There was silence in the library. Hardly unusual, but in this particular case quite noteworthy. Stanbot's processors whirred, as if filling the lull in conversation.
"You…wish to see Akko?" Diana ventured.
"Yes!" Erika pumped her fists again.
"Akko." Hannah said. "Like, Akko, Akko."
Erika nodded rapidly.
"Okay," Sucy huffed, "if no one else is going to say it…why do you want to see Akko?"
"Ah, I suppose we should explain…" Erika cleared her throat.
The group shifted around briefly, rummaging around with something that wasn't quite visible to the other girls. After a few seconds of fiddling, they stopped.
"We!" Erika shouted, and the group coalesced into pose that wouldn't have been out of place in a sentai show.
"Are!" The group shifted into a new pose, with two of the girls standing up to hold something between them.
There was a moment which noticeably lacked a drumroll.
The two girls stretched out a white banner, decorated with a mish-mash of colored writing and decorative shapes, all of which was centered around a disembodied, stylized doodle of Akko's smiling face, with an equally-as-disembodied doodle of a left hand giving a peace sign floating next to her.
"The Official Unofficial Atsuko Kagari Fan Club!" The group shouted, to the tune of an invisible horn playing out a "ta-da!"
Once again, the sound of a library filled the air.
"What." Hannah managed.
"We said, we're—"
"No," Amanda interrupted, "no no no, we heard you the first time, just…what."
"You are…" Diana struggled with her words. "Akko's…fan club?"
"Yep!" Erika smiled cheerfully.
"Akko has a fan club?" Barbara asked incredulously.
"Again, like, Akko," Hannah said, "the girl with the unhealthy obsession with Shiny Chariot. The girl whose spells don't just fail but actively blow up. The girl who I once caught stuffing ten tarts into her mouth at the same time 'just to see if they'd fit'. That Akko?"
"Uh-huh!" Erika nodded, still smiling.
Hannah made a face as if a large, winged pig had casually flown by in a rainbow-colored Mercedes-Benz.
"Ah, I know what this is," Diana said, "when Akko saved the world and revitalized magic it jumpstarted her popularity, correct?"
"I mean," Erika hesitated, "that definitely increased her popularity, but most of us have been here since the beginning."
"I-I…beg…pardon?" Diana relaxed her shoulders in confusion.
"Well the whole thing with the entrance ceremony definitely made a big first impression on a lot of students," she explained, "and that shot her up in the polls and put her more on par with the second years than most first years in terms of popularity."
"I-I'm sorry, again," Diana sputtered, "polls?"
"And of course her antics always make her the center of attention." Erika chuckled. "Remember the Samhain Festival? Heh, ah…classic Akko…"
"Maybe back up," Amanda said as she tried to grapple with this new information, "like…a lot? What…polls?"
Erika frowned.
"Did…you guys not know?" She asked. "About the polls on the crystal ball network?"
"Evidently," Diana said in a noticeably strained voice, "we did not."
"This school has a network?" Sucy muttered to herself.
"I go on the forum for Night Fall," Lotte said, "but that's about it."
"Same." Barbara nodded.
"Huh." Erika thought for a moment. "I would have thought at least…no, never mind."
She shook her head to clear her thoughts.
"Well, okay," she said, "so the school has a site on the crystal ball network, right? Well, a while back—like, I dunno, ten years ago or something?—some students…well…it'd be easier if I showed you…does anyone have a crystal ball I can borrow?"
Luckily, one of the fan club girls did have a crystal ball on their person, drastically cutting the need for annoying side quests or anything of the sort. Erika gently placed the ball on one of the tables and spent a few awkward moments navigating to whatever it was she wanted to show, before she took out her wand and gave it a light flick.
Light trickled out of the magic orb and floated upward, pooling itself into a neat rectangle. Initially it took the form of a shiny, silvery goop as if someone had added blue food coloring to liquid mercury. Eventually, the pool flattened itself until the thickness was indiscernible, and formed into a semi-opaque image of rows upon rows of text.
Specifically, it was a list of people's names.
The witches leaned in. Hannah, Barbara, and Amanda leaned in just a bit more than was entirely necessary.
"These," Erika explained, "are the Official Unofficial Luna Nova Popularity Polls! Every student in the school is on here."
She gestured to the screen, although it was hardly necessary as no one was focused anywhere else.
"Every student is also able to join any other student's fan club." She pointed at one of the numbers on the right. "You can join as many of the clubs as you want, and leave at any time. You can also post discussions and pictures and—"
"Pictures?!" Diana grimaced.
"Yep!" Erika used the crystal ball to scroll to a random girl's name and quickly gave it a tap. A large image of Balsa McVinegar popped up, flanked by several other shots from various angles in various situations. Another table of text filled the lower half of the image.
"What in the world is 'gap moe'?" Sucy mumbled aloud as she read one of the discussion labels.
"It's pronounced 'moe-eh'," Lotte whispered, "and I'll explain it later."
"T-This seems like a flagrant disregard for privacy…" Diana wavered on her words a little.
"Don't worry," Erika said, "any rule-breaking posts are taken down!"
"That is…not reassuring…" Diana sighed. "And regardless, there is absolutely no way the professors have approved of individual fan clubs, let alone…"
She waved her arms wildly, in a manner unfitting of a Cavendish.
"…this!"
"That's the beauty of it," Erika said, "we don't need professor approval, because we're not a school club."
"You guys literally just announced yourselves as Akko's fan club." Amanda pointed out.
"Official Unofficial Fan Club!" Erika smiled smugly, as if she had probed the secrets of the entire universe and then gone for ice cream cake afterwards. "Everything is tagged as 'unofficial', because as long as we don't classify ourselves as an official school club, the professors don't have any authority over us whatsoever! I mean, what are they going to do, tell us we can't talk with our friends? We're a magical academy, not a…place that…has a lot of…"
She thought for a moment.
"I had an analogy for this," she said, "I swear I had something for this…"
"T-that's really not in the spirit of the rules surrounding—" Diana got out before Erika dismissed her concerns with a wave.
"Look," she said, "this has existed for like, ten years, and it's not as if we keep it a secret. If it were against the rules, it'd have been shut down by now, wouldn't it?"
"I-I…" Diana turned this information over in her head. "I-I don't…"
"It doesn't matter anyway," Erika said as she flicked back to the main page, "the point is, Akko's always been pretty popular."
She scrolled up and tapped on what was apparently Akko's name. Akko's page popped up including a large collection of images—at least 7 featured on the page, plus an addition four hundred judging by the little "+400 more" marker next to the gallery. A variety of topics sat at the bottom, ranging from "I doodled Akko in Culinary Magic class" to "How can I pull off Metamorphosis Magic the way Akko does?" to one which had been sitting at the top labeled with a bright yellow "HOT" sticker titled "Rumors Confirmed! Tiny Child Akko Spotted At School!"
"Her saving magic was really just a bonus," Erika continued, "it brought her up from the middle of the rankings into the top five, where she's been sitting pretty steadily for the past few weeks, usually alternating between number 3 and number 4, depending on a few things…"
Hannah, and Barbara held their mouths open in stunned silence. Amanda chewed on her knuckle to keep herself from giggling, Diana was still stuttering out a response to the earlier comments, Sucy hadn't said a word, and Lotte and Constanze merely stared at the screen.
"…and of course we also snagged a bunch of people from the Diana fan club—for obvious reasons—so the increase was inevitable once people realized—"
"Excuse me, I have a fan club?!" Diana exclaimed.
"Of course." Erika flicked back and tapped on a new name. "See? You've been in the number 2-3 slots pretty consistently since school started."
Diana stared at one of images on her page—a not unflattering picture of her outdoors looking up from a cup of tea—and flushed bright red.
"Bwuh—che—fwuh—" She sputtered. "Fwuh—fwuh—fwuhuh—"
"Hey, hey," Amanda spoke up, "where do I rank?"
Erika hummed, flicking back the page and scanning the list.
"I think Akko knocked you out of the top five," she said, "you're 7th right now, just behind Constanze."
"Top ten." Amanda grinned. "I'll take it. Not like there's any shame in being beaten by Constanze."
She ruffled Constanze's hair, and Constanze blushed a bit in embarrassment.
"What about me?" Sucy asked.
"Seriously?" Amanda scoffed. "I wouldn't have thought you cared."
Sucy merely shrugged in response.
"Pretty sure you're like 39th?" Erika scrolled through the list. "Something like that, pretty high all things considered."
She flicked back up the list.
"Of course Lotte," she said as she pointed at the girl in question, "has always been pretty high at number 5."
"E-eh?!" Lotte blushed. "M-me? I-I'm…p-popular?!"
"You did tie with Jasminka as 'nicest girl in the school'."
Lotte babbled incoherently.
"Who's number one, then?" Amanda asked, innocently enough.
"W-we really don't need to listen to this." Diana finally managed to break out of her stupor, although she still glowed a bright red. "This is a waste of ti—"
"Eh?" Erika looked confused. "Seriously? Of course it can only be Barbara!"
The library quieted unnaturally, the group slowly turning their head to face the surprised girl.
Who, for what it's worth, was stunned into silence herself. The words played and replayed in her head like a frustrated user repeatedly slamming the same input over and over into a broken website, in the hopes that it was maybe just a fluke.
"Weh?" Barbara finally said. Or rather, she made that noise. It wasn't quite clear if it constituted "speech".
"You didn't know?" Erika frowned innocently. "You're the most popular girl in school!"
The resulting silence was palpable, and Barbara's subsequent blush was almost audible.