Shame, if you had posted it the bonus might have been enough to put it over the top.
Bah, I'll post it anyway. It's a short little piece, and not tied to any point in time, so maybe it can fit in later.
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Seto Tomoe stood at the back of the little planning room where several other magical girls were working. She'd been allowed to observe their command structure, and was currently checking out how they managed hunting arrangements.
"All right, this should be the last data point," said a girl with a long ponytail, just entering the room. She handed a piece of paper to another girl at the desk, who added a few numbers to a tracking chart.
After a bit of math, she notified the others, "Ok, overall rating looks like 5.3, then. Hmm."
A few quick looks passed between them, before they seemed to come to some unspoken agreement. The girl who had most recently entered must have noticed Seto and her confusion, though, and tried to give an explanation.
"Ah, the DS — er, demon strength — is too high to do accelerated hunting on, but it's too low to merge with the existing northern district. We'll underhunt it back down to 0, and merge it with the north when the two areas are in sync. After that we can redistribute a portion of the northern territory to the south to get them balanced again, and finally re-optimize hunting assignments."
A girl with strawberry blonde hair and incongruously dark jacket, who seemed to be in charge of the desk, chimed in, "Plus that will give us time to get used to the patrol routes in your area without it bleeding over into the current routes. We can pair your girls up with some of our team to get a better understanding of the layout and demon patterns."
"What's the projection look like?" the first asked, leaning down over the mess of papers scattered across the table.
"Hmm... Guessing about 70, maybe 72 cubes this month. We won't be able to take full advantage of the new territory until it's properly integrated. Once it's back in sync, it might go as high as 80."
"Wow. We might actually be back in the black after paying off Kyuubey."
"Kyuubey?" Seto asked, speaking up for the first time. Unfortunately, that seemed to be a delicate topic, as grimaces manifested on the faces of all those present.
Finally the lead girl answered. "We, ah, had a little accident a few months ago, and had to get Kyuubey to cover up for us. It totally wasn't our fault! But we had to pay through the nose to get it cleaned up." Her defense seemed to lack a bit of conviction.
"Anyway!" a third spoke up, "That won't happen again!"
"I see," Seto replied. And she could, somewhat. Kyuubey loved to charge for his services. She was curious about what this 'accident' was, though.
Still, this entire dispatch center seemed a bit surreal. A massive whiteboard on the back wall had a couple dozen names running down one side, and a grid of calendar dates, with numbers in each box that seemed to refer to another table that described patrol routes. Her own little group had never been this organized — had never
needed to be this organized.
And it wasn't like the Serenes were a large organization. Sure, larger than her own, but the total size was under 50 before her group joined, and a quick glance at the board showed maybe 15 or 16 hunters with routes assigned; at most, three times as many hunters as her own group had active per month. They just seemed...
obsessed with this efficiency.
Looking back at the battle with the Class 3 demon, there was a clear lack of focus on the fight; fear and uncertainty and nervousness spread throughout all of the vets taking part. This was not an organization with experience at going to war, but they'd dedicated lavish attention to anything with numbers in it — both this hunting operation, and a rather ridiculous collection of money-making operations they had active. They were actually starting up their
third business venture! And apparently managed a half-million dollar loan to get it running. The idea of a half-million dollars in her hands was just mind-boggling.
Seto sighed and shook her head, starting to make her way out. She gave a smile and wave as she left, though, to show that it had nothing to do with the girls who had been trying to explain things to her. "Take care, Tomoe-san!" carried out the door after her.
Even that bothered her, a bit. "Tomoe-san." By some strange coincidence, the same last name as the leader of the Serenissima, yet none of the girls had any trouble referring to her that way. The reason? She had never once heard one of the girls refer to Mami Tomoe by her last name; only some form of 'Mami-san' or 'Oneesan'. One large family, 50 strong.
She walked out onto the porch overlooking the backyard — another reminder of the amount of money flowing through this group — and took a seat. Her own group had done...
OK, money-wise, but they literally could not afford to dedicate too much time to it. A couple of girls had jobs, which brought in enough money to pick up the leather armor they used in their hunts. A couple small, cheap apartments for those who had no family to stay with.
She thought they'd been doing well — no, they
had been doing well. A bit rough, but there was a camaraderie among them, the bonds of shared experience. Perhaps they, too, would have grown as the Serenissima had, into a thriving community, able to share their strength with others. If she had committed to building an organization of her own a year earlier, instead of shutting everyone out and staying on her own, would they have been prepared to deal with a threat like...? No.
There is strength, and there is power, which Seto had. And then there is leadership. The twin girls, Kyouko and... she wasn't sure if she'd caught the other one's name —they had perhaps more raw power than any of them, but were certainly not leaders. Even with just casual association, she'd already seen the wide berth the other girls gave the red-heads. But what held this group together — what allowed several dozen girls to organize to fight such a terrible threat, on the behalf of someone they barely knew, on mere hours notice — was the leadership of a girl who made no pretense about caring deeply about every single one of her charges.
That charisma gathered people to her in droves — girls who would trust in her and follow her. It was a talent that Seto herself sadly lacked. She could lead, but felt she was far from being a true leader, one that could gather such a following, organize them, and keep it all running smoothly like this.
It felt so wrong, letting someone else take over for her, letting other people be in charge of her girls — her family. Even if they never openly admitted it, there was a certain feel... Heh. Perhaps she could understand Mami a bit better than she had thought.
And now it was a question of whether she could look at all these new faces, and think of them as her family, as well. Obsessively nerdy family, but family. A family that had welcomed her without hesitation, adding the names of girls they didn't even know to their personal memorial shrine, so they would never be forgotten...
"Right," Seto said to herself a moment later, slapping her legs as she stood up to shake off the melancholy. She directed her gaze to the northeast, where even now arrangements were being made for a new set of apartments to house a decent number of girls — "rearranging manpower for more optimal coverage" — along with the ones she'd lived together with these past months.
A smile flickered across her face, as another flicker left the yard empty.
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While Seto herself (as written) doesn't think much of her leadership capabilities, I'm putting that down to the Dunning-Kruger effect — she's good enough to be able to see just how much farther she has to go, and despairs at being inadequate (when given someone like Mami to compare against), despite being far better than she gives herself credit for. In truth, Mami would probably say much the same thing — that she is far from a great leader, and it's only due to the support of those around her (and a bit of luck) that she made it as far as she did.
