The Aurora Stellaris crackled overhead. Its activity waxed and waned with no rhyme or reason. Clouds gathered across Starlight City as if drawn in by a vacuum. Weather reports adjusted on the fly. Such was life in the capital of magic. Phones beeped with yellow alerts, screens across town displayed warnings. Monster activity.

  People sped up their footsteps and found shelter indoors. The foolhardy listened to rogue radio stations for sighting reports like storm chasers. Rather than seeing what form the monsters of the day took, they wanted to be in a front row seat to a magical girl's battle. They risked their lives, even though most encounters were recorded and viewable through the various corporations' subscription services.

  Raven peered out the coffee shop window and watched the people outside. The Graybricks District was full of buildings from the last two centuries, inhabited by a mix of white and blue-collar workers. The only people about at lunch break were local shop owners, the elderly, and stay-at-home parents with small children. And students skipping school.

  "Hey, you here often?" one such student hit on her. He was maybe sixteen years old, flanked by his three friends. Judging by their modified uniform and spiky light brown hair laden with hairspray, they were delinquents.

  She ignored his clumsy advances and gazed up at the Aurora Stellaris. The hair on the back of her neck was standing up from the magical energy emanating from it on a day like this. In the past, when there were only a handful of magical girls, she would drop everything and head out to patrol the city. Now, she could sit around calmly and listen to a boy embarrass himself in front of his friends.

  "Dude, she's outta your league," one of them said, a taller but skinnier boy than her wannabe suitor.

  "Look at her outfit," another added. "That's some top-shelf shit."

  They talked about Raven as if she couldn't hear them. But she lowered her gaze toward her cup of coffee and played around with the plastic straw, sniffing in amusement. Not one of them seemed to think that she was much older than they were. Being a magical girl affected one's aging differently. Some simply stopped growing while others continued to mature to a point. It seemed that their subconscious affected how they developed.

  In Raven's case, she had stopped after her growth spurt. Her appearance would likely remain like this until the day she died - until she was killed for her deeds. She felt that a magical girl likely wouldn't pass from old age, and not just because of the dangerous lives they led. Such was the power of magic that it could even revive someone after they had turned to ashes.

  "Heh, you think you're so much better than us?" The suitor's tone shifted when he interpreted her sniff as mockery. The combination of her aloof attitude and her expensive outfit seemed to set him off.

  She turned toward him and stared up with her deep black eyes. Seeing this, he swallowed his words audibly. That was not the look of a regular person. He had seen it a few times before, on the news. The mugshots of hardened magitech criminals. But she looked like a girl their age. How hardened could she be?

  Before he could call a bluff, she stood up from her barstool. She was the same height as him with her high heels, but her presence made her appear much larger in his view. She picked up her mostly empty coffee cup and shoved it into his chest. He reflexively caught it when she let go. "Here, get off on this and then go back to school, boy."

  With these parting words, she took up her motorcycle helmet and walked away from the dumbfounded boys. They couldn't muster a single response until she was out the door. Then, their eyes almost popped out of their sockets when she walked over to the Ventari BT-12 parked among the mopeds and bicycles and swung her leg over it. Her skintight leather pants accentuated her bottom as she settled into place and revved the engine, audible even through the window.

  She looked back at them with a smirk, then put on her helmet and drove off. There was no doubt that this encounter would become a core memory for the young man. She needed to give him at least this much service after crushing his courage. Hopefully, he wouldn't develop a weird fixation with women like her, though.

  "What are we going to do with this?"

  "I didn't consider I would meet you when I left home yesterday."

  Raven stood next to her Ventari BT-12 and looked away in embarrassment. Beside her was a young girl wearing the prestigious Saint Adela Institute uniform. A burgundy blazer over the frilly white shirt, completed with a long black skirt and stockings underneath. The striped tie was an indicator that she was in the middle school division.

  "I'll have to call my driver, then," said the girl with a shrug. Her entire demeanor could be summarized with one word: Lazy. Even though she wore her uniform properly, her back was slightly slouched. Messy green hair from undoing her twintails haphazardly. Amber eyes peered at her surroundings with a detached feeling. She was the stereotypical uncaring student of this age.

  A long bag hung from her shoulder - a rifle. Students of the Saint Adela Institute had to pick from a number of traditional sports associated with nobility. They offered riding, fencing, court and ballet dance, archery, and shooting, among many others. It promoted healthy bodies and minds. Unsurprisingly, not many magical girls emerged from its halls over the years.

  "I'm sorry about that. I should have driven home and come in a car," Raven said, touching her palms together in apology.

  "All good. I heard where you went," the girl turned away and pulled out her phone. Raven furrowed her brow and wondered who tattled. Likely Neri. He would get it when she went back to the hideout later.

  The girl with the rifle was Alicia Messier, codenamed Robin. She shared little about herself, but Nightingale vouched for her, so Raven trusted her, too. In fact, the less they knew about each other, the better. Once they reached their common goal, they would return to their own lives.

  "What about my bike?" Raven asked when Alicia finished her call.

  "Send her home. She comes with intelligence, no?" she said flippantly.

  "I didn't set it up. I don't trust them," responded Raven with a glance at her motorcycle. The greeting function alone was already too much for her, and she refused to respond to it. She hated androids, too. The technology had only been in its infancy when she graduated from high school, but something about it didn't sit right with her even then. That feeling hadn't changed in the five years since and only deepened.

  "Then ask Auntie Nightingale to drive her home for you. Anyway, there comes our ride." Alicia gestured at an approaching sedan. The shiny black finish and tinted windows made it stand out more than if it had been painted in garish colors.

  "Auntie...?" Raven's jaw dropped. Nightingale was only two years older than her. What did that make her, then? "Don't ever let her hear you call her that..."

  Alicia ignored her warning and walked toward the automatically opening doors of their ride. Raven quickly wrote a message to Nightingale on her phone and activated her BT-12. It spoke its usual greeting, but then the screen distorted and displayed a white bird in a golden cage: Nightingale's calling card. As always, she was connected to the Thoughtmend Stele and monitoring her communications.

  "Thank you," she said to the motorcycle in passing.

  "No problem." Nightingale's voice emerged from the speakers before the engine came to life. Raven watched it start moving without a rider. This was someone controlling it remotely, so she was fine with that. If the onboard intelligence did that, she would not be able to accept it so easily.

  "Come on, let's go already," Alicia called out to her from inside the car.

  Raven glanced at her departing BT-12 one last time before following her beckoning. The moment she sat down beside Alicia, she noticed that there was no driver. "What did I just say? And you even said you'd call your driver..."

  "Calm down. The onboard intelligence is my driver." Despite being nearly a decade younger, Alicia behaved more like an adult when it came to technology. "Jeeves, take us to the Everleaf Center."

  "You even gave it a name..." Despite not even being that old, Raven felt like the younger generation and the world at large had left her behind.

  The Everleaf Center was a massive department store in the heart of Starlight City. Retail, groceries, boutiques, three separate food courts, an opera, multiple theater stages, a cinema with the two largest screens in the world, and a sports center that offered anything from indoor football to a skating rink. It had facilities for everything.

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  The building itself resembled an oversized stadium, nestled between the skyscrapers of the Aurora District, the city's downtown proper. Unlike the towering but nondescript office buildings in the Glass Hill District in the west, these belonged to corporations with a more public-facing image. Consumer brands, fashion labels, car manufacturers, among many others. Their logos and billboard screens covered the walls, catching the eyes wherever one looked.

  The original Starlight City Billboard Ranking billboard stood on the plaza just outside the Everleaf Center's main entrance. It displayed the current top ten magical girls with pictures and names, and the next twenty in text underneath. Railroad was still listed in thirteenth place. The public would likely get the news in a few days from now, detailing how she had died fighting some immensely powerful monster. There would be no mention of a terrorist threat.

  Alicia had changed her clothes in the car and left behind her uniform and rifle. She wore skinny jeans and an oversized teal hoodie that made her already small frame look even smaller. Her voluminous hair was tied into a single ponytail by threading it through the rear opening of her blue cap. As if a completely different person, she seemed full of energy at the prospect of playing around for the rest of the day.

  "Why didn't you come with your classmates?" Raven wondered as they joined the ranks of the people entering the department store. She looked over her shoulder one last time to peer up at the nearby Ascension Bridge. Although its upper reaches were still under construction, the bottom floors were already in operation, providing exclusive boutiques for the city's wealthier clientele.

  Stepping inside the Everleaf Center was like going through a portal into another world. The busy city soundscape was replaced by the clamor of leisure activities. The droning voices from advertisement screens, the laughter and screams of young children, and the echoes of announcements over the countless speakers created a very different atmosphere. One could find whatever the human heart desired in here, as long as it was something money could buy.

  "Because you're more fun. Anyway, let's grab something to bite, first. What would you like? It's my treat," Alicia responded as if in passing, then quickly moved on to the next topic. She pulled up a map on her phone, a requirement to find one's way in this city within a city.

  "I'm your elder; I should be the one to treat you." Raven grabbed her head through the cap and swiveled her around playfully.

  "Nyaha, but you're poor."

  "I'm not that poor, oi."

  "True, you could afford a BT-12. Although it cost you everything," said the green-haired girl with a smirk.

  "You little..." As always, Alicia knew how to push her buttons.

  "Come on, let's have ramen." She took Raven's hand and pulled her along.

  It was a strange feeling. Going along with the childish demands of a middle school girl didn't make her feel like a responsible adult chaperoning a child, but rather an equal. Whenever she was with Alicia, she felt transported back to her youth, when hanging out with friends after school was the norm. She hadn't really grown up since. Despite attending a corporate-sponsored university course for three years, and then lying low in the criminal underground of Starlight City for another two years, it felt like her time had been stopped on that day they departed the Higashi Girls Academy together for the last time.

  The food court of their choice occupied an entire underground floor. A delicious smell greeted them as they were coming down the escalator. It was the late afternoon, so the shops and stalls were starting to fill up with hungry customers. Alicia followed the map on her phone and found a ramen shop tucked away at the end of a hard-to-find corridor between a large pizza restaurant and a popular fast-food chain. It almost felt like it had been deliberately hidden from view. Not a single person sat in one of the ten available seats despite the time.

  "Welcome!" the middle-aged man in the stall greeted them in a jolly tone as they sat down.

  "A Pork Belly Miso Special with triple the meat!" Alicia ordered immediately without looking at the menu.

  "Have you been here before?" Raven wondered with a dubious look at her companion.

  "No, but I heard on the networks that this was an ultra-secret sleeper hit."

  "If it's on the networks, it can't be that secret..."

  "That's beside the point. Look at the menu already, Big Sis."

  Raven blinked. Did the two-year gap between her and Nightingale mean the difference between a sister and an aunt to her? Sometimes it was hard to understand Alicia's thought processes.

  "A salt ramen with extra greens," she made her choice quickly. The chef slapped the counter with jolly laughter and started to prepare their meal.

  "So, you went to see the red lady, huh?" Alicia suddenly spoke up after a long silence between them.

  "It would be better if we didn't talk about that here," Raven averted her gaze and deflected. Alicia knew not to jeopardize their cover. Nightingale vouched for her professionalism despite her young age. But one never knew who was listening. They were inside a corporation-controlled space. One that had over a dozen magical girls on call, no less.

  "What, because it's about sex?" Alicia leaned in on Raven, her lazy amber eyes harboring a glint she had never seen before. She was at an age when a girl became interested in this topic. But how did she know about that? No, she knew the answer. Neri would doubly get it later.

  "No, it's about our... project," Raven looked toward the narrow corridor leading to this ramen stall. Nobody was there.

  "Don't treat me like a child. We are already bedfellows."

  "Phrasing. Also, you are a child."

  Alicia furrowed her brow and pouted. Then she leaned back and looked aside with a sniff. Raven glanced at the chef, but he was too busy to hear their conversation. She understood why this middle school girl was so interested in her, the same way the boy in the coffee shop had been. No, she was much more than he was. After all, magical girls exuded an unnatural charisma toward other people.

  But their pull was especially strong toward other magical girls.

  Be it a malicious god's cruel idea of a joke, the laws of nature from beyond the veil, or rooted in every affected individual's subconscious, but they couldn't have sexual relations with the opposite gender. Some found out the hard way by going against their newfound desires and lost their powers. Or worse.

  Alicia Messier was an unregistered magical girl. According to Nightingale, she became one a little over a year ago and hid it from everybody. Raven was the only fellow magical girl she could open herself to. Maybe that attraction was born of loneliness more than anything else. To a degree, she felt the same about her current situation.

  "Here you go, customers!" the ramen chef interrupted Raven's thoughts when he slammed the bowls onto the table before them. Hers was a regular portion just as she had ordered. However, Alicia's was more than twice her size, and the glistening pork belly slices were heaped so high that a single wrong move could cause them all to collapse.

  "Thank you!" Alicia's eyes were glittering at the sight. She picked up her chopsticks and dug right in. Raven wondered where she would fit all of that. Surely, that bowl's contents were almost a tenth of the petite girl's body weight.

  Then again, she knew exactly where it all went for herself. Her stomach was like a furnace. No matter what she ate, it was all converted into magical energy rather than the biological processes humans experienced. And that magical energy, in turn, sustained her body. She first realized that fact after dying and reviving, when she gained absolute control over her magic. Maybe she could join eating contests for some extra cash after depleting some of her magical energy beforehand.

  With such idle thoughts, she started eating under the joyful gaze of the chef.

  "After a good meal, it's off to the arcades!" Alicia declared, pulling Raven along by her hand again. Even though she had eaten less than half the petite girl's portion, she felt it keenly in her stomach. Her furnace wasn't working as much as she wanted it to since she hadn't used much magical energy today.

  And as expected, she had not allowed Raven to pay for the meal and transferred the funds directly from her phone.

  They left the food court behind and rode the escalators up seven floors to the arcade and game center. Since it was dinner time now, there were far fewer people around. The usual din of button mashing, coins clattering, and the beeping of games was at a more tolerable level. Still, plenty of students were around, wasting their pocket money on the arcades and UFO catchers.

  "Hey, let's play Road Warriors," Alicia pointed at an arcade machine with a bench seat for two people.

  "I've never seen this one before." Raven looked at the demo playing on the split screen: Two heavily modified pickup trucks driving on a dusty race track, with one driver and one character standing on the cargo bed each. When they approached each other, the people riding in the back started fighting with their melee weapons.

  "It's fun, I promise!" With these words, she put in the necessary coins to start the game and plopped down on the bench. Raven sat down next to her and looked at the controls. She wasn't that old that she didn't know how to use these. Back in the day, when she still had the time and friends to go to an arcade, she would always come out on top of the others. "But I won't hold back, Big Sis."

  After picking their cars and fighters, the game began like any regular race. But when the starting signal rang out, a shot from a rusty anti-aircraft cannon, the pickup trucks immediately swerved to ram into each other instead of driving forward. Fights broke out all around the two players. Raven quickly grasped the control scheme and fought off her assailant, kicking him off his car. Meanwhile, Alicia was already across the start line, leaving the others in the dust.

  With half the participants eliminated, the race could truly begin. Raven rammed and fought her way to second place and gained on Alicia's slower but stronger truck and fighter picks. Soon, they came neck to neck, trying to push each other out of the curves. Their fighters seemed evenly matched, but Alicia performed a combo during a car jump, knocking Raven out once and for all.

  "Victory!" Alicia jumped up and raised her arms high. Then she turned to Raven with a smug face. "Now, for my reward."

  "Huh, we didn't agree on anything like that?" she said with a frown. But then she relented and smiled wryly. As the adult, she would gladly play along and make her happy. "Alright, what do you want?"

  "Here," Alicia put a knee on the bench and leaned in on Raven. She closed her eyes and puckered her lips. A kiss.

  "You're ten years too early to ask me for that." Raven covered her mouth with her palm and pushed her away.

  "No fair, you agreed just now."

  "I never said that it would be whatever you wanted. Choose something else."

  "Then let's go to a hotel-"

  "No."

  "Ugh." Alicia pouted. She had been acting like this toward her whenever they met, but today she came on especially strongly.

  "Come on, I want revenge for that. Let's go again," Raven turned to the arcade machine and put in a few coins for another round. But before she could press the play button, Alicia jumped at her. The bench flipped from her added weight, and they tumbled to the ground together.

  "Stop treating me like a kid." Amber eyes glistening with tears looked down at her. Raven could have easily lifted the petite girl off her and stood up, but she only met her gaze. This was where she would hold true to her principles as an adult and stop her advances once and for all.

  "Outta the way," an annoyed female voice came from above them. They looked up to find a girl with black hair and blonde dyed tips tied into a pineapple style, glaring down at them with violet eyes. Her right eyebrow, nose, lips, and ears were all pierced. She wore a spiked collar, a metal band shirt, and torn jeans. Plateau boots with steel caps completed her look. "Whatcha gawkin' at?"

  The girl's expression grew even more annoyed when Raven and Alicia stared at her with their eyes widened, not moving as she had demanded. This punk girl slash delinquent was none other than Ronja Ikonen, also known as the magical girl of metal music, Riot Rhapsody.