Lair of the Brumal Hunter (LMS VI: Blizzard)
7 posts in this topic.
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My avatar, username, hemisphere, and birthday all say the same thing: this predator has the homefield advantage; beware the Hunter that stalks the snows.
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Well, that's the first week's writing done! It's just the start and it's already no joke — it took me about three hours, as estimated. Knowing how much time you'll need to meet your quota will be essential to surviving the storm, but you also need to pace yourself.
Still, I'm unemployed and accustomed to intense last-minute grinding. I can thrive under these conditions. >;)Spoiler
Aww, man! Don’t say the first challenge is to escape from a maze or a buried box or something! Flit isn’t claustrophobic, but he’s totally not a fan of dark places. He makes his tail glow, and yeah, he’s in a big metal box. He gets up and presses against the lid… oh, and it comes open! He’s not buried at all!
“But I am in the city,” he says to himself, “and city centres are like mazes anyway.”
There’s nothing he can do about that, sadly. Our Grace said the first stage is open and solo, so that means he can use any of his moves, but he’s on his own. And then directly afterwards, the group stage begins. If it is a maze they need to exit, maybe everyone will find their group at the exit? He wishes the instructions had been clearer, but that’s part of the challenge.
Okay, well, he’s in the middle of an alley. His first decision is already one he can’t make: to go left or to go right? He looks in each direction, but he can’t tell any difference. There isn’t any of the usual noise you’d expect from a city, and he’s not seeing people walking past either. He listens intently and squints in concentration.
…Nope, still nothing. He sighs. Maybe he can go one way, see what the street looks like, and then go the other way to see if there’s a difference like that? Okay, that should work, but… he still needs to pick a direction to start.
He looked at the alley wall opposite him and pointed to his left. “One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a hare alive—” With each syllable, he alternated pointing right or left again. “—six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then I let it go again.” He was pointing left.
“I go left!” he said cheerily.
His step more confident now that he has a plan, Flit almost marches to the left side of the alley. He stops and eagerly looks up and down the street, but his smile falters immediately. It looks like the street goes on forever in either direction?!
“I’ve never seen a street this long!” he cries out, aghast. He runs down the alley to the other side. “It’s the same thing! How am I—? Oh, hello?”
He looks down at the little green thing that stopped when Flit suddenly appeared in front of it. It’s some kind of slug with stubby arms and a yellow feather on its head. It looks kind of cute in a silly way! It puckers its big lips, almost as if it wants a kiss.
Flit laughs. “Sorry, I don’t think I should be giving slugs kisses. If my mama were here, she’d tell me not to go kissing any crawlies, especially ones I only just met.”
The slug mumbles something that Flit can’t make out.
“What was that? I didn’t hear what you said.”
The slug jumps up towards Flit. At first, he thought it wants him to catch it, like a very energetic puppy. It’s not very heavy when he does catch it, but the jump almost knocks him to the ground. It doesn’t really feel like a slug, since it’s not slimy. It’s more like a car tyre! But he teeters and almost loses his balance, so he steadies himself and holds the slug lower to the pavement so it can jump safely out of his arms. It does, after which he says, “Man, that actually hurt! Please don’t jump at me like that again.”
The slug turns around, but Flit can see it preparing to jump again, so he creates a protective bubble around himself. The slug probably isn’t hurt much when it leaps against the bubble, but it is bounced back a bit on the rebound.
“Mister Slug, you need to play more gently.”
The slug decides playtime is over. It burps, and Flit is alarmed to see purple slime fly towards him. The slime splatters against the bubble, which holds for a second longer before popping. Flit jumps back as the slime drops in a little shower to the ground.
A shiver runs up Flit’s spine. “I d-don’t think you’re p-pl-lll-playing, are you?” He forms a bubble of air around himself and sprints back down the alley. He quickly looks up and down the street to ensure there aren’t any other slugs. There aren’t, so he looks back down the alley to see whether the slug is following him.
He should just have continued running.
The slug crawls slowly forwards to the spot where Flit had been standing. It then turns towards him and starts rolling.
Flit’s blood turns icy. “Oh, no, no, nonononono!”
Left! Left was the better choice the first time, so he turns left and starts running again. He doesn’t stop and he does not look back.***
Oh. Well, that’s an uncomfortable start. Tiara feels the air above her face. There’s nothing, so she carefully sits up. She’s in some kind of metal container. She sighs, already feeling dejected, but she takes a deep breath, holds it for as long as she can, and then releases it.
First things first, she needs to get out. She moves her arms around to assess the dimensions of the container, and once she finds the top, she pushes. The lid opens, and for a moment, she frowns. Why did she think that would be hard?
Outside the container isn’t actually any better than inside it. She never liked big cities, and she liked its dirty alleys even less. The alley in which she stands isn’t all that dirty, but it’s drab and dull and dim and depressing. She picks up the rim of her dress and walks to the nearest exit. The pavement there is exactly the same as inside the alley, but she already feels better. Maybe it’s just the weak lamplight that makes it look cleaner.
She looks up at the sky, but unlike in Our Grace’s blue and red dream world, there are no stars to be seen. It’s not even because of the light pollution — she can see there are zero little pinpricks of light. Does Sin City really have to be so miserable?
She closes her eyes and puts her hands together. She again breathes in deeply, but this time, while holding her breath, she feels heat form between her palms. She pulls them apart and opens her eyes to see a glowing orb of light that grows bigger the farther her palms are from each other. She then makes a lifting motion towards the sky, offering her light in tribute to the night. The white orb grows bigger and bigger until it hovers above the nearby buildings, about seven to ten metres in the air. The strip of stores looks instantly more welcoming when bathed in the brilliant light of her miniature moon.
Energised by her act, she starts strolling down the strip. The stores are all empty, which means she might as well be walking through a ghost town. At least her moon follows her, bringing its invigorating illumination along as a balm against the cold emptiness of the city. It disappears after about five minutes, so she summons another one.
She didn’t stop to consider that the moon could act as a beacon to her teammates. The thought only occurs to her when she hears a shout come from behind her. She spins around to see Flit, the firefly participant that Our Grace introduced last, run at full tilt from one of the alleys, specifically the one fourth back.
“Oh, thank goodness!” he calls, stopping to pant. He bends so far forwards, he looks as if he might topple over.
“Are you…?”
A green ball shoots out from the alley he just exited. There happens to be another alley in the row of buildings on the other side of the road, down which the ball disappears. It was so quick, Tiara can almost believe she had imagined it.
“Please!” Flit cries, diving behind a lamppost. “You have to help me!”
The green ball comes bouncing back out of the alley, zigzagging wildly as it ricochets. Yet it unmistakeably steers its course towards Flit, narrowly missing the lamppost before striking the wall and rolling towards Tiara instead.
She doesn’t think: in the second before it hits her, she kicks the air where she expects it to be. Her estimation is correct and her kick launches the ball in an arc through one of the store windows. However, she had underestimated the force that the ball carried in its momentum, and she screams in pain. Her leg probably wasn’t broken or dislocated, but it felt as if the ball had tried to shove her leg straight through her hip and out the other side. She falls to the pavement, weakly blocking it with her one arm, and then clutches her knee to her chest.
Everything about it hurts.
“No!” Flit cries.
She can’t see what happens next, as she stares up at her moon with watery eyes, trying to block out the pain. But Flit’s face pops into view as he drops down next to her.
“You need to get up! There’s still the other one!” He looks over his shoulder, gasps, and creates a shimmering bubble around them.
The other green ball hits the bubble and bounces a little into the air. She doesn’t register in which direction it goes.
“Do you know any healing moves?” Flit asks, staring back down at her in concern. “I can take care of myself, but I can’t help anyone else. I’m so sorry!”
It takes her mind a few seconds to formulate an answer to Flit’s question, but the answer does come, cutting through the haze created by the pain in the same way her moon cuts through the darkness: Synthesis! Serene even explained that it was more powerful in bright light.
She closes her eyes, inhales deeply, and extends a hand towards the moon. She feels its warmth flow into her, gently wiping away all the pain in her leg. She exhales shakily and shivers in relief. Opening her eyes again, she smiles at Flit.
“Thank you for asking.”
Flit looks relieved too, but anxiety is still the dominating emotion on his face. “That’s great! But we’re still in danger! We have to go!”
She sits up. “What was that?”
“I don’t know! Mean green slugs! I thought they were cute, but then the one started attacking me, and after I started running towards your skylight, another one came out of nowhere!”
He looks around frantically, stands up, and squints in concentration. An ephemeral clone of him materialises just in front of him, but within seconds, it looks like an identical copy. It then moves to stand guard on Tiara’s other side while Flit himself looks up at the moon. He also raises a hand to it, and Tiara is surprised to see the light envelop him. He’s not a plant, so how can he know how to use Synthesis too?
Flit’s ragged breathing instantly becomes steady. “Wow, that’s a rush!” He sounds almost giddy. “Can you fight? I tried, b-bbbut…”
She gets to her feet and sets her expression in a mask of resolve. “I can fight.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Flit says. “I’m sorry for not remembering your class. It’s hard to think clearly right now.”
“Defender,” she says.
As if on cue, the green ball she’d kicked into the store jumps back out the window. It rolls towards them, though not nearly as quick as before. It changes its course and deliberately hits a wall. When it bounces away, it’s faster. It bounces off yet another wall before heading for them again, faster still. Flit recreates his bubble, but it only deflects the ball — it immediately begins bouncing off the walls again to correct its course.
Tiara draws on all the remaining power of her moon, which begins coalescing in her clenched fists. She points them to the side as the energy continues to accumulate and the moon continues to dim. By the time the ball is heading towards them for the final time, she’s holding a white-hot shaft of energy. It explodes into a huge beam, and it feels as if Tiara is wielding a concrete pillar.
“Get down!” she shouts.
Flit dives to the ground while Tiara swings her beam. It cuts through the stores on the other side of the road, and when it connects with the green ball, it flings it over the roofs on their right before cutting through multiple lampposts and then the stores on their side of the road. The ball, knocked for a six, would likely not be bothering them again.
Tiara and Flit both marvel at the swathes of damage her beam had cut through brick and metal.
“That was totally wicked!” Flit shouts, turning to gawk at Tiara. “How did you do that?!”
She blushes a deep scarlet and offers no further response.
A vomiting noise behind her draws her attention. She sees Flit’s clone disappear, purple slime dropping to the pavement where it had stood. The other green ball, which does look a little like a slug, stands squinting on the other side.
Tiara frowns and stomps on the stupid thing. It sounds almost like a balloon that pops, but it’s still whole. She kicks it as if it were a football, making it bounce into the air, and then she performs several high-kneed kicks and somersaults to launch it higher still. When it reaches about three metres, she leaps after it, catches it in with her shoe hooked around it, and then spins multiple times before releasing and kicking it across the road. That time, when it hits an abandoned boutique’s wall, it does pop like a balloon. She giggles at the funny, albeit grotesque, sight.
“I am so glad I’m on your team,” Flit says in open-mouthed wonder. He then suddenly hugs her. “Thank you for saving me!”
Tiara giggles again, happily hugging him back. “Of course! You’re welcome.”
After he lets go, he asks, “What now?”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I didn’t even realise the solo stage was over already. I thought there would be an official announcement from Serene.”
“Maybe that was just for the end of the entire round?” Flit suggested.
“Hmm. That could be.” She looked around. “Everywhere looks the same. I don’t know where to go.”
Flit groans. “I know, right? I was running for my life with no idea where I was going until I saw your skylight. I thought that indicated which way I was supposed to go.”
She looks at him thoughtfully. “I think it did. We were supposed to find each other, weren’t we?”
Flit beams. “That’s right! We were! You did a really great job.”
She blushes again. Sin City was still an awful place to be, but at least she wasn’t alone in it anymore.***
Date: 06/06/2023
Time: 21:55
Word Count: 2504
Blizzard I: 2504/2500 -
Ugh, I predicted 5K for this week, not 6K, so that means my prediction of 10K for next week will probably be something like 15K instead. I wasn't in the mood to write yesterday, and today, I focused on planning for Purgatory more than on writing for it, so I only did half of this week's quota. I might as well post it so long, since it's already more than last week's.
Spoiler
The humiliation of being placed inside a rubbish container is surely the first of many tests in Sin City, but Gold is determined to prove his worthiness of ascending to Paradise. There are only a few garbage bags inside the container, and they’re in the corners near his head and feet. His tail isn’t anywhere near the bags, but he would have hated to start a literal dumpster fire just by waking up. He clamps down on his frustration and simply climbs out of the container as quickly as possible without looking angry or desperate. After all, the audience is always watching. He doesn’t know which criteria Our Grace uses to measure their virtue, so he has to be on his best behaviour at all times.
He’s obviously in an alley. He’s seen them in films before, but never in real life, since his hometown hadn’t been large enough to have alleys. It’s exactly as dark and gloomy as in the films, but there isn’t any gravel, grime, webbing, or dirty things whatsoever. Hmm, maybe keeping his composure really was the key to success! If he’d gotten angry or upset, he would have missed the fact that the alley is much cleaner than it could have been. If it’s a test, and he’s certain it is, it’s intended to provoke him.
Gold smiled in pride at his realisation and stood a little straighter. If that was a test, he should be able to recognise the other tests when they appear. But… He looked around. The alley is insignificant. He probably won’t find any other tests here.
He takes to the sky for a better vantage of the neighbourhood. He’s left a little confused and disappointed: It’s just… rows upon rows of the exact same two-storey buildings. They’re all painted the same concrete grey, with the same flat roofs. Maybe the interiors differed, but even the roads separating them were the same, running along in countless parallels, while identical alleys spaced at uneven lengths connected the roads. There were no cars, no pedestrians, and it stretched on endlessly. He slowly turned around as he hovered, and as far as he could see, there was only the infinite grid.
The black weight of the empty sky above and the empty buildings below threatened to overwhelm him, so he flew down to the nearest roof. His footing was surprisingly shaky, so he sat down and rubbed one of his horns in dumbstruck puzzlement.
How… was any of the tournament’s participants supposed to find one square in a city so large, its mind-numbingly dull and vacant shopping district stretched across a swathe of land the size of Oldford? If his hometown could be swallowed in one gulp by the city, then Gold himself wasn’t even worth consideration in that scheme of things. He’d last felt this insignificant when watching a video that put into perspective where the Earth was located in the universe. What he’d just seen certainly felt as completely lifeless as the vast majority of space.
And he wasn’t even in space anymore! Purgatory was a realm completely shaped by the whims of Our Grace, Giratina, wholly apart from the material universe. He wouldn’t even know how to begin comprehending its nature, let alone its size. Our Grace had said multiple times that time didn’t matter in Purgatory, so space wouldn’t either.
His head swims, but that last thought suddenly sticks with him like a kite blown into the trees by a storm — space didn’t matter.
Gold leaps into the air and re-evaluates the empty district around him. It’s exactly as if several blocks were copied and pasted over and over. He starts laughing: it’s the effortless creation of what’s literally a meaningless expanse of buildings. It IS another test!
Relief washes over him. He’s not really supposed to see the entire city in one go. Sin City will reveal itself to him just as all good things will reveal themselves in time. And just as Our Grace, Arceus dictates when the right time is, so too does Our Grace, Giratina dictate when the right time is for him to proceed to the group phase.
All right, but then… when does the solo phase end?
Gold inspects the alley where he started. He sees something new! A round, green thing with something yellow on it crawls inside, and after the sniffing the rubbish container in which Gold had woken, it sniffs the one on the alley’s other wall and jumps on top of it. Gold hadn’t even thought about that container twice, but what was the green thing doing? Was it part of his test? Was it waiting for him to come back?
A large orb of light appears multiple blocks away. That’s the second sign in thirty seconds! It’s probably some kind of marker, but he’s unsure which sign he should obey first.
Well, the green creature could be a sign, but it could ultimately just be a random animal normally found in Sin City. The light, however, is literally a beacon, so that’s his best bet. Having made his decision, he flies towards it, but after passing only five buildings or so, he hears a call. Turning to his left, he sees one of the other participants wave at him just outside an alley. It’s that weasel boy who wanted to play checkers with Our Grace.
Could it really already be the end of the solo phase? Was it purely psychological?
He flew over and landed. The boy is probably only thirteen or fourteen. Gold hadn’t thought about asking about the other participants’ real ages, but none of them had been old. Are all of them their real age? It would make sense for some participants to want to be young again, but to be a teenager…
“Hi, hi!” he says. “I really like your armour. You’re totally prepared for battle out here!”
Gold snorts and subconsciously puffs his chest out a little. “I like to think so, thank you. You’re…”
“Also ready for battle!” the boy interrupts.
“…I was going to say ‘Edge’, actually.”
Edge giggles and blushes, looking off to the side. “Hehe, yeah, that’s me! And you’re…!” He frowns a little. “You’re Gold! I forgot it there for a second, but it’s a very nice name.”
“I like to think so for that too, thank you,” Gold says. “If you’re one of my teammates, we should probably get going together.”
“Ooh, you know where we’re going?” Edge almost starts bouncing with excitement.
“I know where we need to go,” Gold corrects. “I don’t know how we’ll get there, yet. We should probably follow the beacon.”
Edge gawks and looks about wildly. “There’s a beacon? Where?!”
Gold takes to the sky again, but even before he passes the rooftops, he can see the beacon is gone. “It… was right there! Where did it go?!” He felt a flame of anger lick at his thoughts for having been distracted by Edge, but he knew where he had last seen it, so he could just—
Oh! It reappeared!
“I see it now!” Edge said excitedly. “Do you think it’ll lead us to Superbia Square?”
“It will lead us to something,” Gold called down. He hovered closer towards the ground so he wouldn’t need to strain his voice for no reason. “Whatever it is, it’s a more promising sign than the green creature.”
“The… green… creature?” Edge asks hesitantly. He sounds a little fearful.
“Yes, I don’t know how to describe it. It was green and yellow and not very remarkable. It looked like it was waiting for me, but I don’t know for sure.”
Edge shivered. “If it was waiting for you, it means those things are actually hunting us!”
Gold frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“It attacked me!” Edge almost shouts. “I was just talking to this pink hat-girl in one of the delivery box containers, and she was being mean, but then this green thing tackled me and bit me and the girl started screaming at me!”
The boy sounds a little crazy, if Gold is honest, and he has no idea what Edge meant with “hat-girl”, but he did see a green thing. It could have been the same thing or it could not, but if it was dangerous and there was more than one, it might be part of their individual tests. …And Gold had ignored his!
“So, I have to go fight it…!” Gold says, more to himself than Edge, and turns to face the general direction from which he’d come.
“I thought we were following the beacon…” Edge said uncertainly.
Gold frowned and turned back. He didn’t want to seem like a coward, but his priority should still be the same. “Okay, yes, you’re right. Let’s go!”
“I’ll race you there!” Edge says, immediately cheerful again.
Gold doesn’t feel in the mood for anything as childish as a race, but when Edge takes off like a bullet, Gold is stunned by the little boy’s speed. His competitive side stirs, and in a burst of pride, he sets of flying after him. It becomes immediately clear that he won’t be able to catch up, so he twists and turns in the air in an approximation of the moves Serene had shown him for the technique called “Dragon Dance”. Almost before he’s done, he feels his speed increase. It’s a little exhilarating, as he’s never flown so quickly before!
The beacon suddenly shrinks and disappears again. Gold slows down, confused, and he thinks he sees something else, something very small, fly through the air, but Edge keeps running, so Gold picks up the pace again. He uses his advantage of height and flight to alternate between the streets, trying to see where he’s supposed to go. But despite the speed increase and the ability to fly over the buildings, and maybe because of the brief pause, he’s unable to overtake Edge. He suddenly sees two other teammates on the pavement of a street with the buildings sliced partially through, but Edge sees them too and reaches them first. He skids to a stop, startling Flit, the firefly, and Gold pulls to a stop a second later.
“I win!” Edge shouts triumphantly.
“What did you win?” Flit asks instinctively, confused.
“I don’t know,” Edge replies, panting happily. “We didn’t agree on a prize.”
“We weren’t really racing,” Gold says, slightly out of breath.
Edge turns and sticks his tongue out at Gold before saying, “You’re just saying that because you lost!”
Gold huffs. “You didn’t wait for my answer. I had to fly after you to ensure we didn’t get separated.”
“You don’t need to be mad!” Edge says cheerfully, and maybe a little smugly. “I’m really fast. I could probably beat most of the other participants in a race! I practised earlier, but you didn’t see that part.”
“What happened here?” Gold asks Flit and the fruit lady. Her name started with a T…
“We were attacked by mean, green slugs!” Flit says, cowering a little. “It was just the one rolling after me at first, but then a second one joined it! I really hope there won’t be more.”
“Who between you did that?” Gold pointed at the buildings. From the street’s view, he could see the slice actually had blackened edges.
“It was the biggest laser I’ve ever seen!” Flit explains. “You should have seen her! Tiara kicked the first slug into one of the stores, and when it came back out, she used her laser beam to knock it away like a living cricket ball! If this had been a cartoon, it would have disappeared in a twinkle in the sky!”
Edge gawks. “Whoa! That’s so cool!”
Tiara looks down and blushes. Flit beams at her, clearly adoring her as much as the boy.
“I thought I saw something fly through the air after the beacon disappeared,” Gold muses. “Did you create the beacon?”
“It’s not a beacon,” Tiara says, “but when Flit ran towards me, I realised it could look that way. It’s just a really big ball of light that makes some of my techniques more powerful.”
“Oh!” Gold exclaims. “So that’s what Sunny Day looks like?”
“You know of it?” Tiara asks in surprise.
“I know the technique too,” Gold says. “I just haven’t tried it out yet.” Suddenly recognising the potential similarity in their strategies, he asks, “Hey, was your laser beam green?”
“How did you know?” Flit asks, astonished.
Tiara nods to confirm Gold’s guess. He makes a noise of surprise. “I didn’t realise Solar Beam could be used that way.”
“It wasn’t Solar Beam,” Tiara says. “It was Solar Blade.”
“There’s another technique like that?!” Flit asks.
Edge, in the meantime, is scratching his head. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about…”
“It’s an attack,” Gold says. “Well, two different but related attacks. You gather light energy and then release it in a powerful beam. I did try that one before my introduction.”
“That’s cool!” Edge says, happy to be following again.
“If these slugs are really so dangerous,” Gold continues, “I should probably go back and… did you kill them?”
“I think so,” Tiara says. She averts her gaze, realising the implication.
“They’re probably just the first monsters we’ll face, like in a game,” Gold says. “Except this isn’t a game, so we need to take the threat they pose more seriously. I’ll be back soon!”
“Wait!” Flit calls before Gold even starts turning. “I’ll come with you! I want to help!”
Gold visibly hesitates. “If it’s an individual test, I don’t think we’re supposed to help each other…”
Flit falters. “Oh. Okay. I guess that means I failed mine, since I needed Tiara’s help.” He looks down at the pavement.
“Like I said, I’m a Defender,” Tiara says, putting a hand on Flit’s shoulder. “You were in trouble, so I did my part. I remember you’re one of the only Blockers in the tournament, so your part is to help.”
Flit brightens and looks back to Gold again. “Can I come along just in case? I promise I won’t get in your way.”
“It’s faster if I just fly there,” Gold insists. “I know more or less where it is. It would be safer to stay here with Tiara and Edge.”
“I can hold onto your back!” Flit suggests. “I don’t weigh much, and I can help you fly faster!”
Gold really doesn’t want Flit to come along, but he already made him feel bad enough. As long as Flit keeps his promise, there shouldn’t really be a problem. And isn’t it better to cooperate than to be stubborn? Everything could be a test, so he constantly needs to be on the lookout for one and ask himself what the best thing to do is.
He sighs. “Okay, let’s go.”
Flit smiles brightly again. “Really?!”
Edge cheers. “Yay! Good luck, you two!”
Gold has to hold in a groan as Flit grabs onto his back. He starts flying back towards the point where he started, but true to his word, Flit summons a bubble of air around them that makes Gold fly even faster than before. It’s even more daunting, and he almost overshoots the spot. He slows down enough that he can see the slug in time and jerk to a sudden stop.
“There it is!” Flit says (unnecessarily, in Gold’s opinion). “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll attack it from a distance and catch it by surprise,” Gold says. “But first, I’m going to put you down on the roof here.”
“Oh, okay!”
Having done that, Gold considers his options. He’s a fire-breathing dragon, so his first attack should be exactly that! He inhales deeply and then expels the pressurised gases in a gland in his throat. They immediately catch fire, and even from as far away as the rooftop of the second storey beside the alley, his fiery breath toasts the slug. It yelps in panic and leaps off the rubbish container.
What Gold doesn’t expect, though, is for a cry from inside the container going, “Eeeeeeh, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!”
He dives down to quickly open the container, not wanting to hurt whoever’s inside. He’s surprised to see, exactly as Edge described, a pink hat-girl. She screams incoherently, so he throws the lid open and flies away, covering his ear holes with his hands and cringing in pain. Once he sees her jump out and almost float down before running away (luckily not towards the slug), he turns his attention back to his test.
The slug isn’t on fire, but it’s still bouncing around from the shock. It doesn’t look very dangerous, but since three different people have said that the slugs attacked them without provocation, he can’t allow himself to be fooled. He inhales again and expels another stream of fire. The slug screams in pain, and the cry is so heart-wrenching, Gold almost wishes he could swallow his breath and take it back. But he can’t, and the cry is only a second long. The closer proximity made the fire much more potent, and as a result, the slug was practically melted into a puddle. It’s just green and purple mush, and Gold has to fight back a gag reflex. The puddle stinks like a combination of rotten egg and burning flesh, so he quickly flies back up to the roof.
“That was amazing!” Flit says. “You literally melted the slug!”
“I… don’t think we should tell the others about this,” Gold says, feeling nauseous at what he’d done. “I already can’t get the image out of my head.”
Flit falters again. “Oh. Okay. I’m sorry it makes you sad. Neither of the other ones made that sound.”
Gold nods, but he’s not really listening. Flit climbs onto his back again, but he’s in no rush to get back to the others again. Did he really just kill a living creature that nonchalantly? Even a rabid dog, as dangerous as it is, deserves a merciful ending. It should be put down, not boiled into liquid.
Date: 14/06/2023
Time: 02:48
Word Count: 3021
Blizzard II: 3021/6000 -
Yeah, it seems I mostly wasn't in the mood for writing this week, so I just wrote little pieces at a time. But I loved writing this last section, so I'm hoping to recreate the same conditions in the coming week and knock out larger chunks at a time! I'm also hoping to finish earlier in the week, haha (even if I was done 35 minutes ago already).
Spoiler
***
In the meantime, Edge and Tiara had waited in silence for Gold and Flit to return. But Edge grew restless almost immediately, so he turns to Tiara. “Do you like flowers?”
Her eyes shone. “Oh, I like them very much! If I never get to see Paradise, I hope I at least end up somewhere with even just one flower. These worlds feel so much emptier without them.”
“I know what you mean!” he says brightly. “Mom always ensured the vase in my room had fresh flowers in it. They were usually the same types each time, but she would sometimes change them for variety.”
“Do you remember which kinds they were?” Tiara asks fondly.
“Yeah! They were almost always white. Lots of daisies, lilies, roses, and… something else that starts with L-I. Umm…”
“Lilacs?”
He grins. “Yeah, those!”
“Your mother loved you dearly,” Tiara says softly.
Edge nods happily. “Yeah! She really loved flowers, but she always told me she loved me more. I told her the poor flowers might get jealous or sad, so she often wore posies on her dress or hat to remind them that she still loved them very much. I remember her last posy the best!”
“Which flowers were in it?”
“It had this very large, gold flower in the middle! I think it’s called a merrygold?”
Tiara chuckles. “Almost: it’s called a marigold.”
“Thanks! It always had this big marigold in the middle with lots of small, purplish blue flowers around it. I think they were actually rosemary from our garden!”
Her smile falters. “Marigold and rosemary both?”
“Yeah! The contrast was really pretty. She wore that posy over her heart all through my last week. She also removed the big vase from my room and put a small purple vase next to my bed. It had these really cute, tiny yellow flowers in them! Mom called them five-fingers.”
“That’s lovely,” Tiara says softly, blinking and looking away. “They’re also called potentillas and sometimes tormentils.”
“Those are funny names,” Edge said, giggling. “I think I like five-finger better.”
Tiara nods but doesn’t say anything else. She also doesn’t look back, so Edge frowns and wonders if he must have annoyed her somehow. Maybe it’s because he talked too much and didn’t give her a chance? Well, he’ll just have to ask her more questions. But not just yet, since adults often got really mad if you kept talking to them when they didn’t want you around.
After a while of silence, Gold and Flit return! “How’d it go?” Edge asks before they’ve even landed. “A fierce dragon like you must have torched it in no time!”
“I did, yeah,” Gold says abruptly. “It’s dead now.”
Edge isn’t sure why he’s so aloof about it, since those slugs are mean and they can’t really be alive if they’re all in the afterlife. Flit notices Tiara is also looking sad, so he feels generally dejected.
“We’re missing one last person,” Gold says, “so I’ll see if I can find them. I’ll be back.” He leaves without waiting for a reply.
Edge looks up at Gold flying away and then looks between Tiara and Flit, neither of which wants to make eye contact. “Am I the only one excited to participate in an actual tournament hosted by the gods?” he asks, not really frustrated but very much confused. “We get to be the heroes of our own stories! We don’t have to be police officers or fire-fighters or doctors, we can be real warriors! Imagine if we needed to save a princess from a greedy dragon!”
“You mean a big, monstrous dragon?” Flit asks. “Not like Gold?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely not like Gold!” Edge agrees. “His name is perfect, since everyone knows monstrous dragons love treasure, but I don’t think he’d really want to kidnap anyone.” Edge scowls. “And any princesses here might not be very nice anyway.”
“Why would you say that?” Flit asks, curious and a little worried.
“Did you meet any pink hat-girls?”
Flit shakes his head. “But I saw one jump out of the container that Gold opened after burning his slug!”
“Did she scream a lot?”
Flit laughs. “Yeah, she did!”
Edge huffs. “Well, I met one just like that. She was very rude and said mean things. She shouted at me for killing the slug that attacked me even though it attacked me first!”
“Do you think we shouldn’t have done that?” Flit asks, worried again.
Tiara speaks up for the first time since she fell quiet. “We need to protect each other,” she says firmly, turning to look at them. “I don’t know what else we need to do, and I’m not sure how far we’ll get in the tournament, but I know and am sure of that.”
“I’ll help protect you!” Edge says eagerly. “I’ll show you I’m not afraid of evil dragons or mean princesses or nasty slugs!”
“Okay, I’ll do my best too!” Flit chimes in, filled with energy by his two teammates’ determination.
Unfortunately, Gold doesn’t get to benefit from the team cheer, since he’s still flying over the grid. He’s ostensibly searching for his final teammate, but in reality, he’s not even paying attention to the direction in which he’s going, instead just flying aimlessly while lost in his thoughts. But ultimately, he finishes processing his feelings and decides that sacrifices have to be made. Maybe he did the wrong thing — if that’s the case, how he deals with it is sure to be yet another of Purgatory’s infinite tests. Moping and feeling sorry for himself isn’t going to change what he did, and in fact, he suddenly realises that he has no idea where he is or where he left his teammates behind.
Ugh! Okay, it’s time to focus again. He’s wasting time, so he needs to make up for it. He performs the Dragon Dance again, since the effects of the first one have worn off already. He performs it a second time, and mentally preparing himself for the burst of speed, he takes off!
After a few minutes of failure, he realises it might help if he also uses Sunny Day, just like Tiara had. It should not only allow him to find his last teammate, it should also allow the others to come to him if they had started getting impatient.
He breathes fire into his hands, and the flames coalesce into a small ball. He raises it above himself, causing the ball to grow larger and larger as it floats away until there’s a miniature sun hanging above him. It’s so bright, he can’t even look at it anymore! It’s also much higher up than Tiara’s was, and the higher he goes, the easier it’ll be to spot. He ascends until he’s somewhere between twenty and fifty metres in the air. He’d never flown this high in life, since he’d never been very fit, but he’d flown much higher while in Our Grace’s blue and red night-time world, so soaring in the sky was now actually much more doable and far less exhausting than he’d thought it would be.
But his idea works! He can vaguely see his three teammates in the distance. A little black figure runs to the other side of the street to be more visible and then waves energetically. Gold laughs and waves back, caught in the happy moment. Tiara and Flit join Edge and they all wave at him too. Feeling like showing off just a tiny bit, Gold flies in a circle and breathes fire. He can’t entirely make out their reaction all the way down there, but he imagines he sees at least Edge clapping.
All right, that’s enough of that. With his great view of the copy-pasted shopping district, he scans for anyone else. His height means the angles of the buildings partially obscure some of the roads from view, so he flies outwards in a spiralling pattern from his starting position. He realises the miniature sun above him is draining his endurance, just as Serene explained it would, so he can’t stay up in the sky forever; he’ll have to stop to rest if it continues for very long.
And evidently, “very long” is the entire minute for which the sun lasts. Gold spots a moving figure down in one of the streets below, and they wave at him just as he slows to a stop and the sun above him fades away. It feels like he’s flown a marathon, so he wearily descends to where they wait.
It’s that duck lady with the odd name. Meeting her in person, Gold can admit she does look like the secretarial type. But from her introduction, he developed the impression she’s also the type to… well, not hesitate, as that’s more Flit. He’s not sure how to phrase it to himself, but he gets the feeling it would take a lot to get her to show much emotion. She seems too calm. He felt the same way about a few other participants, too.
“Hello, Gold” she says. “It’s nice to meet you.”
He lands and exhales tiredly, leaning against the wall of the nearest building for support. He’ll catch his breath in just a bit.
“You said you preferred to be called ‘Rudder’, right?” He’s glad he doesn’t have to remember the other name. He thinks she’s right in that it sounds pretentious, even if he’s not sure what it means. At least she acknowledges that.
“Yes, that’s right,” she says, smiling more than he’d seen her do previously. She then adopts a neutral expression again. “Are you tired? Did you spend a long time looking for me?”
“It wasn’t a very long time,” Gold says. “It was only a minute, but the miniature sun you saw saps my energy.”
“I appreciate your efforts,” she says. “I wandered these streets for some time before I finally saw your beacon again. Did you create the two previous ones as well?”
“No, that was actually another member of our group, Tiara. She gave me the idea, and since I can fly, I could find you more quickly.”
“Oh, you found someone else too? That’s wonderful news.”
“Actually, I found everyone else,” Gold says. He exhales, already feeling much better. “That’s why I searched for you on my own — so they could stay together.”
Well, that isn’t entirely true. He isn’t lying, but he also isn’t mentioning how he felt ashamed for killing that ‘slug’ and hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone about it. He still doesn’t want to talk about it, and complaining wouldn’t be the right thing to do anyway.
“What an industrious young man!” Erudite says pleasantly. “Here, I didn’t even know where I was and where I was supposed to be going. I can’t even blame that on my old age.” She chuckles at her joke, though it’s entirely lost on Gold.
“None of us are entirely sure where we’re going, ma’am,” he admits, stepping away from the wall and standing straighter. (If she is much older than she looks, he had probably to address her with more respect.) “We must have faith that Our Grace will guide our way.”
She smiles and sweetly pats his arm. “A polite young man, too!” And she knows he must be young, because anyone who had reached her age — and even anyone who had reached a couple decades fewer — would have preferred to resume the appearance they had in the prime of their adulthood, which dear Gold had clearly not yet reached. “But they don’t call death the great equaliser for no reason. You and I both have our strengths and flaws, so I hope to learn from you as much as I may hope to teach you.”
Gold feels a little sheepish at that. He’d always respected his elders, but he’d also always felt like it was expected of him to forge his own way through the world to prove his worthiness to Our Grace, Arceus. He had been found wanting, so maybe it’s finally time to learn from his elders too and not just to respect them.
“That hope alone already shows I have much I can learn from you. I hadn’t even considered it that way until just now.”
Erudite’s smile becomes a bit softer. “Life is short, and even in death, our time is limited. Hopefully, we will make the best of the time we have together for now; I would very much like to see you make it further in this tournament.” She suddenly chuckles quietly, covering her bill with a hand before placing the hand over her chest. “Oh, but I am quite getting ahead of myself. Let’s go meet the rest of the group. I am curious to see who the rest are.”
Gold means to answer, but then he realises she would probably want to see them for herself. Instead, he asks, “Do you want to follow along on the road while I fly overhead, or would you prefer if I carried you there? It might not be safe.” He doesn’t know if she’s also defeated her slug, after all. She doesn’t seem hurt or worried at all, but he’d left his behind too at first, so it was still a possibility that she had done the same.
She shakes her head, but the smile that reaches up to her eyes is still as soft as before. “That is a very kind offer, Gold, and I continue to appreciate your efforts and concern on my behalf. But I spent my final years in a nursing home and then a hospital. I haven’t been able to walk this far on my own and feel this well in many, many years. I would very much like to continue using my legs, if that is all right.”
“Oh, of course!” Gold can’t even imagine refusing her. He had been young and yet still unfit enough that he relished being able to fly the way he can now. How much more would someone in their senior years not feel grateful to move around freely? He gestured in the other three’s general direction. “They’re over in that direction somewhere, so I’ll fly above and beckon you towards them.”
“Lovely,” Erudite says. “But I don’t know if I will see you that far up in the sky. It was easy with the beacon, but it’s very dark without it.”
“I’ll just have to use Sunny Day again,” Gold says. It’ll be tiring, but many things in the tournament are bound to be. He nods in determination and takes to the sky again.
He simply exhales fire that time, to see if he could create the sun in multiple ways, and again, his idea works! The fire spins around a central point and condenses into a fiery ball. The ball then floats upwards and the fire flares into white light. Gold can’t sweat like mammals (it was always such an odd thing to imagine anyway), but he’s sure that if he could, the sun would have made the liquid evaporate as soon as… his body pushed it out? He can’t remember that part of high school biology.
Flying slowly onwards feels wrong, especially when taking into account how quickly he had flown up to that point, but Gold needs to ensure Erudite can still see him. The minute feels like it drags on forever, but he isn’t far off with where he remembered Tiara, Flit, and Edge waiting, so he spots them easily enough. He feared Erudite wouldn’t be able to keep up, but that was again his bias clouding his view, since her legs are exactly as functional as she said they were and she’s able to maintain a brisk walk, criss-crossing through the streets and alleys without any difficulty.
His sun fades away, but he doesn’t want to waste more energy creating another one, so he flies back down to her. There’s just one more street between them and the others, so he can just walk with her anyway. He informs her as much as she enters the second-to-last alley.
“Ah, wonderful,” she says. “These streets are so very lonely, but it is refreshing not to have seen a single piece of litter so far.”
“Even the rubbish containers are mostly empty,” Gold agrees, “but at least what little rubbish there could litter the streets are in there.”
She turns to look at the two containers in the current alley, placed in the same configuration that both of them had seen before. “Do you mean these?”
“Yes.” Gold’s intonation almost turns it into a question.
She looks thoughtful as they emerge from the alley. “How curious. I awoke in a completely empty garbage container.”
Gold thought she was lucky to have been spared the embarrassment, but he doesn’t point it out. He’s about to say he’s glad there were only a few bags in his container, but then he realises she doesn’t know they all started in one, so he keeps that thought to himself as well. He can rather talk about the other occupants of the alleys. (And walking down the street, the next alley is far enough that he can’t actually see it and needs to pick a random end of the street to hopefully find one.)
“Did you encounter anyone or anything else in your alley?”
Erudite gives him a different smile than he’s used to. It looks a bit mischievous, which she all but confirms when she replies, “It sounds like you’re expecting a specific answer.”
Gold looks away, feeling sheepish once again, since he’d tried to be discreet, but she might now guess anyway that there were similarities between their starting circumstances. “Yes, I am. The others and I came across little girls and little… I’m not sure what to call them. Flit— Umm, I mean, one of the others calls them ‘slugs’.”
She nods, graciously ignoring the accidental revelation. “Yes, I don’t know what to call the green creature either. It seemed like a dog, but it was certainly a rather rude pup.”
Date: 18/06/2023
Time: 23:50
Word Count: 3018
Blizzard II: 6039/6000 -
Yeah, so much for finishing earlier in the week! Ugh! I'm more than halfway with this monster of a quota, but I have about a third left to write in what will be less than half a day when I wake up later. Not great, obviously, but I successfully recreated the mood from last week, so I did succeed on that front.
Spoiler
“What did you do with it?” he asked tentatively.
“I put it to sleep and placed it inside a garbage container,” she said, smiling like she’d told a very good joke. Gold did let out an incredulous snort.
“That’s… not a bad idea,” he said, shaking his head in good-natured disbelief. If only he had been able to do something like that. Then again… “But wouldn’t it potentially attack whoever next opened the container?”
Another alley finally appeared, almost popping out from between the buildings. Erudite shrugged as they approached it. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I don’t know what we were supposed to do in that situation. I had mistaken it for an animal before mistaking it for a person. It almost sounded like it could speak.”
Gold eyed the new alley’s two containers warily, as both of them had been knocked over. “Something weird like that probably wouldn’t make normal noises.”
Erudite curiously inspects the containers. “The tournament is certainly sure to surprise us a lot more before we reach our final rounds. I wonder what happened here.”
Gold beckons her onwards as he continues past the containers. One of them was empty, but the other had several bags in it, though none had spilled out. “You should hear the story from the others, since I didn’t see it for myself.”
“Is that so?”
She’s eager to meet the other members of her group, but she’s also curious to find out what the story is, so she happily follows Gold outside the alley. He heads to the left, and when she does too, she immediately sees three other people talking four buildings away. She smiles and raises a hand in greeting. One of them enthusiastically waves back. It’s one of the two boys in the tournament — Edge, the excitable one! (Erudite hopes Ember, the shy one, won’t be too overwhelmed and has been assigned a group that would treat him kindly. She didn’t memorise the participants’ positions, so she can’t say for certain.) Following his example, Flit and Tiara also wave, but more modestly, of course. Gold turns to look at Erudite while he’s walking, but he doesn’t react to the waving. He seems bothered, but she’s not sure by what. Gold himself isn’t sure either, since nothing that comes to mind really makes sense, so he tries his best to smile as well and put it out of his mind.
“You found her!” Edge calls, running closer rather than waiting for them to close the distance. “I knew you would, since you found us all so easily and you had no problem spotting us after making your sun!” He chuckles and falls back to walk next to Erudite. “Hi, hi! We waved at him too while he was up in the sky.”
“I’m sure you did,” Erudite says pleasantly. “And hello to you too, darling. May I ask you a question?”
“I’d love that!” Edge says. He almost bursts with excitement at the prospect. He’s not forgetting what happened with Tiara, so it’s best if the adults talk to him first. But he really wants to get to know everyone. It’s been so long since he could make new friends!
“How did such a charming young boy receive a name as cool as ‘Edge’?”
Edge looks down and away as if he might melt into a puddle at the compliment. “It’s just because I’m a weasel with sharp claws, really,” he says, severely restraining the urge to hug the lady. “I haven’t done a lot to deserve the name yet.”
“Oh, I understand that very well,” Erudite says, chuckling quietly. “Even after a whole lifetime, I still never felt like I deserved my name.”
“But you have such a pretty name!” Edge says as they reach the others. “I don’t know what it means. But isn’t a rudder a part of a ship?”
“That’s it, yes,” Erudite says.
“I don’t know what your name means either, to be honest,” Flit says, nervously tugging at the collar of his bumblebee jacket.
Tiara shakes her head in agreement. Gold thinks it means ‘smart’ or something like that, but he doesn’t want to guess and look stupid.
“‘Erudite’ is an adjective that means ‘very knowledgeable’,” Erudite explains. “You use it to refer to someone who has studied and read a lot.”
“Oh, like a professor!” Edge says.
She nods. “Yes, exactly like that. I wasn’t even the secretary to a professor, only to an orthodontist.”
“What’s that?” Edge asks.
All of the others know that, at least. Gold also feels glad that he at least understood the gist of ‘erudite’.
“An orthodontist is like a dentist, except it’s a doctor who specifically works with the arrangement of teeth. If you ever needed braces, you would go to one.”
“Are they just as scary for other kids?” Edge asks. “I never needed to go to the dentist, but I was never afraid of any kind of doctor.”
Tiara subtly averts her gaze, which nobody else notices.
“That’s good,” Erudite says. “Doctors only want to help, after all. But no, children have even less reason to be afraid of the orthodontist. The most they usually do is look into your mouth and ask you how often you wear your mouth guard to prevent your teeth from shifting back into their old arrangement.”
“What about the rest of you?” Edge asks, eagerly looking around.
Gold reflexively crosses his arms. “What about us?”
“How do you feel about your names?”
“Oh.” He uncrosses his arms. “I like mine. I work very hard to live up to it, but I…” He rubs one of his horns. “I don’t think I made it. It’s why I’m determined to do better in the tournament.”
“Yeah! You even have armour!”
“I haven’t seen anyone else wear armour,” Gold points out. “I hope I didn’t end up preparing for the wrong kind of tournament.”
Flit utters a single, nervous laugh. “Or maybe you’re the only one who dressed the right way. I didn’t think I’d be chased by two slugs who wanted to eat me.”
“They chased you?” Erudite asks, surprised. “And they wanted to eat you?”
“Oh, yeah! It was the worst experience of my life. I don’t know if we can die again, but if it hadn’t been for Tiara, I would have been in really big trouble.”
As Flit indicates the destruction of the buildings around them, Erudite gasps. “Oh my goodness! I was so happy to see you all, I didn’t even notice this!” She looks at Tiara with concern. “Did you do this? Are you all right?”
Tiara smiles faintly and nods. “Flit and I both have healing techniques for ourselves, so even if we get hurt, we should be all right.”
“And I can create clones to protect you!” Flit adds cheerfully.
Edge gasps audibly. “That’s awesome! What else can you do?”
“That’s a good idea,” Gold says before Flit has a chance to respond. Everyone looks at him for an elaboration, which he gives. “We don’t know what we need to do to get to Superbia Square, and if we had those green things attacking us while we were alone, we might have even more of them, or more dangerous things, attacking us before we get there. Serene let us all choose attacks and we’re being judged based on our prowess, so we should definitely discuss what we can do. We’ll be better prepared that way.”
“That’s right,” Erudite says, fondly putting a hand on his shoulder. She looks between him and Flit. “Which of you two want to start?”
“Oh, umm, I think I’ll go after Gold,” Flit says, grimacing.
Gold nods. “I’m an Attacker, so I specialise in Offence and Defence. Sunny Day is my only Support technique, and I don’t have any for Pressure. My attacks are Flamethrower, Fire Punch, Blast Burn, Fly, Solar Beam, Dragon Pulse, err… oh, Dragon Claw, and Air Slash. I have Roost to rest and recover energy if I’m hurt, and I have Dragon Dance and Work Up to make me faster and stronger.”
Everyone next looked to Flit. He uttered a single, nervous laugh. “Well, I’m a Blocker! The… only other one, including Lotus. First and last, haha…”
Erudite and Tiara both give Flit a sympathetic, understanding look, while Gold seems unfazed and Edge, as eager and curious as always. Emboldened by the lack of judgement on their part, Flit scrapes his courage together and tries to stand a little straighter.
“I really don’t want to attack anyone, so Bug Buzz is my only technique for Offence. I can also use Thunder Wave to help out, but I picked Defence and Support, since I mostly just want to help you all. I’ve… never been the bravest person I know, but I’m no coward!” He adds that last bit more fiercely, but his passion evaporates instantly and he returns to his more bashful, though still resolute, demeanour. “For Defence, I have Roost, like Gold, but I also have Moonlight and Substitute. Tiara’s seen those during our fight with the slugs; it’s what I use to make the clones I mentioned. I also have Protect and Double Team to make myself hard to hit, and I have Tail Glow too!” He smiles and illuminates the end of his thorax a little. “That one makes my special attacks stronger, but I don’t really want to use Bug Buzz, so I’d rather want to give it to some of you instead! I can do that using Baton Pass. My other Support techniques are Tailwind, which makes us all faster, Light Screen, which protects us against special attacks, and Helping Hand, which… it’s hard to explain. Serene did it really well, but I can’t remember his exact words.”
“You’ve explained wonderfully so far, darling” Erudite says reassuringly. “Do you want to try anyway?”
Flit hesitates, but he nods. “I can try! I help you with your attacks and make them stronger.” He smiled at Gold. “That’s why I offered to help you!”
Gold nods and barely manages to refrain from looking away. “Yeah, thanks.”
Flit beams. “You’re welcome!”
“Can I go next?” Edge asks, almost bouncing up and down.
“Please, go ahead,” Tiara says, making an accompanying sweeping motion.
“I’m an Attacker too!” he says cheerfully. “I know I already told you that when Our Grace did my introduction for the tournament, but I only named a few of the attacks I can do! There’s Dig, Cut, and Ice Shard, like I said then, but there’s also Quick Attack, Metal Claw, Night Slash, Psycho Cut, and Triple… Axis?”
“Oh, that’s Triple Axel,” Tiara says, surprised.
Edge grins at her. “You have it too?!”
She smiles and nods. “Yes. It sounded like a useful attack to have.”
“Definitely! I’d love to see you do it.”
“If we get into another fight, I’ll show you,” she said. “Was that all of your techniques? I think you’re still a few short.”
“I am! I can also steal things from monsters or bad guys if they’re not looking!” He snickers. “I have an Ability called Pickpocket that lets me do that if they attack me up close. But I can also steal it using Thief! It’s an attack that allows me to take something they’re holding even if they’re tall and holding it above their heads.” He snickers a bit more at his joke, seeing as he never grew to his full height (which wasn’t going to make him very tall anyway, given his species). “I have Double Team too for one of my Defence techniques! The others are Agility and Hone Claws.”
“You sound fearsome,” Erudite says warmly.
“I’ll totally try my best to be!” He puffs out his chest in an attempt at striking a dramatic pose. “No monster’s going to make me run away in fear!” He grins at Gold and Tiara. “Especially with fighters like you two around! Which attacks do you have?” He asks that question of Tiara, naturally.
“Solar Blade is the strongest one I have, which caused this—” She gestures at the marred buildings. “—but I have a lot more kicking attacks like Acrobatics, Trop Kick, High Jump Kick, Triple Axel, and Stomp. I don’t think that last one is a kick, come to think of it, but I still use my legs for it. I suppose that means I should mention Rapid Spin already too. My last attack is Power Whip.”
“Those sound awesome!” Edge says.
Flit nods enthusiastically. “They were amazing to see. And Gold was amazing with his fire-breathing, so you’ll probably be amazing with your cutting and slashing.”
Edge closes his eyes and smiles in innocent smugness.
“I have Synthesis as a healing technique,” Tiara continues, “and then I have Sunny Day, Aromatherapy, and Aromatic Mist as my last three techniques. They’re all for Support.”
“What do those last two do?” Edge asks. “They sound almost the same.”
“Aromatherapy heals everyone from things like being poisoned or paralysed. Aromatic Mist makes any of you more resistant to special attacks.”
“Oh! That’s really cool.”
“Thank you. I have another ability, Sweet Veil, which prevents you from falling asleep.”
Edge frowns and sniffs the air in Tiara’s direction. “You do smell sweet, now that you mention it. Does it stop you from falling asleep too? Does it prevent even sleeping pills from working?”
Tiara lets out a surprised chuckle. “Oh, not like that. Magical sleep. Sleep from things like Hypnosis or Sleep Powder.”
He gawks. “The monsters here can do that?!”
She tilts her head to the side while looking thoughtful, but Erudite answers before she can. “I have Hypnosis as a technique.”
Edge gawks even more widely. “You can do that?!”
Both Erudite and Tiara only chuckle in response.
“Well, what else can you do? That was all your techniques, right, Tiara?”
Tiara nods, so Erudite simply continues. “Like Flit, I didn’t want to attack anyone. My attack is Scald, because it sounded like the most useful, but I wouldn’t throw a cup of hot tea at anyone, so I’m not altogether certain when I would use it. I would much rather use any of my Pressure techniques, which are Hypnosis, Disable, Encore, Telekinesis, and Soak. Just making somebody wet should be deterrent enough on its own.”
Edge snickers in disbelief. “Really?”
Gold crosses his arms. “Humph.”
“Oh!” Edge laughs in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t think of you when I said that! Do you think we’ll fight other fire dragons?”
The colour drains from Tiara’s face and she takes a step back, her eyes unfocused. Edge hasn’t noticed, but he does look when Flit turns to look at her.
“Are you all right?” It takes him a second of silence to realise her body language is oozing fear — silence not filled by any of the others, unsure of how to reassure her or what to say at all. So, Edge hugs her around the waist, which succeeds in focusing her attention on him. “It’ll be okay! If we do fight any fire dragons, we can keep you far away! Or Rudder can make you wet so its fire can’t hurt you!”
Erudite nods and puts a comforting hand on Tiara’s shoulder. “The boy is right. That is one of the benefits Serene discussed with me when I asked him about the Soak technique.”
Tiara exhales shakily before smiling weakly and putting a hand over Erudite’s. She then gives Edge a hug with her one arm. “Thank you to you both.”
“Serene also explained I will be resistant to any attacks made using fire,” Erudite continues, “so Gold and I can stand in the way if necessary. I could even take a power nap like the old grandma I am if I need to rest. I’ll be asleep for less than a minute, and I can even talk in my sleep to keep fighting.”
“Can you really?!”
“Yes! The techniques are called Rest and Sleep Talk. I believe we saw Rook, that powerful wrestling lady, use it before Our Grace introduced her.”
“Oh, the one with the big belly!” Edge laughed.
“I’m sure we would have loved to have her big belly on our side,” Erudite said almost conspiratorially, which sufficed to make Edge open his mouth in contemplative wonder. “This old grandma could even forget where she is for a few seconds if she uses Amnesia.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I agree with Edge,” Gold says, looking at Erudite sceptically. She sounds like she’s both joking and actually explaining her techniques, which is being very confusing.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Erudite says upon seeing Gold’s expression. “It does what Tiara said Aromatic Mist does, except for only me. I’ll be the little old lady that no monster hurt with magic. I have Protect too, you know.”
“How old are you?” Edge asks, giving her a polite but confused look.
“When I died, I was eighty-two.”
“Whoa! That’s really old!” He gawked.
She laughed good-naturedly. “That is old. I was privileged enough to attend two of my grandchildren’s weddings and even to hold my great-granddaughter in my arms.”
“That’s amazing!” Flit exclaims.
Gold looks away. He’s not jealous, but he’s filled with longing and disappointment. He never even got to marry, so he has no idea how it must feel to have a child, never mind a great-grandchild.
“How do you look so young?” Edge asks sincerely.
“That’s a concession made by Our Grace. I imagined many of the participants would be older than how they actually looked. Are the rest of you the age when…?” She refrains from finishing the question and makes an expression with her bill that resembles the pursing of lips.
As expected, Tiara looks away, and Flit fidgets with his jacket. Gold has yet to return his gaze. Only Edge smiles at her.
“I had thirteen birthdays in total! But I never had a grandmother. If I did, I think I would want her to be exactly like you.”
The three other individuals feel uniformly disheartened and refuse to look at either Erudite or Edge after that, but Erudite stoops down and sweeps Edge into her embrace. “Oh, dear child.”
Edge hugs her tightly. It’s exactly how he imagined a grandmother’s hug to be. She’s not as soft and frail as the other old ladies looked, but hugging her creates the same fuzzy, marshmallow-like feeling he got whenever he hugged his mom. Erudite doesn’t immediately let go, so Edge keeps hugging her for as long as he’s allowed.
When she eventually let’s go, she dabs at her eyes. Flit quickly rubs the tears from his eyes too, sniffs, and puts on his best smile. Tiara can’t cry, but she nevertheless has her eyes closed and has turned away from everyone else. Gold simply has a pit in his stomach.
“You’ve given me one of the greatest compliments of my life,” Erudite says softly, “and the greatest compliment of my afterlife. Thank you, Edge.”
He beams. “You’re welcome!” He then looks at everyone else. “You don’t need to be sad for me, really! Mom told me not to be afraid of death, and she was right! We all got to meet Giratina! We get to participate in a real tournament to win a place in Paradise! Isn’t that the most exciting thing ever?!”
“It is for me,” Flit admits with a bit of a voice-crack.
“For me too,” Gold agrees.
Tiara slightly looks over her shoulder, but she hugs herself, not yet able to speak.
“Ah, it is certainly an exciting thing,” Erudite says. She can’t tell these poor souls that the most exciting thing for her was not just any one thing, but every time her children or grandchildren shared their excitement with her. She lived for them. But perhaps it is about time she tried doing something exciting for herself again. “So, does anyone have any idea what exciting things we’ll do next? I believe we have somewhere to be.”
“Yeah!” Edge says. “Sometimes I can remember the name, sometimes it runs away from me. It’s a square somewhere in the city.”
“Superbia Square,” Gold fills in for him.
“That one!”
“Did you see anything like that while you were flying, Gold, darling?”
Gold shakes his head. “It was unsettling. There were just the same identical rows of buildings as far as I could see.”
“How are we supposed to get anywhere?” Flit asked dejectedly.
“I thought about that. It’s probably some kind of test that Our Grace set for us. We need to get there by working together; I just don’t know how.”
“It sounds like there’s a long journey ahead of us,” Erudite says. “We’ve already taken the first steps, so how about we take the next ones? Just one step after the other.”
“Walking is easy,” Edge said, snickering to himself.
“Would you like to lead the way?” she asks, gesturing down the street, in the direction Tiara faces.
“Sure! I won’t run ahead too far.” He winks and runs off, lightly punching tiara on her thigh.
Erudite walks up to Tiara and puts an arm around her. “Purgatory is a place of opportunity and redemption,” she says quietly. “Whatever sadness and pain we bring from our old lives, we will need to leave behind in order to reach Paradise. I don’t think this tournament is the only way to do that, so even if there can be only one winner, we can still grow and learn from each other while we can.”
“I…” Tiara falters, unsure what to say.
“I’ll go on ahead so long,” Flit says as helpfully as he can, deciding to leave the two women alone for a bit. Gold wordlessly joins him.
Once they’re a few metres away, Tiara tries again. “How?”
“How do we do what, darling?”
“How do we… try to win?” She follows Edge with her gaze as he runs to and fro across the street, peering through the windows of each of the empty buildings on the off chance that one of them actually has something interesting it. “He was only thirteen. He told me about the flowers his mother put in his hospital room. When he should have been in school, hating maths and learning about the history of the world, and playing tag and video games with his friends, he was fighting for his life. And he lost. How can I possibly try to win this tournament if it means he gets denied a place in Paradise?”
Erudite sighs. She understands the problem perfectly. It’s possible that there are nineteen other individuals more worthy than her. “Like I said, I don’t think the tournament is the only way. Our Grace, Giratina is more enigmatic than I had imagined, but it is still a god. We can’t know how it thinks, how it decides who’s worthy and who isn’t. All we know is that Our Grace, Arceus is merciful and just, and if it decided that Our Grace, Giratina is the appropriate judge of our souls, then Our Grace, Giratina must be equally just. I think it may be merciful as well; I can only hope. Hope is all we have here, so please, darling, don’t lose it.”
Tiara turns and gives Erudite a proper hug, burying her face in her shoulder. She mumbles a reply, but her thoughts are too jumbled for even her own mind to make out the words.
“Let’s join them, shall we?” Erudite says, rubbing Tiara’s back comfortingly.
Tiara steps away and nods. She takes a deep breath and tries to look better than she feels. “Let’s.”***
On the walk to, ostensibly, nowhere, Edge had expectedly grown bored of his inspection, so he’d fallen back to join the others again. Neither Gold nor Tiara had been in a particularly talkative mood, so Edge had proposed a game of ‘What am I?’ instead. Erudite quickly guessed he was a white goose (much to Edge’s and Flit’s amazement), after which Flit guessed that she was a stick insect. Tiara surprised everyone by correctly guessing, with only one attempt, that Flit was a key, so she chuckled and took her own turn. Erudite guessed that she was a red apple, but rather than take another turn at being the subject of the guesses, she offered the position to Gold instead. He declined, but Edge started begging, and though Erudite showed more understanding, Flit encouraged Gold to play, too. Eventually, the dragon sighed.
“All right, fine, I’ll do one game.”
“Yay!”
“That’s the spirit!” Flit agrees.
“Okay, so…” Gold thinks about it for a few seconds. He looks down the alley to their left, ensuring there are no green monsters inside, before looking ahead again. “What am I, then?”
“Are you living?” Edge begins as usual.
Gold shakes his head.
“Are you natural?” Flit asks next.
Gold shakes his head again.
“Can you be found in a city?” Erudite asks.
“Yes.”
“Are you made from metal?” Tiara asks.
Gold hesitates. He furrows his brow in confusion before saying, “I guess?”
“That’s not a yes or a no!” Edge points out laughingly, as if Gold had accidentally said two plus three equals six.
“It’s not really a yes or a no,” Gold says, shrugging.
“Are you made using at least some metal?” Flit asks, trying to be helpful.
“Hey, it’s not your turn yet!” Edge exclaims.
Flit ducks his head. “Sorry.”
“I ask what he asked,” Edge says, snickering.
“Yes,” Gold says, rolling his eyes.
“Do you need electricity to work?” Flit asks tentatively.
Gold nods.
Erudite takes a moment to think her question through. “Can you move on your own?”
“No.”
“Do you have moving parts?”
“Not really.”
“That’s not only a no!” Edge points out again.
“It’s basically a no,” Gold says, a little annoyed.
“Okay, then do you have a battery?”
He shakes his head.
Flit takes a while to think. Edge glances at him repeatedly, but Flit is deep in thought and doesn’t notice. Eventually, he asks, “Umm… this might be silly to ask, but I wanted to be sure: do you need to be plugged in to work?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, okay! Thanks.”
“Can you be found in a house?” Erudite asks.
“Yes.”
Tiara wonders if he might be a blender, so she asks, “Are you used in a kitchen?”
Gold frowns again. “Not usually, no. And I don’t want to hear it, Edge.”
“It’s only on her questions that you do it,” Edge says a little sulkily.
“I’m sorry,” Tiara says. They didn’t have that issue before.
“It’s all right,” Erudite says, trying to keep everyone happy. “Gold has simply picked a very interesting thing to be.” Turning to look at Edge, she says, “Why don’t you go ahead and ask your question?”
“Sure! Okay, umm… hmm. Oh! Are you a TV?”
“What?” Gold stops and gapes at Edge. “How did you guess that?”
“You are?” Edge asks, gaping back, but in joy rather than irritation. “I win! Yay!”
“That’s your first one!” Flit points out cheerfully.
“Yeah, exactly!”
“But how did you guess that?” Gold asks, frowning.
“You said you’re an electric, sapient-made thing made from metal that doesn’t have a battery and that can be found in a house but not usually in a kitchen. I thought you might be a phone, but that has a battery. I thought you might be a light bulb, but those are everywhere in houses. Maybe you might have been a drill or a vacuum cleaner, but those both have moving parts. The only other things I thought you might be were a TV or a computer, but everyone watches TV, so I guessed that first.”
Gold huffs before continuing his walk. “Well, yeah, I’m a television.” There’s another alley a few metres away, so he decides to walk down it.
Edge runs after him, happy to finally have won his first game, while the other three follow at a normal pace. Well, slightly more slowly than a normal pace, since they can tell Gold has become annoyed and it’s probably best if they don’t play “What am I?” again for at least a bit.
“Did you see anything interesting?” Erudite asks as she, Tiara, and Flit follow him and Edge inside. As expected, the alley is as abandoned and tidy as almost all the others they had seen before.
“No,” Gold says, “but we probably won’t see any change if we just keep heading down the same streets forever.”
“We changed streets before,” Edge says.
“Yes, I know,” Gold snaps. “That’s why I said streets.” He places extra emphasis on the final S. Unnecessarily, he adds, “Plural.”
Edge runs back to check the garbage containers, first the one, as the other three members of their group reach the middle of the alley, and then the other, as they walk past. “Well, these are also empty! No monsters.”
“I didn’t think there’d be—” Gold suddenly stops as he turns out of the alley. He then grins. “Hah! I was right!”
Edge immediately runs up to him to see as well. “Ooh, is that a person?!”
The rest of the group hastens to see. It looks like it could be a person, but the… being is blue, has frilly antennae protruding from the side of its head, and lacks arms. When Gold had stepped out of the alley, it had immediately stopped dead in its tracks and gaped at him with undisguised awe. When Edge appeared, it opened its mouth a little wider and drew its head back slightly. When the final three appeared, it opened its mouth back as far wide as possible, pulled back, and shook its head from side to side. Gold thinks it looks like a ridiculous exaggeration of surprise, but it could also be another monster that… simply has very weird behaviour.
“Do we think it’s another monster?” he asks without taking his eyes off it.
“That could be a rude first impression to make,” Erudite says. “If they attack us, we might consider them that, but until then, they might simply be someone who’s very surprised to see us.”
Gold places a hand on Edge’s shoulder. “Don’t run to them and ask. Even if they’re not dangerous, you could scare them off.”
Edge giggles. “Serene did say my Ability would make me scary to fight.”
Frowning down at him, Gold asks, “The one that lets you steal from people?”
“No, that’s Pickpocket. The other one! Pressure!”
“Are you going to try to hurt us if we come closer?” Flit calls at the blue entity.
“They spoke to me!” the individual exclaims before promptly keeling over and landing flat on their back. They wiggle on the pavement as they apparently continue to shake their head from side to side.
“Oh dear,” Erudite says softly.
Flit and Edge run towards them at the same time. Gold sighs and puts a hand over his face in exasperation.
“Are you okay?!” Flit asks, peering down at the fallen individual with grave concern. They don’t have arms, so they can’t block their fall! They could be seriously hurt!
“No!” comes the individual’s reply, and indeed, they continue to wiggle. They only cease gaping to answer before gaping again.
“Are you hurt? Do we need to help you?”
“No and no!” Their wiggling still continues.
Flit frowns a little in confusion, not sure what to make of that, but Edge giggles. “Do you always wiggle and gape like that?”
“Only when I’m surprised!” they reply.
In the meantime, Gold, Tiara, and Erudite have walked over. “Well, could you stop?” he asks.
The person immediately stops. “I can! I have! Would you like me to continue?”
“No, that’s— I said no!”
Before Gold had even finished answering, the person had started wiggling and gaping again.
“Hello, darling,” Erudite says. “I believe our friend here meant he would not like you to continue wiggling and gaping. He would like you to continue stopping.”
“If you like!” the person says almost too cheerfully, stopping again.
“Thank you,” Gold says, huffing. “I’ve seen enough weird things already.”
Erudite gives Gold a softly admonishing look, as it’s impolite to call someone weird, but he takes no notice. She herself immediately puts it out of mind for the same reason: the individual’s response.
“Ooh, really? Like what?”
Gold hesitates for a moment. “A green thing that looks a like a slug but also not. It has a yellow feather or antenna on its head. It’s aggressive and will roll after anyone running away from it.”
“Why is it weird?”
He blinks. “It just… looks weird. It has slits for eyes and puffy lips and stubby arms. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. That we’ve ever seen before.” He adds that last bit and indicates the others because he realises that makes for a better argument.
“That’s a lot of reasons! Do all of those reasons make it a little weird and together make it normally weird, or do they have to all be together to make it weird?”
“I…” How is he supposed to answer that?
“Do we need to help you get up?” Tiara asks, more concerned by the fact that the person hasn’t attempted it yet. Like Flit, she fears they might have been hurt but aren’t focusing on it for some reason. Concussions can make people behave oddly, although the person’s speech isn’t slurred.
“No!”
She blinks at the frankness of the answer coupled with the continued lack of attempts at getting up.
“Can you get up on your own?” Flit asks. Edge giggles at the question.
They deftly hop onto their feet, standing only half a metre tall. Looking up at Flit, they say, “I can! I have! Would you like me to continue?”
“I would like you to… keep standing and talking to us,” Flit says carefully.
Gold quickly adds, frowning, “But don’t keep repeating those three sentences each time.”
“If you like!” they repeat instead.
Gold frowns more, but Erudite gives him a slight shake of the head to indicate he shouldn’t press the matter on that front too. He purses his lips, but he can’t argue that their response is an unreasonable one, so he simply looks back down at the person, whatever they are.
“Hey, what are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t! I’m the Looker of Red Triangular Sign Street!”
“Is that your species?” Tiara asks politely but uncertainly, still aware of how her previous question was met.
“What does that mean?”
“Do you mean you just look around?” Edge asks, suppressing a snicker. The person isn’t wearing any clothing, and they kind of look like a silly television antenna.
“I don’t just look around!” Looker says. “I mostly look at, but I also look for!”
“Oh, so that’s your job?” Tiara asks, understanding a little better. That was her other guess, but she’s never heard of anyone being called a ‘looker’ before.
“No! It’s the thing I want to do!”
Gold is quickly becoming frustrated by this person. Their behaviour is annoying, their answers don’t make much sense, and they’re almost always using that just too cheery tone. Edge finds them comical and Flit finds them confusing for the same reason. Tiara doesn’t know what to think, and Erudite is simply reminding herself that the tournament was always going to be surprising, but she’s not too perturbed, as she’s met much stranger (and ruder) people in her life.
“Pardon me,” Erudite says, “but what is your name? Mine is Rudder.”
“I don’t have a name!”
“Oh. How curious.”
“Why is it curious? Do I not have a name because it’s curious?” Looker gasps. “I can go look for it!”
“I don’t believe names can be curious themselves,” Erudite says, smiling in amusement, “but I also don’t believe they can run away. If you don’t have a name, it must be because no-one has given you one.”
Looked nods enthusiastically, which Gold finds about as disturbing as when they waved their head from side to side. “Yes! Homers aren’t given names!”
“Homers?” Flit asks. “What are those?”
“Is that your species?” Tiara asks hopefully.
Looker smiles brightly. “Homers are what Sinners call the people who call Sin City ‘Home’!”
She’s a bit disappointed, but determined to get some kind of answer to her question, Tiara asks, “Do not all Homers look like you?”
“No! No Homers look like me! All lookers look in their own way!”
She sighs wearily. It’s hopeless.
“Do any Homers resemble you in appearance?” Erudite offers, smiling understandingly at Tiara, who nods in appreciation.
“Yes! Some do!”
Tiara is relieved to finally get an answer to her question. That took so much longer than she expected, but this person clearly speaks in a very particular way that will take some time to get used to. Erudite is putting her many years of being a secretary to excellent use.
Gold huffs. “Okay, look, can you—”
“I don’t know yet,” Looker says, “but please call me ‘Looker’, not just ‘Look’!”
“Oh,” Flit says. “So you do have a name?”
Looker profusely shakes his head to the side. (How he doesn’t get a headache from movements like that is lost on the group.) “No! ‘Looker’ is just what Homers and Sinners call me! I’m the Looker of Red Triangular Sign Street!”
“Fine,” Gold snaps. “Looker, can you give us directions to Superbia Square?”
“No! You just need to look for it!”
Gold slaps his forehead before lowering his hand and saying, “Yes, I know we need to look for it. We’ve been looking for it. We want to know how to find it.”
“You find it by looking for it!” Looker says, ostensibly unhelpfully.
Gold bites down on the reply he’s about to give. Tiara takes his hand and pulls him away; he doesn’t need much convincing to leave Looker behind. They walk some distance away before he hisses, “How fucking dense is that— Gah! I don’t even know what they are aside from a ‘looker’!”
Tiara nods and smiles sympathetically. “I know. I haven’t met any Homers other than them, but Edge told me about the girl he met when he looked inside one of the garbage containers. The Homers have a different culture than any we’re used to, so we’ll just have to meet more of them and see what they’re like. I didn’t think we’d ever find something like that here in the afterlife, but none of us truly knew what to expect anyway.”
Gold nods and sighs heavily. “You’re right. Thanks. I’m sorry for swearing.”
“It’s all right. Here they come.”
Erudite leads Edge and Flit over to the pair, smiling as she normally does. Behind her, Gold and Tiara see Looker walking merrily on his way down the street away from them. She explains, “They meant that we would find Superbia Square by looking for it because the act of looking is how one finds it.”
“That makes more sense now,” Tiara says, smiling at Gold. She’s happy her interpretation turned out correctly.
“They could have been clearer about it,” Gold muttered. “Thanks for being so patient, Rudder. I’d say I don’t know how you manage it, but…”
Erudite simply chuckles.
“Hey!” Edge says when a thought occurs to him. “If Looker said they’re from Red Triangular Sign Street, what do we think this street is called?”
The group looks around them, but even Looker has disappeared. It’s otherwise the same as all the other streets from before.
“Nondescript Sixty-First-Thousandth Street?” Gold offers with a shrug. He grins for a second when it elicits a snicker from Edge and a smile from everyone else. “I would offer to fly up and see if there’s anything interesting about it further on, but I’m afraid of jinxing the searching process for the square. You know, I had thought that Sin City would reveal itself to use when the time was right. But if we’re looking for part of it, isn’t that the opposite of waiting for it to reveal itself?”
Flit scratches his neck. “You’re right, that seems conflicting.”
“Perhaps it’s both,” Erudite suggests. When she only gets curious or confused looks in response, she smiles patiently and elaborates, “If we need to search for our destination but cannot search for it directly, we should simply search for wherever we’re meant to be. In my experience, that’s the path to success in life, so it might be the path to success in the afterlife too.”
Gold nods. “That sounds appropriate.”
Tiara looks around. “Can it be that easy? It might be just around the corner, for all we know.”
Erudite taps her chin twice before saying, “If we expect it to be around the corner, it might continue to hide. We found Looker by looking for something but not knowing what, so perhaps we will find the square in the same way.”
Flit gasps. “Yeah! That makes sense! When I was running away from the slugs, I found Tiara by just running away and wishing I could find some help!”
“And you found me when you were just searching for any other tournament participant!” Edge eagerly says to Gold.
Gold, however, shakes his head. “No, actually, you found me. I was on my way to Tiara’s miniature sun she made using Sunny Day, and that’s how Flit found her too.”
“Oh,” Flit says, a little disheartened. He thought he’d figured out something important about how Sin City works.
“Also, I found Rudder while searching for her without searching for her specifically,” Gold continues, “and she saw me because of my miniature sun. I still think she’s right that it can be both, but it’s probably not that simple.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t be afraid of jinxing the process, as you put it,” Erudite said encouragingly. “You found me by flying and yet still managed to find your exact way back to these fine young people.”
Gold hesitates, but she makes a good point. “Should I try it?”
She and Tiara both nod, and Edge says, “It can’t hurt to try!”
Gold grimaces, after which he says, “I really hope that’s true.”
Date: 25/06/2023
Time: 6:25
Word Count: 7040
Blizzard III: 7040/13000 -
This was more than a little nerve-wrecking, but I finished in time! I now need to ensure I carry on with yesterday's and today's momentum when writing tomorrow, because the worst is yet to come.
But me? I'm ready.Spoiler
There’s nothing left but to try, then. Gold lifts off, and though it always takes tremendous effort just to leave the ground, he’s already come to wish he could spend most of his time in the air. He knows he won’t even have to fly for very long, so he makes long, laborious flaps with his wings to extend the experience as much as he can. It’s a funny thing, freedom — once you have it, you can’t get enough of it, and losing it again, even for a small amount of time, feels almost unbearable.
There’s no need to soar, so he simply lets his wings carry him a few metres above the buildings. Despite the others’ assurances, he would still feel better if he minimised the risk of letting their goal slip away when it might have been just in reach.
…And then the thought strikes: when did he become such a wilting flower?
He’s Gold, named after the most lustrous of metals! He had always been enthusiastic in the way he pursued his goals, so why should he suddenly become a mopey little lizard who’s afraid to make progress? He’s passed all his tests so far, and yes, he still thinks he used excessive force when killing that slug monster, but that means nothing in the grand scope of the tournament! It is literally his time to shine, not to cling to newly discovered, comfortable freedoms.
He will soar! He’s worked himself up enough, so it’s time to turn will into action. He does soar, and he surveys the streets around him with the confidence that even finding nothing would be an acceptable outcome. So, when he sees something very different instead and anxiety again gnaws at the edge of his thoughts, he sets his expression into one of resolute anger and sets fire to the worry.
The other four see nothing out of the ordinary with Gold’s steady ascent, but when he turns and dives down to them, they sense an aura of urgency about the movement.
“Flit, use Tailwind!” he says without preamble, even before pulling into a mid-air stop. His tone alone is enough to make Flit oblige even without thinking about why. But Gold’s motivation doesn’t remain hidden for much longer, as he says, “There are more monsters! We must save the Homers.”
Edge had observed the general direction in which Gold had been looking before he dived down to inform them, so he breaks into a full sprint, a black bolt racing towards a green cancer. It takes the others a second to register his departure before they race after him. Flit, not usually a flyer despite his small wings, zips after him a few centimetres above the asphalt. Tiara feels the passion born from defending Flit surge through her again, and even Erudite, who had hitherto been a soothing presence, runs at a speed she hadn’t known since her childhood.
Gold leaps up and leads the way over the buildings, increasing his speed as he flies and catching up with Edge. The three others twist between the streets and alleys, only a short distance behind them. All five burst into a T-junction where seven of the green rude slug monsters accost and assault numerous Homers. Two of the seven continuously bounce between the buildings that line the street parallel to the one from which the participants had just come, rolling the same way as the two that had pursued Flit. The pair effectively creates roadblocks that prevent the Homers from escaping down either end of the street. That leaves only the perpendicular street that forms the T-junction, but a much larger, purple slug monster dominates it and refuses passage to Homers there as well. The dozen or so civilians are trapped.
The five waste no time stopping to evaluate the situation or discussing a plan. Gold and Edge maintain their momentum and immediately launch an attack, Gold by slugging one of the monsters with a flame-covered fist, which sends it careening into a wall, and Edge by leaping at one with his claws extended in front of him. Gold turns in an arc and snatches one off the road before spiralling into the air. Edge stabs straight through the slug, twists his claws to face outwards instead of inwards, and actually rips the slug apart. He grits his teeth at the stinging pain caused by its bodily fluids and simply dashes to the next one.
Tiara and Erudite both head for what appears to be a sunflower family on the other side of the junction, as a sapient sunflower about two-thirds their length stands with their back towards one of the slugs, their arms spread in defence of three cowering sunflower seeds. Both women recognise a mother’s fear for her children and tap into a primal ferocity. Tiara savagely kicks away the slug threatening the mother, while Erudite stops in front of them, aims at another nearby slug with two fingers, and levitates it into the air. With the immediate threat removed, Tiara runs towards the levitated slug and delivers a flying kick to it. The force is enough to push it free from Erudite’s telekinetic grasp, sending it spinning through the air high across the street.
Flit, torn between the two pairs of his groups, keeps flying on without being able to select one side, which ultimately sends him zooming towards the large purple slug. Realising he’s alone, his mind freezes in terror. The slug snaps at him as he passes by, and he continues on, leaving the scene behind until his conscious will can reassert itself. He stops and turns back. The large slug ignores him, creeping closer towards the innocent people trapped between it and the opposite row of buildings. Flit starts running before taking off again. Once he’s close enough to the monster, he draws on his speed to make electricity crackle around him and releases it in a wave when he again passes by. The electricity wraps itself around the slug, which roars like the scariest possible combination between a lion and a hippo.
In the meantime, the civilians have all huddled into groups. There’s the sunflower family, but four other Homers hide near Gold and Edge while five others are about halfway between those two groups. Their unfortunate position means they experience the greatest degree of danger, as Tiara’s kick makes the slug hit the second storey of the nearest building and then drop next to the group, causing them to shout and pull away. They also shout in surprise when Flit then zooms past them after paralysing the purple slug, which crawls after him and towards the group.
Edge has taken to slashing at the burning slug with his claws covered in psychic energy, granting them some measure of protection against the fluids bleeding out. Gold dives down from his upwards spiral, flying low to the ground and sweeping across the street, dragging the slug and thus shredding it against the asphalt. Erudite snares the dropkicked slug with another telekinetic wave of energy, as Tiara had been expecting and for which she’d been waiting, but instead of simply kicking it again, she shows she’s learned from her last attack and instead spins around while kicking it. The slug is repeatedly smashed, but not so powerfully as to wrest it from Erudite’s hold again.
Flit tries his best to emulate a fly by buzzing around the purple slug at high speed, always too fast to be bitten or body slammed, but it’s only as annoying an ultimately harmless as it would be for a regular fly doing so with anyone else. In fact, it annoys the slug to the point that it roars and leaps against the building at the corner of the junction. It misses Flit, of course, but it smashes the wall, which then begins to crumble around it.
“What are you doing?!” Flit cries, pulling to a stop and watching in horror as the slug swallows some of the rubble. He then discovers why, as the slug turns towards him and belches the rubble out at considerable force. Flit screams in panic and dodges to the side, throwing up a protective bubble around him. It was a good decision, as he dodges just too slowly and a large chunk of concrete hits the bubble, ricocheting down the road and sending Flit rolling away (not unlike one of the smaller slugs).
Tiara, hearing Flit’s cry and scream, abandons the pummelled and bruised slug and runs to his side. “Flit! Are you hurt?”
“No, just very dazed,” he says, looking up and trying to smile at her but feeling very dizzy. He then frowns and rests his head in his hand. “Please, be careful! It will probably try that again!”
He’s correct, as Tiara turns to see a hunk of debris flying towards her. She’s frozen in shock, but Flit reacts without thinking and leaps in front of her. He creates another bubble, but it flickers into existence, and when the rubble hits him, the shock is barely absorbed. It drops only a metre away, whereas Flit is hurled back, against Tiara, and they both tumble to the road and skid away.
“Leave them alone!” Edge shouts, dashing towards the slug. He leaps towards it and slices its sides, but since it pulls away, he only really scratches it and leaps straight into the interior of the building.
The slug roars and begins jumping up and down. The already damaged building starts cracking in its other walls, and with a few more jumps from the slug, the first floor’s ceiling starts cracking too.
Gold tosses his green slug aside and flies into the building after Edge, who didn’t stick his landing and stunned himself from his fall. “Come on, you’re going to get crushed!” he shouts, and when it immediately becomes clear Edge is still struggling to get up, Gold scoops him into his arms and flies back out. Edge is a lot heavier than Gold expected, but he’s able to manage it without colliding against any of the concrete jutting from the hole.
“Get away!” Erudite shouts to the sunflower family, ushering them away from the structurally unsound building.
The purple slug has ceased its demolition and instead leaps away, fully aware of the danger. It rolls away slightly, and the building lets out an immense and deep groan as it breaks at the cracks and its walls begin tumbling down. The ceiling caves in, which causes a chain reaction. More and more of the building collapses, scattering bits of stone and a cloud of dust outwards and into the adjacent streets, until eventually the entire thing goes down.
Erudite throws her arms open and creates a wall of force instead of her usual bubble. The cyan wall prevents any of the effective shrapnel from hitting her or the family behind her, but the dust still spreads around the edges and envelops them.
Nobody else is close to the building, as Gold had successfully carried Edge towards Flit and Tiara. The only green slugs remaining are the two blocking the street, so Gold looks between the two nearby groups of Homers and waves them towards the alley from which the other members of his group had emerged.
“Run that way! Go! It’s safer there!”
The Homers don’t need to be told twice, evacuating through the alley as quickly as they can. (Gold’s surprised to see none of them pushing or shoving against each other, which is in stark contrast with the panicked evacuations he’s seen in films and in the media back on Earth.) Erudite guides the sunflower family towards the alley too, trailing behind to ensure anything attacking them would hit her first.
“Thank you so much for saving me and the young ones!” the mother says, running after the seeds.
They have the widest eyes Erudite has ever seen on any plant, and it breaks her heart that even in the afterlife, fear and suffering are apparently a fact.
“Go on and lead them to safety!” Erudite says, taking her stand beside Gold while checking on the other members of her group.
The mother stops just inside and the turns back. “Are you not coming with us?”
Gold shakes his head. “No, we have to ensure these things never hurt or bother anyone ever again.”
She nods and smiles in gratitude. “I hope the mayor rewards you for your bravery!” She then escorts her children out of sight.
“I don’t need any reward for saving children,” Erudite says, partially to Gold and the others but mostly to herself.
Tiara, who had been taking her time to recover her energy under a streetlamp using Synthesis, opened her eyes and nodded. “I agree. If I could redo my death, it would be to save other people from harm.”
The purple slug has sidled up to a wall in the meantime and appears to be taking a nap. The two smaller slugs are still performing their role of blockade, unaware that there isn’t really anyone left to block. They didn’t block the alley either, so it was only somewhat effective in any case.
Edge starts throwing icicles at the closest slug, hoping that somewhere between rebounding off the walls, one of them will hit the thing. His usually grinning face is set in a frown bordering on a snarl.
Gold puts a hand on Edge’s shoulder, drawing his attention to him. “Save your energy. We can focus on them after we kill that one.” He nods at the snoozing slug.
“Did you put it to sleep while we weren’t looking, Rudder?” Flit asks.
She shakes her head. “No, I believe it’s using Rest. It will almost certainly wake soon and then resume wreaking havoc.”
“Then I’ll create clones for you while you fight it!” he says hopefully, glancing at Gold, Tiara, and Edge in turn. But then his courage falters. “I only made it angry and endangered everyone…”
Gold now shakes his head. “It was already dangerous and destructive. This is where we needed to be next. And maybe you don’t even need to make clones for us all.” He looks to Erudite. “Can you lift it into the air like you did with that one?” He gestures at the battered slug lying some distance away.
“I can certainly try,” she replies.
“Then let’s kill the angry monster!” Edge says, visibly restraining himself from just running towards it again.
The group approaches it until they’re about a few metres away. Erudite focuses and takes aim, and though she starts showing strain, her effort pays off! The huge slug levitates into the air, and Erudite lets out a victorious snort, though she can’t afford more than that due to the risk of breaking her concentration.
“Okay, go!” Gold shouts, inhaling deeply and spewing forth a sustained stream of fire at the slug.
Edge laughs happily and throws icicle after icicle at it while Flit encourages them both. Tiara wonders how she can contribute, but then she remembers she picked Power Whip. She jogs to the other side of the slug (around it, not underneath it) and envisions her calyx — her “hair” — growing longer. All three sepals glow light green and extend, so she twirls around, repeatedly slamming them into the slug.
As a result of the barrage of attacks, the slug snores loudly, emitting a shockwave that makes Edge and Erudite both cringe. This breaks Erudite’s concentration and she subsequently drops the slug. The fall then wakes it, which prompts it to roar in fury.
Edge, who’s still cringing a little, as if the shockwave had caused a lingering effect, glares at the slug. “You were being violent first!”
The slug begins jumping up and down again, to everyone’s dismay.
“Get away from the buildings!” Gold shouts.
He turns to follow his own instruction, but as he does, he sees the smaller slug that had been blockading the road now barrelling straight towards them. His words are barely out of his mouth before the slug collides with Flit, who cries out and then crashes into Gold. The slug rolls away after the crash, but Flit is knocked unconscious, so Gold scoops him up and takes to the air.
The others, seeing the slug roll away and Gold carrying Flit to safety, realise that the smaller slugs are no longer occupying themselves with the road. Erudite has enough time to turn and see the slug from the other end of the street coming towards her. She angles her body slightly to the left so that when she produces the same wall of force from before, it deflect the slug back in the general direction from which it had come. A third slug, the one that Tiara had initially kicked away from the sunflower family, is also heading towards her. She remembers Serene’s warning about using Protect too many times consecutively, so she points at the incoming slug and shouts, “Stop!” She successfully disables its ability to roll properly, causing it to skid and tumble across the road instead. She didn’t realise its momentum would still carry it towards her, so she has too little time to properly dodge. But fortunately, Edge drags her to the side just as the slug hurtles by.
“Oh, thank you, darling!” she exclaims, quite out of breath from the fright.
“Run!” he shouts, his claws becoming bathed in orange energy as he scrapes at the road. The asphalt peels away as he continues to dig to safety. “They’ll come back!”
She realises this must be the kind of onslaught from which Flit had been fleeing when he first met Tiara, as all this rolling around explains why the garbage containers in that one alley had been knocked over and why Tiara had resorted to so powerful an attack to be rid of them.
“Rudder, behind you!” Tiara shouts.
Erudite spins around and sees yet another slug coming her way, but it’s all she can to do create a bubble in time. As soon as the slug hits, the bubble pops and it ricochets away, leaving her to stagger back. Suddenly, she feels herself being scooped up by Tiara, who makes an impressive leap into the air. No sooner than she had done so, the second slug barrelled past. Worst of all, she saw the purple slug also begin rolling towards them.
“I can’t protect us,” she says numbly, overwhelmed by the situation.
Gold swoops down, landing only long enough to accept Erudite from Tiara’s arms before leaping into the air again. Tiara easily performs a somersault to launch herself above the incoming purple slug, and at the apex of her jump, she touches down on the slug before performing another somersault into the air.
Gold carries Erudite onto the building at the corner opposite the ruined one. Flit lies there, breathing but still out cold from the collision.
“Thank you,” Erudite says before kneeling to inspect Flit. “Oh, you poor dear…”
Confident that Flit will be fine with Erudite to look after him, Gold leaps off the building again. “Can you continue doing that?” he calls to Tiara, who needs to keep jumping and twirling through the air to avoid the three slugs.
She jumps against a wall and pushes off while rolling through the air almost as if she were one of the slugs too — although her white dress with the scarlet flowers makes her movements far more dramatic and impressive, so she would have been a nudibranch at worst. When she lands, she tucks her head in and rolls forwards before deftly leaping up again. “For now!”
“Keep doing it!” Gold says, positioning himself so he can properly breathe fire at them. The next time one passes underneath, he scorches it, but its sheer speed seems to bring it into very little contact with the actual fire. When the same thing happens twice more, he yells, “How the fuck can they just keep doing this?!” in frustration.
Maybe he should have focused more on the big slug, as a smaller one actually bounces into the air, which Gold easily dodges, but it brings him closer to the big one, which had since stopped rolling. It sprays a jet of acid at him, and though Gold’s armour takes the biggest hit, a good amount of it hits his tail. Gold spins frantically in the air, almost thrashing about as he tries to wipe it off with his sleeves. He moves in a general direction away from the slug, but it’s clear they’re no closer to killing it.
“We need everyone to work together!” Tiara calls.
Having rubbed off the acid and trying his best to ignore the residual stinging, he calls back, “We can’t when they’re constantly rolling around!”
“I have an idea! Get Edge onto the roof too!”
Edge, fortunately, hears her. “Is it safe to come out?!”
Gold waits until the smaller slugs have both rolled past and then dives towards the big one to provoke it. As he expected, it spits acid at him again, but he drops underneath it and pulls up above Edge’s hole. “Now!” Edge almost leaps into his arms, but he awkwardly grabs the boy and lifts him onto the roof.
“Now me!” Tiara shouts.
Gold catches her at the apex of another of her jumps, and though she weighs considerably more than Edge, he still manages to get her to the roof. “What now?” he pants, crouching down to use Roost and catch his breath. It makes the stinging on his tail go away too, he’s happy to note.
“That thing’s probably going to try and bring this building down too if we stay up here for long,” Tiara says, kneeling beside Erudite to inspect Flit, “but maybe that’ll stop the smaller ones from rolling around too.” She emits a particularly sweet and soothing fragrance.
A few seconds later, Flit’s eyes flicker open. “Ow…”
“Heal as quickly as you can,” Tiara said. “We need you to create clones so we can lure the slugs in with them and hit them after they bounce away.”
“If I hold onto Gold again,” Erudite suggests, “I might be able to catch the small ones after they hit a clone. That should be more effective.”
Tiara nods. “That’s a good idea.”
“What can I do?” Edge asks.
“You and I will jump down from here once it’s safe. You look like you can climb, so you should be fine. If you can’t, I’ll just catch you.”
“I’ll be fine!” Edge says happily, glad to be safe and with the group again.
“If it’s okay with you all, I think I’d prefer to stay up here,” Flit says nervously, gingerly pushing himself into a sitting position.
“As long as you can support us from up here,” Tiara says, “that will be fine. This plan will be much harder without you.”
“Is there any other part of it that we need to know?” Gold asks. He’s grateful he managed to pull his teammates to safety, but he was also hoping to get rid of more threats than just two or three slugs.
“We need to kill that purple scum before it gets a chance to use Rest again,” she says, “so you’ll probably have to use Sunny Day once we’ve weakened it so we can finish it.”
“Err, it’s already sleeping again,” Edge points out, peering over the roof’s edge and also literally pointing down at it. “The two small ones are sleeping too.”
Everyone but Flit joins him. “Oh,” she says. “That makes this much easier.” She turns back to Flit. “I think we should try a new plan: focus on making Gold as powerful and protected as possible, then Edge and I will take out the two small ones while they sleep and Erudite can help us weaken the big one. When Gold’s ready, he can come down and help us finish the job.”
Gold gives Flit a determined look. “You know how I melted that other slug?”
“Yeah?”
“Help me do it on a bigger target.”
Flit nods and illuminates his abdomen. At the same time, white energy washes over him. “This won’t take long.”
“Then here we go!” Tiara says. She moves to a different spot before vaulting off the roof and landing perfectly on top of one of the two small slugs. Its squeal lasts for less than a second before her leg skewers it and cuts it off. “Argh, momentum isn’t fun, is it?” she taunts, kicking it away and hopping on one foot while trying to wipe the gunk off her other one.
Edge giggles while precariously climbing down the side of the building, his claws digging into the concrete. He then cackles giddily upon launching himself at the other green slug, on which he lands like it’s a rubbery pin cushion. He slashes it to ribbons within seconds, and it’s surprising how something so weak could have been so dangerous just five minutes previously.
Gold carefully lowers Erudite to the street and says, “Good job!” before flying back to Flit.
“It certainly is a heavy sleeper,” Erudite remarks about the purple slug, which has yet to wake despite the dying screams from the smaller slugs.
Tiara begins summoning her miniature moon again. (It’s interesting how her light is white and refreshing while Gold’s is yellow and energising.) With her eyes closed, she quips, “It can sleep as long as it wants. When we’re done, it will be sleeping forever.” The moon grows and rises into the sky. Once it finishes its ascent, Tiara opens her eyes and glares at the slug. “I’m ready.”
“It’s wakey-wakey time!” Edge shouts laughingly, running around the slug and dragging his claws against it. Unlike the previous time he attacked it, a much brighter purple than its pale lilac hide shows through the scores that he leaves behind.
Tiara follows shortly behind him, all a-twirling and a-kicking like a deadly ballerina. The slug suddenly opens its eyes and roars again, so they scatter to the sides, allowing Erudite to launch a torrent of scalding water at it. Some of the water gets into its eyes, causing it to recoil violently and crash against the building.
Gathering light energy in her hands like the first time, Tiara starts forming a rapidly growing blade. “Get down!”
Erudite and Edge gape slightly and gawk, respectively, at the energy weapon, so they hastily crouch down. Erudite launches another wave of scalding water at the slug just as it tries to crawl away, after which Tiara swings her blade in a clockwise arc. It cuts through some of the building but not the slug, which instead gets carried along as if struck by a timber or steel beam. It’s embedded thoroughly in the wall, like a wriggling elephant squished upside-down into a hole.
Gold descends with Flit on his back, who jumps down to stand next to Tiara. He smiles in anticipation and beckons for her to move back. Wisps of fire spontaneously appear and accumulate all around Gold, swirling into a firestorm and forcing the four others back all the way to the other side of the street.
The dragon inhales, causing the fiery funnel to swirl faster and faster. He doesn’t exhale, instead channelling his energy towards the slug. The firestorm then twists into a ball, like water being drawn down a whirlpool, and explodes towards the slug. The slug, along with the entirety of the first floor, is blown into oblivion, and as the second storey collapses into the fire, it too burns into a crisp and melts into nothing.
Flit and Erudite both create walls of force that merge to create one large shield in front of the rest of the group, and all they can see as flames wash against the walls is Gold and the building disappearing in waves of fire. They can see nothing but a sea of orange for ten seconds, but when it pulls away, it disappears like a candle being snuffed. Gold hovers in the air, hunched over and panting, while the asphalt boils beneath him and a blackened, smouldering mess hisses in front of him. It’s not just the building on the corner, but also the next two buildings behind it that have ceased to exist.
The group just continues to watch Gold, stunned into silence, while Gold himself just continues to behold the destruction he had wrought. Only when Tiara’s moon winks out does Gold stir and turn around. He has a lopsided grin plastered to his tired face.
“It’ll never bother anyone again.”
Finally feeling like he has permission to speak, Flit bursts out, “That was totally wicked!”
Edge’s jaw has practically been touching the road since the firestorm first start. He’s still speechless.
Tiara had thought her strongest attack was impressive, but she stammers out a weak, “Y-yes,” in agreement with Flit.
Erudite chuckles in pride and smiles warmly at Gold. “I think you’ve earned your name, young man.”***
Giratina and Serene float above the endless void that serves as Sin City’s sky. Our Grace appears to be asleep, as it’s curled into a spiral and floats with its eyes closed, whereas Serene is inspecting the progress of the tournament’s participants below. He can follow their every action as if he were right beside each of them, and every now and then, he traces a glyph in the air.
“Should we have another ad break?” Giratina asks without moving.
“I do not think so,” Serene answers, glancing at the celestipede before resuming his inspection of the tournament’s progress. He would prefer an earnest discussion of the participants’ performance thus far, but his duty is to Our Grace, not the participants. Reminding himself of his duty, he says, “I could, however, describe something unrelated to the tournament, if it would please Our Grace.”
“Maybe the audience wants to hear about Mad Adam’s and Jason’s game of marine warfare.”
The disembodied audience most certainly does! It generally cheers in anticipation, though some specific voices state their familiarity with and skill in the game while others state the exact opposite. None of the voices state any concern regarding the tournament, of course, as they already commented on what has already been described, and repeating commentary would simply be boring.
“Very well,” Serene says. “For any audience member who is unfamiliar, the layout is similar to that of a chessboard: A1, starfish; B1, manta ray; C1, large crab; D1, giant isopod; E1, Mad Adam; F1, large crab; G1, manta ray; H1, starfish; A2 to H2, crab; A7 to H7, crayfish; A8, shark; B8, electric eel; C8, large crayfish; D8, Jason; E8, multiple barnacles; F8, large crayfish; G8, electric eel; and H8, shark. A few pieces will not move as expected, but you will notice that immediately.”
Giratina chuckles in its ‘sleep’. “They will notice something immediately, and it’s not that.”
Serene smiles and inclines his head. “That is true. The two opponents nod at each other from across the thirty-two by thirty-two metre platform. Adam calls ‘Crayfish on A7’. Jason says ‘Crayfish to A6’ and the crayfish scuttles forwards. He then expectedly calls ‘Crab on H2’, which Adam orders to H3. He then calls ‘Eel on B8’. Jason rolls his eyes and says ‘Eel to C6’, at which the eel floats over the two crayfish in front of it. He calls ‘Starfish on H1’, which Adam orders to H2, as it is similarly the only legal move. At this point, it should be clear to the audience that players take turns selecting one of their opponent’s marine creatures, which the opponent must then order to a another square. If no legal move for that creature is allowed, the player is not allowed to select it.”
The audience reacts exactly as one would expect, especially in instances where the voices state they know about chess but have never seen this variant before. Some ask whether the point is to waste as much of the other player’s time, and… well, yes! Except also no, there are other rules that have not yet been revealed or explained.
“I will hereafter simply list the following moves until something noteworthy occurs,” Serene says. “And remember that it is currently Adam’s turn to select one of Jason’s creatures. Crayfish on F7 to F6. Starfish on H2 to H1. Adam is unperturbed by the wasted move, by the way. He calls ‘Great Crayfish on F8’, which makes Jason growl and say ‘Great Crayfish to F7’. Crab on C2 to C3. Crayfish on E7 to E6. Crab on A2 to A3. Five turns for each player has now passed, which marks a change in the rules.’
Ah. The previously confused members of the disembodied audience are curious to see what happens next. So far, the game isn’t prone to being completed soon! Which doesn’t make for a very exciting game, although someone with the epithet ‘Mad’ might not care too much about that.
“Adam says ‘Ray on G2 to C3’. Jason then says ‘Crayfish on E6 to E5’. Naturally, the players may temporarily select their own creatures. Crab on D2 to D3. Crayfish on D7 to D6. Great Crab on C1 to D2. Great Crayfish on C8 to D7. Crab on G2 to G3. Crayfish on B7 to B6. Isopod on D1 to C2. And Otter, which is Jason, on D8 to E7. Five turns have again passed, so the players will now again take turns selecting each other’s creatures.”
Oh, that means the players must constantly try to force their opponent to move into disadvantageous positions while then trying to take the most advantage of their own positions when the selection rules change! Those voices in the disembodied audience who previously did not understand, state their newly acquired understanding to the others and excitedly speculate about how the game could proceed.
“Adam calls ‘Crayfish on E5’. Jason reluctantly orders it to E4 and then calls ‘Otter on E1’. This is Adam himself, of course, so Adam then simply steps to D1 while saying ‘Otter to D1’. Incidentally, they are not the same species of otter, as Jason is blue and lean while Adam is pink and sturdy. Crayfish on H7 to H6. Starfish on A1 to A2. Eel on C6 to A5. Crab on G3 to G4. Adam chuckles at that point and Jason smirks. For context, during the first five turns, three crabs and crayfish must be selected, and during the next five moves where players select their opponent’s creatures, only two may be selected, and this alternates between three and two thereafter. Adam has already made his two crayfish selections, so Jason may now compromise his crab arrangement as he pleases. Also, for further clarity, only one creature may be selected twice in a set of five turns, and it may be selected no more than twice.”
If the audience could nod, it would, but being disembodied, it instinctively murmurs its acknowledgement instead.
“Shark on H8 to H7. Crab on G4 to G5. Otter on E7 to F8. Isopod on C2 to B3. Adam nods at Jason, who smirks yet again. It is the eleventh turn, so Adam is now in the position where he must choose whether to save his isopod, which is being threatened by the eel on A5, or his ray on F3, which is being threatened by the crayfish on D4. He chooses to save his isopod, naturally, as nothing is defending it. He orders it back to C2, as any other move would leave it in equally great peril. Unfortunately, this costs him his ray; Jason says ‘Crayfish on E4 to C3’, and the crayfish in question clasps onto both of the ray’s eyes, shaking it violently. Although the ray is ostensibly blinded and bleeding, it flies off the board and away.”
Several voices in the audience exclaim in surprise or anguish (or sadistic pleasure, in one case). They knew the creatures would attack each other, but so brutally?! How exciting and yet dreadful!
Date: 25/06/2023
Time: 23:20
Word Count: 6013
Blizzard III: 13053/13000 -
Since my Blizzard thread looks empty without the final entry and the competition is over, I figured I'd post it here for posterity! Also, there is evidently no word limit on posts in club topics that we can reasonably reach, given that there are greater than forty thousands words in this one, so that's another cool thing to note for posterity. XD
BrumalHunter wrote:Ugh, I spent about seven hours writing in total today, yet I produced only half of what I would normally be able to write in that time. But at least I'm done with the Marine Warfare game, so it's back to the story! I'm definitely not finishing Episode One by the end of the week, haha. XD
Date: 27/06/2023
Time: 5:10
Word Count: 4662
Blizzard IV: 4662/???
I have not written NEARLY enough this week so far. I wrote something like 1.5K on Tuesday, nothing on Wednesday, only two hundred bloody words yesterday, and most of the rest today. (This is what happens when you allow yourself to be distracted by things like D&D.) There is the rest of Saturday left, all of Sunday, and then most of Monday.
I'm at about 75.5K for the story in total now, and I've decided a fitting goal would be to reach 100K by the end of LMS, which means I have three days left to write roughly 24450 words. That's about 8.1K per day, and if I manage to achieve that, I'll be at a total of at least 35690 words. I'll be setting a new record for the most number of words written during LMS Blizzard, but I wouldn't put it past my two competitors to try and reach 30K too. My original goal of 50K for the final week has been made impossible by the lack of a 20K week to warm up sufficiently for it, so if I manage to reach my current goal with time to spare, I'll see if I can't maybe push my word count up to 40K.
Date: 01/07/2023
Time: 5:34
Word Count: 6578
Blizzard IV: 11240/???
Well, that's half of my Sunday gone! It's almost noon, so I shall take a four-hour nap and then a shower. I'll have fewer than 24 hours to write at least 15K more words so I can reach my goal of 100K for the story. It's doable, but it's going to be very, very hard. Getting in an extra 5K is purely a bonus, but I can't afford any wasting of time after this.
It's not all bad, though! I'm learning a ton about how to crunch effectively, and the secret is to immerse yourself. I'm almost done with group 3, and though it was difficult getting my rhythm going, I managed it in the end and feel the same connection to the characters as I did for group 2. Thank you, Dust, for your encouragement. <3
Date: 02/07/2023
Time: 11:58
Word Count: 10140
Blizzard IV: 21380/???
All right, I've finished group 3's arc! This is the last update I'll make for Sunday, so the next one I make will be the final update with the 10–15K I need to reach my goals and hopefully also be the Last Man Standing. I didn't have to post this now already, but I wanted to.
Date: 02/07/2023
Time: 22:38
Word Count: 4121
Blizzard IV: 25501/???
Holy shit. I actually did it. I actually fucking did it. I wrote 40K in one week. I achieved my primary goal of 100K words for the novel by the end of the week, but I also achieved my secondary goal of beating the previous LMS record for most words written in a week.
I cried so many times in the past two days. I wrote the most emotional scene of the novel (so far) today. This took my heart and soul to finish, but I did it.
I did it.
Date: 03/07/2023
Time: 15:56
Word Count: 14599
Blizzard IV: 40100/???Spoiler
“Adam says ‘Crab on G5 to H6’, and his crab clips off the pinchers of the crayfish occupying the spot. The crayfish, like the ray, simply leaves the board. Jason then says ‘Crayfish on F3 to E2’ and that crayfish also goes for the eyes. If the crab is blinded, it nevertheless turns around and scuttles away without colliding with any of the other creatures. Jason says ‘Arrest’, but Adam simply greets the crayfish, who cheerfully waves at him, before saying ‘Great Crab on F1 to E2’. The crab smacks the crayfish with the larger of its two pinchers, after which Adam again greets the crayfish before it happily scuttles away.”
And it didn’t sustain much injury, apparently, so why wouldn’t it be happy? What a lucky crayfish!
“Crayfish on G7 to H6. The crayfish repeatedly knocks on the crab’s head. Crab on C3 to C4. Shark on H7 to G7. Starfish on H1 to E1. Crayfish on H6 to H5. Five turns have again passed, so it is now the twenty-first turn and thus Adam’s next opportunity to select one of Jason’s creatures. As a reminder, three crabs and crayfish must again be selected. Eel on A5 to C6. Starfish on E1 to F1. Crayfish on A6 to A5. Jason shrugs, thereby acknowledging that Adam has successfully prevented Jason’s eel from possibly threatening Adam’s isopod for the time being. However, he then selects the crab on B2, which Adam must order to B3, which prevents the isopod from moving at all. Crayfish on D6 to D5. Crab on B3 to B4. Great Crayfish on D7 to D6, which causes Jason to snort in displeasure. Crab on F2 to F3. Adam takes his time with his final selection, evidently considering which crayfish to choose. He selects the one on E5, which makes Jason snort yet again as he orders it to E4. But he then says ‘Well, let’s see how you like it: Great Crab on E2’, which makes Adam chuckle and order the great crab to E3, its only available position.”
All in all, it sounds like they’re in equally bad positions! Jason is in the lead with a ray while both players are missing two crabs or crayfish. It really is interesting how they carefully they have to try to manoeuvre, even if the manoeuvring itself is only possible because of how friendly the marine creatures all generally, relatively, seem to be.
“It is the twenty-sixth turn. Adam elects to attack the great crayfish on D6, but his crab on C5 refrains from using its pinchers and instead blow bubbles in the great crayfish’s face, which greatly offends it. It makes a great show of stomping away. Jason retaliates by ordering his crayfish on D4 to E3, and it leaps onto the larger crab and pummels its eyes with its pinchers. The great crab flees with the crayfish still on it, but the crayfish leaps off onto its square before it can be carried too far. However, before it actually lands, the other great crab gives it a profound smack with its great pincher, knocking it towards the starfish on F1, who simply spins into the air to avoid the crustacean. The crayfish lands outside the board and lies there for a few seconds before righting itself and leaving. Naturally, this is because Adam had ordered the great crab to E3. Jason orders his crayfish on C7 to D6, and it launches itself against the crab with a jet of water. The crab pats the crayfish before leaving. Crab on H3 to H4. Barnacles on E8 to D7. Ray on B1 to D3, and the ray is particularly happy to finally leave its square. Jason then takes a long time to consider his next move, and as such, I currently have nothing else to report.”
“You should describe the layout of the board again,” Giratina points out.
“Would it perhaps be satisfactory if I do so after the thirtieth turn?”
“You’re the one relaying the game; you decide.” Our Grace doesn’t stir from its position, although its wings are always wriggling, rising, or falling to some degree.
Serene nods. “Very well. In the meantime, Jason has settled on Barnacles on D7 to E6. Adam says ‘Otter on D1 to D2’ as he walks to the spot, and Jason concludes his final turn before the selection change with a similar ‘Otter on F8 to E7’. The next turn is the thirty-first, but before then, the layout is as follows: Starfish on F1 and A2; Isopod on C2; Adam on D4; Crabs on A3, B3, D3, F3, and H4; Ray on C3; Great Crab on E3; Crayfish on A5, B6, D6, F6, and H5; Eels on C6 and G8; Barnacles on E6; Jason on E7; Great Crayfish on F7; and Sharks on G7 and A8. Jason still leads with a ray.
“Resuming play, Adam forces Crayfish on A5 to A4, which will naturally result in Jason losing that particular crayfish, so Jason selects the ray on C3 so that he can ensure his shark on A8 can retake the square without fear. Adam orders the ray to B5. Shark on A8 to A5. Isopod on C2 to D1. Great Crayfish on F7 to G6. Crab on F3 to F4. Crayfish on F6 to F5. Crab on D3 to D4. Eel on C6 to D8. That particular move has Jason gnash on his teeth. Great Crab on E3 to F2, which concludes the thirty-fifth turn. Selection again returns to the players.
“Adam orders his crab on B3 to oust the crayfish on A4, which it does by politely shooing the crayfish off the board. As the ray on B5 is now protected, Jason orders his shark to retake A4, as predicted previously. The shark, however, is not as polite and leaps onto the crab, mauls it, and tosses it off the board while biting off a pincher, which the shark then eats. Starfish on F1 to G1, thus pinning the great crab on G6 to the shark on G7. Otter on E7 to D7, as Jason seeks to prevent Adam’s ray on B5 from occupying C7 and thereby prevent his barnacles on E6 from moving to D5 before the next selection change, when Adam could force Jason’s crayfish on D6 to D5. If that were to happen, Jason’s crayfish on D5, F5, and H5 would all prevent his barnacles from moving into a more advantageous position. Adam moves us on from the hypothetical by moving from D2 to D3. Shark on A4 to A5. Crab on A3 to A4, which makes Jason groan in frustration. Barnacles on E6 to D5. Ray on B5 to C3. Otter on D7 to C6, which concludes the fortieth turn. Three crabs and crayfish must again be selected by the opposing players. Adam calmly looks around to assess the board.”
Approximately a minute later, with nothing further being reported by Serene, the disembodied audience grows restless and begins to murmur amongst itself. Giratina, otherwise still in its not-sleeping position, says, “Skip ahead.”
Serene nods, and even if Giratina can’t see it, it’s probably aware of the response all the same. “In about a minute, Adam will select the great crayfish on G6, which will subsequently make Jason look between his shark and the opposing starfish, realise the implication, and snarl in anger. His shark is worth more to him than his great crayfish, so he will order his great crayfish forwards to G5. Henceforth, I will report on the game as if it were still taking place in the present.”
“The audience doesn’t need to hear about the pauses anyway,” Giratina says matter-of-factly.
Serene gives Giratina a mildly concerned look. “Our Grace, would you prefer if I moved myself and the audience elsewhere?”
“Why would I prefer that?” Giratina asks simply. “Do you maybe think I would find this… distracting?” It pauses before saying that final word, as if discovering just then that the tiniest of pebbles had been snuck onto its tongue.
Serene remains completely motionless for one, two, three, four… six seconds before responding, “I must not have been thinking coherently, Our Grace, as it could not be possible for me to think I would, or even could, distract you. I cannot be certain what exactly my thoughts were, then, and for this, I apologise.”
“That’s very unlike you,” it replies with an affected hint of surprise. “Have a mint.”
“May I decline, Our Grace?”
“You may not.”
“Very well.”
“How was the mint?” Giratina asks without any pause.
“It was bland, Our Grace.”
“You should have picked a better one.”
“I did not care for any particularly flavoured or flavourful mints.”
“Are your thoughts more coherent now?”
“Categorically, Our Grace.”
“Good. Mad Adam is in the present again, so you should continue with the game.”
“Of course, Our Grace.” Serene regards the audience again. “I must clarify on the selection of crabs and crayfish: if fewer moves than the required number are available, then all legal moves for the available crabs and crayfish must be forced, although still only one marine creature may be selected twice. Once these moves have been exhausted, and only then, the concerned player may select any other marine creatures. However, if it again becomes possible to select a crab or crayfish with a legal move before the privilege of selection returns to the players, and the player has not yet selected the required number, that player must do so.
“Jason has spent some time contemplating his next move, which is what granted me the time to make this clarification. He ultimately calls ‘Otter on D3’, which simply has Adam announce his moving to E3. At this point, there are two interesting scenarios at play. Firstly, there is the starfish on G1 pinning the great crayfish on G5 to the shark on G7, though either crab on F4 or H4 could be forced to oust the great crayfish. Secondly, Adam likely knows he must force the crayfish on B6 to advance to B5, which would put him at a disadvantageous position if he has no other crayfish to select, as he would be forced to select that crayfish again and thus allow Jason to let it attack his crab. He must carefully decide whether to do so immediately or whether to delay that selection by one more turn and exhaust his two non-crayfish selections. This is because he seeks to present Jason with a dilemma: select the crab on A4 and allow Adam to order that crab to arrest Jason while Jason himself is not free to make the decision regarding the removal of his own arrest, or select one of the two crabs threatening his great crayfish and thereby gain himself two more turns before he is required to force his arrest anyway. What makes this scenario so interesting is Jason still has one non-crab selection left, and if he were to force the ray on C3 to move, it could no longer protect the crab that would move to B5 to arrest him, thereby allowing him deal with the problem however he likes, as he would delay that crab selection until his fifth turn, after which the privilege of selection of his creatures would return to him.”
“Esteemed members of the audience,” Giratina once more says in its usual, theatrical tone, “if you’ve replicated the board in your mind, since you don’t have any incorporeal chessboards around to visualise the game that way, which decision would you make if you were in either player’s position? Discuss it until Serene has finished counting to ten!”
Both the audience and Serene oblige. When the latter finishes, the former has generally been split equally among all options between both players.
“Ah, it seems you require more mental exercise!” Giratina declares. “Serene will deliver you from your logical agony. How fortunate that the players have pondered for a preponderance of the elapsed time! Perhaps they also require more mental exercise!”
Serene smiles. “It has been a significant amount of time since I last narrated on a strategic game, and I therefore require more mental exercise as well. I had forgotten something which a member of the audience more familiar than me with Marine Warfare kindly pointed out, namely that if Jason selects a creature and that creature places him under arrest, he would not have the time to decide how he removes himself from that position, as the next turn would be Adam’s; as Adam would be free to select his own creatures, Jason would not get to remove himself from danger in time and Adam would order the crab to take his square.”
The disembodied audience gasps. Which amongst them had pointed it out? No particular voice claims the credit at first, but then several do at the same time.
“You can prove your intelligence by playing against Serene later,” Giratina says in a mock-rebuking tone. Still curled up and with its eyes closed, of course. “For now, he can continue reporting on the game.”
Serene smiles slyly and nods. “Ultimately, Adam decides it is indeed better to delay selecting the crayfish on B6, so he instead selects the eel on G8. Jason does not look happy, but he also does not seem too surprised. He orders the eel to E7 before also taking a very long time considering his next move. Evidently, he considers the possibility of being arrested, consequently being forced to use his shark to remove the threat, and losing his shark to the ray on C3 to be too disadvantageous, so he selects the ray on C3. Adam seems to have considered this outcome already, as he immediately orders his ray to B5, taking Jason by surprise.
“Adam cannot select any of Jason’s crayfish, so he merrily selects the shark on G7. Jason orders the shark to G6 and, for being necessitated to select a crab, selects the one F4. Adam nods and orders it to G5. The crab clips off a piece of the star on the great crayfish’s nose, which makes it hop away while making noises that presumably are meant to imitate crying. Adam is forced to select the crayfish on F5, which advances to F4 and prompts Jason to call ‘Arrest’. Jason cannot select another crab, but even if he could, he would have to forego that and select Adam himself on E3, as there is no other creature that can remove him from danger. Adam naturally elects to take C4, telekinetically pushing the crayfish off the board. He considers his options for a couple minutes before selecting the shark on G3. Jason simply orders the shark back to G7, as there is now an opposing crab between it and the starfish on G7. Jason selects that crab on G5, as he must, which then moves forwards to G6.
“As soon as the forty-sixth turn commences, Adam requests his starfish on A2 to ‘please move to C2 and arrest dear Jason’. The starfish cartwheels there, turns to Jason, and charismatically flashes the gem at its centre. Jason merely rolls his eyes and looks around him. There are only three available moves, but Jason doesn’t consider it for very long before calling ‘Otter on C6 to D7’. Adam repeats his request, except that the aforementioned starfish should now move to C7. Jason groans and announces his departure to E8. Adam suddenly frowns in dismay, as if he realised he had made a mistake — most likely, he had noticed that Jason could command his eel on E7 to remove the crab on G6, thereby arresting Adam and simultaneously threatening his starfish on C7 with the shark on G7 — but then he exclaims in relief and requests that his ray on B5 occupy D6 and arrest Jason as well. The ray flies over and flops onto the crayfish, which then struggles to crawl out from underneath the ray before scuttling off. Jason shouts ‘I was in the lead! How is this happening?!’ before moving to F8.
“Adam recalls the possible threat on his position and calls ‘Otter on F4 to F3’, putting him outside the range of Jason’s two eels. Jason shouts ‘Finally! Shark on A5, devour that bloody crab on A4 already’ and his shark attempts to follow his command, but the crab hits it in the eye in the ensuing struggle, leaps out of its maw, and limps away as quickly as it can. Adam admonishes Jason on his conduct, and Jason replies with a string of expletives I would rather not repeat. Adam tuts, looks around, and asks the great crab behind him, on F2, to come stand next to him, on E3. Jason takes a few minutes to look around, peering past all the other creatures block his view, before telling his shark on A4 to move to A8, thereby guarding him against danger in that row from Adam’s starfish.”
The disembodied audience has been keeping track of the turns as well, so it’s already aware that it’s time for turn fifty-one, which means the players again get to choose which creatures the other player must move and that they must choose a crab or crayfish twice if they can help it. The game is nearing its end, but who will win?! Jason was in the lead before, but now, he’s behind a crayfish, both small and great, and still… ahead an eel? The eels and rays are equivalent to the knights in chess, but the great crustaceans are more like powerful pawns rather than bishops. Maybe that means Adam and Jason are tied? What a comeback! Can Jason reclaim his lead, or will Adam go from losing to actually winning?!
Serene has been listening to the audience’s speculation while he was commentating on the game, so he’s aware he doesn’t need to repeat as many things as before. “Adam only briefly inspects the board,” he continues, “before selecting the shark on G7. Jason growls lowly, as he only has two viable choices. Ordering the shark to G8 would cost him his eel if he himself is forced away from F8, but taking G6 with the shark would allow Adam to force the eel on E7 to move away, thus removing the protection it would provide to G6 and letting Adam’s starfish on G1 claim the shark on turn 56. He sighs and orders the shark to G8. He takes considerable time pondering his next move, as selecting any of Adam’s creatures that could capture one of Jason’s own would result in him losing that creature and allowing Adam to make it retreat on his first turn after selection returns. Allowing Adam to move one of his creatures to a square that threatens an unprotected creature would have the same effect, so he has few choices.
“Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Jason selects the crab on B6, which is forced to progress to B7 and arrest him. However, Adam’s ray on D6 prevents Jason from moving away, which means Adam’s only choice is to select Jason’s shark, giving him a free opportunity to move it from B8 to B7. After it bites off one of the crabs legs, Jason’s shark now poses an equal threat to Adam’s starfish on G1. Adam could select the eel on E7, but Jason would surely just move it to F5 to defend his shark from the additional threat posed by the starfish on C7. Yes, Adam has a ray on D6 that already threatens F5, but eliminating the eel would mean losing a starfish, and eliminating the shark would result in losing a starfish to that very eel, which would then still be defended by Jason himself. The shark and starfish are the most powerful creatures in marine warfare, so Adam would not want to sacrifice a starfish and lose his offensive momentum as a result. Adam had already not quite considered the current outcome and fell behind again, so he needs to play conservatively.
“As it stands, it is Jason’s turn to select a creature. He will not readily select either of the starfish, the ray, or the great crab, but the limit on selecting the same creature only twice still applies, so he may find he has no choice. He selects the isopod on D1, which Adam instructs to move to E2. Adam then simply selects the crayfish on B6, which marches forwards to B5. Isopod to D3, Crayfish to B4. Jason has two turns left while Adam has one, so he needs to be particularly cautious with the order of his next selections. Jason elects to select Adam’s great crab on E3, as it poses the least amount of threat, both in terms of positioning and objective power. Adam could have it advance to E4, but he is in the same precarious position as Jason, where neither player truly wants to select many of the other player’s creatures for fear of giving them a free attack. He instead orders the great crab to retreat back to F2 and guard the starfish. He then uses his final turn to select the barnacles on D5, which Jason also orders to retreat, specifically to C6 for the double protection of his eels. However, he realises with some dismay that he must now select the crab on E4, which happily marches into the barnacles’ old spot and proceeds to wave its pinchers in a threatening manner.
“Adam does not allow himself to be distracted by the barnacles and instead, his course of action evidently decided, instructs his starfish on G1 to move to G7. The starfish obliges by first launching a very large beam of energy at the shark, catapulting it off the board, and recovering from the exertion before skipping over. Jason, on F8, delivers a dramatically profane line before delivering a dramatic near-execution: He draws serrated blades from the sheaths on his arms and, in the same motion, severs two of the starfish’s legs. Sweeping the blades outwards, back down, and up into the starfish’s sides, he then uses the blades as levers to hoist the starfish and furiously hurl it off the board. Adam gasps and instructs his other starfish, on C7, to remove the eel on E7. The starfish launches itself forwards with a jet of water, hitting the eel in the throat, and then grabs the eel with its legs, spins around, and tosses the eel against Jason. Both Adam and Jason object at the starfish’s uncouth behaviour; its central gem twinkles rudely in reply. The floating eel glares at the starfish before skulking off. The starfish twinkles again, which Adam translates as meaning ‘Arrest’, though Jason snaps back that he knows what it means before stepping from G7 to G6. Adam gives his crab on D5 permission to carry out its threat against the barnacles on C6, which the crab does by grabbing clipping in half the middle segment joining the two rocks to which the barnacles are fastened. The top half drops onto the bottom half and falls off. Both halves crawl away while glaring murder at the crab; the crab simply waves and clicks its pinchers.
“Jason shouts yet more profanity and orders his remaining eel on D8 to suck the innards out of the crab. The eel mimes that it is, in fact, on a crab-free diet, but it rips off two of the crabs legs and tosses them to Jason in tribute. Jason, his blades still drawn, slices them in half as the legs fly towards him, saying he only eats cooked crab legs and is not a savage. The crab, in the meantime, has snuck off, not wanting to have anything else ripped off. Adam requests the starfish on E7 to sidle closer and to E6, which it does. It begins to twinkle again, but Jason interrupts it by shouting he has not forgotten how being arrested works since it happened less than a minute previously. The two begin exchanging twinkling-shouting insults, and when Adam tries to remind Jason that he needs to lift the arrest, Jason steps from G6 to G5 and makes Adam the new target of his insults. He even insults Adam’s mollusc crown, which gasps in indignation. Adam shrieks in mortified panic and instantly yanks his crown tightly against his scalp, to the point where its teeth cause him to bleed. He calls his ray on D6 to E4 to arrest Jason, who growls and announces, with the repeated usage of an expletive, that he is moving from G5 to F5.
“This marks the end of the sixtieth turn. Adam, still nervously clutching his glaring crown, says selects the lonely crayfish on B4, which makes the creature look up suddenly, surprised it was already its turn to move again. But Jason catches a glimmer from the corner of his eye, snarls, and throws himself at the starfish on E6. Adam frantically repeats his selection, but Jason shouts that he resigns and begins assaulting the starfish. The game is therefore concluded.”
“Go on,” Giratina says.
Serene hesitates. “Our Grace…”
“The game is called ‘Marine Warfare’,” Giratina states. “The audience knows the outcome of the battle, but not how it ends. Give it what it wants.”
The audience, indeed, is cheering as if at a gladiatorial arena. The voices generally chant either Jason’s or Adam’s names, whereas the remainder is whipped into a frenzy and simply demands the continued description of deadly combat.
Serene sighs resignedly. “Very well. Adam shouts ‘To me!’ and his ray obeys. He leaps onto it and hastens off the board to safety.” Naturally, the majority of the audience boos at that. “The aforementioned lonely crayfish looks dejected at the violence and also seizes the opportunity to slink away. The isopod on D4 and the great crab on F2, however, each proceed one square forwards in an attempt to aid their ally. Jason’s shark on A8 and his eel on C6 move to intercept them, with the eel charging wildly at the isopod and the shark then launching itself in a straight line at the great crab. The starfish attempts to defend itself by launching multi-coloured beams of light at Jason, but Jason is relentless and howls in blinded fury while butchering the starfish. When all ten of its legs have been cruelly severed, he hacks at the tissue around the central gem and attempts to pry it off. The starfish then releases a flash that temporarily blinds all creatures still on the board, with Jason being the first to realise there is no longer a starfish in his bloody grasp. The isopod turns and flees at Jason’s resulting outrage, with the eel still clinging to it.
“Jason then joins his shark in slaughtering the great crab. I regret to say it does not survive, as all its limbs are severed and cut into smaller segments, its eyes are gouged out, and its shell is pried open and the innards ripped out. Jason pants in dwindling anger, but movement in his peripheral vision catches his eye. He turns to see the crayfish on H5 and the crab on H4 playing pat-a-cake, oblivious to the carnage around them. At the top of his voice, he shouts ‘Why are you still here?!’ and advances a step with his blades raised in an exaggerated threat. The startled crustaceans immediately flee pincher-in-pincher. Jason watches them as they go, muttering a comment of a personal nature that I will not repeat.”
“Bloodthirsty members of the disembodied audience,” Giratina begins cheerfully, “has your appetite for dismemberment been sated?” The audience gleefully shouts the affirmative. “Excellent! Thank you for your expert commentary, Serene.”
Serene bows. “It is an honour to serve, Our Grace.”
Assuming its announcer tone, Giratina calls, “We have been sufficiently entertained by vice as a break from being entertained by virtue! Half the tournament’s participants have been revealed to find their comrades, but half the discoveries still await us! Onwards and to the conclusion of Round One!”***Spoiler
Iridescent did not have time for frivolity in life, so she certainly has no time for it in the afterlife. Nevertheless, Giratina had made it abundantly clear that ‘time’ is merely an illusion crafted for the benefit of the oh-so-fragile sapient mind. That being the case, she has no patience for the enigmatic deity’s frivolity either.
Ah, but that is simply one of many reasons for her arrival in Purgatory. She had never been particularly religious, so she had made her peace with the possibility of oblivion. Unfortunately, the universe and the evidently real gods do judge individuals on their morality, so she had better prove herself worthy of Paradise. It isn’t as much a case of wanting to live in eternal bliss and joy — a comfortable armchair with ample fine wine and good literature would suffice — as much as it was about escaping the mediocre trash heap in which she now found herself.
She wrinkled her nose. Where is she anyway? Is that… fermented orange? No, spoiled orange. She felt around her and met plastic that crinkled in jeering mockery. The unseen fingers of discarded and broken items jabbed into her back with the resentment of the inferior. She was not merely in an existential trash heap — she was also amidst literal trash.
Scowling in cold fury, she waved a hand in front of her. As expected, the lid of the trash container flung open at her command and slammed against a wall. She then folded her psychic power around herself, lifting her up and into the air. Like an old rag doll freeing itself from the obscurity and humiliation of rejection, she emerges in Sin City, determined to reclaim her relevance and dignity.
As she lowers herself, she inspects her clothing. She fully expected to see foul stains and to have the alcoholic stench of spoiled fruit haunt her, yet her attire remains as pristine as when she awaited the beginning of the round with the other participants of the tournament. She turns to peer inside the container, and though the faint smell of the off orange still assails her nose, there are no loose orange peels or puddles of slimy liquid, as all the trash is confined to sturdy black bags.
Hmm. It seems Our Grace continues to taunt her, but not in any malicious or overly irritating ways. It’s a small mercy, but it also serves as a cautionary reminder not to lose her temper for trivial reasons. The next time, if there is one, she might not be this lucky, and if that turns out to be the case, she would need to prove her restored dignity can stand the test.
She closes the lid of the container (not using her hands, of course) and readjusts her cashmere jersey. There is no further business to be had with the trash, or even the alley in which she finds herself. It’s a dreary place, but it could be worse. It could also be better, and she won’t settle for anything less than whatever constitutes ‘decent’ in such a dismal realm.
She exits the alley, although the street beyond it is as disappointing. She isn’t sure whether Giratina or someone else built the city, but whoever it was, they did a shoddy job. The buildings have zero sense of style, and given that each looks like a small variation of the next, they have an equally non-existent sense of identity. It’s no wonder they’re all abandoned, as anyone working here would lose their mi—
“Wah!”
Iridescent almost jumps as she starts. She whirls around and glares venomously at the child behind her. The ruffian has a most absurd face, with disproportionately large eyes and a snout that would put a pig to shame. He wears no clothing, but she manages not to recoil in disgust because as far as she can tell, he has no indecent parts to show off. It’s actually a little alarming, but who knows what the other denizens of Sin City are like?
“Whence did you come, boy? I was the only soul here not ten seconds ago.”
He nods and looks almost like a rabid dog, his black tongue lolling out as he grins madly. “Y’are!”
She purses her lips. “Do you mistake me for a pirate? Do I possess a cutlass and a tricorn hat that I simply cannot see?”
“I’unno ‘a’ those’re,” he says, pulling his tongue back into his mouth and shrugging.
It’s clear from his body language and vacant expression that he has no idea what she just said, but the experience is mutual, as the words themselves make no sense. It doesn’t help in the slightest that he essentially races off the words and has the articulation of a crushed caterpillar.
She exhales through her nose. Patience. “It doesn’t matter. How did you get here?”
“‘Alked!” he says brightly.
“Ah, you walked,” she says, the tiniest bit relieved she could finally interpret something he said. “And how did you walk here with me neither seeing nor hearing you? I estimate that alley to be anywhere between twenty and thirty metres long, and this road stretches on seemingly forever.”
The hooligan frowns, as if unsure what she means. Not that Iridescent can fathom what about the question was hard to understand. He then turns, points towards the second trash container in the alley, and turns back to grin at her. “‘Eard’ou leave, s’I snu’up!” He makes an exaggerated creeping bogeyman impression. Were it not for the impression, ‘leave’ would have been the only part of the sentence that Iridescent would have understood.
“How long were you hiding in the trash?” she asks, narrowing her eyes in disdain and disapproval. “And what’s more, why were you hiding in the trash? Did you somehow know I was coming?”
He repeats ‘coming’ by saying “‘Ming!” and laughing like he’d just done some fantastic wordplay. He then smiles more simply and says, “Wazza’zere ‘cuz ‘easons. Nu’zully’dees aiku zere.”
She stares at him flatly. His dialect was so wretched, he might as well have been speaking gibberish. All she could make out were several instances of the letter Z. “Would you kindly repeat that in proper Sapient? I have not a single glimmering as to what you just said.”
The insolent brat actually flattens his lips in what she recognises as a smile of sympathy reserved for the less intellectually gifted when they ask for a simpler and/or slower explanation. The offence is compounded by him actually repeating himself more slowly: “Was. Zas. Zere. Cuz. ‘Easons.” He nods and waggles his eyebrows, which she interprets as ‘You’re following now, yes?’ He then continues, “Na’. Uzully. Ladies. ‘Ike. ‘Ou. Zere.”
Iridescent reins in her frustration as best she can and reminds herself to focus on the words instead. The second sentence is definitely ‘Not usually ladies like you there’, which isn’t impolite, and what’s more, it’s factually correct that ‘ladies like her’ would not ordinarily be found dead in such a place, much less ali— Oh. She technically was found dead in an alley. How terrible.
She realises she was having an internal dialogue while the boy still smiled expectantly at her. What was his first sentence? She thinks she understood something like ‘cause reasons’, which would actually be sufficient to answer her question, even if the answer isn’t particularly helpful.
“All right. Preferably using only a yes or a no, answer me this: do you often spend an undetermined amount of time in trash?”
The boy smiles and shakes his head. Not the explicitly requested no, but clear enough.
“That’s better. Now…” she trails off. “Why am I interrogating a miscreant on where he spends his leisure time?” She rubs her temples before recovering her composure and regarding him again. “Boy, do you go to school somewhere in Sin City, or have you also died and you merely find yourself in the same afterlife as me despite coming from some other reality?”
He shakes his head. “No. Eizer.”
“Did you mean ‘neither’?”
He nods, smiles widely, and gives her a thumbs-up, as if she were a toddler learning to speak and he were the elder brother by a few years. Dear gods, what an infuriating child. This is why she never wanted children.
“Well, however you found yourself here,” she says tersely, “may I assume you know the layout of the city?”
He nods, but at least with a closed-lipped smile that time.
“Excellent. Where are we?”
The boy shrugs, his expression nonchalant.
“You just confirmed you know the layout of the city.”
“Unh,” he says with a nod. “I’unno ‘ere zis is.” He gestures to their immediate environment by waving his head around. “Nee.”
“It’s new?” she repeats, more thinking out loud than truly querying him. Of course, the boy nods, not making the distinction. “Hmm. Do you know where Superbia Square is?”
He does the same, enthusiastic grin and nod from before, and his tongue lolls out again. At least he doesn’t include the thumbs-up this time, and this is actually much better news than Iridescent would possibly have expected from someone so unseemly.
“Do you think you could take me there?”
“Unh! Esgo!” He beckons her after him and starts off down the street.
Well, he’s certainly much friendlier than she had given him credit. She’s about to follow, but the alley isn’t empty anymore. “What, or who, is that?”
The boy comically halts, like a dog with its leash pulled back, before returning and peering around the corner. “I’unno. ‘Ever seeni’ afore.”
A squat green creature, with stubby limbs, puckered lips, and a single yellow hair or stalk on its head, crawls their way. Iridescent can’t think of any animal with even a similar likeness. There’s of course the possibility it’s actually another person, but it doesn’t have the same features she’s used to seeing in sapients. There’s no doubt it’s looking at her as its intended destination, though it does give a cursory glance towards the boy.
“I do hope it isn’t some manner of stray animal,” she says. “Shoo!” She waves her hand and lightly pushes it away with telekinesis, hoping it would be startled into running away. Instead, the creature hastens towards her. “No, shoo!” she repeats, pushing it away with mild force and keeping it at a two distance of about two metres.
The creature squirms, evidently still wishing to approach despite the restraint. But then it ceases its squirming and contracts, like a ball being squashed or a slug recoiling from being touched. She wonders if it might be ill, and sure enough, it then belches. However, it belches a sickly green slime in an arc towards her. She exclaims and reels in disgust, but it’s not enough to prevent the slime from hitting her shoes and trousers.
“Oh, you’ve ruined them, you little beast!” she shouts, inspecting her clothing.
She’s released the creature in her outrage, which allows it to bound towards her. She looks up as it’s mid-leap, but the pink boy has already begun darting forwards and smacks the creature. He deflects the beast off its course, causing it to partially miss its landing and stumble-fall. It turns to gawk at him, and the sight is of such a ridiculous nature, it takes all of Iridescent’s willpower to hold back the unexpected laughter attempting to spill out of her.
The boy then takes another step forwards and slaps the creature once with his open palm, once with the back of that same hand, and then once in a diagonally upward sweep, actually flipping the beast over onto its back like some kind of absurd tortoise. The creature flails about on its back before righting itself by rolling over onto its side. The boy smacks the creature once more, but it has come to expect the abuse and smacks the boy as well. How it’s able to do so with such stubby limbs is beyond Iridescent, but the boy grimaces in pain, so it clearly possesses some degree of power.
She’s had enough of this farce. Iridescent raises her arms, and with the motion, cyan energy appears beneath her and the boy and spirals up to envelop them in protective energy.
The boy looks down in shock as the energy appears. He then turns to gape at her and ask, “Wazza’?”
“It’s a shield that will protect you against poison, in the event the creature attempts to inflict it.”
The creature half-mumbles, half-gurgles something in response to her claim. It releases a dark yellow cloud of gas from both of its ends, and even though she isn’t next to the creature, it’s enough to instantly make her cough into the crook of her elbow. What a noxious stench!
Though he stands even closer, the boy simply laughs out loud and points jeeringly. “Ou’dn’t ‘elieva, anau look’ike an iddy! Y’are ‘ust a far’ bag and a ba’ spi’a!”
Until that point, the creature had maintained the same vacant expression, but it now assumed what was clearly a frown. How odd; animals didn’t frown ever. Is it perhaps some kind of sapient after all, if only an uncouth and belligerent one? Nevertheless, it shouts in anger, making the boy reel backwards and trip as if he had been punched in the face with twice the force of his slaps.
“Come now,” she says to the boy, “you can surely do better than that. I’m not even an Attacker and I can demonstrate it for you. Here.” She waves her hand in a half-circle, causing three orbs of psychic energy to appear in its wake. She then flicks her wrist and launches the orbs at the creature.
Following this moment, she would remind herself to take into account how weakened or wounded her target is, for what she had merely intended to be a demonstration of an effective attack instead becomes the rather brutal destruction of a living — well, existing — being. Her orbs hit the creature almost at the same time, so she cannot quite tell at which point the attack became too much, but her pure power causes it to explode. She staggers backwards as a chunk of green flesh hits her right in the diaphragm. Other bits of green flesh fly past her, but she can’t see anything in particular, as she was splattered with blood and other visceral liquids and closed her eyes too late. She cries out but quickly stifles her noises of panic. She takes off her sweater and rubs her eyes, hoping that won’t make it worse. Fortunately, it isn’t like a bucket had been emptied in her face, so her eyes are spared.
Unfortunately, the boy had been very close to the beast, so he had received the worst of the bodily blast. He’s spitting out pieces of flesh and blood and frantically scrubbing at his face as well.
“Use this,” she says, stepping forwards and offering him her sweater.
He snatches it out of her hands and thoroughly rubs at his face. When he’s done, he suddenly stops, slowly looks up at her, and says, “…Y’are crazily danges, lady.” He shakes his head in disapproval and tosses the sweater back to her.
She means to offer some manner of apology, but before she can say anything, almost before she’s even caught the sweater, he starts running as quickly as he can past the bloody stain where the green creature had been and, presumably, far away from her.
Iridescent looks down at her bloody sweater, attempting to process what had just happened. She… slowly lets it drop out of her hands and silently walks the other way.***
Ah, so this is the beginning of the first round. But if they are not mistaken, Level is now lying on their back rather than standing; an uncomfortable affair, as they have four spikes on their back and rarely ever have reason to lie down, preferring to sleep while sitting. They appear to be in some kind of container, which could make matters even more uncomfortable, though more for anyone who would prefer not to have the environment consumed in flames than for Level themselves.
There are a few black plastic bags in the container as well, which means Level was most likely deposited inside one during Our Grace’s teleportation of the tournament participants to Sin City. It is a rather unorthodox delivery system, but Our Grace has a purpose, just like everything in the universe, and that purpose is to determine which souls are worthy of ascending from Purgatory. This placement must therefore serve a similar purpose, and if Level has been deposited inside a garbage container, the other participants have undoubtedly been subjected to the same.
They would dislike unintentionally igniting anything, even though a lifetime of regulating their thermal temperature should prevent that, so it is time to begin in earnest. They exit the container with some difficulty, as it was barely large enough to contain them. The other large individuals of the tournament would certainly dislike the experience too, although Rook, the ursine Attacker with the prodigious belly, is indisputably too large to fit inside. Would she be placed within a larger container? Are the containers perhaps sized to be proportional to each participant?
Ah, so many questions to ponder, and what a joy it is to again possess the mental capacity to ponder at all. But Level will have to ponder them while on the move, as they have group members to find. The solo stage must conclude first, but Serene gave no details as to when that would occur. He has been nothing but fair, so such details must not be necessary.
They have emerged in an alley. There is another garbage container nearby. It is unlikely for Our Grace to have made it so easy to unite with the other participants as to have placed a second participant in the same alley, but displaying the presence of mind to check inside is certainly something it would have intended. Level approaches the container and lifts the lid.
“Hello,” says a most petite child, staring up through light blue hair covering their eyes and falling beside them. They have a hat-like protrusion extending from the rear of their body. They do not stand at even half a metre, and that is solely because of the ‘hat’s’ contribution. Without it, they are perhaps a fifth of a metre tall.
“Greetings to you as well, child. My name is Level. What is yours?”
“I don’t have a name,” the child says calmly.
“Oh? May I ask why?”
“You may.”
“Why do you not have a name?”
“Mother hasn’t yet given me one.”
“And why is that?”
“I haven’t yet evolved.”
Level nods in interest. “How many evolutions does your species have?”
“I don’t know what ‘species’ are,” the child says, “but I can evolve once. If I evolved again after that, I would become Mother.”
Level nods again. “I see. How does your mother currently refer to you if not by a name?”
“She doesn’t.”
“Does your mother not speak to you at all?”
“No, she doesn’t.”
Level feels her heart fill with disappointment and empathy. No child should have to prove their worth to their mother before being entitled to her love.
“Please don’t feel that way,” the child says.
“Oh? Can you hear my thoughts?”
“No, I can feel your feelings. You were pleasantly calm, but you feel sad now.”
“Have you been raised to view any kind of sadness as a negative emotion, perhaps one of weakness or despair?”
The child, as relaxed and calm as Level themselves, simply reply as before, “No. Any kind of emotion is vaguely unpleasant. Strong emotions are more unpleasant and sap my energy. They make my head hurt.”
Level instantly feels more empathy towards the child’s plight, but as that would make matters worse, they envision a chilly walk through the snow in the depth of winter. Their feelings of concern are replaced with contentment, which would hopefully be an improvement.
“I like you,” the child says, even though only a couple of seconds have passed. “Are you a Sinner?”
“That is a matter of philosophy,” Level answers. “I believe sin is an inevitable experience during a sapient’s lifetime, but being a sinner suggests sinning habitually. In that regard, I would not say I am a sinner. Neither would I say I am a saint, as that would suggest being habitually virtuous. Purgatory is the ultimate destination for all souls, with Paradise or Perdition merely being the exceptions for souls that have reached the extremes.”
“You’re not a Homer,” the child states.
“I am inclined to agree,” Level says, “though I can neither confirm nor deny that claim without knowing the definition. Would you please tell me?”
“A Homer is someone who came from the Hall of Origin in Father’s palace.”
Level nods again. “In that case, I can confirm I am not a Homer. Who are your parents?”
“Father is the Mayor of Sin City. Mother is his wife.”
Is that so? “That makes you a very important child. Why are you here in a garbage container?”
“There was nobody else here.”
Realisation sets in. “Ah, and as you are susceptible to the emotions of others, you seek solitude.”
“Yes.”
“I lived a hermetic life myself. Have you attempted meditation?”
“What’s that?” For the first time, the child’s tone shifts from its calm baseline. Level detects a hint of curiosity.
“Meditation is a practice through which one attempts to find inner peace by entering a relaxed position and state of mind and purging all thoughts. Often, one can include a focus to allow for the existence of only one thought to the exclusion of all others. This may be listening to music or an instructor, it may be looking at a candle and regulating one’s breathing, or it may simply be prayer.”
“Did it work?” the child asks. Level detects yet more curiosity and now also a mild amount of amazement.
“It most certainly did,” they say. “I was never an angry child, but I experienced anxiety and doubt like anyone else. Meditation and prayer allowed me to soothe my soul and liberate it from the worries of the mundane. When my body grew frail and my mind deteriorated, I did not fear the natural conclusion of my life but instead welcomed it. It is unseemly to cling to relevance, and so, as the wind erodes the rock, so too was I sculpted and then erased by the will of the gods.”
“How can I learn to do that?”
“I would gladly teach you, but it will not do to attempt teaching you here.” The alley is not dirty by any means, and it is isolated, but there is no guarantee it will remain that way. “Do you have a room to yourself in your father’s palace, or do you share it with siblings?”
“I don’t stay there,” the child says, almost in disbelief that Level would ask such a thing. “My siblings and I stay wherever in the city we want to.”
What strange parents this child has. It harks to a more oppressive time in Earth’s history.
“Where are you currently staying? Is it here?”
“Yes,” they answer in a calm tone once more.
It did not occur to Level that the child might be homeless. There may be many other things that also did not occur to them. “Do you require food and water in this afterlife?”
“No. You can get food and water if you want to, but not here. I’ve only ever seen Sinners eat or drink.”
There is something odd about that claim. “You say ‘sinners’ as if it were a designation and not merely a noun. Would you define it similarly to how you defined ‘Homer’ before?”
“Yes. A Sinner is someone who used to be alive but died and was brought to Sin City. Most of them aren’t pleasant and don’t like it here.”
“Do they also come from the Hall of Origin?”
“No, only Homers come from there. I don’t know where Sinners come from the first time, and I don’t know where they go if they never come back, but Sinners who die in the city eventually reappear in the Pit Beneath the Obelisk.”
“Is that an unremarkable pit beneath an obelisk of which you have not specified the name, or is ‘Pit Beneath the Obelisk’ the actual name of the pit?”
“Yes, it’s the actual name.”
“Is the obelisk called the ‘Obelisk Above the Pit’?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Thank you. How long does one—?” Movement at the corner of their eye draws their attention to an end of the alley. There is a blue, balloon-like being with an orange antenna standing there. It is currently stationary, but it must have moved in some manner to draw Level’s attention. And furthermore, it must have been standing there for some time, as it is far enough inside the alley not to be directly around the corner. “Greetings,” they say. “My name is Level. What is yours?”
The newcomer utters a reply that sounds like “haaaaa”. Level cannot be certain, though.
“Is that ‘Haa’? Did you say that is your name?”
“Maaaaa! Magurlnk.”
“Who is that?” the child asks.
“I do not know. If they are capable of understanding our speech, I must regret to say the same is not true in reverse. Would you describe yourself as a Homer?”
“I didn’t come from the Hall of Origin,” they say in response, which is indeed a sufficient answer.
“Of course. Do Homers and Sinners speak different languages?”
“What’s a language?”
“It is a means of communicating. Each language has its own words and grammar. The language we are currently speaking is called Sapient. I was wondering whether our newcomer might be speaking a different language.”
“I know what a word is, but not a grammar.”
“That is all right,” Level says, regarding the newcomer again. “I take it that you mean to say Homers and Sinners use the same words to communicate, which means our friend might not be speaking at all.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” the child says. They surprise Level by deftly jumping up and over the rim of the container and out into the alley. They jumped out towards the side where the newcomer waits. “I don’t know what that is,” they admit. “It’s not a Homer.”
“Do Homers have a particular appearance?” Levels asks, closing the container.
“Don’t close it, please,” the child asks. Level is surprised, but the child might have difficulty opening it by themselves, so Level obliges. “Thank you. Yes, there are many Homers, but none of them look like this thing. If it’s not a Homer, not a Sinner, not my parents, and not me or my siblings, I don’t know what it is. It must be a monster.”
“A monster?” Level repeats in surprise. That is never a good thing to hear, regardless of whether the word is intended literally or figuratively. “What do you mean by that?”
“A monster is something that suddenly appears and kills everything else except other monsters.”
“It does not seem to have that intent,” Level points out.
“Not now. Monsters don’t always kill just anyone. They might have specific people they want to kill, usually Sinners that were being hostile.”
“I see.” That is a very useful condition to highlight. “If we remain passive, will it go away?”
“I’ve only heard of monsters before,” the child admits again. “I’ve never actually seen one. It looks like it could be a Homer more than a monster.”
“And yet you are certain it is not a Homer?”
“Yes, it’s not a Homer, unless Giratina is creating new Homers.”
“That might not be impossible,” Level says. “Our Grace is hosting a tournament for twenty Sinners here in Sin City. The winner will ascend to Paradise. Has Our Grace hosted such tournaments before? It did not sound like it.”
“I don’t know what a tournament is,” the child says. “If it’s like a game, I don’t think there’s been one like this before. If that is a new Homer, are you a new Sinner?”
“That is possible, but I cannot answer, as I do not know.”
“If it just stands there, I won’t mind it,” the child says before hopping back into the container. “If you don’t win the tournament, will you come back and teach me how to meditate?”
“I have only a five percent chance of winning, which means I have a ninety-five percent chance of losing. And in that case, I will almost definitely return to teach you how to meditate.”
“Thank you!” the child says, mildly to moderately excited.
“How will I find you if you should later move away from this container?” Level asks. Even if the child does not leave, finding them again might be very hard indeed.
“You probably won’t,” they say with a hint of disappointment. “Can’t you teach me now?”
Level hesitates. It is not a place where they would prefer to linger, but the solo stage has evidently not yet ended, so there is more harm in leaving than in staying. “All right, you have convinced me. If we are never to meet again, I would prefer not to have any regrets.”
“Yay! Thank you!” The child’s words may be simple, but their excitement is uncontained.
“You are very welcome. I prefer meditating while sitting and would teach you better while doing so, so if you would be so kind as to join me outside again…?”***
Oho! Round One of the tournament begins with the participants needing to free themselves from the devious restraints that Giratina Griseous has placed upon them! Rook has prepared herself for that, and doing so in total darkness will not daunt her! She may have been placed inside a metal trap, but no metal will hold her for long!
She throws her weight into her right hip and shoulder, moving the trap in a hopping fashion. She hears a loud clang, but not from the trap! She throws her weight into her left hip and shoulder, moving the trap again, and yet again, she hears the clang! That second time is enough to make her realise it is coming from… her head?!
Her lower body is restrained, but not her upper body. She raises her hands to her head and feels metal yet again! She feels around, determining that it is a cylindrical contraption with a handle. She tucks her fingers under the edge and heaves. The contraption is stuck, but if she just puts in more effort… just a little more…! Haha! It will come off! It could not defeat her!
She hears it clang again as it falls wherever she threw it, but she focuses instead on the light she can fuzzily see. She did not even realise it, but there is a blindfold over her eyes. A black one! A silken one. She carefully unties the delicate knot at the back and restores her sight! She can now see she is in an alley of some kind. The metal contraption on her head was… a bucket?! And she is stuck in a rubbish container?!
“Ahaha, Our Grace!” she calls, looking up at the black, starless sky above her, a perfect hiding place for the god and Serene and the disembodied audience if they wanted to watch without being seen. “Your cunning knows no bounds! I have been arrested in a creative and deviously simple way, but our battle has prepared me!”
She heaves her weight upwards this time, hopping into the air before letting gravity pull her back down. The other container in the alley jumps as she lands, and she hears a yelp come from inside!
“Oh! Oho, there is someone else trapped in the other container! I will free you once I have freed myself!”
Hopping more to the side so she wouldn’t endanger the other participant, she manoeuvres so she’s facing a wall. She scrunches her eyes closed in concentration and gathers heat all around her, feeling the metal of the container grow hot. She hops upwards once to test the gravity again. She then hops again, and again, and then rapidly so that she hops as soon as the container touches the alley floor. She then uses her momentum and propels herself upwards and forwards into a front flip. The container crashes against the wall with her suspended upside-down, but she quickly throws her weight back so she lands face-down on the floor and not on her head. Her belly fat took the impact for her, and with a push-up for momentum, she comes to stand, ripping the heated, battered metal at the edges like it was a cardboard box.
She bows, knowing that Giratina Griseous would be watching. “Thank you for the trial, Our Grace! It was a good warm-up! No pun intended!”
Next, there was the matter of the other participant trapped inside the second container. Maybe they were bound inside it and had more difficulty escaping? She would not leave them behind! But when she opens the container, a deflated beach ball is thrown in her face by a small, pink child with a bat mask on his face!
“Oh!” she exclaims, staggering back and dropping the container lid. She opens it again, already sweeping an arm in front of her and successfully blocking the plastic light bulb. “Haha! I was prepared for you, little boy!” She drags the container away from the wall, flings the lid open so she would not have to hold it anymore, and then lifted the one side to tilt it and make the boy slide down. He did, so she scooped him up with one arm before collecting him with the other and letting the container drop. She then firmly placed him down on the alley floor and grinned. “I have bested whatever test you were meant to present! What is your name?”
“Sugma!” he shouts, making a petulant face.
Rook slaps her belly and laughs boisterously. “Ahahaha, I will not fall for that one! If you do not want to give me your name, vulgar boy, I will call you ‘Haznun’ instead! So, Haznun, why were you in that container? Was I meant to save you? Was it a trap?” She gazes inside the container to see if there is anything important she missed, but she can only see black bags. She flips the lid back on.
“It was quiet until you came around! I’m playing hide-and-seek, not talk-to-the-fat-lady!”
“Oho! You have been beaten by someone who was not even playing. I have my own game of hide-and-seek to play. Run along, Haznun!”
“You suck!” he shouts, sticking his tongue out and running away.
“You swallow, Haznun, ahaha!”
He makes an exasperated groan-cry upon rounding the corner, but that turns into a shriek when he trips and falls over something. He should have been more careful!
“Are you hurt, Haznun?” she calls. He makes panicked noises, so he probably is. She runs over to see a round, green animal looking at the boy. It has a black diamond on its back and a yellow banana-peel-like thing on its head. “Oh! What is this?”
The boy is desperately trying to crawl away from the animal, but the animal pounces on him! It has such stubby legs, it could not possibly scratch him, but Rook would know how much damage a round being can do!
She plucks the animal off the boy, but it burps purple fluid onto him. He instantly looks nauseous, so whatever the fluid was, it cannot be good for anyone’s health. She then turns around, jogs a few metres, and puts the animal down. It might only have been defending itself!
“Run along, little turtle-slug-banana-peel thing!”
She shoos it, but it looks up at her and spits the same purple fluid into her face. It is very bitter and potentially poisonous, but she has an ability to counter that! She spits out the fluid, wipes her mouth, and then retreats a few steps. It could still feel threatened! She must give it space!
The boy is looking stunned, but there is nothing she can do for him. She is an Attacker, not a Supporter! She picks him up and plants him on his feet, holding him steady because he looks like he would fall over otherwise. “Go, Haznun, run! Find help for yourself!” She would run for help herself, but where would she go? He would have a better idea!
At first, he just stands there, looking drunkenly at her, but then he gazes to the side, seems to register what she said, and staggers off. He almost falls again, but he manages to move along with something of a consistent stumble. Rook then turns to face the animal. It shouts at her, and to her surprise, the sound vibrates and resonates and hurts!
“Oh! Am I still too close? I am sorry, little thing! I will go now!”
She runs across the empty street and then down the same end as the boy. He has disappeared already, amazingly, so he must know his way around. She turns around, and again to her surprise, the animal is following her. Does it want to pick a fight?
“Hoooh, I must warn you!” she shouts as it approaches. “If you insist on engaging in combat, I will swiftly defeat you!”
It ignores her warning, for as soon as it is a few metres away, it spits a black sludge at her. She has prepared for honourable battle, but spitting poison and chasing after a disengaged opponent?! How shameful! She spreads her arms wide and projects an energetic shield that deflects the sludge away from her. Lowering her arms, she then jumps over the sludge with both feet, crouches down, and launches herself at the animal. It halts in surprise, but there is no chance for it! She flops onto it with her belly and then rolls off to the side. When she comes up, the animal is stunned and looking like it regrets its decision.
“I warned you!” she says before flopping onto it again. Without the worry of the black sludge behind her, the flop is much shorter and she bounces back onto her feet. The animal looks like it can barely move, so she raises a fist into the air. “I have conquered my first opponent!” She lowers her fist and instead points at the animal. “Banurtle, as I will hereafter call you, let this be a lesson not to dishonourably chase after someone when they have tried to leave you alone! Even if that boy hurt you first by tripping over you, you chose to keep being aggressive. Learn from this loss!”
Banurtle weakly crawls on the spot to try and face her. She is ready for another attack, of course, but it barely manages to cough up a dribble of purple spit.
“You must find help for yourself too! I can see you have not learned your lesson, but I will show you mercy and disengage once again!”
She bows to it before turning around and running in the opposite direction that Haznun had gone. If he went that way to look for help, it is more likely that she will find her teammates by going the other way!***Spoiler
Amber would be able to see in all but absolute darkness, and as she cannot, there isn’t any light. She’s lying down, a position in which she wouldn’t normally be caught dead, but she knows better than to rashly get up. She doesn’t move a millimetre, holding her breath and listening intently.
Nothing.
It’s not the silence you would expect from a city: the distant rumble of a passing vehicle, the whistle of the wind against the window, the murmuring of the fridge in the kitchen. It’s silence as absolute as the darkness. It’s unnerving and almost unholy.
There isn’t even the soft rush of air as Amber quietly releases her breath and refills her lungs, since she doesn’t need to breathe in the afterlife. She still has the reflex to exhale and inhale, but there is no functional purpose to it. This pleases her, actually; she can maintain a sense of familiarity to ground herself, yet she can also do away with it when the situation demands it.
Three minutes pass without the darkness or silence being disturbed. She should wait longer, but she doesn’t. She begins to slowly lift her arm above her, but she freezes in place when she hears crackling. She immediately deduces she’s lying on some kind of trash bag, which is probably Our Grace’s idea of a joke or jab. That at least explains the discomfort of having random items poking at her.
The next question is whether she lies on random trash, in a trash container, or on a trash heap in the open air somewhere. She continues to slowly move her arm, having heard nothing to indicate the presence of anything harmful. Still, she listens for the tell-tale twang of a bowstring, the click of a trigger, the hiss of a drawn blade. Nothing yet, so she feels above her and touches metal. Good, excellent, she’s in a container. It explains the darkness too.
Feeling for the dimensions around her, she manoeuvres into a crouching position and carefully lifts the lid. Light darts in, dim but present. Amber can see a suspiciously clean alley, but there is another trash container. It’s almost certainly a trap, since the group stage hasn’t started yet. She turns invisible, leaps out of the container, swiftly and silently lowers the lid, and dances a couple metres away to crouch in the shadow of the other container. Her invisibility fades and she listens for any signs that her presence has been noticed, but there are none.
Sin City cannot be abandoned, so she might be in an old industrial or warehouse district. A glimpse to the side reveals what looks to be a regular strip of stores, but it’s immediately apparent the stores are completely empty. They’ve yet to be purchased, which means she’s in a newly developed area. That means she’s alone only for the time being, but it also means there aren’t likely any unsavoury types lurking around unseen.
She turns invisible again and leaps up against the wall, flapping her wings while running upwards and grabbing the rooftop’s ledge before pulling herself up and over. Her cover is immediately gone, as there is no chimney or ventilation unit on top of the flat roof. The same applies to every other roof within sight, leading to a featureless landscape of open platforms. Nonetheless, few people frequent rooftops, so she should be safer here than on the regularly travelled roads.
Her head snaps to the side. There is a faint shuffling in the alley below. She knew it. There can’t be any way she would have had to choose techniques for attacking others and defending herself without anything to attack and against which to defend.
She keeps low to the roof and creeps towards the corner, turning invisible before peering over. There is nobody in the street, so whoever made the noise, they’re also alone. She then peers back into the alley. What she sees is nothing she’s ever seen before. She can hardly believe it’s real, since the thing looks wholly unrealistic. It’s not likely to be an illusion, so it must be something created by Our Grace for the purpose of the tournament. But that’s assuming Sin City was made for the tournament — if it wasn’t, then whatever is below might have existed before, but its appearance cannot possibly be a coincidence.
She’ll call it an alien, since it obviously has an alien morphology. The alien sniffs around at the containers, which leads it to the spot where Amber had crouched in the shadows. It snuffles around for a while. Nothing good would be so interested in an owl briefly hiding in an alley, since even small predators would prefer avoiding something unknown.
Should she attack it, or should she get away while she can? The alien doesn’t seem like it could do much to her, but the conspicuous yellow antenna on its bloated green body must serve some purpose. It could be to regulate an ability that isn’t immediately apparent, like telekinesis or something else. She decides that neither fight nor flight will do: she needs to observe it more.
The alien stops snuffling and makes a sound reminiscent of a slimy yawn. That’s definitely unlike anything Amber’s ever heard before. She shivers in discomfort. But then the alien moves on, crawling to the other end of the alley and out into the next street. It continues on its way and doesn’t look back.
She lets it leave. It’s still isolated, so she could provoke it and see how it responds, but the antenna might contain nervous tissue that regulates a telepathic ability instead. The last thing she needs is having some damned alien call for reinforcements, especially when it might have been searching for her already. It’s best to lie low — or lie high, as it were.
Her next goal is to scout the surrounding area from the rooftops. She doesn’t spy any other aliens, but she doesn’t spy anything else that might be of importance either. The empty stores are all the same, just an endless grid of unclaimed buildings. It’s like the city had prepared for a population that never showed up. Or maybe the population hasn’t showed up yet? Both thoughts are equally unnerving.
The search becomes monotonous, but she can’t allow herself to slip into complacency. That’s exactly when misfortune will strike. She continues carefully checking every street and alley, and her prudence pays off. After leaping to some random building, she again hears movement in the street below. She creeps nearer, following the pedestrian’s progress. They’re moving to her left, and once they’ve passed, she peers over.
It’s that fashion lady, Iridescent. She’s just trudging along like a zombie, almost completely unaware of anything around her. She doesn’t evoke the impression of the condescending woman who had thought herself clever enough to trick Our Grace with an answerless riddle, so it might only be a trick for the unobservant, a lure for those too eager to unite with anyone they recognise.
Amber follows her for a minute, but her behaviour doesn’t change. Amber then turns invisible, leaps to the next rooftop, and runs ahead so she can catch a glimpse of Iridescent from the front. It still looks like her, but her blouse and trousers are covered in blood and some other liquid. Amber leaps across the street before her invisibility fades, as Iridescent is less likely to spot her. She indeed doesn’t, so Amber continues following her for a few more minutes. It might be the real participant, but it might not. Either way, it’s not another of those aliens, so even if it is a zombie, Amber can kill it with ease.
She looses a feather arrow at a spot a few metres in front of Iridescent. Iridescent starts and waves a hand, summoning three glowing orbs of energy. Amber ducks down and crouches underneath the ledge. She’s too quick for Iridescent to make out anything but a grey blur, so it’s no surprise when the orbs hurtle past above her. Amber doesn’t blame her for feeling threatened — in fact, it took her long enough to realise she ought to be more vigilant — but she can’t discount the possibility that the zombie could also be a psychic and have appropriate abilities. Amber grabs one of the green feathers hanging from her chest and pulls it down into a bowstring again. She nocks a spectral feather and takes aim at Iridescent, not intending to launch the arrow but prepared to do it if necessary.
Iridescent summons a screen of light that hides her from view. Amber can’t risk not seeing an attack coming so she ducks down again. More orbs don’t fly overhead, but she could simply be waiting for Amber to appear again. Amber lets the arrow disappear, turns invisible, and jumps up, silently gliding back over to Iridescent’s side of the street. Iridescent is none the wiser, of course.
“You should be more careful,” Amber says from above, reappearing and making Iridescent start again.
“What are you doing?” Iridescent asks coldly. The screen of light disappears.
“Being careful,” Amber answers simply before dropping down.
“You launched an arrow ahead of me and then disappeared. I thought you were trying to attack me. How is that being careful?”
“I followed you for about five minutes before trying to get your attention. I had to be sure it was really you.”
Iridescent scoffs. “Who else would I be?”
“A disguised shapeshifter,” Amber replies. “A zombie mimicking you. A ghost hiding under an illusion. This is Sin City and you didn’t think there’s a reason we have attacks?”
“I am fully aware, thank you,” she says frigidly.
“Clearly. What happened to you? Where is your sweater?”
Iridescent suddenly becomes stiff. “I used it to wipe blood from my face. I offered it to a boy who did the same. There was no point putting it back on after that.”
“It’s not your blood,” Amber says matter-of-factly. “Was it the boy’s? Which boy?”
“It was not,” Iridescent said testily. “If you haven’t seen him, it doesn’t matter which boy.”
“What did you do?” Amber asks, narrowing her eyes somewhat.
The other woman stands a little straighter, but it’s obvious she’s trying to hide some of her feelings. Her mask is very well crafted, so Amber can’t tell what.
“I attacked a weakened creature and failed to consider the power I wield.”
Amber points at the bloody mess that Iridescent’s clothes are. “That’s the result?”
“Regrettably, yes.”
“What was the creature?”
“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen on Earth,” she says. “It’s a little green beast, squat, ridiculous, and aggressive.”
Amber nods. As expected, the alien is part of a larger group seeking out the participants. “I’ve seen one too,” she admits. “It was overly interested in the place where I had hidden for not even twenty seconds. I didn’t attack it for lack of knowledge of its purpose or abilities. As I said, you should be more careful.”
Iridescent rolls her eyes. “Evidently, the only care I need to take is not to attack the people and creatures that carelessly attack me. I have not sustained any injuries.”
Amber grunts, unsure whether she should be impressed or not. “Didn’t you say you were a Controller?”
“I am.”
“That means you specialise in Support and Pressure, not Offence?”
“That is correct.”
“Yet you killed one of those aliens without even trying?”
Iridescent clearly struggles not to look away. “Again, that is correct.”
“Did you…” Amber tries to fathom what would make the alien create such a mess on someone’s clothing, but then she remembers how bloated it looked. “…make it explode?”
Iridescent sighs. She does look away that time. “Regrettably, yes.”
Amber grunts again. She’s decided she’s impressed. “Damn. This city can be relieved there’s only one Attacker standing here.”
“The city and me both,” she says with a hint of resignation, reinitiating eye contact.
Gesturing behind her with her head, Amber says, “We’ve found each other, but we still have three more people out here. If they’re wandering aimlessly like you, it’ll take a while to find them.”
“You flatter me,” Iridescent says, pursing her lips.
“I’m already as tired of you as you are of me,” Amber says nonchalantly. “Keep walking this way and I’ll find you again. If I find anyone else, I’ll send them your way.” She turns invisible and again runs and flies up to the rooftop.
Iridescent simply sighs. She then mutters under her breath, unaware that Amber’s acute hearing enables her to hear the complaint, “If only Our Grace would offer me a real glass of wine right now…”***
Honestly, Serene was probably into only Giratina itself. Either that or he’s ace and not into people at all. Twist has no idea who or what Serene is even really supposed to be, aside from, you know, hot. He wouldn’t even mind watching the two of them, the centipede god and his feline assistant — herald, producer, whatever — have a go at each other; he’s not afraid of kinky shit. Maybe it’s heresy thinking that, but he’s done far worse. The gods don’t really look like they mind anyway.
Although, Giratina did dump him in the trash, so hah! Maybe one or both of them got annoyed after all. (Hmm… somebody left some vegetables outside for too long.) He chuckles and feels for the lid to the trash container — what else would contain plastic bags with mouldy vegetables and other broken or empty stuff in it? — but it’s actually higher than he can reach.
Great, making fun of the short guy again. Very funny, Our Grace. He scoffs in wry amusement to himself and creates another flash of light, like he did when he first woke up. There isn’t anything like an old broom in here, so he’ll just have to use one of the bags. He feels around for the smallest one, hefts it above himself and leaps up. The bag pushes the lid open, so he has enough time to stick an arm and shoulder out. The lid doesn’t drop very far so it doesn’t hurt, but it takes some effort, with the lid squishing him, to actually wiggle over and then drop down outside.
He dusts himself off and looks around. It’s the cleanest alley he’s ever seen! And the trash was actually neatly contained in plastic bags. There’s actually also another container in the alley. Like, really? Two? What kind of place is this? The people of Sin City must hate litterbugs. He makes a mental note to keep any candy wrappers in his jacket until he sees another container or bin.
To his surprise, the other container’s lid also pops open. “Sup, little dude?” he says to the pale red gremlin, taking off his sunglasses and stashing them in an inside jacket pocket. It’s night, so he won’t be need them until later.
The dude stares at him incredulously. Twist expects him to comment on how weird he looks, but nope, that’s all he does. Kinda the same thing, really.
“Never seen someone with spiral eyes before?”
“Nope.” The gremlin seems to have gotten over his surprise, since he pops back inside the container, dropping the lid back down.
“That happened,” Twist says to himself. He shrugs and exits the alley.
Weird. The road and the buildings next to it all look new, but it’s like somebody just wanted to build shit and then never decided to use them for anything. Yet despite that, he found a kid who prefers hanging out in a rubbish container rather than the empty buildings. If Twist were gonna squat anywhere, he’d have done it in one of those.
There’s a light cyan blob heading his way. It has a funny little white thing on its head, like a bird with a single feather for a crest. Twist waves at it. “Sup, little blob.”
It’s kinda cute in an ugly way, so he steps closer to the wall so it can pass by. But it doesn’t and instead stops to look up at him.
He yawns. “D’you want me to pet you?”
It yawns back at him. He suddenly feels very sleepy…
“You know, I’m gonna take that as a no. Why don’t we take a nap?”
He yawns heavily and then stares into its eyes. The blob blinks once and then closes its eyes, drifting off to sleep. Twist sits down against the wall. If it wants to put him in with the sheep, it’s only fair that he do the maze, the shave…
He jolts awake to find the blob is sleepily munching on his leg. “Get off!” He kicks the blob, but it doesn’t let go. He creates a flash of light before kicking the blob again. Since it’s stunned, he succeeds and gets up.
His left leg is numb, and he realises with horror it’s because it has third-degree acid burns. His shoe, sock, and trousers are basically gone. He can’t actually support his weight with the leg anymore.
“Did you fucking try to eat me?!”
He leans against the wall, puts his hands out in front of him, as if holding something, and wills a body pillow into existence. It looks exactly like him, down to having the bad leg. He tosses the pillow at the blob, burying it underneath the pillow. He then closes his eyes and imagines his leg being healed. It’s not a life-threatening injury, but he can’t deal with more handicaps…
Healing energy washes over him and he sighs in sweet relief. The numbness in his leg fades and all feeling returns. He opens his eyes to see the skin as fresh as… well, probably a fresh vegetable or something. It isn’t dead and burned, basically. His left trouser leg is still partially gone and his shoe and sock are tattered, but that’s the least of his worries.
The blob has taken to munching on the head of his body pillow, making his blood boil at just the idea of his handsome face being so viciously scarred because a big baby decided it needed a pacifier.
“You bastard!”
He throws himself at the blob, wildly kicking and hitting and biting it. (The white rod on its head is kind of like an elastic banana, and though it doesn’t taste like anything, he does enjoy the texture.) By the time he finally gets a grip on himself — Serene had not been kidding about him seeing red — the blob is as bruised as an apple that got used as a hacky-sack. It’s bleeding a little and looking worse for wear, but that’s what it deserves!
“Get some, you testicular weirdo!” He picks up his body pillow and beats the blob with it for good measure. After dropping the body pillow onto it again, he says, “Have fun with that,” before walking in the direction it had come.
If he encounters any more of those little bastards, he’ll be prepared this time. Nobody sucks on him without permission!***
“Breathe deeply,” Level reminds the child.
“I am!” they say stubbornly.
Level shakes her head, even though her eyes are closed. “No. You have inhaled deeply. You exhaled normally. Breathing is both in and out. You sometimes do the one deeply, sometimes the other, but rarely both.
“How can you know that without affecting your own breathing?”
Level smiles, slowly drawing air in through their nose. She holds the breath, stoking the fire inside her, before exhaling through her mouth, forcing the stale air out. “I know because I have been doing it for more than fifty years. Do you know what a year is, child?”
“No,” they admit.
“It is a measurement of time. Time may be an illusion in Purgatory, but in reality, it is most valuable.” She counts with intention. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Each count is what we call a second — do not worry yourself with the naming of the unit. Sixty such counts constitute a minute. Sixty minutes constitute an hour, twelve hours constitute a day, and approximately three-hundred and sixty-five days, plus a quarter, constitute a year.”
“That’s a lot of time,” the child says.
“Indeed. I have learned much during that time and I have taught much during that time. I should never have dreamed I should have the opportunity to learn and teach after my time has ended. This is a privilege for us both.”
“Thank you, again,” the child says humbly.
“And again, you are most welcome. Let us try again: inhale deeply.” Level and the child both do. “That is it. Keep holding your breath. Once you feel the air becoming thinner, slowly yet deliberately exhale.” Level again does it as an example, which the child follows. “Now, we do it again.”
And so it goes. Soon enough, the child has the proper rhythm. “Is this meditation?” they ask.
“No, this is merely breathing. Meditation is about finding inner peace. Before you can make peace with yourself, you must make peace with the world.”
“Aren’t I doing that already?”
“No, dear child, you hide from the world. You hide from your siblings, from Homers, and from Sinners. Try this: think of nothing, and when a thought appears, state it out loud.”
“I’ll try.” A few seconds pass. “My brothers are the worst.”
“Good, now acknowledge the thought and let it float away.”
“How?”
“Admit to yourself that your brothers cause you distress, but also admit that you can guard your peace against that distress. Let the thought of them come and go until you again think of nothing.”
After a moment, they say, “I think I did it.”
“Very good. We repeat the process. Think of nothing, and when a thought appears, state it out loud to acknowledge it, and then think of nothing so the thought may be free.”
“I would like to play with some of my sisters sometimes, but they tell me to go away.”
“Good. Maybe someday they will play with you, but for now, let that disappointment go away instead.”
“I got sad once and one of my big sisters hit me.”
“Acknowledge that pain. Allow yourself to feel it, but do not let it dampen your peace. Let it float away.”
“I ran away from her. I missed Mother, so I went to the palace to see her. She wasn’t there.”
Level nodded sombrely. She resisted the urge to take a concerned glimpse at the child and instead reinforced her focus on guiding the child. “This is where it becomes difficult. You have acknowledged the outer layer of your thoughts, but you must now peel away at the inner layers.”
The child sniffed and breathed more shallowly. “Mother doesn’t love me.”
“Acknowledge her absence in your life,” Level says gently. “If it brings you pain, allow yourself to feel it. If it brings you sorrow, allow yourself to feel it. You cannot find inner peace while you suppress inner turmoil.”
The child began crying softly. Level only sensed it at first through the increased effort it took them to breathe deeply, with the air shakily entering their little lungs. Then came the occasional whimper and sharp intake of breath, though they always tried their best to correct their breathing. Finally, the child became overwhelmed by the weight of their emotions and they sobbed quietly.
“What you feel is natural,” she says. “There is nothing wrong with the desire for care and affection. Allow it all to flow through you and out into the world.”
“Did… did you have… a mother?” they choke out.
“I did.”
“Did she love you?”
“She loved me very much. May I share a piece of her with you through something she said?”
“Yes, please,” they said, sniffing.
“When you fall and hurt yourself, you may cry because the pain feels like more than you can bear. That is not because you are weak, it is because pain is real, and without having experienced pain, you cannot know how to bear it. Once you have experienced pain, you can learn to bear it. You can learn because you are strong. You are strong enough to feel the pain and know you will heal. You are strong enough to be hurt yet not be broken. In some cases, it will be difficult. At times, it may even seem impossible. But always, always, you have the strength to persevere if only you try. And someday, should you fall and hurt yourself, you may find that you do not cry. You may find that the pain is bearable. You may find you are strong enough.”
The child sobs openly. Level opens her eyes and exhales. She then rises, scoops the child into her arms, and presses them to her chest. The child does not resist, rather embracing Level with their locks of hair. Level did not know the hair was prehensile, but it does justify the lack of arms.
She smiles. If the child can sense the feelings of others at all times, even when they would rather not, then let them feel her fondness for them. Her care for their happiness.
A shadow suddenly appears at one end of the alley. Level gazes to her right.
“Aha! It is a crying child!” Rook runs into the alley and makes her customary right-angle bow, arms thrown out wide to the sides. “But my help is not needed! Thank you, Level, for being here to comfort this little girl in her time of need!”
“Do we know that she is indeed a girl?” Level asks rhetorically, though she does incline her head to Rook in greeting. “I think it is for them to decide.”
The child looks up at her. “Of course I’m a girl.” They sniff and rub their eyes. “What else would I be?”
Level smiles fondly and gently strokes the child’s hair. “The mind is a funny thing. Sometimes, it cannot find peace because it is a square when it wishes to be a circle. Sometimes, it cannot find peace because it is a diamond that tires of being called a square for having equilateral sides. Sometimes, it does not truly know what it is or what it wants for always being told by others what its identity and desires are.”
“Will meditation help with that?” the child asks.
“Of course. It will take time, but the more inner layers of your thoughts you peel away, the closer you will come to finding peace. By the time you find inner peace, you may know what you are, or you may not, but you will be at peace with it all the same.”
Rook is at a loss for how to react. “Level, you are wise. I have never considered such truths before! I feel humbled for having the honour of sharing this moment with you. I will intrude no longer!” She dashes back to the street and stands to attention with her back facing the pair.
“Are they another Sinner?” the child asks. “They were filled with a lot of awe.”
Level nods. “She is, and her name is Rook. It appears the solo stage of the tournament has come to an end and the group stage has begun.”
“Does that mean you have to leave now?”
“It does. She will want me to leave with her, but if you want me to stay, I shall stay.”
“What about the tournament?” the child asks, gaping in surprise.
“It struck me as a paradox from the moment Serene explained it to me,” Level says. “I understand the requirement of being the most virtuous among the twenty participants to ascend to Paradise, but there is nevertheless the possibility that none of the twenty of us may prove virtuous enough. If that possibility comes to pass, the winner of the tournament would not truly have earned their place in Paradise, they would merely have won it. Even so, remember that I only have a five percent chance of winning. I should much rather stay here and continue to teach you than abandon you with the small hope of beating nineteen other souls in a competition.”
“Isn’t Paradise worth that small hope?” they ask.
“Perhaps, but I have mostly found inner peace. I do not need a reward for that — inspiring the growth of others is a far better reward in any case.”
The child continues gazing up at Level. They say nothing for a moment before asking, “Could I come with you? Then you don’t need to choose.”
Level had not considered that. “You certainly could. Would the feelings of the other participants not be too much for you? There may also be conflict. It will not be pleasant.”
“The feelings of all the other Sinners and Homers in Sin City aren’t pleasant either,” the child retorts. “Sinners fight each other all the time. You’ve started teaching me how to meditate. If I can find inner peace, nobody’s feelings will bother me anymore. I want to stay with you.”
Level smiles and nods. “Then it is decided. We travel together.”
The child gasps and hugs Level again. Of their own accord. “Thank you so much!”
Fondness swells in her breast. She carries the child out with her to Rook. She taps the other participant’s shoulder.
“Ah! You are finished! Is the little lady, if she decides she wants to be a little lady, coming with us?”
“Yes!” they announce. “I think I like being a little lady.”
Rook laughs and slaps her belly. “Hah! Would you like me to call you ‘Lilady’?”
“Can she give me a name?” the child asks, staring up in amazement at Level.
How could she refuse such a sincere request? “Anyone can give you a name, dear child,” she responds. “It seems to me, however, that the choice is yours whether you wish to accept it.”
“I want to keep it!” she cries enthusiastically.
Rook hops backwards and bows. “Then I hereby dub you ‘Lilady’! May the name bring you much joy and satisfaction, hoho!”
Lilady claps her hair together. “Yay!”
Rook stands up straight, gasps, and then points behind Level. “There is another Banurtle here! Oh, but it is blue, not green. How interesting!”
Level turns around to regard the former newcomer. “What did you call our friend?”
“I called it ‘Banurtle’!” Rook states. “It is a combination of ‘banana’ and ‘turtle’, but this one’s banana-peel-like thing on its head is orange, not yellow! It does not look like an orange peel, so I cannot call it ‘Oranurtle’! You call it ‘friend’? Is it not aggressive?”
“Not in the least,” Level says, looking between Rook and the balloon-like being. “However, Lilady did say there are monsters in Sin City, and if you encountered one that was aggressive, I fear it may be of a similar species, if perhaps not a similar disposition.”
Rook nods. “I will call it ‘Turblue’! I hope other Banurtles will be as friendly as Turblue.”
“I hope so too,” she says. “Now, where do we go from here? Were you nearby?”
“Hahaha! I have scoured these many streets and have only now succeeded in finding a teammate! I was far in that direction—” Rook turns and gestures. “—and searched that way—” She gestures down the one of the street. “—before searching this way!” She gestures down the other end. “Haznun and my Banurtle both came from or went in this direction, so I thought the other direction would be where you were, but I was mistaken!”
“Who or what is Haznun?”
“He is a little pink boy with poor manners and a vulgar sense of humour!”
“That sounds like one of my brothers,” Lilady says before exhaling forcefully. Evidently, she is trying to quietly meditate.
“Oho! You have multiple brothers? How many?”
“Too many to count,” she says. “I have too many sisters too count too.”
“Astonishing!” Rook exclaims.
Level looks from Lilady to Turblue. “It may be too soon to draw this conclusion, but it could be that each member of our group will encounter Lilady or one of her siblings, as well as Turblue or one of its kin.”
Rook gasps. “I would never have considered such a pattern! How remarkable! You were in an alley and I was also in an alley. We must search the other alleys!”
“There are alleys everywhere here,” Lilady says. “This whole district just appeared today. It’s boring but empty, which was nice.”
“Then we had better continue searching,” Level says. “We may be at it for a while.”***
“Ugh, this is so boring,” Twist complains. “Hey, disembodied audience! Are you entertained? Do you like watching extremely attractive pandas walking around with nothing to do?”
“Have you never been to a zoo?”
“Sweet, fucking—” Twist whirls around in shock. “—holy Arceus! You really are a ninja.”
Amber gives him a stony look. “You shouldn’t blaspheme.”
“And you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!”
“You should be more careful. You’re not the only one I’ve told that already.”
“I’m sure they also told you something along the lines of ‘Go fuck yourself, darling’.” He crosses his arms and gives her a narrow-lipped look that isn’t quite a glare or a scowl.
“You’re the only sex-obsessed participant in this tournament, so no, she didn’t.” She pauses very briefly before adding, “For the record, you’re not as attractive as you claim to be.”
Twist scoffs. “Have you ever seen modern art and thought it was only a bunch of coloured swirls and lines?”
“You’re referring specifically to abstract modern art,” Amber corrects. “And contrary to what you’re suggesting, subjective aesthetic appeal in a representational sense can’t be compared to total abstraction. They’re mutually exclusive.”
“I have very little understanding of what you just said,” Twist drawls with a smirk and a raised eyebrow, “since I’m not an artist. Whatever you are, you’re clearly not a fan of the sculpture before you. And that’s fine.” He bows forwards a little and lifts his hands in a sarcastically placating gesture. “Birds aren’t my type, so I’m not gonna flirt with you. But I’m not gonna diss you for no reason, either.”
“You’re annoying,” she retorts. “Even the Griseous God of Purgatory thought so. Telling you to cut it out isn’t a diss.”
He chuckles. “No, Our Grace maybe thought Coil was annoying. I definitely thought he was a prick.” He looks around. “Hmm, I should touch wood; wouldn’t want him in our group. Anyway, Our Grace was as weird with me as it was with basically everyone else. And it’s a god, as you said, so it’ll do whatever it damned well wants. Maybe Serene was annoyed with me, but I watched all the introductions and I don’t think that’s it. He was just confused, which, duh, was the point.”
Amber sighs. She’s not going to waste any more energy on him. She points to their left, slightly behind her. “Iridescent is that way. If you head left and cross four streets, you’ll be in the same one as her.” She disappears again to continue searching elsewhere.
“You’re exactly as much a stick in the mud as I thought when I first watched you being introduced, you know!” Twist calls. He shrugs, looks for the nearest alley, and then follows her directions. “Iridescent, huh? Great. I’m stuck with two frosty chicks.”
He keeps his thoughts to himself while he walks, since apparently everybody is a critic. Story of his life, obviously, given the species as which he was born, but it sucks that he can’t even complain to people that aren’t there because people that weren’t there could just randomly pop up.
Four streets later, he at least does see Iridescent walking some twenty metres away. “Sup!” he calls. She stops and turns around. To her credit, he expects her to just roll her eyes or something and keep walking, but she actually does wait for him. Once he gets closer, though, it becomes clear she’s already seen some shit, since her clothes are all bloody and gross. “Guessing you also had a run-in with a blob?”
Iridescent sighs. “Unfortunately, yes. Good day.”
“Is it, though?”
She face-palms and massages her temples. “I would very much not like to discuss the contextual appropriateness of a standard greeting.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Twist says. “You look like you’ve been having a pretty rough day. Mine probably isn’t as bad, but it hasn’t been a stroll in the park either. Would probably have been attacked by a blob there as well.”
She notices his ruined trouser leg and shoe. “You appear to have come off unscathed.”
“Err, no? Like, yeah, it does look that way, but that’s only ‘cause I have a healing technique. The stupid thing put me to sleep, so I did the same thing before I actually took my nap, but then I wake up to find it’s munching on my leg anyway.”
“I see,” she says. “I suppose our days have been equally rough, in that case.”
“I’ll take that.” He walks up beside her and she recognises the cue to continue walking. “Was Amber a pain for you too?”
She scoffs.
He chuckles. “That’s a yes. Why did she tell you to be more careful?”
“I presume she told you that as well?”
“Yip, that’s why I’m asking. She made a whole point about how it wasn’t the first time today.”
Iridescent nods absentmindedly. “I was apparently not vigilant enough for her liking by simply walking along the street and looking for my group. Her being able to surprise me is some sort of proof of carelessness on my behalf.”
“Right?” He shakes his head. “She’s, what, an Attacker or Suppresser, isn’t she?”
“The former.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not. I remember you and that kid, Ember, are the only two Controllers in the tourney, and that picnic lady, Rudder, and I are the only two Eroders. None of us picked those roles because we decided we wanted to sneak around like ninjas or something.”
Iridescent frowns ever so slightly. “I believe that most likely describes that young man Dagger better than Amber.”
Twist shrugs. “Fair enough. Amber’s more of a spec-ops-type of chick. Although, I thought you said you didn’t want to discuss the… how did you put it? ‘Contextual appropriateness’ of words?”
She doesn’t answer for a moment, but then she relents. “You’re right, I did say that. I apologise.”
He flashes her a winsome smile. “We’re cool. You know, you’re actually not as stuck-up as I thought you’d be.”
“I do so adore back-handed compliments,” she replies dryly.
He tilts his head to the side, sort of grimacing, before saying, “Yeah, okay, I didn’t think that one through. Sorry about that. I just mean you actually seem like an okay person. You gave off a… a bit of a vibe during your introduction, if you know what I mean?”
“I understand,” she says, “even if I think you might benefit from some self-awareness.”
He snorts and casually waves a dismissive hand. “Pfft, nah! That was all for show. If Serene had given me a bottle of vodka like I’d asked, I totally would have been shitfaced, but I wasn’t. He, Serene, is always so composed and meek around Our Grace, and Our Grace is… loopy. It gets to be what it wants, obviously, but I noticed that in all the introductions, it tends to say or do weird or random or unexpected things. It probably gets a kick out of it, so I wanted to try that against the two of them and see what they thought.”
“Are you aware that they can probably hear us?” she asks, giving him a sideways glance.
“Totally! I’m pretty sure they’re watching us too.” He finger-guns up into the sky.
She looks up and then at him. “If they are incorporeal, they don’t need to watch us from the sky. They could essentially be over our shoulders and we would never know.”
“We should ask Amber that when she gets back. She saw them.”
“Did she?”
“Yeah, she totally did! I don’t know how, but she was already looking at Our Grace before it started speaking, like she knew it was there. The rest of us were usually taken by surprise by them just appearing out of thin air.”
“Then you may be correct,” she concedes. It isn’t a point worth arguing against anyway.
He yawns. “I hope shit gets exciting soon. I’ve never seen a place this boring since ever. At least if we were in the middle of nowhere back on Earth, you could count on there being some kind of bug or whatever around. Even deserts would be more interesting than this. Like, imagine riding a camel as part of a caravan. Some people still trade that way.”
Iridescent shakes her head. “I would rather suffer the monotony of this place than actively languish in the heat somewhere.”
“I feel you.”
In the meantime, Amber has finally spotted Level and Rook, with the latter still carring Lilady and Turblue still following them like a loyal pet or a stray hoping for scraps. She wonders how they haven’t realised the danger following them around yet, but they’re obviously aware that they’re being followed at all. That alien also looks different, so maybe it is different too. She won’t know until she finds out. So, she turns invisible and flies down to land a bit ahead of them.
When she reappears, Rook gasps audibly. “Are you two aware those aliens—” Amber points in an arcing motion around Level. “—are here to attack us?”
“Ah, you surprise us, Ember!” Rook says.
“No, I’m Amber,” she cuts in quickly. “Ember is someone else.”
Level nods. “He is the shy boy who hid in the tent.”
“Oh! Yes, I remember now! Thank you to you both!”
“I asked you a question,” Amber reminds them.
“I don’t like them,” Lilady whispers to Level.
“Her,” Amber corrects.
“Thank you, Amber,” Level says sincerely. Amber has difficulty parsing whether or not she’s being sarcastic, however. “To answer your question, yes, we are aware that these beings can be dangerous. Evidently, this particular being, whom Rook has named ‘Turblue’, is not. There is no reason to treat it with hostility if it has shown nothing but curiosity.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Amber insists. “Don’t complain to me later if it seemingly attacks you out at random.”
“We shall endure the risk if it means not assuming Turblue’s guilt as a foregone conclusion,” Level says. “Even if events ultimately transpire as you say, one cannot judge another for actions they have not yet taken.”
Whatever. Amber didn’t sign up for morality lectures; she just wants out of this mess. “I found Iridescent and Twist already. You can follow me to them. They’re far away.” It felt like it took her forever to find these two. At least they weren’t separate.
“Yes, thank you,” Level says. “Do kindly lead the way. If you would prefer to travel in partial solitude, we shall not attempt to converse with you.”
“Great, thanks.” She really doesn’t want to chat anyway, especially with Rook, who’s far too boisterous and honestly a little dense.
Amber disappears again, though she realises it’s starting to sap her energy. Once on a rooftop, she reappears and signals to the pair to follow her. They do, so she ensures that she’s always in their line of sight. It makes travel painfully slow, but she stops next to a streetlight and absorbs the light to replenish her energy. She feels invigorated, yet she surprisingly still feels drained from constantly turning invisible. It must be because she’s not actually becoming invisible as much as she moves to what you could describe as a spectral plane. She’ll have to rely on her senses more to avoid danger rather than taking the easy route. With a united group, that will be considerably harder, but at least they should be able to face danger much more easily. She doesn’t know what Level’s, Rook’s, or Twist’s performance is like, but she’ll have to be ready for anything.
Level and Rook, on the other hand, have no such worries. They resume their conversation on the merits and necessity of sleep, which is frequently punctuated by Rook’s exclamations or bursts of laughter.
After a while, it occurs to Amber that Iridescent and Twist are also walking in the same direction, and since Level and Rook are both larger than the other two participants, they walk more slowly. In other words, they literally cannot catch up. She informs them of this before running ahead and relocating the other pair, whom she guides onto the correct street and instructs to slow down significantly.
Once she has left to return to the slower pair, Twist gives Iridescent an unimpressed look and asks, “Why didn’t she just say we need to walk back towards them?”
“I expect it’s because she has a rigid interest in efficiency. If we travel towards them, we’ll have to retrace our steps eventually, which she might personally find unpalatable. If we wait, we’re halting our progress, which might also seem inefficient to her.”
“She has issues,” Twist remarks. “I vote we just hang out here until they catch up. If only to stick it to her. She’s not the boss of me.”
Iridescent smiles in mild amusement. “As a former chief executive officer, I also dislike the notion of being bossed around. I’ll allow myself this petty indulgence.”
Twist smirks wickedly and elbows her. “Hey, if we’re not moving, we’re technically saving energy, and that’s more efficient, eh?”
“That is an acceptable point.”
“Cool! I’m gonna try and take a nap again.” He creates another body pillow, taking great pleasure in the disturbed reaction it provokes from Iridescent, and uses it as a sort of bed on the pavement.
Iridescent simply shakes her head, especially because it becomes clear after a few minutes he won’t actually succeed in taking a nap. “Would you like me to hypnotise you?”
“Oh, damn, yeah! I didn’t know you picked Hypnosis too.”
“It should prove very useful for putting nuisances to sleep.” Her eyes glow a soporific purple.
“I—” Twist interrupts himself with a yawn. “Take… ish…”
“You better not snore,” she says to his sleeping form.***
Amber is not impressed when she finally returns. “Why is he asleep? What made you think this was a good idea?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Iridescent asks. “When did we claim it was a good idea to stop for a rest?”
“If you agree it’s a bad idea—”
“I didn’t do that either,” Iridescent interjects. “He decided he wanted to take a nap while we wait.”
“And you didn’t stop him?” Amber asks incredulously.
“What authority over him do you perhaps think I have?” Iridescent asks. She used to influence the lives of hundreds of employees on a daily basis, yet even she understands that it isn’t her place to order others around in the afterlife. She might not approve, and she will very well voice her disapproval when she wants to, but that is all.
“The least you could have done was not to enable him.”
“Do you think it would have been prudent to leave him behind?” She certainly disapproves of that, and her tone makes it abundantly clear. “I do not. In fact, I put him to sleep in the first place.”
Amber is astonished. “You’re both mad.”
Iridescent smiles sweetly. “We’re all mad here.”
“Ohoho!” Rook laughs, coming into earshot. “I understood that reference as well! It is a pleasure to finally meet you both!” She looks at Twist. “Oh! He is asleep! Our meeting has been suspended!”
Iridescent shakes him with her telekinesis. Twist mumbles something incoherent, so she shakes him a bit more vigorously. He finally wakes and peers at her.
“Oh…” He yawns. “The whole gang is here.”
“Now,” Rook happily says, “it is a pleasure to finally meet you both!”
Twist stretches luxuriously, fully taking his time with the knowledge that four women are watching him, before resting his arm on the body pillow and propping his head up with that said arm. He smirks. “Sup, ladies.”
“Why?” That is all Amber can muster in response, feeling dead on the inside.
“Don’t kill me later for what I’m about to do,” he says, drawling in a particularly low tone and winking and blowing a kiss at her, “but it was just to annoy you specifically.”
The kiss actually includes a pink heart shape that floats towards Amber. She feels like she would ordinarily have sliced the heart in half or at least have had the presence of mind to protect herself against it, but she doesn’t. Instead, the heart hits her and she suddenly feels very flustered. She knows she would ordinarily have been able to tell him off immediately, but the way he lies, so stupidly self-assured and even a little shamelessly suggestive… Ugh!
“You’re still not my type,” he says, to her great indignation, “but Purgatory is all about broadening our horizons, after all. Do you still think I’m not exactly as attractive as I say I am?”
She’s infuriated and would like nothing more than to skewer him with several arrows, but she finds his smugness too powerful to overcome. “You better fear for your life later,” she says before stalking onwards, hoping the group will follow without her constantly needing to remind them.
Twist twists to peer at her over his shoulder. He chuckles and then gets up. “Totally worth it.”
“If you had continued much longer,” Iridescent says, slightly satisfied at seeing Amber so embarrassed and yet feeling deeply embarrassed herself, “I would have had to stop you.”
He waves her off. “Relax, I’m just messing with her. It’s temporary. She’ll probably be charmed for about a minute more and then she’ll go right back to thinking I’m just a no-good, stuffed teddy bear.”
Iridescent shakes her head without further response and sets off after Amber.
“I think it is good that technique does not exist outside of Purgatory,” Level says, speaking in Twist’s presence for the first time, “as it could be put to too much mischief and worse.”
Twist scoffs. “Totally. But I have a body count in the mid double digits. It’s not just bluster.” He winks, slings his pillow over his shoulder, and follows Iridescent.
Rook laughs merrily, while Level instead considers the tiny child still cradled in her arm. “How goes your meditation, Lilady?”
“It’s very hard,” she confesses, “but I’m a little less bothered by everyone’s feelings than usual. It’s still very unpleasant and I want to run away from the bird and the bear.”
“Neither of them mean any ill,” Level reassures her.
“By the way,” Twist calls back, looking over his shoulder, “where did you find — Lilady, was it?”
“I found her in the second garbage container in the alley where Our Grace sent me.”
“Aww, really? That’s kinda cute! Mine had a little dude inside, but he just stared at me. I didn’t speak to him much.”
“That was one of my many brothers,” Lilady clarifies.
“Oh, really?” Twist turns to walk backwards, peering behind him, now to the front, to ensure he wouldn’t hit any lampposts. He moved onto the road for safety. Satisfied, he looks ahead of him, which is back to Level and Rook, and asks, “Do you have a big family?”
Lilady sighs. “The biggest in Sin City. I don’t know most of my siblings and wouldn’t recognise most of them.”
“Damn. Your parents must be busy.”
“They are. Always.”
The frankness of her tone makes it hard to discern, not just for Twist, whether Lilady actually addressed the innuendo. It’s possible she might just mean it in the general sense, but for all they know, it could be both. Twist has the decency not to press the matter, simply snickering.
“What made you decide to tag along?”
“Level is teaching me how to meditate.”
“That’s a noble thing,” Iridescent says approvingly, angling her head to the side just enough to show the intent to address Lilady and Level without actually looking at them.
“It’s to help me find inner peace,” Lilady adds.
“That’s cool!” Twist says. “I don’t think I have the pa— Shit!”
Amber had finally gotten over her embarrassment, even though the infatuating effects of Twist’s technique had already worn off, so she had abruptly stopped, turned around, and launched a small cloud of feathers and down at Twist. They cling to him as if he had been dipped in oil and flour, and since he hadn’t been watching where he was going, it caught him by surprise and made him trip and fall. He wasn’t actually hurt, though, given that his pillow absorbed most of the impact.
He gives her an upside-down smile. “You know, I can tell this is supposed to make me look ridiculous, and having this much fluff on you would make anyone else hit like a marshmallow, but things don’t work that way for me. You might notice this is actually a flattering look — I’m more toned than ever!”
Rook gasps. “Oho! I see it! I have never seen a man look like a pillow defeated him and yet also look so handsome! How interesting!”
He finger-guns at her and clicks his tongue against the inside of his mouth. “She gets it!”
Amber huffs. “Do you have a counter for everything?”
“Yeah, pretty much. But you can’t be one to complain, Miss Total Abstraction. …Huh, I can’t believe I actually remembered that.”
She rolls her eyes, sighs wearily, and moves back to the front of the group. Rook offers Twist a hand, which he accepts, but rather than pull himself up, she does it for him. He dusts off some of the feathers, leaves the majority of them, and collects his pillow again. Maybe to prevent another fall from happening, he walks the normal way and returns to the pavement. The group resumes its walk.
“Lilady?” Iridescent asks.
“Yes?”
“My name is Iridescent. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Oh, thank you. This person decided to call me Lilady and I liked the name.”
“This person is called ‘Rook’,” Level calmly points out. “The man is Twist, and the woman at the front is Amber.”
“Hello!” Lilady says to all of them. “I’ve never met so many Sinners before.”
Twist chuckles at that, but Iridescent is understandably offended. “I beg your pardon?”
“She does not mean it as an insult,” Level clarifies. “Here in Sin City, the local inhabitants are known as Homers. We souls who lived and died are known as Sinners for rather understandable reasons. It is a proper noun applied regardless of one’s actual history with sin.”
“There is always a less flattering term,” Iridescent says coldly, her anger not directed at either Level or Lilady, but her weak attempt at reassuring herself doing little to diminish her anger.
“Does she know if we’re heading the right way?” Twist asks. “It would be funny but kinda shitty if we’ve been going in the wrong direction all this time.”
“No, we’re going the right way,” Lilady confirms.
“How much farther is it?”
“I don’t know. The distance is never the same.”
“Oho! What does that mean?”
“Yeah, I’m with her,” Twist says, looking over his shoulder. “How does the distance change?”
“It’s likely some kind of illusion,” Iridescent suggests.
“Not really,” Lilady says. “If you want to get there, you’ll get there. Just not right away. Some places let you get there almost immediately, but not Father’s palace.”
“I thought we were going to Superbia Square,” Twist says.
“We are! It’s in front of Father’s palace.”
Rook gasps. “Are you a princess?!”
“What’s that?” Lilady asks.
“Do you remember how I said you were a very important child?” Level asks.
“Yes.”
“Well, a princess is that. Her father is the Mayor of Sin City.”
Twist makes an impressed noise.
“Who’s the governor?” Amber asks, breaking her usual silence.
“Some Sinners call him the mayor, but some call him the governor. He’s the same person.”
Amber scoffs but doesn’t engage any further.
“If we’re going to the city square,” Twist muses, “it’s probably to meet him. That’ll be cool. I’ve never met a high-profile politician before.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Iridescent remarks. “Most politicians make for terribly drab and long-winded company. It’s a natural consequence of perfecting the art of saying nothing in as many words as possible.”
Level nods, though not in agreement as much as general acknowledgement. “If we are to meet him, Our Grace likely has a major role for him to play in the tournament.”
“Does he know we’re coming?” Twist asks.
“I would gladly do what I can to improve the conditions within the city!” Rook declares. “I will help those in need and defend those in danger!”
Amber groans. “Then kill the alien trailing along behind you already.”
“We have already discussed that matter,” Level says with a gentle firmness, “and the circumstance of Turblue’s companionship has not changed.”
Twist is lost. “What?”
Iridescent is more concerned. She stops, sees nothing, and then walks to the side to see the blue blob effectively trying to hide behind Rook. “Why is it following us? And why are you letting it?”
“Turblue has not caused any harm or shown any ill will,” Level says, “so despite your own interactions with their kind, as I suppose you must have had, there is no reason to deny them the freedom to travel where they wish.”
“Oh, this one has a pink crest!” Twist says, having stopped as well to inspect Turblue. “I like the teal better, too.”
Iridescent gives him a dubious stare. “In what world is orange pink and blue teal?”
“Mine!”
“You must be colour blind,” she says icily. “Of all the—”
“Yip!” he says, making her fall abruptly silent. “I’m tritanopic, to be more specific.”
“I…” she falters. “I apologise. I didn’t know.”
He shrugs. “Don’t sweat it. Most people don’t. Red pandas are the butt of everyone’s joke.”
“All red pandas have tritanopia,” Level elaborates.
“Oh!” Rook exclaims. “What colour am I?”
“I can’t see any shade of green, blue, yellow, or purple,” Twist explains, “so you look teal and pink to me. I have no clue what you actually are. Probably blue and orange, like the blob behind you.”
“I am dark green and beige!”
“Oh.” He shrugs. “Yeah, I don’t know what ‘real’ colours most people are. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“How do you know the names of colours?” Iridescent asks. “Someone must have taught you what teal looks like.”
He shrugs again. “My parents taught me. I’m guessing someone, at some point, taught red pandas what the colours are that they see. It’s probably a recent thing, somewhere in the last century. People didn’t bother to study colour blindness before.”
Rook looks thoughtful at the new information, Level looks as calm as always, so she probably knew all of this already, and Amber just looks impatient, waiting with her back towards Twist and wanting to get back to their travelling, but Iridescent looks apologetic and actually somewhat ashamed. She has another emotion in her eyes, and when Twist sees it, he scowls.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
She’s taken aback. “How should I not look at you?”
“Like I’m some broken person to be pitied,” he says hotly. “This is why we don’t talk about these things. As soon as anyone else learns about exactly how different we are, they stop seeing us as weird and start seeing us as sad. They make the same doe-y expression you have on your face right now. At least when people think we’re weird, they think we’re inferior because we’re wrong in their eyes, not because we’re less than what they think a whole person should be. We can deal with prejudice, but fuck pity.”
Iridescent is internally reeling at the revelation and his scathing words, but she sincerely wants to do better. She nods earnestly. “I understand. I’ll try to do better.”
He groans and makes an exaggerated slumping motion. “No, don’t do that. Understand, sure, but don’t ‘try to do better’.” He mimics quotation marks with his fingers. “Pretend I said that in mixed case. Just go back to thinking I’m a prick for knowing and saying I’m sexy.” He shakes his head and moves to his previous position in the group’s marching order.
Iridescent does the same, so everyone proceeds as before. But there’s an uncomfortable silence hanging around them, and even Amber wishes it would go away.Spoiler
After a few minutes, Lilady shivers. “Something’s wrong.”
“What is it?” Level asks.
“There’s a lot fear coming from over there.” She points with her ‘hat’ to their right and a bit to the front.
“Do we need to check it out?” Twist asks.
“No,” Amber firmly says. “You’ve all delayed us long enough. Our goal is to get—”
The remainder of her words are cut off by a chorus of shouts. Almost at the same time, numerous screams follow, including an especially high-pitched one.
The group pauses, uncertain. Iridescent opens her mouth to speak, but Rook beats her to it.
“Have faith, you who are in need!” she calls at the top of her lungs, barrelling towards the nearest alley like a heroic cargo truck. “Help is on its way!”
“You heard her!” Twist says, joining and catching up with Rook.
Iridescent can’t remember the last time she actually ran, but she’s thankful she had decided to wear something more practical than high heels. “I recognise those shouts!” she calls at the group members in front of and behind her. Level, to her surprise, quickly overtakes her, but Amber is nowhere to be seen. She’s either chosen not to risk her safety for that of others, or, perhaps more likely, she disappeared and is running along on the rooftops.
“I’m gonna take a wild guess,” Twist calls, “and say it’s the blobs?”
“Naturally,” Iridescent confirms, already panting. This isn’t going to leave her in a very favourable state for combat. Fortunately, her role does not require that of her, so she will be more than happy to provide assistance from the side.
Amber is indeed running along the rooftops, and with her keen hearing, she knows exactly in which direction to go. She doesn’t move invisibly, as the time for reconnaissance is done and the time for action is nigh, but also, she needs her group to cover her. She’s absolutely not engaging in mêlée combat on her own.
When she reaches the scene of the commotion, she sees several of the aliens attacking what she assumes to be Homers. She assumes that because they all look ridiculous: there’s a mass of tentacles and vines with two white eyes almost glowing in the darkness at its centre, wildly swinging its orang-utan-like arms at any aliens that come too close; there’s a circular gong with large yellow eyes just floating there, having purple liquid spat on it without showing much reaction; there’s a gang of pink kids that must be Lilady’s infamous brethren, which everyone but her seems to have encountered; and then there’s a stupid lilac kid with crosses for eyes, who screams bloody murder anytime an alien comes near before running exactly five steps and then stopping again.
Unfortunately, there are also a few other people, mostly some of the pink kids, who are already unconscious and lying on the asphalt or pavement. Amber doesn’t have time to worry about them because she counts seven of the aliens as well as a much bigger boss alien, which is purple and has yellow whiskers. The pink kids, about five of which are left (three are unconscious), are attacking the aliens instead of just running away; at least they gang up on the little blobs, which is sensible. Three are about occupied that way, with another alien harassing the gong, another chasing the screaming kid, and the last two attacking the tangled mass alongside their boss.
“Take out the easy targets first,” she mutters to herself. She draws her bodily bowstring, nocks a spectral feather against her wing, and takes aim at the alien chasing the screaming child. She’ll focus better without— The child screams and flees, making Amber cringe. Yeah, without needing to deal with that. She steadies her aim, and when the quill’s tip glows purple, she takes the shot. The arrow hits its mark, bursting into purple flames and pinning the alien’s shadow to the road. It jerks to a stop, immobilised. She takes aim with another arrow, but the rest of her group finally bursts onto the scene.
“Ho, your defeat has arrived, Banurtles!” Rook shouts. She wastes no time picking a target and makes a beeline towards the immobilised blob before belly-flopping on it. The blob is as incapacitated as one would expect after such an experience, but Rook isn’t quite done with it. She picks it up and hurls it away. Its shadow is ripped apart in the process, and with it, the last thread of its life.
Twist simply drops his body pillow, runs towards the nearest blob, which is already being mobbed by a couple of the pink gremlins, and starts thrashing it. The gremlins enthusiastically join him, kicking and hitting and scratching the blob until it stops moving.
Iridescent takes a more calculated approach to her engagement. She first evaluates the scene like Amber had before raising her arms and creating spirals of cyan energy underneath herself, Rook, the no-longer-screaming lilac child, Twist, the nearby boys (both fighting and unconscious), and the mass of tentacles. She then notes that the aforementioned mass is having the most trouble, especially with all the acid being spat at it, so she creates a screen of light around it to hinder the blobs around it but not the mass itself, while also diminishing the power of the blobs’ attacks.
Level, however, has not yet joined the fight. Amber is just wondering where she had gone when Level suddenly hauls herself onto the same rooftop.
“How did you get here?”
“I climbed,” Level answers simply. She then places Lilady on the roof and says, “Stay here. Do not attempt to climb down or go anywhere without me fetching you first.”
Lilady nods, trembling. “I don’t like it here…”
“It will be over soon,” Level says before nodding at Amber. “Do you require me to distract any of the savages for you?”
Amber simply points to the blue blob lingering at the edge of the conflict, not joining either side. “If that thing attacks even one person, I’m going to kill it.”
Level turns to regard Turblue. She nods. “I suppose they will then have revealed their true colours.” She regards Amber once more. “Until then…”
“I get the point,” Amber says brusquely. “If you want to help me, isolate some of the aliens so I have a clear shot.”
“I shall do so.” She vaults over the edge of the rooftop and lands soundly before charging at the blob attacking the still largely motionless gong. She gives it a whack with her powerful arm before placing herself between it and the gong and creating a light red wall of force.
Amber takes her cue and fires an arrow into its shadow as well, unconcerned about the purple fire that blossoms around it, as the explosion isn’t enough to go around Level’s wall of force. When Level retreats, ushering the gong away and saying, “Come, now, it is time for you to escape to more relative safety,” Amber simply fires an arrow directly into the alien. It explodes dramatically, and she finds herself more than a little pleased that Iridescent isn’t the only individual in their group who can claim that accomplishment anymore. What makes it even better is that Iridescent, who witnessed the explosion, turns to where Amber is perched and gives her an impassive stare that Amber takes to be an acknowledgement of the fact.
In the meantime, the very large purple blob has lost interest in the vine person, instead deciding to inspect the fruits of its labour. This would be the unconscious boys, but while most of the tournament’s participants are already engaged, Rook has seen the threat to the boys’ lives and instead charges at the blob.
“Fiend!” She swings a heavy arm at the blob, knocking it back and away. “You will not devour even a single innocent soul on this day! Have at you!” The blob accepts her challenge and spits acid at her, but she whirls around, completely unfazed, repeatedly hitting it with her arms. It staggers considerably and almost topples over. It’s fairly tall, almost standing at two metres, and possesses immense bulk, but the mass of tentacles is two metres tall, and Rook is even taller and possesses even greater bulk. In what would ordinarily be an advantageous matchup, it is actually at the disadvantage.
The blob is seemingly aware of this, as it refrains from approaching her and instead roars. The smaller blobs cease their physical attacks and join in, creating a reverberating cacophony that makes everyone else cease their own attacks and cover their ears. Amber is far enough to be outside the immediate range, but the quality of her hearing makes it such that she is just as affected all the same.
A couple more of the boys faint. Rook gasps when she sees this. “Ah! No! Flee, children, while you can!” She scoops up the nearest two children and carries them to the pavement on Amber’s side of the street, relatively far away from immediate danger.
Level collects the newly fainted boy from the group of three attacking a pair of blobs and slings him over her shoulder. She then withdraws the claws of her right hand and aims what is now the barrel of a cannon at the two blobs. “Children, please see yourselves to safety. My allies and I are capable enough of neutralising these troublemakers.” The children take on look at the cannon before fleeing for their lives. The blobs defiantly shout at Level. “If you will not stand down…” she says before backing away and launching a glowing orb of fire at them. It explodes spectacularly and flings the two blobs into the air, one of which has caught fire. She angles her body away after making the shot and drops the boy down onto her arm, shielding him from the blast. She then extends her claws, collects the other fallen boy, and carries the pair to where Rook has laid down the other two.
Having dealt with his first blob and chased away the two boys that had helped him, Twist swaggers over to the two accosting the vine mass. His body pillow is again slung over a shoulder. “We’ve got this, mate. You can go now.”
They glance down at him, evidently sceptical because of his short stature and the copy of himself he’s carrying, but they do not hesitate for long. “Thank you!” A blob spits acid onto them, so they turn and give it a final, angry smack before jogging away.
“Say cheese,” Twist says before creating a blinding flash of light. The blobs recoil and stumble around, but they make angry noises and throw themselves at him. “Oh, no!” Twist says in mock despair, stumbling to the side. “It seems I’ve blinded myself too! What an utter fool I am!”
He totters around, as if barely able to maintain his balance. He weakly throws a punch at one of the blobs, but he swerves and teeters on the brink of falling over instead. The blobs, still recovering from the flash and unable to coordinate their movements properly, leap towards him at the same time and instead crash against each other. They decide to roar at him of their own accord, but he staggers in a half-circle around them, dodging the sound waves from the one and then ‘accidentally’ tripping and falling onto the other, preventing it from joining, before almost immediately rising to his feet. He’s dropped the pillow and means to pick it up, but he instead spins wildly and solidly hits one of the blobs with it before letting go and stumbling off.
“I don’t even know where I’m going anymore!”
The two confused blobs frantically try to find where he’s gone, but they’re swerving and stumbling as well. In the end, their erratic motion effectively confines them to an imaginary circle about four metres in diameter. When they realise the body pillow is still amidst them, they try to attack it instead, imagining it to be Twist who had fallen down.
Amber is more than happy to engage with the plentiful target practice. She launches arrows in quick succession, capitalising on each opportunity as it appears. One of the two aliens razed by Level’s explosion was easy to hit, but the one running around in panic on account of being covered in flames takes a few tries. In the end, she successfully skewers it, but the noxious gases escaping from the thing makes the flames burn a sulphurous yellow. She fires a volley at the large blob before switching to needling the blobs attacking Twist’s body pillow. As revenge, she lands a headshot on the pillow, treating one of its spiralling eyes as a bull’s-eye. It disappears in a puff of smoke, completely consumed by her arrow’s spectral fire.
Twist, who had dropped his act and watched from relative safety, drops to his knees. “The horror!” he wails. “Oh, the sapience!”
Iridescent adds to the barrage with three of her psychic orbs, but she splits them so that one hits each of the small blobs and the third flies astray to hit the purple blob. Instead of exploding, the two small blobs simply burst open. Amber had already launched another arrow, which has the effect of splattering blob fluids everywhere and making the corpses smoulder with an almost black flame. The two women make eye contact yet again, but to Amber’s irritation, Iridescent gives her a subtle yet pointedly self-satisfied smile.
“Holy shit!” Twist exclaims, laughing in amazement. “That was fucking brilliant!”
Level is scorching the last of the green blobs with a constant stream of fire, having turned her arm into a flamethrower instead of a cannon. When the blob has been melted into a sticky, stinking puddle, she turns to face the large purple blob, which almost seems like it’s surveying the carnage of its mutilated minions with a morose air.
Perhaps the blob did feel some kind of attachment to its subordinates. Perhaps it simply dislikes how quickly its reign of terror had ended. It roars in fury, but there is no-one near enough to be affected, and there are no additional voices to amplify its voice. Amber is enjoying its impotent rage, so she holds off one firing additional arrows to see what it does. She nevertheless has a quill-arrow at the ready, just in case she needs to stop it from doing anything drastic.
The purple blob finally notices the presence of the blue blob. It shouts in anger, presumably at Turblue’s lack of joining in the fight, but the smaller blob simply gurgles in reply. As to what exactly it says, nobody can accurately speculate, but Level is more convinced than before that the blobs are, in fact, beings capable of some kind of intelligent reasoning and these violent ones made an active decision to be violent. Even Amber has to admit it does suspiciously look like the two aliens are arguing about something.
The purple blob spits a glob of sludge at Turblue, but amazingly, Turblue creates a blue wall of force to deflect the long-range attack, similar to what it had witnessed Level doing. She wonders if Turblue had always known how to do that or if they had specifically learned from her example. If the latter was true, she would have to be especially careful not to influence them in a negative way. When the wall of force fades, Turblue retreats farther back before turning around to continue watching.
Amber feels restless, so she fires her arrow at the blob. “Let’s just kill it and be done!”
The blob trembles. It could be for several reasons, and each of the tournament’s participants has their own opinion — pain, fear, exhaustion, anger, and desperation — but whatever the reason, whether one or multiple, it does something nobody expected: it stops trembling and waves a stubby arm.
There is a moment of silence. Twist almost wants to laugh, but something about it creates an anxious knot in his stomach. It’s likely the anticipation, as Iridescent and Amber also feel nervous.
Rook is oblivious and shatters the tense silence by shouting, “Fiend!” and again charging at the blob. “Your mockery and savagery end h—!”
Her sentence is interrupted by a sudden explosion of white. Snow whips out of the ether, a blizzard screaming the blob’s fury at everyone in sight. Rook halts in her tracks, putting one hand on her headband in case it might be yanked away and covering her eyes with the other hand. Twist, Iridescent, and Amber are all knocked over by the violent wind, while Level expels superhot air from her arm to melt the snow racing towards her, creating a cloud of mist and steam around her.
Amber is angry at herself for not having interrupted the blob’s dialogue with Turblue and killing it when they all had the chance. She doesn’t know how it’s managing to create a blizzard in the middle of Sin City, but if it can do that, it could potentially do worse. She looks around for Lilady and sees her pushed into a corner at the edge of the rooftop on the farthest side from the road. The little girl is so light, it’s almost a miracle she hasn’t been blown off the rooftop already! Amber ducks and rolls towards her, skidding the final way and trying to block the worst of the snow.
“I’m scared!” Lilady shouts. Even though Amber is right next to her, the words are barely audible.
Amber simply holds out a wing in response, and once Lilady has crawled close enough, Amber clutches her to her chest. She summons a spinning circle of arrows around her, intensifying her power, before trying to bear against the snow and crawl back to the edge adjacent to the street.
In the meantime, Iridescent has pulled a veil of stars with black space around herself, hoping to block out the worst of the cold. Her fingers are already feelings warm and itchy, which she knows to be a bad sign. Twist has created a protective bubble around himself, which Level has also done, giving up on melting the ice in the onslaught of the storm.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the blizzard subsided and what snow remained merely flung itself to the ground. The blob waved its hand yet again, to everyone’s horror.
“No!” Amber shouts, releasing Lilady and quickly nocking and firing an arrow. In her haste, she shoots the arrow a metre too far to the right. She doesn’t have time to take aim again, for a different kind of scream fills the air. She looks up and sees—
“Are those fucking meteors?!” Twist shouts.
Half a dozen meteorites indeed fall from the sky, hurtling death towards the group. Their speed is breath-taking: Twist dives through the air and creates another protective bubble, though it shimmers uncertainly, and when a meteorite as large as Rook crashes almost onto the exact spot he had just occupied, the bubble pops from the force of the impact and flings him across the asphalt. He skids past Iridescent, who had created a barrier above her to block the meteorite coming her way. She knows she won’t be fast enough to dodge it, but she also knows her barriers only mitigate damage to a degree, offering sustainability and duration as compensation for the lack of complete protection. She has died once already, but watching her end speed towards her is an entirely new experience. She’s too frozen in shock to be afraid.
Level had recovered the most quickly when the blob had waved its stubby arm again, rushing towards the building to climb up and hopefully whisk Lilady and Amber to safety. But on the side of the building and looking up, with the asphalt behind her exploding and a meteorite plunging towards both the rooftop and Iridescent, she makes a split-second decision to go for the guaranteed save instead and leaps towards the hapless woman. She tackles Iridescent to the ground and creates a bubble around them both. The meteorite shatters it, but having passed through Iridescent’s barrier first, the shock is minor and simply cracks the pavement around them, rather than doing either of them any actual harm.
Amber, meanwhile, had snatched Lilady off the rooftop and leaped off the side. Exactly the same as everyone else, she creates a shielding bubble around them, so when the meteorite tears the building asunder and sprays bits of concrete, metal, and glass their way, she is unhindered in ducking her head and rolling to safety.
The building collapses and sends out waves of dust and shrapnel, so Level drags Iridescent away and plucks the moaning Twist from the pavement before they get seriously hurt. Rook had also shielded herself from the brute force of a meteorite, but her physical strength had left her standing after the resulting explosion, so she followed through with her previous intention and charged at the blob once more.
It does not have the time to wave its arm for a third attempt, as she shouts, “FIEND!” while hurling herself through the air. She collides with the blob and slams it into the building behind. The force is such that she drives it through the wall and the two of them disappear into the interior.
Amber nocks an arrow and draws it back, holding the projectile taut while the energy at the tip of the quill builds. “Rook, get out of there!”
Level wearily looks Amber’s way and recognises her intent. She places Twist on the ground, who mumbles, “I’m fine…” before aiming her cannon at the same hole and waiting for Rook and the blob to reappear. Iridescent groans and wearily waves her hand in the air. Her three orbs appear again, but she holds her arm up, struggling, waiting as well.
The seconds pass achingly slowly. After what feels like an hour, Rook flops face-first out of the hole, panting. When she looks up to see her three allies all primed to attack, she cries, “Oh! Oho, I see!” and awkwardly scrambles to her feet before fleeing with an unsteady wobble.
The purple blob hops out the hole, bruised and bleeding, and spits a glob of sludge against Rook’s retreating back. She exclaims before falling forwards again. The blob then gazes towards the rest of the group, barely able to register the fiery arrow, the fireball, and the three psychic orbs racing towards it at the same time. The arrow hits it first, exploding into purple flames and puncturing it, after which the orbs rip through it like cannonballs, until finally, the fireball detonates and the blob ceases to exist. Rubble from the building collapses to fill the hole and bury whatever shreds of burning flesh remains.
A different kind of silence then descends on the scene. It’s the silence after the storm, when all the anger of nature and the energy of the virtuous and the vicious have been spent. It’s the silence of the triumphant gathering their energy. It’s the silence of survival: Level inhales and exhales deeply, Amber half-kneels, half-crouches with her eyes closed, and Iridescent lies on the pavement, her vision blurry and her left arm doing all it can to keep her head and torso in the air.
A loud snore fills the air. Three pairs of eyes find its source — Rook, lying on her back some ten metres away, is taking a nap.
Twist chuckles. He’s also lying on his back, but his eyes are open. In fact, he’s already seen Rook sleeping before the other three heard it. “I really hope she didn’t miss that epic finish,” he says, yawning. “I do kinda wish I could just nap like her, though.”
Amber gives him a half-hearted scowl. “You already napped once today. You’ve filled your quota.”
Level sits down with effort. “Where is Lilady?”
“I’m right here!” she says, running into view. She had hidden near some rubble prior to Amber firing her ultimate arrow. Lilady runs into Level’s open arms and hugs her. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“I am more pleased that you and everyone else are safe,” Level replies fondly but tiredly. She nods in appreciation at Amber, who nods back in acknowledgement.
Turblue crawls into view and waits a respectable distance from Level, Iridescent, Twist, and Lilady. It mumbles something incoherent, but everyone interprets it to be friendly or the like. Amber is still suspicious of it, but Level smiles in relief to see they had also survived.
“It seems we are all strong enough to bear the pain.”***Spoiler
It’s dark, which means nobody can see him. He can’t see him.
Ember doesn’t even care where he is. He just feels around, finds a corner, and instinctively curls up in it. He feels the slightest bit better, but it’s hard metal. His tent was nicer. It was plain but warm. It made him feel safe. He’d known he was far away from everyone and everything, except for Our Grace and Serene.
Now, he’s in Sin City — not just the one type of place where he least wanted to be, but the worst possible of places.
He hugs his legs more tightly and breathes the stale air. A rod of some kind pokes into his thigh through the plastic, so he pushes the bag away with his foot. He knows what the inside of a garbage container is like. It must have been garbage day recently if there were so few bags around.
Maybe he was exactly where he belonged: just a nobody in the garbage in the afterlife for sinners. He pulls his hood over his head and rests his forehead against his knees. He cries quietly.
Why did he agree to participate in the tournament? He wouldn’t normally agree to participate in any tournament, but in a moment of desperation, he’d made the dumbest mistake of his afterlife. It’s too late to back out; Serene said so himself when he asked. But he has no hope of winning. He can just stay where he is until the first round finishes. Maybe then, Serene will have to admit that Ember is so useless, there’s no point in keeping him around. There’s no need to eliminate somebody else when he’s the obvious first choice.
If it doesn’t work that way because of the tournament’s stupid rules, he’ll just stay here until both rounds finish. He doesn’t need to eat, sleep, or even really breathe anymore, so there’s nothing stopping him. It shouldn’t take more than a week for both rounds to finish, so he won’t still be around to be chased away when someone comes to collect the garbage.
He whimpers and rocks slightly back and forth. If only the pain would go away. If only he didn’t feel so miserable all the time. If only… if only he got to hug his mom one last time…
Hot streaks flow down his cheeks as he weeps. The metal around him groans, but he’s oblivious to the strain under which he’s putting it. He hugs himself more tightly and chokes out a sob. The sound of his sorrow masks the metallic tear that accompanies it. The plastic bag he’d pushed aside, as well as the few other plastic bags inside, is crushed into a crumpled ball of recyclable material.
Still, he weeps.***
Silence and darkness. A sudden awakening. Her trial has begun.
Lotus carefully feels around her — first, above her head so that she may sit up; then, beneath her tail and legs so that she may ensure the uneven surface doesn’t hurt her, or tear her clothes; and finally, beyond her reach to the sides to determine the space in her environment. Having done this, she next reads the atmosphere around her.
There are two bags beside her, which she had already moved out from underneath her, but their contents tell a strange story. That is, they do not tell a story at all. They are discarded, and yet they have not existed for long. They have no more use, but they had no use before.
The metal around her is equally as recent. It is more content with its existence, as its purpose is simply to be. What enters and exits its confines is of no concern to it.
She pushes against the top and raises the lid, rising along with it. There is a passage, an alley. With her appendages still afloat and her eyes still aglow, she enquires of it the same as she had of the container and the trash. Its answer is similar, being one of content nonchalance. It and everything around her exists simply because it was recently willed into existence.
There is another in the alley with her. A second container, identical to the first, containing plastic bags filled with new trash, not identical and yet the same, and also containing a vessel for intelligence and emotion. Lotus lifts the lid and finds a small boy with wide eyes.
“Excuse me,” the boy said, glaring up at her from his sitting position, “what makes you think you can just open the lid to my container? This is my private space. You don’t know what I could have been doing in here. I could have been sharing a secret with myself. I could have been playing marbles. Do you often make a point to eavesdrop on secrets being told? To intrude on a game that does not involve you?”
Lotus puts a hand on the spike protruding from her chest and bows apologetically.
“Well,” the boy huffs, “at least you have the decency to show contrition. I will forgive you if you show me a private space of your own.”
She considers what to show him. Then, she emanates a projection of her reading a history novel on her bed in her youth.
The boy grunts in satisfaction. “Good. Balance has been restored. Go now and maintain a deeper respect for the privacy of others from this point onwards.”
She smiles softly, bows again, and closes the lid. A sour presence then tugs at her heart and she gazes past the walls towards it. She follows its progress until the source appears in view at one end of the alley: a bulbous creature of a faded green with a yellow appendage upon its head. Through its slanted eyes, it detects her and approaches.
Its aura emanates a terrible, gnawing hunger and a lack of care for what sates it. Its energy is toxic in its simple-mindedness. She rests her hand on her chest-spike, but rather than inclining her head, she shakes it in polite apology. Electricity crackles around her and she lifts herself into the air, well beyond the creature’s reach. It makes a noise of protest and spits a vile liquid at her, but she effortlessly pulls her towards the metal frame in the side of the wall and avoids it. She offers it a weak smile of understanding before levitating all the way to the top of the alley and up to above the rooftop of the two-storey buildings flanking it. The creature is unable to look directly upwards, so it continues through the alley and out the other end, paying her no further notice.
She slowly spins three-hundred and sixty degrees to evaluate the panorama around her. As far as she can see, the city stretches into uniform infinity. She emanates the dimness of a large cloud drifting in front of the sun, as well as the realisation of a baby watching two puppets being placed behind a screen yet seeing only one when the screen is removed. Disappointment and confusion.
Lotus lowers herself towards the entrance of the alley where the hungry creature had first appeared. As she has come to expect, the pavement, the road, the walls, everything is new and content to be.
A trial in process. Questions arise and truth hides. She proceeds to seek.***
And so, the tournament begins in earnest! Round One; Solo Stage: the goal is yet to be determined, Group Stage, find the four other members of his group and travel to Superbia Square. Excellent!
Mason quickly determines he’s in a metal container, but it’s not locked, so he simply exits. An easy start. It turns out the container is likely meant for the disposal of rubbish, since he’s in an alley and that’s the only place where he’s ever seen such containers. His country only used bins.
He claps two pairs of hands together and grins. “Now, then! What is my first goal?”
He looks around. Nothing immediately comes to mind. Our Grace and Serene surely has something planned, and if they did not specify what, it must be obvious. He’ll have to trust in the internet adage: when you know, you know.
Before he sets off in any direction, he must ensure he’s prepared for whatever he might find. Mental tasks were never his strong suit, so his preparation focuses on his body. He first stretches his arms, then his shoulders, his upper back, his lower back, his gluts, his thighs, and finally, his calves. He’s just stepping back and away from the wall after having finished his routine when a fruit-like slug with tiny arms crawls into the alley.
He laughs out loud. Is that a melon or an apple with a face? Apples don’t have yellow stalks, but they don’t have puckered lips either!
As the fruit slug approaches, Mason wonders what he’s supposed to do with it. He can at least guess that its appearance is no mistake or coincidence. But beyond that? Is he supposed to feed it? Follow it? It will have something to do with ‘virtue’, but that’s as far as his logic can take him.
The slug makes eye contact, but it crawls past. Ah, so he’s supposed to follow it. He starts doing just that, but then the slug suddenly hops on the spot and turns around completely! Mason is taken aback, but he’s even more surprised when the slug spits brown liquid in his face!
“Argh, bleargh!”
It clearly doesn’t want to be followed. He can’t think of another reason why it would basically spit mud in his face, although mud is by default cleaner. This stuff is actually burning his eyes. He’s still wiping the gunk from his face and spitting out some that had gotten into his mouth when a bigger stream of liquid hits his chest and knocks him back. He’s a sturdy fellow, so it doesn’t hurt much, but he wasn’t exactly able to see it coming. Once he’s able to see properly, he safely backs up and raises a pair of hands in surrender.
“That’s enough! I came too close, but I’m backing away now. I won’t get angry at you.”
That was probably the point of the solo stage: to see if he could keep his cool despite his clothing being soiled. He probably won’t get to take a shower and visit a laundry store soon.
Even though he’s backing up, the slug approaches again. Maybe it’s aggressive now and it wants him to do it more, and probably faster. Fine, but he knows better than to turn his back on it. He looks behind him and quickly retreats around the corner. Once he’s out of sight, he jogs away and grins sheepishly. That was a disaster! It would have helped if the slug had shown some kind of sign that it didn’t like him being so near. Baboons make that very clear by baring their fangs and making mock charges, and snakes rear up and hiss or rattle.
He stops to check on the slug, and… why is it still following him? He left it alone. That should be enough. It isn’t a baboon or a snake, so Mason has no reason to be afraid of it.
“Okay, I’ll stand my ground now,” he says more to himself than the slowly approaching fruit slug.
Once it’s a few metres away, he readies himself to run. The slug spits brown liquid again a few seconds later, but he expertly dodges out of the way and runs around to its side. The slug turns to spit at him again, but bends down and grabs it around its girth, pointing its mouth away from him.
It’s rubbery more than slimy. It almost feels like a combination between a lizard and a frog. The slug struggles to escape, but Mason’s grip is rock-solid. Trapped in his hands, it’s defenceless and can’t do anything anymore. He inspects it by turning it to the sides and lifting it so he can look at it from the bottom too.
“What are you, little spitter?” he wonders out loud. “And what am I supposed to do with you?”
It’s not dangerous, but it’s persistent and will definitely become a pain. Maybe he should put it back in the alley, sprint this way, and then dodge into a different street? He hasn’t seen any crossings or traffic lights, which is strange, but there’s another alley up ahead. He could even circle around…
His train of thought is interrupted by the slug releasing a purple gas. Mason instantly knows not to breathe it in, so rather than instinctively taking a gasp of air, he presses his lips tightly shut and forcibly exhales through his nose. He tosses the slug far away, as if practising with a partner on the other end of a rugby field, and then jogs away from the cloud. The slug will definitely be hurt by the toss, but its rubbery skin should make it survive. It needs to learn not to be overly aggressive; in the savanna or wetlands, that’s how it would end up becoming some predator’s meal, or just some scavenger’s carrion. He doesn’t know what Sin City is like, but if it’s not uncommon for people to kill snakes and other dangerous animals that get into their homes, especially spiders and wasps and other bugs, it probably won’t be uncommon for people to kill very aggressive fruit slugs either.
So, that was his solo stage. Is there anything else left? He’s sure he knows that was it, since someone could definitely have felt tempted to kill the slug. If there is something else, he will find out soon enough. What he does know is he needs to find his group soon, so it’s not a bad idea to get started on that.
He looks down at his brown shirt; that will never wash out. He then inspects his tie; that should still be fine! And his shoes are only a little dirty. There’s nothing a good polishing won’t fix there.
Mason grins. It could be worse!***
He’s ready! Oh, but it’s dark. No problem, he can fix that.
Credence lights a spark in his hand. He’s still getting the hang of it, so it takes him a lot more time than it should to get it to grow into a small flame. He cups it in both hands and moves his hands around like a candle. Huh, he’s in a rubbish container. He’d never actually gone rummaging around in rubbish before, so he wouldn’t have guessed this is what it feels like to lie on it.
“Please don’t be locked,” he says, trying his luck and pushing against the lid. It comes open! “Sweet! I was getting kind of claustrophobic in there.”
He extinguishes the flame and hops out, eager to get started. To his disappointment, he’s in an empty alley. “Uh, okay?” He looks up. It’s also pitch-black up in the sky above, but not because the streetlights make it impossible to see the stars. It just seems like there aren’t any stars at all. “Aww man, that sucks.” He pulls his lips into a wry expression before jogging out into the street.
It’s totally abandoned. No cars, no pedestrians, nothing. Okay, no cars isn’t a bad thing, actually, but the rest is totally out of whack!
“Where are all the people?” he complains. He adds, “I don’t like jogging at night.” Especially in places that give him the creeps, and Sin City so far is giving him majorly creepy vibes.
He pouts and scuffs a trainer against the pavement. It’s all so clean and tidy. There aren’t even any tiny pieces of gravel for him to use to practise Pyro Ball. That’s so lame.
Credence stuffs his hands into the pockets of his shorts and sulkily walks down the street. He takes a glance at the stores he passes, but they’re all empty. As in, there aren’t even empty shelves or racks or display cases to suggest what would be sold in the store. They’re just empty. Like everyone just agreed how lame the place was and decided they would rather move someplace else. He can’t blame them, but he does wish there would at least be a poster saying, ‘Hey, we’ve moved! We’re over on Fifty-First Street now. Here’s a map.’ It wouldn’t help him just now, but he’d at least know where ‘someplace else’ actually is.
He gazes down the length of the street and realises there is no end to it. He abruptly stops. “Whoa, what?” He turns around and sees the same thing in the opposite direction. It’s just one really long street of empty buildings. “No, no, no,” he says, growing a little panicked. He does not like this feeling. It’s like he got dumped in some horror film!
He’s freaking out and trying to figure out what in perdition to do when a small animal crawls out of the alley. He lets out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank paradise!” Something else that’s alive — heh, ‘alive’ — besides just him!
What is it, though? It’s round and looks squishy, but he has no idea what he’s looking at. It’s green! Green and squishy things tend to be frogs… and toads. Yeah, basically just that. But frogs hop, they don’t crawl. Worms crawl! But that’s totally not a worm either. He’s also never seen a frog or a worm with a yellow crest on top of it.
It’s crawling towards him, and that’s a little weird. Amphibians usually hop away from you when you get close, and worms just go wherever. He can clearly see it at least has eye spots (maybe he should say eye slits instead), like some flat worms, but those are usually for just sensing light, not seeing. Maybe it just heard him?
He jogs across the street, but the worm-frog-thing redirects to start crossing the street as well. Okay, maybe he just made too much noise. He quietly walks back, but again, the thing corrects its course to head towards him.
“Umm…”
He’s starting to feel creeped out again. A shiver runs up his spine and he gets the feeling he doesn’t want it to come close to him. It’s like the first time he played Minecraft, not knowing what it was, and he saw his very first creeper. It was in a hole in the hill, beneath him, but he got bad vibes from it when it spotted him and ran closer. He later discovered exactly why he was right not to have felt safe. The frog-slug thing has that same weird and creepy vibe and he’s guessing he should keep his distance. The last thing he wants is to meet a monster that actually explodes with a hiss.
Credence backs away slowly, but he starts jogging on the spot as he does, boosting his agility in case he needs to make a quick break for it. He doesn’t want to look like a scaredy-cat, but he’s really uncomfortable with that thing. He decides he’ll just test it and run at the thing. When he gets a couple metres away, he abruptly stops and retreats to fake it out.
The thing spits purple slime at him. Credence easily dodges it, but his heart is now pumping faster.
“I knew it!” he shouts. “I knew it! Nothing here is cool!”
In true horror films or games, you don’t get to fight the monsters. But in some games, you do, and after a while, it doesn’t become as scary anymore. He wouldn’t really know, since he doesn’t like horror of any kind, but he’s absolutely down for not being scared of that creepy, weird thing anymore.
Okay, maybe… Acrobatics! Yeah!
He skirts around the thing, dancing from foot to foot, ready for it to make its move. It spits brown sludge that time, which looks a lot like it just vomited liquid crap. He’s wary of it turning and spraying as he tries to dodge, and that’s exactly what the stupid thing ends up doing! He does a backflip to further dodge the stream, and he can almost feel himself move in slow motion. He then lands on the thing with one foot and stomps on it as hard as he can before light jumping off.
While he has the element of speed and surprise, he drop-kicks the thing down the road. It bounces like a football that’s a little too heavy, but the image makes him grin and he runs after it. When it stops tumbling, he dribbles with it for a few seconds before flipping it into the air. He bounces it once to make it a little hot, twice to start covering it in flames, and before doing the third bounce, he brings his leg up and over it before bringing his leg down and catching it just in time. He then kicks the thing higher into the air, making it fully catch fire, and then he Pyro Balls it at the wall! It splats before flopping back onto the road, but just to ensure it’s dead and stays dead, he gives it the strongest kick he can and watches it fly down the road.
He laughs, feeling a little giddy. “Yeah! Yeah, I did it! I showed it who’s boss! Whoo, yeah!” He’s not sure from where the disembodied audience would be watching, but he pretends they’re behind him, so he turns around, points down the other end of the road, and calls, “How’s that, y’all? Did I show my style or what?!”
His laughter subsides shakily. He’s still really nervous, but that wasn’t too bad. He’s not going to let this horror-inspired city get to him. He’s fighting back, just you wait!***
Sky sighs wistfully. They’ll miss Our Grace’s blue and scarlet world. They would maybe not have wanted to stay there forever, but a while longer would have been nice. People underestimate how much happiness you can derive just from spending time in nature.
They focus on the task at hand: making it to the end of the first round. They’re excited to work with the other participants, so they hope the solo stage doesn’t last too long. They get the feeling it won’t, but it remains to be seen.
They’re currently flat on their back. Well, not really flat, since they’re lying on a lot of uneven things. Once they move and hear the hollow plastic crackle, they realise they’re probably lying on black bags. And if they’re lying on garbage bags, they’re probably in a garbage bin. They sigh at the joke.
Sky climbs out of the bin and steps into a very urban alley. A single look at Sin City is enough to depress them, what with the grey, featureless walls and the black, empty sky. Out of all of Our Grace’s settings they would have liked to visit, this one is, unfortunately, at the bottom of the list.
They’re not even sure why they’re in Purgatory at all, to be honest. They’re far from a saint, of course, since nobody in the modern day can really be saints — it feels like an unattainable goal that so many people in the past were able to achieve, but Sky was born too late for that — but they don’t think they did anything wrong.
Of course, you can’t just not do bad things and expect to be considered a good person. Good people do good things. But Sky did do good things. They donated their old clothes and regularly bought imperishable foods for shelters, they volunteered to help plant new trees in their neighbourhood, they served on Cloud’s high school board… They tried to be kind and generous when they could and they never did any harm when they could possibly avoid it. Cliff always teased them about catching the spiders and releasing them outside.
If anyone had asked them if they thought they were a good person, Sky would have said yes. They would have felt shy about it, but… it’s like being asked if you thought you would pass your exams. If you studied hard and consistently had an average above eighty percent, wouldn’t it be false modesty to worry about whether you would pass when you knew you would do better than most? Sky did believe themselves to be a good person, so what did they do wrong? What was holding them back?
They sigh again. Serene had said that’s one of the few things he and even Our Grace are actually forbidden from telling any souls in Purgatory. It’s a shame.
A noise to their side startles Sky out of their thoughts. “Oh, hello!” they say to the adorable green darling next to them. It’s an animal that they don’t recognise, but it’s undeniably cute. Sky is filled with the irresistible urge to just scoop it up and squish it to their chest like a blubbery kitten. They crouch down and ask in a baby voice, “What are you doing here, sweetie? Are we going for a wa—?”
The animal spits in their face.
Sky cries in alarm and surprise and instinctively teleports backwards. They’re distraught that they were fooled yet again. Cliff is always saying, “Sky, you can’t go petting every animal you come across,” but then Sky would laugh and stick their tongue out. Cliff, ever the pragmatist, was right, but Sky didn’t try to pet every animal. The angry or wild ones they would leave alone, but it’s when a docile, otherwise friendly animal, which Sky thought would be safe to approach and which usually was actually safe to approach, suddenly behaves out of character and bites or takes a swipe at Sky that they would become hesitant of animals for some time.
They wipe the spit from their eyes and try to look at their hands, but it burns too much. They wish another member of their group would heroically appear and offer a handkerchief or a tissue, or maybe just the clean hem of their shirt, but of course, they’re alone. Sky really would prefer not to ruin their dress for this. In all honesty, it was probably a silly idea anyway. It didn’t get dirty in Our Grace’s surreal realm, but in Sin City, dirty things were probably all too common.
It occurs to them they were being a bit too sensitive again and they have a solution available already. They create Life Dew in their hands and wash their face thoroughly, rinsing all the spit out of their eyes. They can finally see that the spit is brown, almost like mud. A bit of it falls onto the edge of their dress, but that’s fine. They wipe their face and ensure there is no more mud coming off on their hands before taking the risk of wiping their face dry with part of their dress. Luckily, they did a good enough job and they have both a clean face again and a relatively clean dress.
They look up. To where did they teleport off now? It wasn’t oft— Oh, no. They must just have teleported to the end of the street on the other side of the alley, as they can see the animal crossing the street towards them.
“No!” they call, reaching out an arm to stop it. A telekinetic wave of energy envelops the animal and keeps it in place. Sky isn’t sure where to put it, so they lift it up onto the roof. “But that isn’t very safe,” they think out loud, still maintaining their telekinetic grip on the animal. “What if it jumps off? What if it spits on someone who passes below?”
Their gaze drifts onto the large garbage bin. They lower the animal back into the alley, briefly release it, quickly open the bin’s lid, and then lifts the animal over it before dropping it inside and closing the lid again. There! It’s not very safe either, but it’s hopefully safer than pu—
A scream sounds from inside the bin. Sky immediately realises their mistake: there are two bins in the alley, and they placed the animal into the second bin without thinking to check if there is someone else inside.
They frantically teleport closer, open the bin again, and levitate the animal out and up into the air, far away from her and the child inside. They look like they’re dressed up as a little witch, but the hat seems to be part of them. They scream again and jump out of the bin before hopping away.
“I’m so sorry,” Sky calls after them. “I didn’t know you were there!”
The child disappears around the corner, so Sky drags the animal back through the air, unceremoniously but not callously deposits it inside, and then closes the lid. They pick up the hem of their dress and start running after the child, but the animal howls and leaps against the lid, shoving it open for a second before falling back inside. That won’t help at all if it just escapes anyway.
Sky grimaces and drops their dress, instead motioning as if to pick up the entire bin, which they do, but again using telekinesis. They drag it away from the wall, flip it onto its back so the lid faces the wall, and then pushes the bin against the wall so the animal can’t get out. It makes a tremendous amount of noise in its angry attempts to escape, but hopefully that will warn anyone not to make light of letting it out. They don’t know if there is some form of animal control or veterinary society in Sin City, but that would be the ideal organisation to remove the animal without it or anyone else being injured.
Finally satisfied that the animal won’t be a risk any longer, Sky hurries into the street. They look up and down, but the child is nowhere to be seen.
In retrospect, why was that child in the bin in the first place? Sky was in one because Our Grace must have thought it was funny, or because it’s a god and Sky can’t hope to discern its true motive, but the child isn’t participating in the tournament. Why didn’t they ask to be let out? Who put them there in the first place?
A horrifying thought occurred: was the child homeless and that had been their temporary sleeping place? It was night, so it’s entirely possible they were sleeping. Oh, Sky, you fool!
They bury their face in their hands, ashamed of their lack of forethought. They can’t go running through Sin City doing silly things like that! They must be more considerate of the people and animals that call it their home.
They close their eyes, inhale deeply, stand up straight, and hold the breath until they feel calm again. Then they release the breath and open their eyes. They feel more grounded.
…And they’re standing partially in the road. They giggle at their silliness and step back onto the pavement.
Well, they have made a mess of things — in the alley, the animal still continues to bang against the bin’s sides; it really should stop that or it will badly bruise itself — but they can do better in the future. They decide to go in the last direction they saw the child. Maybe they will see them again, but in an unfamiliar city, Sky has little hope of finding anything at all without help. Five minutes down the road, they will most likely be unable to find the alley with the animal trapped inside the bin.
They’ll just take it one step at a time.***
Empty streets abound, bloodless, feeding only husks. Contently forlorn.
Lotus wanders, lost among the stillborn skeletons. She radiates the laughter of children, the conversation of old friends, the tender whispers of lovers. Yet she passes like a moth on fire above a choir of cicadas, bringing light at her own expense while she alone desires it.
She reaches out, always, for any signs of life. If there is more in Sin City than ever-hungry creatures, she will find what is to be found. Thus, she wanders on.
Her faith is rewarded, as she knows it must be, for she ultimately detects another light among the petrified contentment. It flickers weakly, but it flickers still. She hastens to find and cradle it, to nurture it into a beacon of hope for others.
She finds exactly what Our Grace had described during his eleventh introduction: ‘A little light persisting even in the face of direst darkness.’
Ember sits, huddled, in what remains of a metal container, in what remains of a ruined alley. The metal has been ripped and bent into an almost unrecognisable mass. The other container in the alley has been flattened against a wall, and the alley itself displays numerous cracks running through the floor. Similar cracks run through the adjacent buildings, sections of which have fallen out and been ground into dust. A fine cloud hangs in the air and paints a picture of uncontrollable grief.
Lotus rushes forwards, first quickly and then ever more slowly, as if the boy before her might himself collapse into dust if she disturbed him too suddenly. She kneels and rests a hand on her chest-spike, inclining her head ever so slightly. A peridot eye cautiously rises to meet her citrine gaze.
She smiles and a tear rolls down her cheek. Warmth emanates from her, carrying the scent of dough being separated and kneaded by many hands. As she extends her other hand, the inviting aromas of cloves and cinnamon waft into the air.
Ember slowly drops his gaze to stare at her hand. He stirs, but he does not yet move.
Lotus blinks and more tears stream down her face. Happy echoes of a hundred and two voices gradually fill the air. Her laughter, distant and carefree, is the last of these to fade in before fading away. She gives a small, one-shouldered shrug, the smile in her eyes reflecting the pain she feels in the air.
“I…” Ember tries, but he cannot hold her gaze. He just focuses on her still-extended hand. It doesn’t withdraw. He searches for his voice and whispers, “I don’t want to leave yet.”
Lotus lightly shakes her head.
Ember’s attention drifts to the patterns and designs on her sleeve.
The low, haunting rumbling of an earthquake vaguely fills the air. When it dies away, indistinct yet determined voices intermingle with the chipping of steel against stone amidst other faint noises of sawing, drilling, and hammering.
Ember is afraid. He squeezes his eyes shut, withdraws into his corner, and hugs his knees again. But then he feels a hand touch one of his. At first, it’s just the tip of a finger, but the whole hand gradually slides over and covers his right hand. He dares to peek at the metal spike protruding from the black wrist. He slips his left hand out from underneath his arm and gingerly touches the spike. It’s warm, unlike any metal he’s ever felt before.
As if needing to drag it through tar, he pulls his gaze up to look into Lotus’ eyes again. He gasps when the acrid stench of gunpowder bursts into the air. His chest throbs and he immediately jerks away, but her hand is gently yet firmly clasped around his left wrist. He tries to pull away, but she has physical strength not belied by her slender form.
“Let go!” he yells. He rips his other hand out from underneath hers and tries to use it to pull his wrist free, but her other hand, also freed, almost blurs through the air before snapping around his right elbow. He squeezes his eyes shut again as he frantically tries to pull away. “I said, let go!”
But she does the opposite. She rises from her kneeling position and pulls him up with her. He now desperately fights with all of his meagre might, hoping gravity would aid him. She pulls him into a standing position and then just… waits. He struggles ceaselessly, crying and whimpering again, but she doesn’t budge.
Summer breezes tousle his hair, autumn leaves drift down, winter winds howl through his ears, and spring blossoms float upwards. Yellow, red, blue, and pink flash and fly around them. He doesn’t know whether his eyes are open or closed, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like the seasons and colours are as much in his thoughts as they are whirling in confusion outside them.
Then, rising like a wave, his sorrow spills out of his mind and into the alley. Sheets of rain drench him and Lotus both. He goes limp, but just when it feels like the water would carry him away and drown him in its depths, he feels a body pressed against his own. He clings to the harbour of safety and hugs it as tightly as he can.
He doesn’t realise when it changed, but his clothing and fur are no longer soaked and cold. They’re comfortably warm, as if he had sunbathed in the golden rays of a new day. He blinks and sees green and black. The fabric is soft.
A sense of coherence returns to him like sand running through an hourglass. He’s first aware that he’s standing, then that he’s embracing someone, then that he’s in a destroyed alley in a city in the afterlife, and finally… that there is a faint cloud of dust scattering the weak light from the nearby lampposts.
He gently withdraws his arms and slowly steps back before gazing up at the azure jackal. It’s her eyes that shine with the warmth of the sun.
“You’re… Lotus, aren’t you?” he asks hesitantly.
He wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but her eyes actually shine just a little brighter.
“I’m Ember.”
Meeting in ruin, exchange of heartaches; at last, melding in sunlight.***
Credence’s courage didn’t last for very long.
Walking through the abandoned streets, he jumps at ghosts that exist only in the eyes of the fearful. Every alley looks like it might hide more of those creepy frog-worms. He’s too afraid to go near them, so he jumps high onto the rooftops before leaping back down to the street. If he follows just one street far enough in one direction or another, he starts feeling like he’s losing his mind, so then he swaps to a different street and goes the other way.
He’s jumping down from a rooftop, not really looking before leaping, when a friendly and rich, “Hello there!” makes him yelp (maybe it was a little bit of a scream, but he would never admit to that) and completely lose any sense of balance. He’s sure he’s going to land on his face and get himself killed even more stupidly than the first time, but then two pairs of very muscular arms catch him.
“Arceus Almighty!” he almost sobs out for the sheer relief that floods his body.
His saviour sets him down on his feet and flashes him an apologetic grin. “Sorry, Credence. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The very attractive man is standing way too close for Credence to have any proper faculty of speech. That and the adrenaline.
He takes a step back and blinks slowly, waiting for his brain to stop lagging. “Have we met?” he manages not to stammer out.
The other man laughs heartily. “No, not officially, but we have been introduced. I am Mason.”
Of course Credence’s brain would pick exactly that moment to begin responding again, just in time for him to realise how absolutely stupid he must have sounded. He blushes as red as the tuft of fur on the top of his head.
“Right! Of course you’re Mason! You were introduced just after me! You were juggling those boulders to entertain yourself!”
Mason chuckles. “Yes, that was me.”
Credence wouldn’t mind being juggled h— NO! That was not the time, brain! For Arceus’ sake!
He slaps his forehead with his palm and stares at the road. “Look, I’m really sorry for how stupid I must look. I was just really on edge because of some creepy frog-worm thing—” He looks up again. “—and how this whole city feels like the set of a horror film, and then, when I jumped down and wasn’t expecting you to greet me—”
“It was very poor timing on my part,” Mason says, inclining his head in yet another apology.
“Oh, yes, but… it’s, like—” Thankfully, Credence’s brain decides to be helpful again and directs his attention to the mud on Mason’s face and shirt. “Oh,” he says, “you have mud on your face and shirt.”
Mason half-grimaces, half-grins. It’s a confusing but kind of attractive — shut up — expression. “It’s not actually mud,” he clarifies.
It clicks and Credence gasps. “Right! No, you’re totally right! You’ve fought one of them too! It’s not mud!” He pauses. “It would’ve been better if it had been mud. It’s less gross.”
Mason shrugs casually. (Credence kind of wishes the other man would just stop moving, because even when covered in brown gunk, he manages to make every movement look captivating.) “It is gross, but it could be worse. I was not as quick on my feet as you were. I wasn’t expecting a fight, you see. It tricked me.”
Credence mentally kicks himself. “I didn’t mean to insult you by saying you were covered in gross-looking— Actually, I’m not going to finish that. What I did mean to do was call the little monsters gross. And creepy. And stupid. They’re just terrible.”
“I can agree that they need to learn their place,” Mason says.
Credence isn’t sure Mason’s actually agreeing with what he said. “Aww man.” He’s totally being lame.
“Hmm?”
“What?”
“You were saying something,” Mason points out.
“I was?”
“Yes. You said ‘Aww man’ and sounded like you were going to say something else.”
Credence closes his eyes in exasperation at himself. “I said that out loud. I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. I was thinking how lame I am for rambling. …See? You need to stop me.” He opens his eyes and looks pleadingly at Mason. “Please, stop me.”
“Maybe you should take a breath,” Mason says, smiling charmingly and good-naturedly patting Credence’s shoulder.
That is so not helping. Either Mason is deliberately teasing him, or he’s oblivious to Credence’s overwhelming attraction to him. It’s probably the latter, because Mason seems like a really nice guy. He’s just not into guys, so why would it occur to him that any close proximity to and/or physical contact with the other guy would reduce that other guy to a babbling, barely functioning travesty of a sapient?
He should try the breathing thing. “Okay, I’m breathing now,” he says more to himself than to Mason. He does actually need to remind himself to breathe and not just say he’s breathing. That’s a weird thing about being dead — you can hold your breath forever, literally forever, and not realise it until you exhale.
Mason chuckles. Credence is funny. He’s very obviously flustered, but he’s also still anxious from his fall and walking alone through Sin City. He’d gotten the impression from Credence’s introduction that he’d be the type to show off, even more than Mason himself had, so he just needs to get his confidence back. Ideally, he’d need a strong drink!
Credence is fully aware that Mason is chuckling at him, but he tries his best just to get his breathing under control so he can calm the fuck down and reclaim some semblance of normalcy. Who would have thought that hormones and neurotransmitters could continue to wreak havoc on one’s life even after one’s life has ended? That’s messed up.
He shakes his head and raises his hands in resignation. “Gods, can we just… walk somewhere? Standing still in the horror city is doing nothing for my jitteriness.”
“Of course,” Mason says. He gestures down the road. “After you.”
“Oh, but I already came from that direction,” Credence points out. “Not down this exact street. The next one over. I didn’t see anyone on either side there, so I think it’s better going the other way.”
“I came from the other way,” Mason says pleasantly.
“Just straight down that way,” Credence asks, “or did you also move between streets?”
“I moved a few times. Everywhere looks the same.”
“I know, right?! It’s like the city’s trying to lure us to our doom! And it actually might be!”
“I don’t think so,” Mason replies. “It’s easy to let one negative experience influence your perception of something in general, but that would be a mistake.”
“But it’s called Sin City,” Credence points out. “Do you remember that dude Coil’s question? The man in the suit with the des—?” He interrupts himself. “You probably remember. He asked what the nature of Sin City was, and Giratina said it’s sinful. Murder is probably the biggest one of them, and also the first, if we believe certain stories.”
“I think theft and dishonesty came before murder,” Mason says thoughtfully.
Credence is very afraid of accidentally insulting Mason again, but he’s seemed fine with indulging him so far, so he might as well keep going. It’s not like he can stop anyway.
“According to some stories, yeah,” he says, “but they’re all just stories. We don’t really know what came first because we can’t even agree on when the first sapients actually became sapient. It makes more sense for murder to be the first sin than for either of the other two, because many animals kill each other without intending any malice. They just want to eat. To lie, you have to be able to speak first, and we know animals don’t do that. And stealing is also a thing that means you need to own something for it to be stolen first.”
“Many animals steal eggs and kills,” Mason replies. “And some animals, especially intelligent birds, will mimic the cry of a predator to scare away the other animals. That’s deception, which dishonesty also is.”
Credence scratches the back of his head. “Huh. You have a point there.” He shrugs. “See what I mean? We can’t really know what came first because we can’t even properly define what sin is either. Is there a difference between a hyena stealing an antelope from a leopard and a sapient stealing a bread from a bakery?”
Mason gestures up and down the street. “If you still wanted to walk, we should pick a direction.”
“Right, right, sorry! Umm, but which side did you come from? You just said you changes a few times, I think.”
“I did. I came from that side.” He indicates the direction in which Credence had been going.
“Aww man, that means we need to go past our starting points if we want to find anyone else. This is such a stupid layout to use.” He huffs.
Mason simply starts off in the direction he was originally taking anyway. Credence can’t think of any reason to argue against it anymore, so he just follows his lead. It’s actually nice not needing to make that decision when he’s obviously being indecisive. Mason doesn’t care either way and just wants to do something.
When Credence realises Mason is probably the type to, you know, not ramble and probably speak more measuredly, he also realises it’s up to him to pick up the conversation again. “What was I talking about?”
“Murder.”
“And before that?”
“How Sin City was sinful.”
Credence grimaces. “Yeah, sorry, I meant before that too.”
Mason furrows his brow in concentration. After a bit, he shrugs. “I can’t remember. I was telling you that you needed to breathe.”
“Oh, right! Yeah, I was just rambling before that.” He frowns. “Is it the mur—? Oh! I remember! I was going to say something about how we have so many different terms for the different kinds of stealing people can do. You have burglary, robbery, petty theft, grand larceny, and so on. All of those suggest that there’s a lot of defining you need to do to decide what kind of crime it is, which means you’d need to do the same to decide what kind of sin it is. Things start simply and become more complex over time.”
“You could say the same thing for murder,” Mason says. He’s aware it sounds like he’s playing demon’s advocate the whole time, but the conversation is interesting and there is a lot of nuance to point out. “If you take someone’s life out of jealousy or anger, it’s called murder and it makes you a murderer, even if you only murdered one person. We could also say you’ve killed that person, which is the more common word, but you’re not usually called a killer — that’s if you kill people often. If you kill people often and you’re paid for it, it makes you an assassin. If you kill people often and you do it for fun or some other disturbing reason, it makes you a serial killer.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Credence says.
“That’s not even the troubling part,” Mason continues. “If you kill people often and you’re paid for it, you might also be called a soldier. Then, it’s legal and actually considered praiseworthy. You could also kill people less often but still have it usually be considered legal, and in that case, you might be called a police officer or a detective.”
“Or a spy,” Credence adds jokingly. More seriously, he adds, “Or any guard of some kind.”
“Exactly,” Mason agrees. “Stealing, lying, and killing can all be considered sins, but if the context is right, doing those things is considered good. They almost become a virtue.”
“What do you think about killing the monster that did this to you?” Credence asks, gesturing at Mason’s shirt.
“If I had killed it because it had dirtied my shirt,” he says gravely, “I am inclined to say it would have been a sin.”
“Did you kill it?” Credence asks. The pit in his stomach tells him no.
“No, I didn’t,” Mason says. He picks up on Credence’s anxiety and says, “That doesn’t automatically mean I did a virtuous thing by not killing it and you did a sinful thing by killing the one that attacked you. If our societies say killing is allowed under some circumstances, that means the context is important to making the distinction.”
“What if the gods don’t make that distinction?” he asks, feeling a little sick. Did he really ruin his chances of winning just because he’d killed something while he was afraid?
“Remember to breathe,” Mason says, trying to cheer Credence up with the small joke. Credence smiles weakly, but it doesn’t really work. Mason continues, “I think the gods know better than we do, but we must always try to be more like the gods. Slavery used to be allowed, but it’s now illegal everywhere. That’s a step forwards. Surely, even if we can’t say much about the gods, we can say they would agree that slavery is denigrating— No, that’s not the right word. It’s not ‘disparaging’ either.”
“I think those two mean more or less the same thing.”
“Yes, exactly. Hmm. It’s closer to ‘belittling’.”
“Maybe ‘demeaning’?”
Mason considers it but shakes his head. “No, although that one is close.”
“‘Degrading’!” Credence declares happily.
Mason grins and claps his companion on the back. “Yes, that’s the one! Thank you.”
Credence has mostly gotten over the butterflies from his attraction, so he’s glad he can accept the gesture without degenerating into incoherent gibbering again. That’d honestly be annoying, and he thinks Mason would think so too after a while.
“You’re welcome,” he says. “I’m not sure why it took us so long to find the word.”
“It happens,” Mason says simply. “We found it in the end, which is what’s important. So, yes, I think everyone can agree that the gods would agree that slavery is degrading. It is no good way to treat another sapient being, and there is no moral justification you could use that would make it good. Even if someone treated you very poorly in the past, or maybe even if they had enslaved you themselves or kept you as a slave, that doesn’t justify you doing the same thing to them. That leads to the saying ‘an eye for an eye’. Nobody will be left with eyes by the time everyone has finished claiming their vengeance.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Credence says. He can definitely think of many problems back on Earth that revolved around that same logic, and it just made life worse for everyone.
Mason falls into contemplative silence, which naturally makes Credence want to fill it. He thinks for a bit to ensure he picks the right topic from to continue again.
“If you didn’t kill your monster,” he says, “what did you do with it in the end?” It’s not a great question, since it again makes him feel nervous about his own actions, but he wants to know.
“At first, I just thought I had angered it by being too close. If a porcupine flares its quills at you and you get punctured by one or more of those quills, you were too close and didn’t respect the threat it poses. I walked away and gave it space. But then it followed me. Even after I jogged away, it followed me.”
“Yeah, that’s what freaked me out,” Credence says. “It just kept coming towards me. That’s not normal.”
Mason nods. “Not for most animals, no. They run away immediately or they warn you off. I thought it was surprising that this animal wouldn’t give any warning. It walked past me without reacting poorly, but when I turned to follow it, it spat in my face. It then spat against my chest, but that wasn’t just spit. It could potentially hurt under the right circumstances.”
“Yeah, like if it had hit me that way,” Credence says. Mason is robust and very well built; it looks like his muscles were all perfectly chiselled from one large piece of rock. Credence wasn’t skinny or anything, but he was closer to the leaner side of things. He jogged a lot and did more cardiovascular exercises, so he had good endurance, but if something were to hit him very hard — …heh — he would feel it a lot more than if Mason had taken the hit instead.
“Yes, exactly.”
He didn’t exactly want to hear an agreement, but he’d left the door open to that. Oh well.
“I normally give animals all the respect they deserve,” Mason continues, “but some animals are cheeky. They are like children who keep pushing their limits. Animals like that need to be shown where the limits are, how far you’re willing to be pushed. This animal, by chasing after me, was now disrespecting my space, so it was my turn to show it my displeasure.”
“What did you do?” Credence almost begs, dragging out the last word. He enjoys listening to Mason talk (he has a great voice), but he wants to hear the end of the story! Especially if Mason did something badass!
Mason laughs, correctly interpreting Credence’s enthusiasm. “I waited for it to attack me again and then jumped to the side. I picked it up almost as you would pick up a tortoise — don’t do that if you can help it, by the way.”
“Pick up uncanny green monsters that try to spit you to death?” he asks facetiously, grinning at his own joke.
“No, tortoises,” Mason says. “It doesn’t matter now, but their shells are more fragile than most people would think. You must support their body and legs. Avoid picking them up if you can, since it is very stressful for them. Not all animals want to be handled.”
“Okay, sure,” Credence says absently and a little impatiently.
“In this strange animal’s case, I could see it had no legs, and it didn’t wet itself the way a tortoise likely would have. I wanted to go put it back in the alley and then leave it behind, but it released a cloud of purple gas. It was most likely toxic.”
“Shit, it can do that?!”
“Yes. I had experienced my fill of the animal, so I tossed it away like a rugby ball.”
Mmm, Credence could definitely envision Mason playing rugby. He’d probably be good at it, too! He’s too distracted by the image and only realises after an extended pause that Mason was actually done. “Wait, that’s it?”
“Yes.” Mason looks at Credence, wondering what else he was supposed to say. “You asked me what I did. That’s what I did.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Do you want to talk about what you had done?” He makes sure to make it sound like a polite suggestion, not an accusation.
“I… suppose I could…” He hesitates for the obvious reason, even if it had felt totally epic in the moment. But he’s saved from answering when he looks towards Mason and sees his second saviour in the alley they happened to be passing! “Oh! Hey, over here!” He realises, too late, that they had already been moving towards Mason and him, so it’s likely that they had seen them first. He sighs inwardly.
“I’m so glad I found you!” they say, smiling pleasantly. “I never liked cities, but Sin City is a different type of depressing.”
Credence groans. “Tell me about it. You’re Sky, right?”
“I am!” they say happily. “And you two are Credence and Mason. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“The pleasure is ours,” Mason says charmingly.
“Hey, you were introduced just before me,” Credence says, remembering the order. “And Mason was just after me. What are the odds of us being on the same group? That’s pretty cool!”
“It does seem unlikely,” Sky says modestly.
Credence smiles brightly before he realises, with a sinking feeling, that he finds Sky’s mild bashfulness appealing. And suddenly, he’s also acutely aware of how they duck their head slightly when they speak, how their eyes communicate exactly what emotion they’re feeling at that moment, and how their effortless grace— Are they blushing? Oh no, he must have made eye contact for just too long.
Damn it, twice in less than an hour?! He became infatuated twice when meeting a dead stranger in person for the first time? That has to be some ridiculous kind of record! Giratina must be making some kind of witty commentary about his interests and quizzing the audience on how many times he’s showed his attraction to Mason so far.
He blinks. Did he zone out?
“Sorry, I was lost in thought suddenly. Did either of y’all say anything?”
Mason and Sky both turn to look at Credence. He’s grateful he’s not made of ice, or he’d surely melt on the spot.
“You haven’t missed much,” Mason says.
“We were just discussing where we’ve been and where we think our last two teammates might be,” Sky explains. Credence is more absent-minded in person that he’d seemed in his introduction, but he’s clearly well-meaning, if a little out of his depth.
Credence sees the sympathetic fondness in Sky’s eyes and feels his heart sink. Yeah, he’s basically been immediately friend-zoned by both of them. It’s not like he’s never felt the flutters of having a crush one someone before, but the last time he had it this badly, he had still been twenty-one. It’s like the ten years after that were just wiped clean. Since when did death turn you into a teenager again? Gods!
“Have we reached a verdict yet?” he asks, trying to maintain his cool.
“More or less,” Sky says. The sympathy disappears from their face and is replaced by cheerfulness again. “I sensed you two long before I actually heard you talking. Now that I know where you are and where you’re heading, it will be easier to find you again. I can keep looking for our other friends and then bring them back here.”
“Oh, okay. You’re leaving.”
“Mmm-hmm! But I’ll be back. See you soon!”
They just… poof. Disappear. But not even in a poof, they’re just there the one moment and gone the next. It looked like they, for a split second or so, maybe disappeared upwards, but he can’t say for certain.
“What do we do now?” Credence asks listlessly.
Mason stretches his shoulders and upper back, much to his companion’s dismay, before responding. “Sky can cover ground more quickly than either of us, so whether we stay put or continue walking, they will be able to catch up.”
“I don’t think they’re actually faster than me,” Credence says, thinking about Mason’s claim. “As in, I can actually boost my speed now. I couldn’t do that when I was alive. I could probably beat a hundred metre sprint in a few seconds if I was boosted and really tried.”
Mason chuckles. “I understand what you mean now. I think you may be right, but you can’t sense auras, emotions, or thoughts the way they can.”
Credence vehemently shakes his head. “Nope! I wouldn’t even want to try. I have enough difficulty with my own emotions as it is. I feel like I’m a kid again, which is weird, since I was fine before Round One started.”
“Could it be performance anxiety?”
“What? Oh, no! No, I think I’m fine there.” Credence is almost incredulous, but he laughs it off. “I have zero difficulty entertaining people.”
“Is it just the fear?” Mason asks. “You just need more exposure. Things become less intimidating over time.”
“No, it’s not that either.”
“Then what?”
“I think you’re hot,” he blurts out. He kind of regrets saying it, but he also definitely doesn’t, since he’d rather have his feelings be out in the open and know where he stands than to pine over the dumbass situation.
Mason, to his credit, doesn’t need to take a moment to process the world-shattering revelation the way some people would have. He grins and, damn him, says, “I am hot. You have good tastes.”
“You’re not helping!”
“I’m sorry,” Mason says, chuckling heartily. “This does explain your behaviour so far. It was a vague possibility in the back of my mind, but I did not heed it.”
“I guess that means there’s no chance you’re into dudes?” Credence tries not to sound too disappointed or hopeful, but he’s pretty sure he knows the answer already.
“Happily married to my lovely wife Beauty for twenty-six years,” he responds, offering a sincerely apologetic shrug.
“Ah, well. Y’all probably had children, right?”
“A son, Justice, and a daughter, Charity.”
Credence nods. “Thanks for telling me. Did you two grow old together?”
Mason grimaces, but in a paradoxically happy way. “In a way, yes, but in a way, no. There was a malaria outbreak. We had mosquitoes, but none that carried the parasite. My son and I both passed. I was fifty-nine and he was thirty-two. I attended both my children’s weddings and held two grandchildren, one from each, but I would have liked to grow older with my wife.”
“Aww man, that sucks,” Credence says. “I’m really sorry for you.”
“There is no need. I lived a happy life. Many people are worse off. You said you died in a car crash?”
“Yeah, but I guess that’s misleading. I wasn’t in a car. A car hit me while I was jogging.”
Mason grimaces for real. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Did you suffer?”
“Nope, died on impact.”
“That is some consolation, at least.” He put a reassuring hand on Credence’s shoulder and offered him an encouraging smile. But then he removed his hand, as if he had forgotten a stove was still hot. “Sorry, I shouldn’t do that.”
Credence chuckled, making an exaggeratedly sad face. “Yeah, it reminds me of what I can never have.”
“I hope you at least found a nice boy, or maybe also a girl, before you had the accident.”
“Both!” he said merrily. “The relationships didn’t last very long. I had a few more flings.” He pouts. “I should have gone for a last one more recently. The last time I had any action was nine months ago.”
“There are at least a couple flirtatious participants in the tournament,” Mason points out with a sly grin. “Is there any interest for you there?”
Credence considers it. “Honestly, many of the people are decently attractive, but I wouldn’t have said I had any specific interest in anyone until the first round actually started. First you and then Sky.”
“You might still have luck with them,” Mason says hopefully. “You’ll have to ask.”
“Yeah, but they might also have been married, like you.”
“As I said, you’ll have to ask.”
“Ask what?” Sky asks.
Credence jumps and almost swears, but he was too surprised to really do that. He turns around to find Sky standing with the missing pair to complete their party. One of them is Lotus, the lady who swore the oath of silence, and the other is Ember, the shy teen who had hidden in his tent. Credence has to resist the urge to give him a hug, since he just looks so sad. He had looked that way during the introduction too. However he died, it was clearly hard for him to get over it.
“Hello there, you two,” Mason says brightly. He’s personally happy with the group around him. Credence is a fine young man, and Sky, Lotus, and Ember are all sensitive souls who decided to devote themselves to helping others rather than seek glory for themselves. Humility is one of the greatest virtues, in his opinion.
“Hi, y’all!” Credence says weakly.
Ember briefly makes eye contact with the two men, softly saying, “Hello,” before looking at the road again. He doesn’t think anything specific of them, but they didn’t seem like he wouldn’t get along with them either.
Lotus offers them the same courteous bow as everyone before them. The fresh scents of paper, leather, and ink convey the sentiments of hope, excitement, and wisdom.
“Yeah, I hope so too!” Credence says more enthusiastically.
Sky nods and smiles brightly. “I agree. I feel greatly heartened for everyone’s presence here.” And they mean it. Being surrounded by so many radiant personalities makes it impossible to feel dejected or lonely.
“You found Lotus and Ember faster than I expected,” Mason says to Sky. “No implication as to your tracking ability.”
Sky smiles behind their hand, trying to suppress a grin. “Actually, I’m the one who was found. Lotus had been searching tirelessly for us. She and Ember were already together by the time I sensed her aura, and when I reached out to her, I was surprised to learn they were already on their way towards me.” They beam at Lotus, their adoration difficult to conceal. “Her capacity for empathy is greater than I could even have imagined possible. It sounds so silly to say it, but we are blessed beyond words for having her with us. I can’t believe how lucky I am to share a group stage with her.”
Lotus smiles modestly and bows in gratitude.
“What did you talk about?” Credence asks. Seeing Sky so awestruck just makes them even more attractive, and with his interest in Mason partially nipped in the bud, they hold all of his current interest.
“That’s the most amazing part!” Sky says, now grinning openly. “We’ve barely spoken! Oh, ‘spoken’, as it were. You remember she swore an oath of silence.”
“We remember,” Mason affirms. Credence nods along, just in case anyone was wondering otherwise.
“It’s difficult to explain empathy to someone who doesn’t understand it,” Sky continues. “If you’ve ever imagined what it feels like to be in someone else’s position, you’re on your way. If you’ve felt genuine emotion for someone else because of their happiness or misfortune, you’re almost there. But only once you’ve felt someone else’s sorrow or joy as if it were your very own can you truly understand what it means to empathise. It comes more easily to certain species, like ours—” Sky gestures between them and Lotus. “—but it’s hardly exclusive. Anyone, with experience, training, and love in their hearts can develop empathy. It’s like a reservoir of love that you share with others, and only through sharing it do you get to enjoy its benefits. Lotus’ reservoir, if I may continue with the comparison, is in reality more like a dam so expansive, if you were in the centre, you would think you were lost at sea.”
“You determined all of this by simply meeting Lotus?” Mason asks, catching on.
“Yes!” They then smiled bashfully. “I should clarify, sorry. Being able to sense auras or emotions allows you to know people without needing to utter a single word. You can tell their fears, their hopes, their dreams, all of this and more by just sensing them. It’s like seeing the story of someone’s whole life condensed into a single picture.”
Credence suddenly becomes very uncomfortable. According to that logic, the more you try to hide your feelings, the more obvious they become. It’s like somebody reading your mind, except they get to see the spirit of your thoughts, not just the details of whatever you happen to be thinking at that point.
Sky grimaces behind their hand. They know that he now knows that they know. “I may have explained more than you wanted to know, Credence. I’m sorry.”
Mason elbows Credence. “He will live. Maybe he’ll even become spoiled with the knowledge that he can express himself without needing to put in the hard work of finding the right words to translate his thoughts!”
He knows Mason is just trying to lighten the mood and make him feel better, but Credence honestly feels like he’s the butt of some kind of cosmic joke. For all he knows, he actually might be and this was intended by Giratina all along.
“Should we talk about something else?” Sky offers.
Mason looks between each of the other three adults. “I think Lotus and I can find a worthwhile topic to discuss. Maybe we could even entice Ember into joining us.” He offers the boy an encouraging grin.
When Ember looks up, realising he should do so out of politeness, Mason dramatically waggles his eyebrows and makes his grin extra wide. Ember snorts softly. The corner of his mouth twists ever so slightly upwards, but his uncovered eye reveals a greater sense of amusement.
“We’ll leave you two to it,” Mason says conclusively, patting Credence on the back and walking a respectful distance away with the other two, leaving Credence and Sky out of earshot.
“Again, I’m so sorry for making you uncomfortable,” Sky says abashedly.
Credence waves them off, resigned to his fate. “It’s not like you did it on purpose. And it probably wouldn’t have been very hard to tell anyway. You don’t need to be a psychic to tell when someone has a crush on someone else.”
“You’re very sweet—”
“Sorry for the interruption,” he says, “but just tell me. You’re also married and have two or more kids, right?”
“Just the one,” Sky says quietly.
Credence immediately feels like a jerk. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s all right,” Sky says sincerely. “I know how you meant it.”
He grins stupidly despite himself. “Right. Because you’re an actual psychic. And an empath.”
“Oh, we don’t use it that way. Empathy is more like a way of living and viewing the world than an acquired skill or ability, even if you can and should train it.”
“Got it. You’re just a psychic, then.”
“Mmm-hmm.” They giggle softly. “Cliff would like you.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” He only partially succeeds in not breaking eye contact.
“You’re unabashedly you.”
“I’m pretty sure that means ‘shamelessly’.”
“It does,” Sky admits. “Under other circumstances, it might not be the best of adjectives to have associated with oneself. But being yourself without shame isn’t a bad thing. You’re not perfect, but you don’t think that. You know you still have room for growth, so there’s no reason to feel bad about who you are and to wish you were someone else. Too many people make themselves unhappy that way.”
Credence shrugs. “Yeah, it’s not that…”
Sky nods. “I know. I’ll try using other words.” They think about it for a few seconds.
To Credence, each second feels like an extra punishment that he needs to endure before finally being released. He wishes they would just say it already. Mason didn’t drag it out this long. It’s a crush. Nobody likes being rejected, but he’ll get over it.
“You’re funny,” Sky says to start. They tilt their head slightly to the side. “Hmm, in fact, you’re actually a bit of a goofball. You easily endear yourself to others because of how carefree and earnest you can be. You never mean any ill, but you often fail in silly or sometimes more saddening ways. You’re wholesome, which means your happiness is infectious.” They smile a bit more shyly, but they don’t turn away or avert their gaze. “And I also personally think you’re attractive.”
His heart beats more quickly, but he’s reluctant to allow himself to feel hope. Sky’s words… sound like they’re open to… whatever. Credence doesn’t himself even really know what he wants. It wasn’t something that he thought through or even intended to think through. But that’s hardly new.
“What’s the catch?” he asks in a strained tone.
Sky is a little embarrassed to admit it, but they know there’s nothing about which to be embarrassed. “I’m not as young as I look.”
Credence swallows out of reflex, but it takes a second to register that what he heard isn’t what he expected to hear. “Come again?”
“I’m not as young as I look,” Sky repeats. Their smile is their best attempt at suppressing a snicker.
“Is that even possible?”
“Yes! Lotus is a centenarian.”
His jaw drops. “She’s what?”
“She’s a hundred and two years old! Amazing, isn’t it? I wonder why she’s even here at all.” They catch themselves. “Oh, I should not say such things so lightly. She has her reasons. I daresay she has a better idea than the rest of us do about our own reasons.”
Credence knows his reason: he was too young and stupid to be worth sending to Paradise. At least he knows his death wasn’t his fault.
“If she’s that old,” he says, trying to wrap his head around it, “how is she… you know?”
“We are all still ourselves,” Sky says brightly. “Some of us simply decided to peel back a few decades. You can’t add years if you died young, since you can’t be who you haven’t become yet. That’s why you and Ember and many other participants look your age, but some of us don’t.”
“How old are you, then?”
“I’m seventy-seven.”
He looks at the person standing in front of him. He tries to imagine them with white hair and a stooped posture, but he can’t. “You look my age.”
“Yes! This is what I looked like when I was thirty.”
For lack of anything better to say, he asks, “Is that all?”
“That’s the only catch, yes. There is a condition as well, though.”
Credence feels like a balloon soaring higher and higher into the sky. At some point, he will either pop or deflate. That point is really close now.
Sky takes Credence’s silence as permission to continue. “I said Cliff would like you. That’s true. Because he’d like you, and because he’d want me to be happy, he’d say I should be with you if it will make me happy.”
“Will it?” He doesn’t even know what he’s asking. They’re dead and participating in a tournament for a place in Paradise. What does ‘being with someone’ mean here?
Sky smiles apologetically. “I don’t know yet.”
There’s the pop. Credence knows it’s written all over his face, even though he tries to remind himself they said yet.
“Yes, please do try to keep hope,” Sky says gingerly. They cringe, knowing precisely what Credence is feeling. “Cliff is the pragmatic one, but I’ve always been the romantic. Big surprise, right?” They let out a single, forced laugh. “He would say ‘Until death do us part. That’s what we agreed.’ But for me, it’s not that easy. If he still lives for many years, I wish him happiness however and wherever he may find it. Me? I’m seventy-seven. I lived with the love of my life for more than half a century. Even if I’m dead and our vows no longer apply in the letter of the law, they still apply in spirit for me. It will take time for me to feel like I’m not being unfaithful to him, regardless of what you and I do, and it will take time for me to… learn how to… to do anything without him.” They chuckle and their eyes light up. “Look at me. I can’t even say the S-word. I’m hopeless.” They toss their hands as if they were limp and let them drop to their sides. “I need you to be patient with me. That’s the condition.”
Credence scratches the back of his neck and then stuffs his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “That’s all? I just need to give you time?”
Sky nods cheerfully. “That’s essentially it. I can only foresee you growing more as a person the more rounds we manage to last, so you’ll only become more attractive to me. You were never not enough.”
He feels a school-boyish smile worm its way onto its face. Try as he might, he can’t remove it, and his heart is fluttering worse than before. Gods, it’s so embarrassing!
Sky shakes their head. They first snicker with their mouth closed, but it then breaks into a toothy chuckle. “Credence, you’re adorable. Just keep being yourself and we’ll see what becomes possible.”
“So… no promises, but you’ll try your best?”
They nod decisively. “Sounds perfect.”
He sighs in relief. Dead or alive, it’ll apparently never get any easier.
In the meantime, Mason was indeed conversing with Lotus as he said he would be. He finds it occasionally difficult to interpret her emanations, but when sound and smell are insufficient to convey the message, she resorts to visual projections. Sometimes, she uses them from the start.
She is reticent to discuss certain parts of her personal history, but with respect to contemporary history, religion, and philosophy, she readily shares her knowledge. At Mason’s request, she provides a multisensory description of various places she’s visited all over the world, from the world-famous Shrine of the Sea God and the Saint Beryl Cathedral to the more obscure Falconstone Catacombs and Blue Pillar Cave. He frequently throws a glance towards the other pair in the group to see how things fare, and when it looks like they finally reach a resolution, based on Credence’s expression of pure relief, he excuses himself.
Lotus nods, appreciative of his concern for the younger man. Ember has taken an interest in the cave, so she gives him a second-hand tour, reconstructing the internal structure as well as her memory permits.
Mason bumps shoulders with Credence. “I told you that you’re going to become spoiled.”
He scoffs. “We could have had this conversation later.”
Mason crosses both pairs of arms. “If you thought time wasn’t a given in life, which most of us know for a fact, you’d be a fool to think it’s a given in death when Our Grace repeatedly stated time doesn’t exist here. Take it from me: resolve any issues as soon as you can, because you might not get another chance later.”
Credence scuffs his trainer and glances towards Sky, who cheerfully nods in agreement with Mason. Lotus and Ember are still off on their own, so that’s at least some consolation. He gives both Mason and Sky a worried look. “But if we don’t know what’ll happen later on…”
“I can’t see the future in Purgatory,” Sky says. “There are some risks we’ll have to take. You risked wearing your heart on your sleeve and it paid off. I still need time, so we’ll just have to keep taking risks.”
“Know which risks to take,” Mason says, raising an index finger. “That is the key. For example, not telling Sky or me about your feelings would have left you distracted. When we need to fight the next monster, being distracted might have cost you. Or it might have cost us. It still can, so we need you focused.”
The shift in tone makes Credence focus on the tournament at hand. “Okay, you’re right. We still need to get to the city square.”
“It’s going to be a long walk,” Sky says.
“How do you know?”
They gesture at Lotus, who notices the gesture and beckons Ember over. He’s disappointed the tour is over already, but he’s glad he got to see something he never would have had the opportunity to visit otherwise.
Sky wordlessly repeats Credence’s question and conducts a completely non-verbal, purely sensory conversation with Lotus, who again relays her interactions with the roads and the buildings lining them. She reports that the current road and the empty buildings beside it are no different.
“Basically,” Sky says, “everything you see around us exists literally for this round alone.”
“What, so these are all a day old?” he asks.
“You could say that, yes.”
He looks around. “Man, it’s no wonder there are no people around and why this feels so depressing! It hasn’t existed long enough for anyone but us and those stupid frog-worm-things to occupy it.”
“What things?” Ember asks, engaging with Credence for only the second total time so far.
“Didn’t you encounter a round, green monster with a yellow crest in your alley?”
“I might have. I don’t remember.” He looks away. If he did, there’s a good chance it either ran away or got seriously hurt.
“I only fought the one,” Credence notes. “Did y’all only find one too, or were there more that I missed?”
“Lotus says she encountered one but avoided it,” Sky relays. “And I was attacked by one just like Mason.”
“Mason and I basically played sports with ours,” Credence says, hoping he doesn’t need to elaborate on what he means. “What did you do with yours?”
“I put it inside a garbage bin and flipped it so the lid was against the wall.”
“Did you use telekinesis?” Mason asks.
Sky nods cheerily, but their smile freezes and sets into an expression of concern.
“What’s wrong?”
“Trapping the animals, whatever they are, isn’t a… good idea.”
“Why not?” Credence asks. “If I had your abilities, I’d have felt better about doing that than… you know.” He pulls on the edge of his tank top.
“I did feel better about putting it inside a garbage bin than I did about any of the alternatives,” they say. “The problem is that… oh, I don’t think I can put this delicately.”
Mason eyes them warily. “If it’s not a big deal, you’re making it sound like one.”
Sky grimaces. “No, it’s a big deal.”
Lotus’ eyes widen when she reads Sky’s aura. Sky repeatedly nods at Lotus in a way that even Credence can understand as meaning, “Yeah. Yeah.”
“I don’t like the look she’s giving you,” he says. “Sky…”
“Are you going to tell us or not?” Ember asks. He immediately regrets posing the question. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re right, I’m not helping,” Sky admits. They laugh nervously. “Okay. The animal in the bin, err… it went bwoogh.” They make two circles with their hands, put them next to each other, and then open their fingers and pull their hands away.
“It exploded?” Mason asks, hoping he misinterpreted the gesture.
“Yeah.” Sky looks distinctly uncomfortable.
“When you say that, do you mean it just popped?”
“No, I mean it exploded and destroyed the garbage bin. There wasn’t fire, but metal and plastic and garbage flew everywhere.”
“No,” Credence almost whispers. He repeats it more and more loudly until he’s frantic. “No. No, nonononono, you did not just say it exploded. You did not say that.”
“I—”
“Fucking gods, they’re actual creepers!” Credence shouts. “I set one on fire. What if it had exploded while I was dribbling it?! We can’t get near those things if they can do that!”
“Credence, calm down,” Mason says, putting a hand on both of his shoulders. “You’re getting worked up.”
“I don’t know what a creeper is,” Sky says sheepishly.
“Have you ever heard of Minecraft?” Credence asks, closing his, breathing deeply, and trying his best to absorb some of Mason’s calm through osmosis.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Okay, well—” He opened his eyes. “Oh, you haven’t?”
They shrug guiltily and say, “Seventy-seven,” by way of answer. “I didn’t play many video games. Arcade games like Pac-man are the closest I ever got.”
“It’s a procedurally generated, block-world sandbox game,” Ember says quietly.
Sky chuckles and shakes their head at themselves. “My age is showing. I don’t know what any of that means either.”
“You collect blocks of wood and soil by hitting them,” Ember says, trying again. “You then build tools, collect more materials, and then build more things. People can get really creative.”
“It’s the best-selling video game ever,” Credence adds.
“Oh!” Sky’s lips remain in an O-shape after speaking.
“Yeah. One of the monsters in it is a weird plant called a creeper. Its only attack is to run close to you and explode.”
“It makes a hiss as a warning,” Ember adds.
Credence nods. “Yeah, and many hardcore players have had their runs end suddenly because they heard that hiss too late.”
“I think I see how that would be traumatising,” Sky says sympathetically.
“Yes. And now they’re basically real.”
“Credence.”
He doesn’t hear at first.
“Credence, look at me.” Mason turns Credence so he does actually need to look at him. Once Mason is sure he has the other man’s attention, he says, “We have two Defenders, a Blocker, a Controller, and an Attacker here. That last one is you. We have three specialists in Offence, two in Endurance, four in Support, and one in Pressure. Do you understand what that means?”
Credence blinks he inhales and then exhales shakily. “No, I’m not sure what that means. Please tell me.”
“It means all four of us here chose roles that allow us to support each other and to support you. Sky and I can be by your side, helping you attack whatever we need to while also protecting you. Lotus and Ember will provide bolstering and disrupting support from the side-lines. If anything explodes and thinks it will take you or any of us down with it, it’s got another thing coming. Do you understand?”
He nods. “Yes, I understand now. Thanks.”
“Good. Come here.” Mason pulls Credence into a hug.
Credence initially stiffens, but then he relaxes and puts his arms around Mason too. It isn’t until he has it that he realises how much he actually just needed a friend’s embrace.
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