Red and blue flashed across the Raytronics Corporation logo. The bright sunrise peeking out from between the nearby skyscrapers reflected off the glass exterior, blackened by descending ashes. It illuminated the field of debris strewn across the premises. The sound of hovercars buzzing overhead drowned out the voices of police and rescue workers.

  A clear morning dawned on the Raytronics Financial Center's extinguished blaze. As the firefighters exited the building and gave the go-ahead, investigators entered the lobby. Bullet holes, broken military-grade robots, and dismembered security guards, all covered under tarps, told a story the media would not get.

  "What is that little girl doing here?" asked a young SLPD officer with a frown. His partner followed his gaze. A brown-haired girl in a gray trench coat, wearing a soft-brimmed hat of the same color, walked among the destruction. Underneath her coat peeked out the skirt of a public middle school uniform.

  "You're new here, so you haven't met her," said the older officer. He nodded when she glanced in his direction, but she didn't return the greeting. "That's Elizabeth 'Betty' Cline, also known as Sweet Cipher."

  "That's her?!" the younger man blurted out. He quickly covered his mouth, but the girl in question ignored him and peered down at the crime scene. In a whisper, he continued, "I don't usually pay attention to the magical girls, so I don't know what they look like. But I thought she would at least be older."

  "She's what I would call an old soul. If you ever talked to her, you would understand that magic can't be neatly quantified and packaged," the old officer explained.

  Betty put on a pair of white latex gloves and lifted one of the tarps. Under it was the headless body of a security guard. A subcontractor rather than the company's usual staff. The patch on his shoulder read BSS - Blackpoint Security Solutions. This was a Druzhina, the elite among the elite, even in Starlight City. And he had been decapitated without a single other wound on his body.

  She looked at the two pieces of a thick ballistic shield lying next to another tarp. A single clean cut. The ground was strewn with bullet casings. Blood only next to the bodies. No protracted fight, quick and efficient work. Even the strongest magitech-enhanced criminal would have trouble fighting a security detail like this.

  But this was done by a single individual. Betty lifted the brim of her hat and peered up at a security camera pointed directly at her. She had already been told that the feed had cut out for the entire duration of the attack. One assailant with hacking support. Also, a crack of thunder on a cloudless sky preceded the hovercar crashing on the roof. A shooter with an anti-materiel rifle, if the testimony of nearby pedestrians could be believed.

  This was not a random terrorist attack, but a surgical strike of the highest level.

  Betty walked to the elevators, where the forensics team was dusting surfaces. She followed a trail of the slightest magical residue that even the most sensitive magitech detectors in existence would miss - footprints. A magic circle lay over her ocular lens, something she had to practice for a long time to do without transforming. It allowed her to do the job of a full crime scene investigation crew all by herself, without anybody even knowing what she saw.

  No hints of any fingerprints on the buttons outside and inside the cabin. The hacker had full control over the entire building. Betty rode the elevator up to the top floor. She glowered at her reflection in the mirror, mulling over all the details she had gathered so far. The target of this attack was clear, but the methods had been questionable. And the motive? That was the biggest mystery.

  The elevator chime announced her arrival in the penthouse office space. When the door opened, the stench of wet ashes tickled her nostrils. Water dripped from the ceiling, pooling in the tiniest depressions in the floor. The carpet that used to cover the ground had burned away. Piles of charred remains in the hallway hinted at human bodies. Pieces of ballistic shields and melted guns lay beside them. More security. Equally ineffective as those in the lobby.

  The magical residue in this area was off the charts. It could not be explained by the fuel of a hovercar igniting and exploding. If that had caused the fire, it would have dissipated already. The fire itself had been started by magical rather than physical processes. There were a number of ways for that to have happened. Judgment had to be reserved for now.

  She walked past some SLPD detectives investigating the crime scene. The wreck of the hovercar on the landing platform outside was still steaming, visible through the charred and broken windows. It wouldn't take the police long to realize that the fire wasn't started by that. But would they find out what Betty had discovered?

  The hallway to the left was brimming with magical residue. A veritable cloud of it rose from one carbonized body. Betty furrowed her brow. She had never seen anything like this before. But underneath the soot was the clear outline of an elongated object. She dug her gloved fingers into the ashes and touched something metallic. With a slight effort, she pulled it free and found a charred sledgehammer.

  Her eyes widened in realization. The body next to her belonged to a magical girl. Railroad, ranked thirteen on the Starlight City Billboards. A powerhouse only hampered by her limited external magic. If she could do more than enhance her strength, she could perhaps have broken into the top ten. But now, she was dead, charred beyond recognition. That was why this magical residue was unfamiliar. She had never seen one of her kind dying with their transformation still on.

  The intruder could only have been another magical girl.

  Betty placed the hammer back where she found it and continued. The police would realize this, too. And it would send them into a panic. A rogue magical girl was like a hijacked main battle tank. Even Starlight City's finest were not equipped to deal with a weapon of war. The corporate magical girls would be mobilized to hunt this one down.

  She sniffed. As she walked through the ruins of the penthouse office space, her mind swirled with the possibilities. There were over five hundred magical girls today, all of whom were signed with a corporation or law enforcement - except for herself. Over forty among them had powers related to fire. But only three could have killed Railroad, even when accounting for a sneak attack.

  The motive was still missing. Whether David Song, the CEO of Raytronics Corporation, was dead or alive would be a determining factor, though. For now, he was considered missing. Given the fact that the crime scene had only been opened fifteen minutes ago, that seemed like a premature conclusion. He could be among the carbonized remains on this floor.

  But Betty understood where that statement had come from. Among the soot-covered remains of the meeting room stood a young girl in pure white. Straight blonde hair reaching all the way to her waist, tied back with a glittering tiara, long gloves reaching over her elbows, and a tight-fitting dress with feathered shoulder attachments and silver threads woven into its surface in an elaborate pattern. A skirt almost trailing on the floor with feathers adorning its hem, parted in the front, revealing slender legs in white stockings fastened with a garter belt. A winged baton with a heart-shaped outer ring and a golden heart on the inside rested in both her hands.

  She turned toward Betty with a tilt of her head. Pale blue eyes stared at her, devoid of all emotions. It made the smile on her picture-perfect lips disturbing rather than charming. She was innocence incarnate, an empty shell of a person. Ranked first on the Starlight City Billboards and signed with Starlight Enterprises. The most powerful magical girl in existence, White Wish.

  "Have you found anything?" the girl in white asked with a bell-like voice. Officially, she was only eleven years old. That knowledge created a mismatch with her wedding dress-like outfit. However, since a magical girl's transformation was not chosen by anybody else but their own subconscious, one was left to wonder what went on behind those inscrutable eyes. Nothing was known about her personal life, a secret her sponsor kept more secure than even their weapons programs.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Nothing you haven't, I presume," responded Betty with a glance around the blackened room. Among the ashes and rubble, White Wish was glowing with the radiance of an angel. And she looked just as detached as one. Her winged high heels were floating a few millimeters above anything she stepped on, an unconscious application of her ability to fly. Nothing would stain her purity.

  "A shame," she said with a downcast gaze. But then her eyes flicked up to fixate on Betty's. The pale blue irises seemed to draw her in, and the world around her faded away. "Still, you are Sweet Cipher, ace detective. You will get to the bottom of this, right?"

  Betty's voice was stuck in her throat. How could a person be so pure and so sinister at the same time? Maybe she was projecting her own insecurities and tainted heart on this girl before her. But she could never get used to her presence whenever they met. She wondered how other magical girls felt about her.

  "I have seen enough. Truly, a tragedy," White Wish didn't wait for an answer and said to nobody in particular. With one last glance around, she walked toward the broken window with graceful steps, then floated outside like a feather on the breeze. Once she was clear of the building, she shot away faster than the eye could follow, generating a massive sonic boom in her wake.

  Staring in the direction she had disappeared, Betty was left wondering if this was a warning from the corporations - or even the godfather of Starlight City himself. As the only independent magical girl and investigator left in Starlight City, she always had a target on her back. The only reason she had yet to be eliminated was that her face could be seen on the billboard rankings among the most famous magical girls, sitting squarely in the ninth place for the last year straight.

  "Heh," Betty made, wiping a drop of sweat from her cheek with her sleeve. That was only a challenge to her. She would not let herself get intimidated into hiding whatever this situation was from the world. "You can bet your pretty little head that I'm going to get to the bottom of this, princess."

  She pulled her hat deeper into her face and turned around to leave. But then she froze and stared with her eyes widened. Only when viewed from this side could she see a blossoming pattern of magical residue. A burst of energy, strong enough to affect physical matter on an atomic level. It had been shot into the walls and ceiling like a gamma ray burst from outer space.

  An especially powerful magical girl had transformed here. Betty looked down at Railroad's remains with a dreadful feeling grasping her heart. The attacker had made it all this way without even transforming. She hadn't been using some unknown means to hide her magical energy on her way up. Everything until now was the residue from her baseline form.

  This individual had taken down one of the best security details money could buy in this world without transforming. Her baseline power was already at that of a transformed magical girl. It had taken one in the top twenty to force her to show her actual power. Betty peered out the window at the brightening morning sky. Had White Wish noticed it, too?

  Whatever the case, the residue was so scattered and weak that it could pass for background noise from a fight between two magical girls. For now, this pattern was a secret only another magical girl could find. With that head start, she would launch her own investigation. First, the motive. Then she would bring this rogue magical girl in. No matter the reason, murder was never justified.

  With these thoughts, Betty put her hands in her coat pockets and walked back the way she came, her mind working in overdrive to process what she had found.

  "You know that I have to stop you, right?" Raven growled.

  "You don't sound very convincing while looking like that," responded Lady Rosca.

  Raven lay naked under the satin sheets, looking up at the small woman tied up and dangling from the ropes right above her. She wanted to throw those words back at her, but it would likely only arouse her. With a sniff of disdain, she turned her head aside and mulled over the information she had received in exchange for debasing herself like this.

  Three of the splinter groups that came out of the Heartstopper Syndicate's destruction wanted to get back together and form a new organization. Those who opposed that merger had already been sent an ultimatum. Of course, they didn't expect them to go down without a fight. And that fight would attract unwanted attention of the magical girl kind.

  Raven's rampage in the Raytronics Financial Center was proof to the Iele Coven's collaborators. And when she infiltrated Starlight Dynamics and eventually caused an uproar, all eyes would be on her. The perfect distraction for the underworld to have their street war and consolidate their power.

  As the magical girl who took them down in the past, she had a duty to stop them from coming back. But Lady Rosca was right. Being in bed with the enemy like this made her unfit to talk about justice. The irritation rose inside her, and she glared up. Tiny erect nubs hung almost in her face. She raised her hand to pinch and twist one of them.

  "Ah!" the bound woman moaned in pleasure and pain, although to her, both were one and the same. She peered down at Raven with a mixture of smugness and anticipation. "Another round?"

  "No, it's already morning. One night, that was the agreement," with these words, Raven got up from the bed and let the satin sheets slide off her body. Lady Rosca twisted her head to watch her graceful movements while the ropes dug deeper into her skin due to her exertion. But the pain, combined with the divine sight, only served as stimulation.

  Raven put on her clothes and checked her phone. A few messages from Nightingale and Robin. Neri and Igor knew not to try contacting her whenever she met with Lady Rosca. And she currently had nobody else in Starlight City who knew this number.

  Nightingale had written her a few hours ago to tell her that the investigations in the Raytronics Financial Center had started. Several magical girls had been seen on site. The corporations had put the heat on. They would feel it eventually.

  Robin just wanted to hang out after school.

  "Umm," Lady Rosca made, trying to draw Raven's attention to her.

  "Send me the details on Starlight Dynamics later. You know how to contact me," she responded without turning around.

  "You know, you could give me your number, so I don't have to go through Igor every time," argued Lady Rosca, wiggling in her bindings.

  "I'd rather eat razor blades."

  "Not like that would do much to you as you are now."

  Raven ignored her and walked across the room.

  "Hey, take me down from here," the woman rocked her body and dangled back and forth from the ropes.

  "Can't you just transform yourself and slip out?"

  "These are magic-suppressing ropes. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel a thing."

  Raven listened to her explanation while pressing a button on the wall. The hidden door swung open silently, revealing the wolves waiting outside. They stepped aside for her even when she remained in the doorway unmoving. She looked over her shoulder with a sardonic grin. "I'll call Sister Striga to help you out."

  "No, anyone but her!" Lady Rosca yelled, but Raven already walked away. "Stop, she doesn't know moderation! Come back!"

  Her pleas fell on deaf ears as she swung back and forth. The black and white wolves peeked into the room with worried looks. They were not allowed inside, and they would not be able to help her either way.

  Only moments later, thudding footsteps announced a giant's approach. The wolves ran behind the desk and hid with their tails between their legs. Then, Sister Striga tilted her upper body to peer inside the hidden room, her lightless black eyes fixating on her superior. She was dangling in a vulnerable position like a piece of meat before a predator. The veil hid the lower half of the sister's face, but her eyes curled up into a sinister smile. "Let me help you, Lady Rosca."

  She squeezed through the doorway, and the door closed on the screams of the tiny leader.

  Raven exited St. Luka's Cathedral and found her BT-12 parked where she had left it. There was not a scratch on it. As expected of an area controlled by the Cogitum Lance. One part of her wondered if a magical girl of her level using it could extend the effect to all of Starlight City, or even farther beyond. But that very thought was revolting. She found mind control to rank among the worst crimes, whether magical or mundane. Only murder was more reprehensible.

  She glanced back at the cathedral. If the Heartstopper Syndicate formed again, it would be her responsibility to stop them again. And this time, she would make sure to leave no remnants. As she was now, that meant killing them. Unlike the security guards and the magical girl known as Railroad, these were criminals who destroyed the lives of people. Her heart was cold at the thought. She would not hesitate this time.

  She was truly reprehensible.

  "Welcome back," the BT-12's onboard intelligence greeted Raven as she activated it via her remote key. She sat on it sideways and took out her phone again. It was still early in the morning. Five hours to go before Robin was out of school. A few more until she got the details on Starlight Dynamics. What would she do until then?

  First, she responded to Nightingale, thanking her for keeping her updated. The response came not even a second later. She looked forward to her return. As always, she was plugged into the Thoughtmend Stele. Raven caught herself smiling and wiped the expression off her face quickly. With a cautious glance around, she put on her helmet and saddled up. She couldn't be caught displaying emotions right on the enemy's doorstep. Even if she had quite literally been in bed with that enemy.

  Revving the engine, she announced her departure for everybody in the Iele Coven to hear. Knowing Sister Striga, Lady Rosca wouldn't be one of those who did.