Adah floated down to where the exposed Cruelty core rested with her scythe in hand. The three members of Fifty Flip slowly closed in around her as she approached—most likely to get a better look at Beleth’s Bloodletter and how it consumed the core, but they made Adah’s blood run cold anyway. Weren’t they getting a little too close when Adah hadn’t even formally introduced herself?

  Putting aside the bizarre behavior of the trio, this core was essentially a show of hospitality or offering of friendship. It was a sign of their good intentions, wasn’t it? Maybe under normal circumstances, Adah would find a way to turn down such a gift politely, but a Cruelty’s core wasn’t something that anyone else would have much use for. Besides, she didn’t know how the members of Fifty Flip would react if she did reject their offer, and she wasn’t interested in starting off on the wrong foot when it came to such… strong personalities.

  Adah stabbed the smoky blade of her scythe into the core, consuming its energy as she had so many times before. Hyperia, Elegia, and Dystopia all watched the essence flow from the core into the scythe with wide eyes. Soon after, the puddle of Cruelty matter—Elegia’s would-be meal—vanished from this world.

  Perhaps in response to how close the Fifty Flip members had gotten to their captain, the rest of Adah’s teammates joined her on the ground.

  “Do you really eat Cruelties?” Ami asked as she touched down. “Like, with your mouth?”

  Elegia turned around to face the twin, covering her mouth with a hand as she laughed.

  “From time to time,” she answered as if Ami had asked her if she likes to watch movies in the theater.

  “It doesn’t make you sick?” Emi asked.

  “The first few times, it came back up,” Elegia said with a smile, “but you would be amazed what the human body can get accustomed to.”

  “But why?”

  Elegia laughed in the same way again and said, “I just can’t help myself.”

  Neither twin said anything in response to that, but Adah could tell from the looks on their faces what they were thinking. There must be something seriously wrong with your human instincts if you can’t stop yourself from eating Cruelty gore. Adah was tempted to ask Elegia what kind of food she normally ate, but before she could decide whether to pursue that line of questioning, Hyperia’s sing-songy voice called out.

  “Lyrika, Lyrika!” she shouted despite, yet again, being only a few feet from Rika. “What did you think of my grand finale? This chubby guy ruined it by squirming around, but it was beautiful, right? You loved it, right? You’re inspired, right?”

  The girl, who was even tinier than Adah, looked up at her idol and smiled with a purity that didn’t match the intensity of her words at all. She really was like a pink chipmunk, only she was turning out to be a rabid one. As the girl leaned toward her, Rika reflexively leaned back.

  “It sure was impressive,” Rika said. “I was surprised you could cast it so many times in a row.”

  “I’m impressive, right?” Hyperia said, misinterpreting Rika’s words but letting her smile shine all the same. “It takes a lot of effort though, so I hate when they don’t die right away. I can’t believe I had to get all sweaty over a stupid, fat mole.”

  No one on the Last Light was interested in correcting Hyperia’s understanding of what kind of Cruelty this was, nor in pointing out that she could have stopped after the first couple of stomps. As strange as Elegia’s diet was, Hyperia was the Fifty Flip member who seemed most unhinged.

  By contrast, the member who put on the most aggressive air seemed to be the calmest.

  Dystopia faced Adah, held out her hand, and said, “I go by Dystopia, but you can call me Dani.”

  Adah shook Dystopia’s hand and said, “Twilight Heartbreak, but Adah’s fine.”

  Elegia came up behind Dystopia and stuck her own hand through the gap between the girl’s arm and body. Dystopia leaped away as soon as she realized what was happening.

  “Oh, me next,” the eldest member said. “Elegia Flip, also known as Helena.”

  Now that the ball was rolling, all of the magical girls introduced themselves to each other until everyone had shaken everyone else’s hand and shared both their aliases and real names.

  At the end of it all, the two teams stood facing each other, with the exception of Hyperia. The girl stayed right by Rika’s side, bouncing up and down with such giddiness that you wouldn’t think she’d just exhausted herself with all that rapid spellcasting. She stared up at Rika, looking eerily like she was planning how to kidnap her idol before the day was over.

  For the sake of their potential alliance, it might have been better to let the issue of Hyperia’s obsession lay dormant, but Adah suspected it’d come to a boiling point sooner or later. Rika had no idea how to handle the ball of energy before her, only occasionally looking down at Hyperia with an awkward smile before glancing off at nothing again. To those outside of their team, Adah and Rika’s relationship remained an unconfirmed (if likely) rumor, but Adah decided to make things clear to Hyperia.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She came up beside Rika and grabbed her hand, pulling her close so that they were hip-to-hip and she could wrap herself fully around Rika’s arm. If something like this would be a problem, it was better to deal with it now than to wait until Hyperia’s feelings spiraled out of control.

  Yet, upon seeing Adah cling to Rika, Hyperia only started bouncing faster. Her pink cheeks turned red and her eyes widened. It was like she was a dog who had gone from hearing the word “treat” to seeing the physical treat itself.

  So that’s how it was. That, Adah realized, could be even more troublesome.

  “Our captain seems indisposed,” Dystopia said as Hyperia remained stuck in a bouncing loop. “Why don’t the rest of us get down to business? Why did the four of you come here today? I’m guessing Sammy didn’t win a meet-and-greet contest.”

  Dystopia looked Adah dead in the eyes. Despite her skimpy outfit, the cold early winter air didn’t seem to bother her at all. Elegia stood beside her, smiling at Adah.

  “You know about the two B-Ranks we took on, I’m assuming,” Adah said. “One that went well and one that didn’t. The one that didn’t has led the region to a sort of crossroads. The question is: who is going to lead us, and down which path?”

  In all of these discussions—whether with teams she was hoping to recruit or even with those in the government—Adah needed to think of the opportunity from the other side’s perspective. Ketzia was right: these teams may like the Last Light, but if they felt as strongly about Thibault, there’d be no need for these conversations in the first place. The best way to get her foot in the door with her potential allies was to acknowledge what their relationship with him actually was.

  Or the lack thereof.

  “You’ve never met Secretary Thibault, have you?” she asked. “I’m fairly certain you haven’t. When we were in your shoes, he had no interest in getting to know us, nevermind helping us out. Not that you’d want to attract his attention anyway. Look at what happened to DreamRise and the Fogstorm Knight.”

  “How much of that is true?” Dystopia asked. “We saw your interview.”

  “All of it,” Adah said, straight-faced. “Ekki will confirm it all once he wakes up. Besides, if it wasn’t true, why would the Department of Magic sweep it under the rug so fast?”

  Dystopia looked to Elegia, who nodded slowly in response. Good, their minds were on the right track. Even if it hadn’t involved them, Adah’s feud with Thibault would’ve piqued their interest. They may not have met him, but Thibault was supposed to be their Secretary as well. It was easy to trust that the Department had everything under control when you only saw its operations from a distance. Meeting Adah in person, knowing that she had once been as uninvolved as they were, would cause Fifty Flip to start considering what might happen once they were involved.

  The question to answer now was…

  “What does this have to do with our team?” Elegia asked. “Surely you didn’t come here just to confirm a rumor.”

  “We came here to figure out if all this does have something to do with your team,” Adah said. “Call it curiosity. I’m interesting in learning if our teams have something in common. If we do, maybe we can take the same turn at that crossroads and help each other walk the same path. On that note, why did you all become magical girls?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Dystopia spat back almost immediately.

  Elegia placed a hand on her teammate’s shoulder and said, “Now, now, Dani. You don’t have to answer, but it’s a normal question for one magical girl to ask another.”

  Dystopia shrugged off Elegia’s hand and turned to the side.

  From that response, it seemed the girl wasn’t angry at Adah. It was her reason that had brought those feelings out. It was a personal reason, something she didn’t like to think about. Dystopia was around Adah’s age, which meant she was old enough to have lived through a period when Cruelties posed a greater threat to humanity. Putting all that together, most likely…

  “I don’t mind answering your question,” Elegia interrupted Adah’s thoughts. “You must think I’m strange, after all. I became a magical girl so late.”

  “Yeah, I guess there’s that, too,” Ami said.

  Elegia simply continued smiling as if she didn’t understand.

  “Magic, mascots, Cruelties,” she continued, “they’re all so lovely, aren’t they? It’s like a fairy tale. With the power of magic, anyone can fight monsters and become a hero. I used to watch magical girls fight Cruelties and think how adorable all the variants looked, how fun it must be to kill them. But I never thought someone like me could be a part of it. I have a weak constitution, you see. I thought such violence must be out of reach for me.”

  Elegia said all of this in the same soothing tone she always spoke in. This must have been what it felt like to run into the killer in a slasher film.

  “Believe it or not,” Elegia went on, “it was my dear little Hyperia who convinced me I could become a magical girl. When she told me she was going to chase after her dream, I started to believe I could reach mine as well. If we worked hard together, nothing could stop us.”

  “Wait,” Rika said, glancing down at the pink blob of energy in front of her, “are you her mother?”

  Elegia giggled and Hyperia shook her head furiously back and forth.

  “No way!” the girl yelled. “She was just my history teacher.”

  She used to be a teacher, huh… That school’s hiring practices could do with a thorough investigation.

  “What about you then, Sam?” Adah asked the youngest member of Fifty Flip. “What’s the dream you’re chasing?”

  Hyperia at last turned away from Rika to face Adah. She stuck both her thumbs up and pressed them against her cheeks while her eyes squeezed to a squint. This was something like a signature pose for her, as Adah had discovered while looking through the girl’s social media.

  “I’m going to be the cutest girl in the world!” she declared.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, magical girls are the cutest kind of girl, right?” Hyperia said. “And who’s going to be the cutest magical girl of all time?”

  “I’m not sure,” Adah said.

  “The one who destroys the Cruelties for good, obviously! Her cuteness is going to be times a million because she’ll be the one who got rid of all these gross monsters. The cutest girl in the world is the girl who the most people love, right? And who wouldn’t love the girl who destroyed the Cruelties?”

  Somehow, her mode of thinking was only half as warped as her former teacher’s.

  “So that’s what binds you as teammates?” Adah said. “You all want to kill Cruelties more than anything?”

  Dystopia gave a stern nod, still unwilling to say anything more about her own motivations. Beside her, Elegia smiled wide and laced her fingers together in front of her chest.

  Last, but not least, Hyperia threw an arm toward the sky and yelled, “All of them!”

  It wasn’t how she’d expected the conversation to go—not in the slightest—but Adah’s plan may have worked out anyway. These three magical girls had every reason to join Adah’s alliance.

  After all, they all shared the same goal.

  “Then,” Adah began, “I have a proposal I think you’d like to hear.”