“More, more, more!” Ami yelled.

  The watery shield of her [Aspis Meniscus] was already full of so many magic stars that it glowed with a blinding white light. Adah wasn’t sure how Ami could see anything with all of that light in her face, but she primed yet another [Sparkling Strike] and added another star to Ami’s collection.

  This was the natural evolution of the spell-catching technique Ami had developed during their training camp. Smacking a Cruelty with one suspended spell was neat, but building up a stockpile of spells could turn her shield into a devastating all-out attack. All those spells jam-packed into the shield made up the “payload” Ami had been alluding to.

  “I think we should call it there,” Adah said. “I don’t want to see what would happen if you accidentally drop the shield.”

  “Bah, I’m fine,” Ami said. “Rika put twice as many lasers in last time. But if it makes ya feel better, I’ll get to work. Just don’t blink!”

  With that, Ami flew out toward the Cruelty. She had grown so comfortable with this technique that she could almost maintain her top speed even while carrying so many spells. As their flight over here had proved, Ami could still outpace Adah with ease despite the latter’s training. Whether it was her natural athleticism or some method of movement she had figured out, Ami remained the fastest member on their team. The only one who came close was her own sister, but lately even Emi would fall behind once Ami got in the zone.

  Adah was curious how Ami would fare against the rabbit-eared Sheffa and her speed-based magic. Maybe one day Sunbright and Apex Vox would wind up in another competition together.

  But today, Ami’s only competition was the water strider Cruelty. Adah positioned herself above the monster in case her teammate needed support, though she doubted Ami would ever ask for it. She had said she wanted to show off, after all.

  Ami didn’t bother trying to conceal her approach—she flew straight at the front of the Cruelty with a roaring battle cry. The water strider paused its fishing to observe the very bright, very loud object flying in its direction. Sensing this new nuisance probably wasn’t a friend, the Cruelty moved to evade Ami’s attack. It started to skate backward as effortlessly as it had moved downriver, raising its front legs out of the water and into the air. As Ami got close, the monster stabbed its claws forward, alternating between striking with each limb.

  Ami dodged each of these thrusts while sacrificing none of her forward momentum. She rolled out of the way of the strider’s left limb, then ducked below the attack from its right. She zipped from side to side in a blur, leaving the monster to claw at nothing but empty air. The movements looked like a dance that Ami had choreographed, incorporating the Cruelty’s every attack as her partner. She responded so fast—almost before each attack came—that it reminded Adah of how Ketzia had predicted the frog Cruelty’s movement.

  Though, Ami had never fought one of these water striders before. She was reading its attacks on the fly and staying ahead of it through sheer intuition. Forget feeling fast, Ami was locked in on all levels. She moved without fear or hesitation, and steadily closed the distance to the Cruelty’s body.

  No matter how it changed the course of its gliding, or which direction it rotated, or how fast it stabbed at Ami’s afterimage, the monster could do nothing to halt its impending doom.

  All the while, Ami yelled at the beast, taunting it much like she had taunted Adah on their flight here.

  “C’mon you bug-eyed bastard!” she screamed. “My sister punches faster than this! If you’re this much slower than her, you could at least try to be cuter!”

  Adah had learned long ago that all of Ami’s shit-talking and yelling was for no one’s benefit but her own. She’d do it even if no one else was around, even if—like now—her opponent couldn’t understand her. For her, it was a natural part of fighting. It was something she couldn’t help, like bobbing her head to a catchy beat.

  If they ever faced off against other magical girls again, Adah wouldn’t make the same mistake of sticking Ami somewhere she couldn’t apply that verbal pressure.

  In today’s battle, Ami had just about sealed the deal. She was right in the bug’s face now, dodging its futile jabs as she searched for the best angle to strike the finishing blow. When she found it, she rocketed forward as if leaping off a trampoline and gunned straight toward the Cruelty’s body. The monster spun around on the river’s surface like a top, desperately trying to confuse Ami, but the girl was far too focused to fall for that. She sneaked beneath the monster’s front limbs and smashed her shield against its torso in one fluid, swooping motion.

  The dozen or more stars Adah had stuck in Ami’s shield exploded in a white flash that outshone the sun. Adah had to turn away and shield her eyes, and she felt a rush of heat blast past her from all the energy the spells expended. When she turned back to see what damage Ami had done, the water strider had vanished entirely. The explosion had annihilated it, core and all.

  Adah couldn’t find Ami either, but she heard her loud and clear. The girl’s voice came through a magic channel to Adah’s ears, hooting and hollering like the cowgirl she was at heart. Adah soon spotted her far off to the left of where the Cruelty had been, likely propelled away by the force of the explosion.

  “Nice job,” Adah said. “You weren’t kidding about feeling fast today.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t leave any scraps for you!” Ami said.

  “Beleth can go a day without eating, I’m willing to bet.”

  Ami chuckled as she regrouped with Adah near the park walkway.

  “Don’t go acting like that weapon’s a pet,” she said. “You’ve already got one wannabe dog in Izzy.”

  The force of the blast must have splashed up a bunch of river water as well; Ami’s hair was completely soaked. She shook her head back and forth as she rubbed her hands through her hair in an attempt to dry it out.

  “Sometimes it feels like I have two,” Adah said.

  “Huh? You say something?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Their banter was interrupted by a pair of children’s voices from below. The two boys Adah had seen earlier had climbed down from the moose statue and ran over to a spot on the walkway below where the girls had regrouped. They jumped up and down, waving to the magical girls above them.

  This was another development resulting from the IndieMagie. It had happened to Adah twice before already: fans or other bystanders would call out to her and her teammates after a mission, sometimes wanting to take pictures together and sometimes just wanting to say hello. People throughout the region had begun to recognize them—random people, not just magical girl diehards. Those types mostly hung out online anyway.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  These were experiences Adah was still getting used to. After all, her main interactions with the public in the past had included being recorded while attacking her mascot and then giving Seb the broken heel off her shoe. Still, being treated like a local celebrity was exciting, even if certain fans made… odd requests of her.

  She hadn’t yet slapped any of the fans who had asked her to, but she was getting close. She wouldn’t be holding back when she eventually did go through with it, though. She needed to make an example of the lucky fan. It was important to maintain appropriate boundaries, after all.

  However, the younger fans were almost more difficult to handle. Back when she was Sparkling Starbloom, Adah had always hoped to build a fanbase of kids and to appeal to them the same way Pureheart Chu had inspired her. As Twilight Heartbreak, the dynamic between herself and kids was a bit more complicated. She didn’t want to show her usual mean and standoffish attitude around them, but she wasn’t sure what they wanted instead. Sometimes they just wanted to talk about how pretty her costume was—which she didn’t mind at all—but the ones who just liked watching her fight were another story.

  That’s why she was glad to have Ami with her today.

  She and Ami touched down on the walkway near the boys who had waved to them, and the kids immediately ran over. On instinct, Adah almost crouched down to be at the same height as the boys, but stopped herself as she realized that wasn’t a very Heartbreak thing to do. Maybe kids their age would find being treated like that patronizing, anyway. They looked to be about ten years old, and she really wasn’t sure when kids wanted to be treated like adults nowadays.

  In the end, Ami showed her that she was most definitely overthinking the whole interaction.

  “What’s up!” Ami said, greeting the kids like they were old friends. She stuck a fist out to each of them, and they both bumped knuckles with her.

  “That was so cool!” one of the boys said. His black hair was long enough to fall over his ears, and he wore glasses with lenses wide enough to cover half his face.

  “You were all like—vroom, whip, wham, BOOM!” added the other, who reenacted Ami’s performance by swinging his arms through the air. Despite the colder weather, he was wearing a tank top. He’d get along well with Ketzia, surely.

  Ami laughed, then swung her own arm to smack Adah on the back.

  “The boom was thanks to my teammate here,” she said. “She’s got the power, and I’ve got the brains and speed.”

  The boys gave Adah much the same reaction they had Ami, though this time the one in the tank top upgraded his description of the magic blast to “KABOOM.” As they spoke to her, their gazes gradually made their way to the top of her head, where her horn ornaments rested.

  “Are those real?” the boy in glasses asked.

  Adah smiled. This was a question she was ready to respond to.

  “Want to find out?” she asked, tilting her head down toward the boys.

  The kids looked at each other, then back at Adah’s head. The one in the tank top gulped and started to reach an hand up toward her.

  “Careful,” Ami said, a bit louder than she needed to. She placed a hand on each boy’s shoulder and quieted her voice to a whisper. “I’ve seen what happens to people who touch her horns. They get turned into pigs!”

  Apparently Izzy had been listening in on this conversation, as he popped out of thin air by Adah’s side right on cue.

  “And you can never turn back,” he said.

  The boys yelped and nearly jumped into the air upon Izzy’s appearance. Thankfully, though, they didn’t break into tears. They just stared at him wide-eyed for a second before Ami yelled, “Run!” and led them off on a charge down the walkway. Pretty soon, their frantic escape turned into a game of tag, with both boys trying to catch up with Ami as she flew circles around them. Someone had certainly gained two lifelong fans today.

  “You see?” Izzy said to Adah. “There are advantages to my regal form.”

  “We need to buy you a dictionary,” Adah said. “But I have to admit your stubbornness probably helped us get here. That video of me freaking out wouldn’t have gotten the same traction if you were a cute cat or bunny.”

  Or an owl with pristine white feathers.

  That was one of the mascots she had seen with that trio of magical girls earlier. Even now, those girls were still hanging out a short distance down the walkway. The girl with the owl mascot was talking on the phone while the other two stood around looking just as bored as before.

  Adah decided to head over and greet her curious colleagues.

  As she walked closer, the two bored girls spotted her and watched her approach with muted expressions. Adah didn’t recognize either of the girls, which meant they probably weren’t part of a local team. Or a particularly popular team from another region, for that matter.

  They were dressed as casually as they would be to go see a movie, and the only aspect of their appearance that gave any hint that they were magical girls was that they had their mascots with them. If not for the two neon-colored birds that hovered by their sides, they could have passed for average college students. One of the birds glowed bright green like a barrel of radioactive waste in a cartoon, while the other could only be described as nightclub blue.

  Adah was suddenly glad to have a pig by her side instead.

  Neither girl said anything to Adah, even as she came to stop right in front of them. The girl on the phone took notice of her now, though, and said a curt goodbye to whoever she was talking to. The other girls watched her as she stepped between them and Adah. She must have been their captain.

  “Did you enjoy the show?” Adah asked.

  The captain squinted and shoved her hands in her jean pockets.

  “What do you want me to say?” she said. “‘Good job?’”

  “I’m just wondering why you stuck around—you and your mascots. I guess we were just that interesting?”

  “It’s not like we want to be here,” their captain said. “It was bad enough being sent off on these jobs before, but now we’re just supposed to stand around and watch you? It’s humiliating.”

  “If you don’t want to be here, then go home,” Adah said.

  “It’s not by choice,” the girl with the radioactive-looking bird said. “This is what we got stuck with instead of an actual mission. It’s a total bore.”

  “What are you talking about?” Adah asked. “What do you mean you got stuck with it?”

  The trio conferred with each other via a series of glances. The girl with the blue bird shrugged, which was enough of an agreement for her captain to start venting.

  “Our agency told us to go watch your team,” she said in a tone like she was complaining about a customer she was forced to serve. “We’re supposed to wait around, and if you screw up, then we can come in and clean up the job. It’s like we’re a reserve team for an agency we don’t even belong to.”

  “Why would they…”

  Adah let her words trail off as her brain answered her own question for her. She just needed to confirm something first.

  “What agency are you with?” she asked the girls.

  “Iconderella,” they said.

  A Region 3 agency—that added up. If Adah recognized their agency but not their team, that must have meant they weren’t their agency’s front-team. They would have been a second string group, reserves that got called on to do jobs the agency’s stars couldn’t be bothered with. Jobs like taking on another region’s C-Rank missions.

  Now that Secretary Thibault had blocked any outside regions from accepting local C-Ranks, a team like this was left without work. And their agency had lost a steady stream of bonus revenue. Sending these girls here to watch Sunbright fight was indeed a message—just not from the girls themselves. It was a message from the other regions.

  As soon as you screw up, we’ll remind you why you relied on us in the first place.

  If one of these teams ever had to step in to help Sunbright or DreamRise, Thibault’s plan would crumble under public pressure. It’d be indisputable evidence that local teams weren’t enough on their own to handle the volume or power of all the C-Ranks that threatened the region. Thibault would be forced to reopen these jobs to interregional teams once more, otherwise he'd look like he was risking the safety of the region.

  So it wasn’t just Adah who was trying to force his hand. Several industry players had a stake in the outcome of his plan, in one direction or the other. Although, the larger the pot grew, the more chips Adah and her team could snatch for themselves.

  “Look,” the captain interrupted her thoughts, “we're not trying to start anything. We just want to go home. If you want to fight with someone, go find our manager. It’s obvious he doesn’t give a shit about us anyway.”

  “Good luck with daycare,” the girl with the green bird said, nodding her head in a direction behind Adah.

  Back near the stone statues, Ami was still playing tag with the kids from earlier. It looked like flying had gotten too easy for her, so now she was running away from them on foot.

  “See you soon, I guess,” the trio’s captain said with a lazy shrug.

  With that, the girls walked down the park path and out of sight.