At night in the city, communication between different teams doesn't come easily. For the moments where sending a message is absolutely vital, there is one alternative: Team Courier, a group of girls dedicated to ensuring different teams of girls manage to coordinate on what is needed.
These are their adventures.
These are their adventures.
Team Courier is a Sleepless Domain fanfiction by OdysseusOfGaming and an entry in the Sleepless Domain Expanded Universe.
The fic can be read here
. In addition, the Interstitials, a set of twelve snippets from the point of view of each member of Team Courier, can be read here. Also, the Correspondence, a follow-up anthology, can be read here.
Team Courier provides examples of the following tropes:
- Badass Normal: Katia, a normie who manages a surprise attack on a Magical Girl — her own sister, no less — and saves Ellie and Ryder's lives.
- The Cameo:
- Bud appears in chapters 5 and 12. Ryder begrudgingly respects her despite being absolutely convinced she has a mole in Team Courier.
- Grace Fields makes an appearance in chapter 8 as the healer who assists Ellie.
- Though she's not named, Malee Phlipitak has a small scene in chapter 10, described only in narration, in which she annoys Ryder about her team's lack of cameraperson.
- Courier: The titular Team Courier.
- Fair-Play Whodunnit: All of the clues necessary to determine the attacker's identity are located explicitly in the story at the time of their discovery by the characters. In fact the earliest hint is in the very first chapter; in Dawn's first appearance she has the trademark cold eyes of Celina's possession victims.
- Faking the Dead: Celina di Moreno/Mind Courier.
- Fighting Your Friend: The attacker's preferred fighting style, starting with the encounter at the Blue Building. She controls one or more members of Team Courier and forces them to attack Ryder and Ellie.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: Both Ryder and Chris are primarily martial fighters who rely on their respective powers (Ryder her shadow portals and Chris her teleportation lightning) to various degrees.
- Painting the Medium: As with the original webcomic, every magical girl's text is colored in their theme color. Ryder, who has a black color theme, is given a really dark blue text color to avoid being mistaken for normal text.
- Pseudo-Canonical Fic: To the point where a plot point in Chapter 16 (Maddie dying by being rammed into the Outer Barrier) abruptly had to be edited a week before publishing due to a development in Chapter 17 of the comic.
- "Rashomon"-Style: Every witness to Celina's death remembers what happened differently. It's Justified, as Celina used her mind powers to fake her own death.
- Uncertain Doom: The final fate of Maddie. For all in-story purposes she is considered dead, but it's deliberately left open in case the comic proper reveals something about the Outer Barrier that allows her to survive.
