Adah could have slept for a week straight, but her nap was ended abruptly the next morning by a great commotion coming from the agency lobby. The excited voices of a half dozen girls had no trouble breaching the walls of her bedroom.

  Right, she had made a promise to a certain rabbit the last time they met. Something about “cross-team bonding.” It had sounded like a good idea at the time, although that was before Adah knew she’d have to save DreamRise from a B-Rank mission just a couple of days prior to hanging out. The thought of closing her eyes and letting sleep take her again was alluring, but maybe something like this was exactly the sort of distraction from recent events that she needed.

  She forced herself out of bed, got dressed, and headed downstairs.

  All of her teammates—even Grace—were already mingling with the Apex Vox members and their manager by the time Adah got down to the lobby. They had split into little subgroups by this point—with Rika and Canto sitting on the couch to talk, Grace showing Nora around the first floor, and the twins and Sheffa plus Mari huddling together and whispering conspiratorially.

  As Adah made her way into the lobby, Sheffa spotted her and declared, “I guess we can scrap our plan, comrades. The princess has awoken from her slumber.”

  “Hiya Heartbreak!” Mari yelled, throwing her arm into the air. Her greeting was loud enough to bring everyone’s attention to Adah. She suddenly felt like a kid trying to sneak downstairs for a snack while her parents had friends over.

  “We thought maybe you’d only wake up for your girlfriend,” Canto said.

  Adah rubbed her temples and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to reset her brain as quickly as possible so she could deal with the crowd of magical girls and managers in front of her.

  “Why am I being teased first thing in the morning?” she moaned.

  First it was Grace telling her she looked like shit, now it was making a fuss over her and Rika. How about a “good morning” for once?

  “Hard to talk about anything else after seeing that video,” Sheffa said with a chuckle.

  “Not to mention,” Grace said, walking over to Adah, “it’s not morning. Maybe Heartbreak should use a watch after all. You already missed lunch.”

  “The only thing I miss is my bed,” Adah said.

  However, her stomach betrayed her words. She could feel it growling, and apparently everyone else could hear it. All the girls but Rika started laughing—not that her reaction was any better, the way she shook her head with disapproval. Nora gave Adah a polite smile while Grace taunted her with a smug one.

  “This works out nicely,” her manager said. “Since you’re so hungry, why don’t you take everyone on a trip to grab some snacks? Preferably a selection with at least some options suitable for a bunch of magical girls who need to be in peak shape? While you’re gone, Nora and I will set up some proper seating in here so we can play without somebody sitting on the floor.”

  Right, play. That had been the plan. Region 4 didn’t offer a whole lot in the way of entertainment, especially if you weren’t willing to brave the cold to go for a hike. The Apex Vox team insisted on visiting the Last Light here since Adah had traveled to them last time, which left Adah and her team with the dilemma of figuring out what to do.

  An idea that Adah had suggested as a joke ended up striking a chord with the animal-eared girls. Maybe they could just sit around and play games? Mari in particular was thrilled about the prospect.

  Thus, the plan was to pass the afternoon playing whatever board and card games they felt like until dinnertime. Then, Grace and Nora offered to work together on cooking dinner, which all of the magical girls made sure to express their deepest gratitude for.

  And so—not five minutes after waking up—Adah found herself outside, being slapped in the face by an icy wind. At least she was surrounded by good company, she told herself.

  “You really undersold yourself, Adah,” Canto said as the group walked down the empty neighborhood streets. “You sounded great on the verses. Harmonized well with Rika, too.”

  “Thanks,” Adah said, “but anything good I did is just a credit to Rika’s patience. It took me so many tries to get a decent take.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “That’s just the way it goes sometimes,” Rika said, stepping closer and slipping her hand into Adah’s. “As you record more, it’ll get easier. Except for the times where it gets harder.”

  “How encouraging.”

  “Next step is to get all you girls on one song,” Sheffa said. “Then we can start talking about a real collaboration.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Ami said. “Maybe Emi’s got the voice for it, but my singing isn’t something anybody wants to hear.”

  “It’s all bad omens for me, too,” Emi said.

  Sheffa laughed and said, “Well, I wouldn’t force yourselves if you don’t want to, but I wouldn’t overthink it either. The expectations for magical girls still aren’t as high as they are for dedicated musicians—and even a lot of them get by on their image alone. Don’t underestimate how happy your fans would be to hear you on a song or see you in a video.”

  “It’s time for you to build a little bit of ego,” Canto said. “You’re not some random girl anymore—you’re a magical girl. And magical girl fans want to believe in an illusion. If they like you, they’re ready and willing to see you as something special. You just have to get in front of them and let yourself believe you’re an idol. They’ll do the rest of the work in their heads.”

  Mari ran ahead of the group and started walking backwards, facing them all while talking. Her reverse walk looked as natural as her usual. What a bizarre skill.

  “Canto’s got the cynical view of everything,” she said. “You don’t need to think of it like that. You can just do what I do, ‘cause I’m terrible at singing too!”

  “And what’s that?” Rika asked.

  “I focus on the extras: the ab-libs and little cut-in lines, call-and-response, stuff like that,” Mari explained. “That’s all easier for me. The music stops and all I have to do is say something cute or funny like, ‘Take my paw and come with me,’ then the fans go crazy. If you look at our videos, those are always the most replayed parts.”

  “Are you sure they aren’t rewinding there to screenshot the goofy faces you make?” Canto said.

  Mari held up her hands and made one of those goofy faces now. “What’s it matter? That’s still fanservice, and they still love it.”

  “Canto has a point, though,” Adah said. “Even what you’re doing is another fantasy, Mari. It’s give and take, isn’t it? You can get away with saying an embarrassing line like that because the fans embrace it. And they can embrace it because there’s an understanding that you and the other fans won’t judge them for it. There’s like an unspoken agreement between everyone to create an atmosphere that allows for something like that.”

  “A princess and a philosopher, huh?” Sheffa teased. “But it’s probably true. Didn’t you two feel it at the last live show? It’s almost like a leap of faith during some of the cornier parts of the lyrics or choreo. Take your line, Mari. Let’s say the music stops, you talk about your little paws, and then nobody cheers? There’s just a moment of silence before the music kicks back in. Wouldn’t you want to run off the stage?”

  “These paws ain’t little!” Mari shouted back, balling up her fists in front of her. “I guess you’re right, though. Knowing that the fans want to hear it helps me say it with my heart. I wouldn’t be able to if I thought it’d go over poorly.”

  “And they’d probably get self conscious about liking something like that if you didn’t do it at max effort,” Sheffa said. “If it looked like a chore for you or like you were mocking them, they wouldn’t be able to cheer for it even if they enjoyed it.”

  “I suppose I’ve been relying on that give and take all along,” Adah said. “Everything about the way Heartbreak acts only works because the fans want it to work.”

  “The will of humanity,” Canto said.

  Canto had surely meant it as an offhand joke, but it did make Adah think. Was there something in the way magic functioned that relied on that kind of mutual fantasy? Was that what necessitated the FP system, and what empowered a magic user’s spells?

  They were simply idle thoughts, and were soon interrupted by Emi.

  “So I should act like a cat?” she asked.

  She balled up her hands and held them in front of her face, tilting her head ever so slightly. All three members of Apex Vox immediately reached for their pockets and started hunting for their phones.

  “Hold that pose!” Mari shouted. “Hold that pose!”

  “Imagine we put a filter on it,” Canto said. “It’ll be even cuter.”

  “Someone call Nora and tell her we need to add a member!” Sheffa said.

  Right when all three girls had pointed their phone cameras at Emi, Ami stepped in front of her and held out her arms like a barrier. The trio’s view of her sister was completely blocked.

  “Nothing in this world is free,” Ami said. “That’ll be five hundred Credits—each.”

  “I could buy a movie ticket for that price!” Sheffa protested.

  “And popcorn!” Mari added.

  Ami merely shrugged and said, “This is better than a movie, isn’t it?”

  The Apex Vox members turned to each other, their eyes engaged in a silent debate. It looked like they had nearly discovered the flaw in Ami’s plan—that they could pay for one photo and share it between themselves—when Emi dropped her hands and frowned.

  “I’m not a side show,” she said. “It’ll be five thousand.”

  Apparently even a team as successful as Apex Vox couldn’t justify such a steep price for a photo. Besides, they could probably convince Emi to pose like that again the next time she let her guard down.

  “Well, there’s your proof,” Rika said, bringing the conversation back to its original focus. “Your fans would love to see you two in a video regardless of your singing—not that you’re as bad as you think in the first place. Music can’t belong to Adah and me alone, just like modeling can’t belong to you. It doesn’t hurt to have our specialties, but even concert pianists have to learn to pose for photos. We’re going to be overlapping all the time.”

  “It’s the best way to unify our team, like we were talking about,” Adah agreed. “It’ll be the same as our battles: we each have our own way of standing out, but we do it all together.”

  Even while walking, Adah didn’t miss the glance the twins gave each other—a shared look that broke apart just as quickly as it met.