“Something’s different,” Ami said, glancing between Adah and Rika.

  “That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?” Adah said. “We need to decide how we want to handle these FP changes.”

  “She’s dodge-rolling,” Emi said.

  “You bit the bullet, didn’t you?” Ami said.

  Emi cupped her hands and whispered something into her sister’s ear, which caused Ami to crack up laughing. Whatever she had said, it was surely very mature and professional.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to brag about,” Adah said. “It’s all between Rika and me.”

  “Nothing to brag about?” Rika said.

  “Well, I didn’t mean it like that…”

  The Sisterhood of the Last Light had been granted a moment of peace after the chaotic few days they’d been put through. They had no missions to attend to, no training sessions to grind out, and absolutely nowhere to be. That made today the perfect day to bask in the glory of their growth and plan their next move.

  That growth, of course, took the form of boosts in every girl’s FP level. The team was gathered in the agency’s back office, sitting in front of that familiar whiteboard. As today was also a well-earned day off for Grace, the four magical girls were meeting by themselves. While the other three remained sitting in the folding chairs that they still had yet to replace, Adah took the liberty of updating their levels on the board.

  Twilight Heartbreak:

  7052 ?? 12041

  Lightburst Lyrika:

  6667 ?? 11892

  The Frostfist Berserker:

  7002 ?? 8633

  The Raindrop Reaper:

  7045 ?? 8759

  “We’re getting left in the dust,” Ami said.

  “Tumbleweeds,” Emi added.

  While it was undeniable that Adah and Rika had pulled far ahead of the twins after the release of their music video, Adah didn’t think there was any cause for concern yet.

  “We’re still a little disconnected,” she said to her teammates. “There’s a lot of attention focused on us individually, but not necessarily on the Last Light. We didn’t fight that hydra alone, and what most people are going to remember from that battle is that Ekki got hurt. We’ll need to take out a B-Rank on our own to get our name as a team out there, like we originally planned. After this boost, that’s something we’re absolutely ready for.”

  That alone had gotten the twins fired up enough to stop them from worrying about the numbers on the whiteboard, but Adah wanted everyone to think beyond missions. Doors into the entertainment industry were opening for them, and they wouldn’t be a unified team unless they found a way to step through those doors together.

  “Beyond that,” she continued, “the fans who are discovering Rika and me are more like content fans than magical girl fans. I don’t know how much they care about us defeating local Cruelties compared to us releasing more content for them to engage with. Someone who likes the music video won’t necessarily care about our teammates unless they appear in the next video, or some other content they can consume. At this point, we don’t even know how many of them even care about the missions Rika and I take.”

  Adah could sense the difference between their old fans and these new ones from their comments alone. The new fans were more likely to talk about the video itself, detached from either Heartbreak or Lyrika. They seemed to view the video more as an isolated spectacle than as part of a storyline. When put side by side, it was clear who knew about Heartbreak long before this video ever debuted.

  verh0even: it’s not catchy like most magical girl songs but as an anthem for these two i think it could be really special

  18EMMA15: am i the only one who thinks the redhead is so pretty its almost scary? Shes almost not human, in a good way

  obscureZen: It’s times like these that make me think how lucky we are to be piglets. A fabulous song, and an honor to see two wonderful magical girls be happy together.

  holofan: live when?

  doc__salt: Ladies and Gentlemen: Yuri

  tasokare_wota: that shot of them behind the tree…I NEED MORE ANGLES. AND MORE SONGS

  stayskippy: what in the world was that weapon??? forget the larping where did that girl get something so gnarly?

  To Adah’s relief, the positive comments were so common that they buried the inevitable negative ones. When she scrolled through them, she had to go out of her way to stop on a mean one.

  Still, she would have some work to do in order to get these new fans invested in her and Rika as full-fledged magical girls. The same went for the twins—they had to strike while public interest was peaking and take their own first steps into entertainment media.

  That said, the video premiere was nothing other than a major success. The video had already passed 15,000 views in under 24 hours, something Rika said eclipsed even her best cover song releases. It was undoubtedly that interest that had catapulted both of them past their next FP breakpoint.

  The 10,000 FP breakpoint was the second unique threshold that the girls had crossed. While most breakpoints led to straightforward spell unlocks or raw power upgrades, certain level thresholds offered magic users more agency over their arsenal. All four girls had already experienced this once when they unlocked their weapons—although their options were influenced by the perceptions of their fans, the choice of which weapon to take was left up to them.

  The five-digit breakpoint that Adah and Rika had just crossed introduced a new kind of upgrade to their kits: augmentations.

  As magic users grew in power and took on increasingly tough Cruelties, the spells they unlocked early in their careers would begin to lose much of their utility. It was important for low level spells to be simple in their effects and easy to use—to preserve essence in new magic users who wouldn’t have much at their disposal, and to make fighting Cruelties as easy as possible while they learned the basics of magic combat. However, that simplicity limited how effective the spells could be against stronger variants of Cruelties.

  Adah and Rika had already run into this issue with their [Sparkling Strike] and [Shining Shot] spells. Despite their upgraded speed and power, Adah’s star projectiles rarely amounted to more than a distraction tool in her battles against C-Rank Cruelties. The problem would only get worse against higher ranked monsters. Besides, shooting out sparkling stars didn’t quite fit Twilight Heartbreak’s persona.

  Spell augmentation was meant to resolve this problem.

  Each augmentation essentially “rewrote” a portion of the spell that was engraved in the magic essence that particular magic user had access to. The way Izzy had explained it to Adah, essence had to be engraved with certain attributes that enabled the human mind and body to utilize that essence for certain spells—almost like coding functions in a program. As part of their processing of magic essence, mascots added this “code,” altering the essence for their human partner. Augmenting a spell was like pushing an update to that code. At least, that was the comparison Izzy made.

  According to him, this process was also part of why he and Adah would be bound together for her whole career. Altering essence in this way was no simple task, so each mascot had to become an expert in processing essence for their partner. In a similar vein, this was why Adah wouldn’t be able to transform if she tried connecting with one of her teammate’s mascots instead of Izzy.

  Through augmentation, a mascot could breathe new life into a spell that would otherwise sit neglected. By the time a magic user reached an FP level of 10,000, they should have a good sense of their preferred fighting style, their strengths and weaknesses, and what sort of impression they wanted to make on the battlefield. Augmentation offered branching paths of upgrades that fundamentally altered how a spell functioned, allowing a magic user to choose the enhancement that best complemented their battle strategy.

  For their first augmentation, Adah and Rika could each select between two distinct paths.

  Rika’s paths seemed to send her in two clear directions: either adding disabling effects to her spell or expanding its damage output. In the Magiapp, they were labeled as The Viper and The Pyromaniac.

  The first augmentation under The Viper claimed to empower Rika’s [Shining Shot] with a toxin that, when accumulated in great volume in a Cruelty, could immobilize the targeted limb or appendage. After firing enough bullets into a hydra head, for example, Rika could disable it in the same way Clair had managed to.

  The path of The Pyromaniac offered the kind of enhancement its name suggested: more firepower. Instead of a single bullet of light, this path’s augmentation would turn Rika’s spell into a primed explosive. Her first shot would still damage a single target in its usual manner, but would then explode after a short delay, damaging everything in an area.

  “We’ve got enough raw damage, don’t we?” Rika said as she weighed her options. “When I think about the Cruelties that gave us the most trouble—the scorpion, the hydra, stuff like that—taking away some of their movement would’ve been a huge help.”

  “If you can knock ‘em out, that makes it easier for me to beat the hell out of them,” Ami said.

  It was true that their team lacked a safe means of slowing down or disabling a Cruelty. Their best options at the moment all involved sending Ami straight into danger. Although there was something to be said for having Rika specialize in pure firepower, the toxin would help address one of their team’s most immediate weaknesses.

  Rika locked in her decision for the path of The Viper without much hesitation.

  In her own Magiapp, Adah was presented with a choice between The Doom and The Butcher. While the names made her think she needed to remind her fans that she wasn’t supposed to be just a demon but a demon princess, she was more than pleased with the effects of these augmentations.

  The Doom transformed the stars of her first spell into the last sparks of a supernova. Once her projectiles reached their destination, they would collapse and become black holes, inflicting additional damage in an area around themselves and pulling in any nearby matter for a brief period. The augmentation was a convenient combination of damage and utility.

  The Butcher, on the other hand, focused on making her stars into a viable offensive spell once more. This effect essentially turned her stars into saws—their sharp edges would bite into any surface, including a Cruelty’s flesh, and carve their way along a straight path before eventually fading. Already, Adah could see herself rolling a star down the center of a Cruelty and slicing it right open.

  “This one’s tougher,” Emi said.

  She was right about that. Adah would love a reliable and repeatable ranged attack, which made the sawblade stars stand out. The black holes were more focused on displacement than damage, but that was appealing in its own right. She couldn’t deny the potential for creative usage of their suction effect either.

  “If only I could try them both out,” Adah lamented. Maybe a trial period would be too much work for the mascots. They were the ones who would have to process all that essence, after all.

  In the end, Adah had to trust her gut. Not only did one of the options have more upside potential, it also seemed to fit Heartbreak’s theme better. She locked in her selection for The Doom.

  “That settles that,” Ami said. “So, what’s next? Are we going hunting for a B-Rank or are you gonna help make Emi and me stars?”

  “Next?” Adah said. “I’m finally taking a nap.”