Part IV – An Intimate Evening with The Cripple

Suchi, Central City. A private chamber at the top of The Chapel of The Sky.

The tallest building in Suchi was the chapel’s minaret. At the very top of this minaret was a private chamber with 360-degree walls of glass that were opaque glancing in from the outside but transparent glancing out. This one-way visual exchange produced a panopticon effect. Residents below, in the city and the slums beyond the city’s walls, could never see when the chamber’s occupant was or wasn’t gazing out at them, and thus they lived in a state of surveillance-limbo, having to assume that they might be under watch.

This structure purpose-built for domination had been constructed many millennia ago, its original architects long since relegated to history’s unread appendix. These days, it was occupied by the Ibanpita church, who promoted its towering height as symbolising the connection between themselves and the sky whose rain they commanded. The chamber at the very top continued to be used by The Church's divine head, passing down through successive Popes, each of whom arranged it according to their preferences and personality.

Currently, the place was a mess, the chamber floor forming a mosaic of open books and ledgers and wine flagons whose unfinished dregs had fermented into vinegar. These possessions in disarray were caked with the red dust that accumulated in Suchi when one neglected regular cleansing.

“And here comes The Empire, their driftwood crowns knocked off-centre from the smacking! Check out these losers. Where are the speeches of community now, you heroes of the masses? Give us a speech!”

Pope Berbahaya was talking madly to himself, pacing around his cluttered chamber. Like an over-fed grizzly bear lumbering through a forest on its hind legs, he kept his chest thrust out, his gait ponderously slow, the muscles of his squat frame instilled with a brooding, paternalistic strength. (Centuries ago, when he’d first been admitted into the clergy, his rivals had accused him of attempting to compensate for his short, unimpressive stature. Maybe they'd been correct, but, now, they were dead and he was alive.)

“Stand taller, young royals!” he shouted. “By the way you’re all limping, you’d think The Deathless One had returned and snipped your egg baskets. Cheer up! Hey, maybe a speech will lift your spirits!”

Despite pacing through the litter of his messy chamber, the Pope'd been keeping both eyelids closed, one eye in his Mental Library, the other glowing.

Being transmitted to the glowing second eye was a harrowing scene from down in The Slums, outside one of The Company’s Trading Posts - not the one over which Lord Karnon had drawn the explicit picture of Berbahaya and King Ramiro, that one was still being washed. While the Pope watched through the eyes of a Bishop acting as his surrogate, The Empire's leadership was skulking out of the venue like mourners departing from an execution of a loved one.

The Company had been kind enough to invite a Church delegation to sit in on their happy meeting. Recently, The Tyrant’s forces had discovered that naughty Ramiro had been conducting a smuggling operation, importing unsanctioned weaponry from the expert craftsmen of Chayoka. The fines for this infraction, once tallied, proved beyond The Empire’s financial capacity to pay back. Therefore, they were given two options. One, they could hand over control of everything—their assets, their businesses, their craftsmen, the loose fraternal organisation branded as ‘The Empire’—in which case, after The Company’s restructuring, the former leadership might retain their token figurehead roles as ‘Kings’ and ‘Queens’ with a few benefits. Two, The Company would take everything by force instead. Ultimately, The Empire chose to die by the first, peaceful method of execution.

Berbahaya gained little intellectually or materially from sitting in on the amateur political dealings of the Offworlders, the maturest of whom were mere teenagers by his ancient perspective. His soul, however, had been nourished by a comical fact hanging unacknowledged over the meeting.

On a first, superficial level, the Empire had to forfeit their domain because they couldn’t afford The Company’s fines. That was the sole tenet of The Tyrant’s church: if you commit a sin, you must atone through a proportionate penance of platinum; if the demanded indulgence is beyond your means, he, in his magnanimous grace, will create an equitable repayment schedule that accommodates everyone’s interests; if the interest proves too burdensome, the debt can still be erased through a final oblation of giving up all one’s possessions. Such was The Company’s creed. Their terms and conditions were stated in simple language in the contract one signs before being issued the nifty Attention Identification Emblem, available to paupers and emperors alike. Fair and square.

On a second, deeper level, however, the reason these fines were unpayable for The Empire was due to The Tyrant, coordinating with Berbahaya’s Church, opening up the West-Bank Autonomous Exclave, boosting its production output and crashing The Slum’s competing economy. The Empire should, eventually, have adapted to this change and recovered, but it happened to be today that The Tyrant’s goons turned up to discuss the smuggling charges. And, today, well, The Empire’s books weren’t looking fantastic. According to The Company’s impartial calculations, repayment would be impossible.

Thus, following a ridiculous, circular logic, The Empire couldn’t pay back The Tyrant because The Tyrant wasn’t allowing them to pay him back. Beneath the surface of a dry financial impasse was a much more direct conflict. The Tyrant—although not officially and handled through puppets—owned the West-Bank territory that The Empire had planned to invade. The Empire’d unwittingly insulted him by plotting to not only seize this asset but to do so with his own smuggled weapons. For daring to spit in his shadowy face, they had to be removed.

Yet, in a moment of supreme deliciousness, throughout this meeting to discuss the handover process, The Empire’s leadership—none wishing to incur more of The Tyrant’s vengeance—stayed tight-lipped on the reaming he was giving them. While his goons stared into their weeping faces and thrusted, Ramiro and co could only respond by kowtowing, apologising for their hubris, pleading to retain their thrones, promising to amend their blunders, acquiescing to every cruel condition and tyrannical term.

Berbahaya loved it. This was an immaculate display of power by The Tyrant, adorning himself in a sacred robe of byzantine rules while kicking the downed enemy in the stomach.

Ramiro, emerging now from The Trading Post, came into The Pope's vision, and the mood amongst his defeated peers turned awkward. Some intentionally delayed leaving to chat with him for a while. Others, unable to handle their sadness and shame, walked away after a mumbled sentence of farewell.

Their beloved driftwood emperor, The Saviour of The Slums, was already dead.

Ramiro, The Empire's founder and visionary leader, had been dethroned during the meeting, the sole member of the cabal outed – so far. No mercy could be given to him for masterminding the weapon smuggling operation. He'd been stripped on the spot of all meaningful authority. Due, however, to his popularity with the Slumdwellers and the civil unrest that would be caused by an abrupt dismissal, his official position would remain intact until The Company could engineer a smooth transition into retirement. In exchange for Ramiro's compliance with his sacking, The Company had agreed not to spread some dirty footage that’d been leaked to them.

Soon enough, the fallen sovereign was alone outside The Trading Post.

He lingered around the exit until Queen Atusa came out. (This was Ramiro's secret mistress and, by Berbahaya's estimation, the volunteer of the kompromat, which she would have traded for leniency.) The disloyal hussy, upon crossing glances with her former lover, strutted past him with no more acknowledgement than one might give a rancid-smelling Ibanmothe.

“Check out the size of the ovaries on this wareeksa!” Berbahaya celebrated. “Ay, if only our broads could be so straightforward. Always with the flowery apologies and the blaming of fate. Here’s a woman who gives a man no illusions. ‘If you haven’t got at least a throne, these sweet tikawaatas are getting put back behind the lock and key’. No more touchy-touchy for Ramiro, no more speaky-speaky. Youuuuuuuuu’re fucking invisible now! Hahaha. Oh, look, Mr Invisible’s spotted us."

The usurped king, the discarded saviour, threw a hood over his uncrowned head and approached Berbahaya’s surrogate.

The Pope spoke through the surrogate's mouth. “King Chubby Cheeks! What can I help you with? Ask for anything except your manhood back - even I don’t have the ability to restore that.”

Ramiro responded to the gloating by inching uncomfortably close to the surrogate's face and lighting up a cigarillo, communicating through an unbroken stare. Strangely, his gaze was neither that of a man begrudging his defeat nor one accepting it with helpless sublimity. Belonging to a man still invigorated by the spirit of resistance, it said, ‘You can feel it, too, right? This is a false ending. I’ll be back.’

A thick cloud of white smoke filled the surrogate’s vision. By the time it’d dissipated, Ramiro had his back turned.

"Ay, fuck you right back, you over-fed goat." The Pope, opening his glowing eye, severed the connection. “What an arrogant little shit! These fucking Offworlders, they’re not merely immune to death but learning basic lessons in humility…”

The Pope continued pacing, blabbing.

Thinking out loud was another supposedly crass habit that Berbahaya’s dead rivals had criticised him for, accusing him of being a thug too stupid for tact and subtlety. They, like The Tyrant, adhered to strict codes of custom and caution, always monitoring their behaviour, never letting slip their secrets.

But the kids were wrong. What they failed to grasp was that, through their bondage to these practices, they admitted their weakness. By comporting oneself, one admitted they could be harmed by negative impressions. By hiding intentions, one admitted their actions could be blocked by obtaining knowledge of them. Implied in both decorum and subterfuge was the threat of some other, stronger authority, one capable of weaponizing one’s admissions against oneself. To have genuine power was to transcend this other and the demand to obey them. Genuine power, the state of peerlessness, expressed its unassailable sovereignty through the freedom to be brutally honest and honestly brutal. Does anyone extend courtesies to flies? No, you just squish the annoying bastards.

That's why you wouldn't hear Berbahaya equivocating like a thin-necked wareeksa. When it was on with him, you knew it was on.

“...still, I'm grieving. Didn't think we'd see the fatty fly away so soon. His rallies always made for soothing background music. Maybe we should tell The Tyrant to keep the tradition up for..."

The Pope continued pacing, blabbing, his words and thoughts as disordered as this chamber.

Yet, weren't there many things off with this scene of a brash, thug of a man rambling insecurely to himself?

Peering into the Pope's other, still-closed eye, a different picture emerged, one in contradiction with his presentations...

The Mental Library inside this closed eye was maintained in pristine order.

Towering walls of books stretched far out of sight, all archived according to countless methodical systems of classification - by dates of production, dates of authorial births, deaths, Ascensions, dates of historical correspondence, by language family, by dialect, by accent, by speciality and sub-speciality, by deity of primary and secondary and tertiary and quaternary association, by prior usage in countless variations of analyses. Through subjugation and training to dense mental networks of order, this colossal archive could respond to any inquiry with the speed of a finger responding to the brain’s request, as it was doing now, marching out essays, reports, legal codes, tractates, letters, manuscripts, drawings. Floating above the endless stream of well-disciplined knowledge was a constellation of thousands of shiny nodes, one node representing the painting of a moon, another node another prank, connections between nodes forming and severing according to various tested modes of order. Through every element of this library, order flowed, right down to the arrangement of the trivial objects on a writing desk: quills lined up rank file from largest to smallest, a 15-pointed star pendant with its necklace string straightened parallel to the writing desk’s sides, and stacks of sketch-filled papers aligned with the disjunctionless precision of freshly-opened reams.

This hidden refuge of order, finishing the subduing and assimilating of information collected during The Company's meeting with The Empire, settled around a stable insight.

"Karnon knows." The Pope, the brutish mask faltering, opened their second eye and stopped in their stride. “But why would he reveal that he knows?”

Paired with this question was a subtle, indirect gesture to the patch of sky where the blood mural had hovered for all of Suchi to observe.

Silence answered.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Is he listening to us? Karnon, are you here? Let’s chat.”

Again, there was no response.

“Is he here? Are you him in disguise?”

From above Berbahaya, the chamber's ceiling replied with two hollow taps, as though a piece of timber was being rapped against the roof.

Headquarters for the Suchi branch of Channel 5 News, a newsroom in a tent.

All around the journalists were busying themselves narrating scripts for podcasts, vetoing headlines for print releases, collating compromising pictures, drawing funny comics, complaining over coffee. It could almost have been confused for an old-timey newsroom if not for those wearing medieval armour or controlling levitating quills.

One constant that hadn’t changed in the year 2050 was the exhaustion of the crunch, the staff grouchily yawning after an all-nighter. Since yesterday’s blood mural prank, The Channel 5 team had been working flat-out. First, they’d covered that event on its own; later, they’d transitioned to investigating how the attack might fit within the larger scheme of The Company’s seizure of multiple Togavian cities. The upper echelon of their news organisation was scrambling to connect the dots, checking whether the supposedly stolen item that’d motivated the city seizures, assuming an item existed, had been snatched by Karnon during the attack on The Trading Post or during the other myriad of pranks he’d pulled on The Company elsewhere in Saana. The God’s prolific, globe-trotting tendencies had produced hundreds of locations of interest. Consequently, it wasn’t Channel 5’s Suchi branch alone investigating the issue but also their sibling branches in other Zones.

The local investigations had uncovered no definitive leads. The Company, as always, refused to communicate, making no official statements on events inside The Trading Post preceding the blood mural. Any NPC witnesses that might’ve been bribed had been atomised in the sound explosion.

For now, Suchi's team was winding to a close for the day. The answers that could be rushed had been rushed, and the slow-burners would have to wait for tomorrow after everyone had gotten adequate rest to recharge their wits and curiosity.

London Tremor had finished his task of interviewing Villagers who'd observed the Trading Post incident from outside. Now, he was catching up on ongoings at the New Suchi Arena with recordings of HF’s latest matches in its mini-tournaments. Despite London being done with his work and his eagerness to go the arena in person, he didn’t dare request a dismissal from his manager.

He had reasons to avoid Oliver.

Before Karnon's prank, London Tremor had filed an anonymous complaint with Channel 5's HR about Oliver misusing departmental resources by making everyone patrol The Slums for his asinine pig hunt. Whether there’d been consequences for this, London didn’t know. He’d had a foreboding feeling that his manager might use his sleuthing skills to identify him as the complainant and punish him. It seemed, however, the complaint might’ve been pushed aside during the frantic investigation for the unfolding situation in Togavi. Oliver had exhibited no signs of being reprimanded. In fact, their new manager had been in an unusually companionable mood, offering everyone on the team assistance to pump out half a week’s worth of articles so they could take an extended rest after their all-nighter.

London's Grey Wolf Scotia suddenly growling and snarling, he glanced up to catch said manager approaching.

He shut off his match footage. “Sir?”

“The little lad from London!" Oliver greeted. "Your turn. Let's see if we can recycle the garbage you’ve been collecting into news. Summaries, reports, rumours – give me your most scandalous."

"I had a weird con—"

"Not Karnon's stupid prank," Oliver interrupted. "Your adventures at the stadium. What's going on there?"

The intern hesitated a moment. Then, conceding, he summoned several sheets of blank paper, ink, and quills. These items coordinated to transcribe a draft for his article on Suchi’s duelling scene at a page every ten or so seconds, Oliver catching them and skim-reading.

The article was structured like a less drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson account. London Tremor's personal struggle learning how to duel was interlaced with the oddball incidents of The Slums: the feuds between the clashing Village personalities, the sinuous road through the Empire’s quirky events leading up to The Company’s recruitment tournament, and the disruption caused by the intrusion of a stadium with an unidentifiable function. Pervading his prose was the romance of youth engaged in a fierce struggle of wills, the sweaty and bloody sentiment of the arena.

London Tremor carefully examined Oliver’s reaction. The senior journalist sifted through the pages with the hurried pace of the veteran who, even when skimming, retained a grasp on the key points along with their important developments. Steadily, his pace began to hasten, a shift one might confuse as arising from a burst of increased interest if not for an accompanying drooping of the eyelids. The final judgement was solidifying: juvenile, insipid, masturbatory, the type of self-infatuated shlock one would expect from a mere intern, a waste of anyone’s attention.

“Is something…wrong?” asked London Tremor, suppressing an impulse to smile.

Other interns might’ve been disheartened to receive this dismissive appraisal from such an accomplished industry senior. But a negative reaction had been the plan. London didn’t trust Oliver with this scoop, the guy having no morals. Thus, the handed-over piece was a dummy report, one with certain key details omitted, a certain key figure absent.

Oliver returned the report with a yawn. “What’s your real name, London lad?”

“Trevor…” the intern replied with fake caution…

“Trevor…London Tremor…London Trevor. Shakespeare's wincing in hell at this appalling wordplay. Trevor, from now on, you’re Clever Trevor. Clever Trevor, listen carefully, I want you to rest assured that I would never have stolen the story you’ve left out, the one that motivated you to snitch on me.”

London Tremor froze for real.

“Why would I never steal your work?” Oliver continued. “This isn’t a rhetorical question. Guess, Clever Trevor.”

“…journalistic…integrity?”

“Journalistic integrity,” Oliver made a sour face. “No, lad. Don’t cripple yourself adhering to worn-out aesthetics. I would have no fundamental problem stealing from you if I wanted to, but I never will want to. Why? Because my story is better than your story. So much better that any diversion from it created by your infantile scribblings would be a tragic loss, not just for me but for the whole universe. Does that sound unfair to you? Does it sound narcissistic?”

London Tremor resisted replying, 'Yes.'

“Yes." Oliver nodded. "Here's a lesson, Clever Trevor: to thrive in this field, you have to be an arsehole. You must be an egomaniac, ignoring and stepping with disdain over everyone else as you present the holy truth that you alone are able to uncover. Truth demands this level of dedication if it is to survive. Don’t fall for the lie about pens being mightier than swords. The sword is the pen; the sword is truth. The sword carves out the discursive regime by which truths are sorted, ranked, questioned, investigated, judged, selected, distributed, repeated, preserved, and, on the other end, which truths are NOT sorted, NOT ranked, NOT questioned, NOT investigated, NOT judged, NOT selected, NOT distributed, NOT repeated, NOT preserved. It is against this cruel sword that your truth must contend, against its soldiery of rival truths, and, if you will not even give your puny truth the minimum backing of your undivided, narcissistic attention, then what chance has it of victory? Are you getting my point?”

London Tremor nodded indecisively. He understood roughly, although the sword analogy seemed a misplaced projection from Oliver’s demotion to their branch after Alex Wong cut him in half using Worlddevourer during their interview. London’s own report on HF’s duelling innovations had no particular danger of being squashed by political censorship.

“Let's test your comprehension,” continued Oliver, “based on today's lesson in journalistic ethics, am I now holding a personal grudge against you for snitching on me?”

London, following the previous logic, reasoned that there should be no issue with him resorting to this tactic in the pursuit of his holy truth. “…No?”

Oliver winked as though Clever Trevor had unlocked the final secret before becoming a professional. “Wrong. You almost compromised my brilliant story for your worthless one. Next time, I, your manager, am going to fire you. Never forget this. Here, in this den of talentless rejects, the one wielding the sword of truth is me. Watch your neck, lad."

London, Oliver moving on without a parting gesture, slumped back in his seat like a beheaded corpse, his wolf growling the unspoken frustration at this obnoxious bell-end of a manager.

Meanwhile, Oliver Spears—gaming journalist of the year 2049, unwilling branch manager—marched on in his solitary path of truth, the intern’s duelling write-up leaving no significant impression.

The Tyrant’s recruitment tournament? This was roughly on the same level of importance as The Tyrant’s zany outfits at celebrity galas and the favourite foods of The Tyrant’s tongue-tied offspring. Those who engaged sincerely with these were falling for The Tyrant’s performance, none of which was more than a gossipy diversion from his genuine identity: a deceptive warmonger, a scheming businessman, a megalomaniac who delighted in the subjection of hundreds of millions of players to his hypocritical perversions. Oliver had no interest in these trivial deceits.

In fact, he could barely maintain interest in Karnon turning—deservedly—The Tyrant’s minions into paint or the subsequent Togavian city-hostage situation.

Through the cover story of retrieving an item from Karnon, The Tyrant was truly claiming the Togavian cities to set up a trap and slay the region's mischievous protector, thereby conquering the game's first Starting Zone. This was the primary theory peddled by Oliver's inept industry peers, including the Channel 5 clowns who'd pinched his ousted position. Anyone who wasn’t a clueless rube would dismiss this nonsense outright.

For all The Tyrant’s public showboating, he exercised precise care never to telegraph his serious actions - as evidenced from today’s acquisition of The Empire, which’d gone down without public prelude or announcement, no one seeming to notice but Oliver. Secrecy was The Tyrant’s modus operandi. Per his username, Crusadingintheshadows, he always executed his real deeds with an assassin’s fastidious anonymity – the perpetrator adorning himself in layers of masks, like the Alex Wong mask, and manoeuvring indirectly through shadowy networks of agents.

If The Tyrant were truly plotting to kill a God, there wouldn’t be this blazing spotlight illuminating the crime scene. His target would be kept in the dark of ignorance, confusion, and distraction. They would not even be considering the possibility, fooled into a state of complacency by false offers of alliance, by attacks against their own enemies. Any noise ever made by The Tyrant functioned purely to hide the sound of his true approach, whose only audible footstep would be the very last, the step taken before his fingers wrapped around YOUR mouth to muffle the grunt from the plunging dagger.

Therefore, the ability of the entire world to envision his desire to slay Karnon self-eliminated this possibility. Whatever deed was going down, it’d be happening elsewhere – it might have already happened.

But, most importantly for Oliver, wherever that elsewhere might be located, it wouldn’t be here, in Suchi. Nothing important ever stirred in this inconsequential dumpster heap. That's specifically why The Tyrant had abused his connections to banish Oliver here, as punishment for tempting the sword on live television. And Oliver, accepting his downfall as one accepts a terminal disease, wouldn’t be humiliating himself by pretending this wasn’t his predicament. You would not be finding him participating earnestly in the global egg hunt to decipher The Tyrant’s latest spectacle. He refused to grant his enemy this satisfaction, the pleasure of watching him dredge up handfuls of fucking nothing from this desert of sand, clay, and small-time perverts.

Speaking of perverts…

Oliver, stopping at the centre of the newsroom, cleared his throat, collecting the attention of his haggard-faced underlings eager to log off. “This would have been when your former manager praised your hard work.” He paused. “So I’ll be giving you all that promised break. You’ll have the opportunity to log-off, run a bubble bath, make love to your wives and husbands, walk the dog, eat a hearty meal, catch up on missed shows. I want you to pick whichever two or three of these you do wisely before logging back on in 2 hours and 18 minutes, when Channel 5’s Pighunting Enthusiasts Club reconvenes."

A tide of dismay washed throughout the listeners, the staff groaning, swearing, sighing.

“I’ve almost hit the playtime quota.” A quick-witted fellow tried his luck.

Oliver, who’d been tabulating hours, shook his head.

The same fellow’s countenance crumbled. “But we’re exhausted, Oliver…you promised us a break…please, Oliver…please…”

“You will be having a break,” Oliver countered in all sincerity. “For the next few days, you will all have a break from being low-life, gossip-mongering scum as you redeem yourselves through the noble journalistic pursuit of a pig. Don’t worry, everybody. Boss Ronson called me for a chat.” He flicked a snide glare at Clever Trevor. “And he approved everything. This is now our branch’s sole priority. We’re in this together, as a team.”

The whiner began to weep uncontrollably.

Oliver was unmoved by the waterworks. His heart had been soaring on the thought that tonight would be the night, the night when his five severed orphan hands would get their justice, when the exposé on Suchi’s sadistic saviour would reach its exciting climax.

The conditions were prime. El Salvador, after getting his little sandcastle commandeered by The Tyrant, would be fuming. With his blood pressure skyrocketing, the poor man would be in desperate need of a firm massage to release the excess tension or, failing that, a firm preteen to mutilate and eat. And you couldn’t ask for a more optimal time to whip out The Hog, tonight marking the start of The Empire’s monthly masquerade festival. The Slums would be flooded with hundreds of thousands of costumed players out to watch their friends’ trite performances. Through the noisy throng, who would notice one pervert in a pig mask? Better still, this festival dragged out across timezones, moving from ‘Kingdom’ to ‘Kingdom’, extending for dozens of hours. If they were lucky, there’d be a whole spree in store, Ramiro losing himself in a sustained, tantric, snorting, oinking, orgiastic buffet. And just as he was working himself up to the final climactic squeal, his eyes rolling back into his swinish skull, that’s when Oliver Spears would pop out and slap the fork from his stunned grip, catching the sicko red-handed and red-mouthed.

The stakes were high, and the steaks were raw, just as Oliver preferred them…

Tonight would be the night!

It might also be the night for a spot of petty vengeance. Although less definite, Oliver sensed this cannibal controversy could be spun back upon the greatest pervert of them all, the one who—not yet known to the public—had recently grabbed ownership of this degenerate hellhole. If The Tyrant'd had the ability, then why hadn't he moved faster to clean up the pigsty of Suchi? Had he been condoning the cannibalism of street orphans all this time? For how long had he been in cahoots with orphan eaters? Can we estimate, based on the objective data, when he last dined on a sweet orphan himself?

An intern raised her hand. “My ice yoga class runs ten minutes later than that.”

Oliver Spears—2049’s journalist of the year, demoted manager of these useless hacks—shrugged. “Ten extra minutes to freshen up for the pig hunt? Sure, lass, it’s yours. Spoil yourself.”

That night. The Kingdom of South-East Asia and Oceania. The Soiree in The Slums, a sweltering, upbeat festival evening.

The Soiree had been unaffected by the change in leadership except for Queen Suhita cancelling her appearance at a ball.

Throughout the labyrinth of crammed streets, groups of masked players were staggering from show to show. Some Villages had invested several days to build immaculate costumes of rare materials; others rushed theirs from paper last minute. Performers were going wild everywhere - symphonies sang from platforms over stalls, actors dramatised in pop-up theatres, moose-step jazz fusion bands moo-bloop-bopped in dinky bars, clowns juggled amongst the pickpockets, acrobats plummeted from high-wires into the excited crowd. As with previous community events, there was plenty of crossover for Villagers dedicated to non-performing hobbies, craftsmen selling custom outfits, food, and drugs, duellists scuffling in a quirky superhero versus supervillain tournament.

As long as one didn't squint much closer than that, The Soiree in The Slums would be a fun, splendid occasion for everybody involved.

In one of many streets, in one of many crowds, Team Friendship Forever had gathered. All of them had donned their democratically-voted-upon purple-gold spandex outfits with TFF emblazoned on the chest - all except Henry, who’d dressed more normally for the first proper date of his life.