Elsewhere in The Slums, a market stall with racks of hand-sewn costumes.
A customer was browsing the wares while chatting with the ten-year-old tailor who ran the stall.
“Your grandfather?” remarked the customer. “A family tradition, then.”
“Yep! Gifted me his knowledge and his fingers.” The tailor flaunted her dexterous hands pridefully – customers usually assumed from her age that she was merely working the counter, but the costumes had been designed, cut, and sewn by herself.
She thrust one of these delicate fingers at the customer’s weird mask. “What kind of monster’s that, mister? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Would be strange if you had. It's a creature from my universe.”
“Wow! Offworlders have monsters, too? You guys don't act like it.”
“We have plenty. In ancient times, they roamed out in the open. Now, they’re craftier, they disguise themselves as humans.” The customer, stuffing his cigarillo between his teeth, picked up a mantis and orc costume and compared them with the detailed scrutiny of a theatre director. “This could work.”
“Which one?”
The customer dismissively re-racked the orc costume, before breaking into a playful smile. “All of them. Sell me everything, Master Seamstress.”
The young tailor went moon-eyed, sparkling gold coins showering down in her vision.
“Maybe,” continued the customer hesitatingly. “An order of this magnitude...it’s a sizeable chunk of the show budget…”
“6%!" the tailor shouted. "I can take 6% off! No, 8%!”
The customer paused to consider the offer, pretending that the transaction would ever be completed. “6%...that will do, but only if you can arrange them to be dropped off at the theatre. My Spatial Bracelet’s at capacity after doing the rounds.”
“I’ll bring them myself!” The young tailor immediately set upon packing her wares into crates and loading them onto a donkey.
“Calculate the total, would you. I’ll pay you n—"
“Nerin’s spear, no.” The tailor stretched out a hand in warning, then checked around them to ensure no one had overheard, before responding in a whisper. “Mister, those amounts, it’s not safe to be seen carrying them around.”
“My mistake.” The customer nodded, impressed by the tailor’s prudence. “Sorry, with this festive atmosphere, you forget the realities of this place.”
The Heroes Versus Villains tournament, the bracket stage of its duos competition underway.
The pink-painted imitation Borobudur, this holy Buddhist temple plagiarised from the real world, continued to be desecrated with the blood and organ offerings of slain competitors. Its bottom layers were presently taken by the noise and flux of clashing 3v3 teams. On the top platform hosting the 2v2s, the scene was calmer, most of the cacophony arising from the voices pouring in from the crowd slowly counting down.
“…8!”
“…7!”
Two duo teams awaited the match start on opposite sides of the platform.
A staredown was impossible, the vision of each other obstructed by the battleground between them, a conical pyramid consisting of three concentric, stacking platform layers. Each of these layers rose to the height of an adult, stretched wide enough for trading spear-blows but not arrows, and was interspersed with imitation-stone statues for coverage. Jutting from the pyramid’s centre peak was a large dome structure climbable with a boost from an ally.
On one side of this battleground, two Earthfriends dressed in demoniacal-looking Indonesian garb were silently assuming their positions, the taller of the pair moving with a falsely-disarming gait, the shorter with the remnants of a dance in their step. Against them were two Australian dudes in cheap, ready-made costumes bought to fulfil the tournaments’ entrance requirement, a Fighter as Spider-Man and a Crusader as Black Thumb from 2048’s Black Thumb.
“Strewth, the little fellas seem to be demanding an apology.” The Fighter commented on a contingent of South-East Asians in the crowd booing them for eliminating a regional team in the previous round. "Should we say sorry?"
"Why? We’d only have to repeat ourselves after this next brutal bashing.” The Crusader, grinning, tauntingly beat the shaft of his spear against his shield. “AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE!”
Their banter, amplified to the audience by the officiator recording, stirred up a mix of booing overridden by drunken Australians chanting back, ‘OI, OI, OI!’
“…1! FIGHT!”
The Crusader-Fighter duo rushed straight for the dome at the top of the pyramid. Many previous matches had begun with a race for this target since the dome—attested by piles of severed limbs lying around it—provided a defensible elevation point exploitable by whoever reached it first. In the Crusader and Fighter’s case, it was imperative they prevent their enemy claiming the dome before them - the Earthfriend duo had an advantage with their Class’s ranged spells. Stairways to the pyramid’s top could be accessed by circling around the structure’s base, but the faster route from their starting position was to clamber up the platform layers. This, the Australian pair proceeded to do, lifting themselves high upon the pick-me-up of cheers and boos.
Summitting the pyramid first, they discovered that their opponents hadn’t bothered with the race.
The taller Earthfriend—the only one visible—stood in the open below, on a statue near their starting position. The figure had a peculiarly weak yet confident posture, like a mouse that, after fleeing from a cat through the alleyways of a city, arrives in a dead-end, turns to face its hunter, and gives a taunting squeak as the rest of the pack descended on the deceived prey to consume it. Except, in this case, the Earthfriend was alone.
The Earthfriend raised a hand in salute towards the pair. A crackling ball of lightning in the palm, receiving a final Elemental Charge trickling down a fingertip, expanded.
The Crusader protected himself with a spellshield. The Fighter lifted a physical shield, a glow from a
The Fighter hit, snakes of electricity slithered down his muscles, tensing the fibres at their touch and locking them into place.
Due to the Earthfriend possessing evenly-distributed stats not focused on magic, the spell's inflicted damage was nothing lethal, nothing that couldn’t be healed by either the Crusader ally—once they’d mentally registered the attack, processed it, and reacted to it—or the Fighter himself using his Class’s
200 milliseconds, that was all the time the duo needed to recover.
Alas, an instant after the spell struck, from out of the soft triangle of flesh between the Fighter’s collarbone and shoulder-blade, the tip of a sword emerged.
Crouched beside him was the shorter Earthfriend, who’d snuck up behind him in Chameleon-Monkey form before dropping back to a human. They were pressing the hilt of a sword to his paralysed abdomen. The body of the weapon’s slender blade was hidden, having been sheathed into the Fighter’s torso, journeying in one clean stab—not a single bone nicked—through the skin of his unarmoured costume and his belly skin beneath, through his guts, up into his heart, and finally out through the soft triangle from which the tip now protruded.
The Earthfriend, having chosen an attack uncharacteristic of their Class, unsheathed their sword from the scabbard of the Fighter's torso.
The Fighter, his severed heart no longer able to push blood and oxygen through his arteries, crumpled into a pile of flaccid, dead limbs.
Assassinated.
The Crusader’s elimination followed soon after. While fleeing from the shorter Earthfriend who’d skewered his companion after they shapeshifted into a cheetah, a second cheetah swiped him unawares from the side. The sneaky beast’s lunging paw mutated into a gorilla hand and, clutching the Crusader by the throat, discus-tossed him over the stage’s upper platform, his body flying out of the designed boundaries and beyond. He bounced with a defeated thud off of a lower level of the fake temple.
An announcer declared victory, and the audience, already shouting after the opening elimination, went hog wild.
This had been the Earthfriend duo’s second bracket bout. In their first, they’d won easily by synchronising Chameleon Monkey
Many in the crowd immediately identified the duo as the favourites to win, swapping their fickle allegiances on the spot. The loudest, most fanatical support came from the Indonesian spectators, who felt avenged against their uncultured, unwashed Australian bullies. A few snoops were already scrambling to solve the mystery of their identity - since Indonesia’s best Earthfriends were already accounted for, the pair had to be either newcomers or smurfing Villager returnees.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
No one yet had suspected that the duo consisted of one extremely famous, popular duellist and The Cripple.
Henry reconvened with Rose by the side of the stage, offering the crook of his elbow like a gentleman as his gorilla form melted away. She locked her arm through his, and the two of them began to smugly descend the fake temple’s stairways, past a queue of competitors, towards the sea of oblivious spectators below.
-Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege, is this what they mean by the phrase ‘easy as stealing candy from a baby’?
-Henry Flower: No, my dear. Having actually stolen candy from a baby, I assure you those two noobs were infinitely easier.
-Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege, please do me the honour of identifying my countless errors.
Henry frowned.
-Henry Flower: No. As I said in the first round, I'm not going to ruin this already failing date by giving pedantic criticisms. Why do you keep insisting?
-Zhangmei33: That won't ruin anything. Helping to enlighten the youth with his teachings from the top...isn't this Cripple-gege’s secret love language?
-Henry Flower: Love language? Eww. No. You've missed the mark on that one.
-Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege, I'm Septic Rose, I never miss.
Henry, admitting that her social IQ was higher than his, reflected on whether him correcting the errant ways of the noobs arose from a hidden concern.
-Henry Flower: OK…at a superficial level, perhaps. But there’s a limit. No one expresses the deepest feelings so abstractly, not even me. In love or hate, the stronger the sentiment, the more we revert to the handsy gestures of apes.
In his experience, deeper still, people became like reptiles, spitting at him as if their saliva were venomous.
-Zhangmei33: But, Cripple-gege, I’ve seen how affectionately you critique…your friends.
In the moment of stuttering, Rose had switched away from what she’d spied over the months of stalking at his bookshop to the recent events of Henry hanging out with his schoolmates during arena practice.
-Henry Flower: I wouldn’t describe my practise regime as 'affectionate'. That's...complicated. In this place, it might just be less burdensome to interact with them as trainees instead of genuine friends.
Rose didn’t understand his point.
Henry didn’t explain. Her failing to relate to him was a positive sign, an indicator that her therapy had been returning her to the state of mental normalcy in which his difficulties in being intimate with both her and his schoolmates weren’t apparent at a glance.
Seizing her abruptly by the waist, he pulled Rose back from taking the next step. An instant later, an arrow zipped by in front of them and ricocheted off a statue - the projectile had been fired by one of the 3v3 teams battling around them. This petty gesture of protection sparked a bout of high-pitched screeching from the audience’s boy-love enthusiasts due to both of them being costumed as dudes.
At the base of the fake temple, Henry waved dismissively at the audience to calm their panties. The pair then veered off into a cordoned section for waiting competitors. He spotted no spies or assassins yet, but they would soon arrive, Rose flexing her talents more than he would have preferred. Several groups slid along the benches they were seated on to create space. Henry chose a spot beside an 8-foot-tall Godzilla, who was fixated on the matches and wouldn’t pester them with inquiries.
Up next was a Miracleworker-Fighter versus Earthfriend-Cutthroat bout. (From the post-Overdream perspective, Henry recognised another of Karnon’s clues, The Trickster God rigging this tournament’s match ordering.)
He feigned not to be studying the bout carefully.
Meanwhile beside him, Rose was sneaking nervous glances his way. Henry preventing her being shot by the arrow had reminded her of events two evenings ago, when he’d left her to get killed by the Doomreaver while saving the undeserving ugly $&#* alpha-pleb.
Summoning the confidence of the arena, she steeled her nerves. This was a decisive moment.
-Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege…about the Doomreaver incident…
-Henry Flower: If you’re trying to apologise for overreacting, I accept, forgiveness granted. It's water down the toilet.
By ‘overreacting’, he was referring to her assignment of her assassin guild members to chain kill Silver so the alpha-pleb couldn’t leave the spot where she’d logged off. Hilarious.
-Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege, I’m never going to feel remorse for euthanising a yapping pup! However, after reflecting these on matters…it occurred to me that Cripple-gege’s decision was the…optimal choice…the potential exposure of the alpha-pleb’s identity upon its revival a risk to the anonymity required for his return…this variable of danger to the mission outweighing the low-priority importance of a fan’s Tier-0 character…
-Henry Flower: Yeah, that was my logic.
Whatever romantic conclusion Rose had first drawn from being left to fend for herself was preposterous – they were in a videogame, their characters immortal, the annihilation of their own bodies bearing no significance. His worries about the assassinations against himself—and his enemy’s main motivation behind those attempts—stemmed from him carrying a boatload of Legendaries. Anyone who could snuff him without the deed being traced back to themselves stood to gain a monumental pay-out. In the absence of these extra consequences, the ‘death’ of his player character or whoever else’s was insubstantial to him.
Perhaps.
Rose, encouraged by the confirmation of his cold calculations, followed up with an anxious gulp of preparation.
-Zhangmei33: Cripple-gege, but what if…hypothetically....what if there was a Doomreaver…in real life?
-Henry Flower: A towering monster of guts popping up on Earth?
-Zhangmei33: Who…wh-who would you pick?
She glanced at him carefully, wishing that they weren’t wearing these costumes so she could read his expression. To her surprise, he replied within a second, not having to deliberate.
-Henry Flower: Want an ironic answer or the serious one?
When she didn’t reply, he gave her the ironic one.
-Henry Flower: For the sake of mankind, I’d have to leave you both to get squished while I run for the hills. Risking the loss of the world’s first Uberpatrician to save a stalker or a noob? Illogical. Hah!
While he laughed over the comms, his body was stationary, sounding and conveying no humour.
The mood-killing, lobotomised-cockroach-social-IQ answer invoked no laughter from Rose either. She gulped again.
-Zhangmei33: …the serious one?
-Henry Flower: In the event of a real-life Doomreaver, I would refuse to be distracted by the false conundrum presented and focus my energy on solving the bigger systematic issue of the invasion of colossal flesh monsters. Presumably, if there was one, then there's an alarming potential for more.
A moment of silence followed, Rose’s frustration and disappointment palpable at his continuing to give a ridiculous non-answer to a question that’d been so difficult for her to get out.
She sighed.
“Hah!” Henry laughed.
But, no, that’d been his god-honest answer. Just as he’d become accustomed to doing these years in Saana, he wouldn’t allow himself to be entrapped by the small picture of death before him - even in the real world. He would invest all his effort into identifying the deeper root of the problem setting up these false choices in which people who didn’t have to die died. He would hunt that root down with an evidence-based, targeted solution weighing the pros and cons of various actions. If the means were available, the calculus was right, and the root happened to be a mortal person, he might assassinate them.
The 8-foot tall Godzilla beside Henry leapt from its seat to cheer, the entire audience losing their minds. On stage, the Miracleworker, having successfully foiled a stealthed ambush from the Cutthroat and Earthfriend, was fending off the Cutthroat 1v1 while their Fighter partner was occupied by the enemy Earthfriend. This match-up favoured the assassin over the healer. Nevertheless, through a surprising demonstration of skill, the Miracleworker was not only keeping their assailant at bay but weaving heals for their ally between parries, blocks, and ducks.
The heroic outplay dragged on impossibly long, and increasingly more spectators began to belt out encouragements. They burst their lungs with the hopes of producing enough combined physical sound-force to knock the next thrust off-target, and the next, and the next.
Henry, in the spirit of resistance, of not giving up on romance yet, took a calming breath and stared at the match and his problem, attempting to admire the fight like everyone else - not as The Tyrant, not as The Cripple either, but as a teenager on a typical awkward date.
Instantly, he was punished for this decision by a wave of nausea. Daggers twisted through his intestines, his heart raced against a creepy chill spreading through his limbs, the colours of the fight turned luridly sharp and bright, the chatter and praise around him distorted into the clangour of metal. Beads of sweat began to pour down the interior of his costume.
Still, he endured, he observed, he enjoyed.
This simple task of spectating a couple players scrapping for his own amusement…it was harder than one should expect for the old Cripple.
For the crowd and competitors around him, these fights were merely a means to test themselves, to impress comrades, to get recruited into a prestigious guild. Similar motivations had once also applied to Henry in a prior life. However, the significance of the arena, of the constituent actions that this institute was built upon, had been transformed for him by the years intervening between his beginnings and now. He’d been shown the extra shades that could be conferred into an identical gesture by differing contexts, purposes, and outcomes.
Take, for example, the Cutthroat on stage stabbing away with his dagger. Here in the arena, a dagger thrust meant the last critical chunk of health removed, the obtainment of victory, the incitement of awe and anger from the spectators, the demonstration of a new technique, the proof of an arduous regime of training: glory and defeat. In other areas, though, that very same action, the muscular movement of pushing a dagger into the meat of somebody, could mean the collapse of a key troop formation, the shift in the tide of battle, the end of the decisive battle in the war, the downfall of an empire; elsewhere, it could be the assassination of a hated enemy or the assassination of a beloved ally; everywhere, it was the impartial obliteration of dreams and all the other complex universal beauties contained in both loved and hated minds before they ceased to be: life and death.
The reasons for which they stabbed people - therein lay a critical divide between Henry and these other duellists. All carried inside of themselves a mass of the prior dagger thrusts they’d received and administered. His mass differed, however, in the composition of what its thrusts signified. While the flexion and extension of muscles involved in the stabbing motion might appear indistinguishable, the memories stored in his muscle fibres and recalled by every command to thrust again were not the same.
The Cripple had fallen out of touch with these kids.
The crowd around Henry broke into applause at the conclusion of the bout on stage. The Cutthroat who’d been failing to hit the slippery Miracleworker conceded when his Earthfriend partner was eliminated by a spear through the skull.
Henry fought against a rising nausea and joined himself and his memories of tens of thousands of spear-impalements to the spectators clapping along, appreciating this 2s match as merely a fun contest between the next generation of skilled youths.
He clapped, and he clapped, and he clapped.
He took a breath to rest.
Then, with an alternatively-angled stab of resistance, he pivoted back to Rose and gave her a soft shoulder punch, striking at the question behind her childish Doomreaver hypothetical.
-Henry Flower: I'm sorry. It's a non-answer, but the serious truth is a non-answer. Honestly, I have no strong feelings on the matter – the time hasn’t been available to acquire them. Everyone tends to focus on its lead-up because it’s more complicated, interesting, and communicable. Me, I don’t believe love begins until the moment it’s acknowledged openly and both parties are striving together towards their shared desire, in the naked, untalkative way that apes do. Love's like...a duel. Everything beforehand is important, often the outcome is determined in this phase, but you’re not duelling until you’re approaching each other with your weapons drawn. The duel enters existence only when the duel begins. Should its start be cancelled, your opponent research, your advantages and the tools you’ve amassed in preparation, these evaporate into nothing.
-Zhangmei33: And the duellist with the advantage loses all the time.
"Mhm," Henry grunted out loud, staring in puzzlement at the Cutthroat descending from the arena in defeat.
The two teenagers left the point there, each lost somewhat in their own romantic blockades. While it may have seemed a bleak note to pause on, since they were both keen duellists habituated to rolling with unpredicted defeats and victories alike, the thought contained a vital glimmer of hope. Sometimes, the worrying uncertainty of life applied even to one’s expected failures.
Rose perked up first, dropping unsubtle suggestions for Henry to join her in tandem assassinations after he'd finished presenting the supreme martial art. He warned her not to push her luck.
In the next round, Rose made an unfortunate blunder while showboating to impress him, tripping on an out-of-place boot and getting clipped by an axe in the face. Although they still won, a gash had been opened up in her mask, through which a couple key figures in the audience managed to recognise her, pushing the two of them further towards the centre of the tricky web being woven in the background.