pretty face,” she said to Michel. “You could turn a courthouse drama into a soap opera.”

  “Come on, now,” Michel said, finally breaking his pose with a shrug. “That was at least one-third sincere.”

  “Yeah, the third where you talked about your impulses,” Grace fired back. “Forget the old name—what do you think of Adah’s idea?”

  Michel leaned back in his chair, his usual ways finally taking over.

  “I think its clever,” he said. “The original idea for this agency was based on chasing after what was popular at the time. We failed at that, so I like the idea of trying to get ahead of what’s popular instead. And full-fledged characters? That’s a lot easier to sell. Hell, maybe one day we can collab with a mobile game and make some real money.”

  “And the other two-thirds go out the window,” Grace said.

  Michel held up his hands and said, “Forgive me for playing pretend from time to time. A little bit of improv practice will be useful for these girls now that we’re going this direction.”

  “Does that mean you’re on board?” Adah asked him.

  “On board?” he repeated, then stopped to laugh. “You know what? Yeah, let’s go with that. I was going to say you girls can do whatever you want, but this sounds too fun to sit out. Reminds me of when we first started. Right, Grace?”

  “In a worrisome way,” she said. “You lost the brakes for your brain a long time ago. Let’s all remember that we still have commitments to the Department of Magic. We can’t afford to overwork the girls just because our ideas have gotten ahead of us. And ‘the girls’ includes you, Adah.”

  “I’ve never felt better,” Adah said.

  Grace stared Adah down with a look that could turn her to stone. The bags under her manager’s eyes had grown heavier, and Adah wondered if her own looked the same.

  To break the pressure of Grace’s stare, Adah asked, “What about you? Are you on board?”

  “Me?” Grace parroted. “I told you before, didn’t I? I want to see everyone at this agency achieve their dreams. If this is how you’ve all chosen to go about that, then I’ll do what I can to support you.”

  “I just wanted to be sure,” Adah said. “I know it’s going to be a lot of work, and there will be a lot we get wrong at first. I don’t want to ask everyone to push through that on account of my desires.”

  “In case you forgot,” Grace said, “I had to deal with a much more troublesome magical girl in the past. And I wasn’t even her manager. Have more faith in the ideas that got you this far. Michel was right about one thing. This does sound too fun to sit out.”

  With his feet now resting atop the desk, Michel clapped in celebration.

  “So,” he said. “What’s the new name?”