Thinking something bad had happened to Pechorin, Natsuko checked her Use-Rankings chart. Sure enough, Pechorin was gone. That the rest of her friends were still there was a small comfort, but it didn’t dispel the grief blossoming into a tight pain in her chest. There was something she needed to do right away, so Natsuko threw on her regular clothes and barged into the hallway and banged on Ailing’s door.

“Open up, Ailing, we need to talk!”

She was about to bang on the door again when Ailing opened it wearing a peach-colored nightie half off her shoulder and a cat-like smile.

“Would you like to talk inside?”

“No, we can talk out here,” Natsuko said. “You told me not to look at my stats. Why?”

Ailing’s eyebrows flexed in sympathy. “Because you were driving yourself mad thinking about them, darling. We thought it was for the best.”

“We? Who is we?” Natsuko said, her hands balled into fists. “And how long have you noticed Pechorin was missing?”

Ailing reached out and placed a hand on Natsuko’s shoulder. “Just now, dear. This is news to me. I wasn’t checking my stats in my sleep. And as for “we,” this was one of the things Koyon and I came up with to help ease your anxiety.”

Natsuko’s hands unfurled themselves. “You and Koyon… But then why the insistence that I not see Daisy yesterday? Explain that.”

“You can go see her, I won’t stop you. I don’t think any of us could if you really wanted to go.”

Ailing stepped out from her room and walked around behind Natsuko, draping her arms over her teammate’s chest. She was aware of the soft warmth pressing into her from behind, and her intoxicatingly sweet perfume. Her teammate’s hands clasped in front of her like a seat belt locking. At her ear: a dulcet, goosebump-raising voice.

“If you decided not to go, Natsu… it’s because you didn’t want to go. Maybe there’s something you want to talk about. I’ve been so focused on your physical comfort, maybe I’ve been neglecting your emotional needs? Why don’t you come inside, let me be a set of welcoming ears for…” her voice dropped to a whisper, “you.”

Separated from that dreaming darkness by the gulf of waking consciousness, she realized it really had been just a nightmare. Wait, the Use-Number change!

“Oh, that’s odd…” Ailing said, her tone switching from sultry to confused. “You said there was a Hero who was force dimension-jumped, right? But the number is the same.”

Natsuko immediately checked. Not only was the total still 221, Pechorin was squarely at the bottom rank like he always was. She exhaled in relief.

“It was a nightmare…” Natsuko laughed. “Gods, it was just a nightmare!”

Ailing smiled. “Come inside and tell me about it, darling. Let’s help you calm down.”

As always, Natsuko’s teammate was able to draw her out of her circling thoughts and back down into her body. It was as though confessing to Ailing purged the anxiety and discomfort from her like exorcising an evil spirit. And as reward for surrendering herself to this exorcism, Ailing would help her feel good again. No one had ever made Natsuko feel this good before, and by comparison, her life prior to this was a purgatory she had endured on the road to heaven. After she went back to sleep, there were no more dark storms filling her head, only a blissful glow that turned the storm into a gentle spring shower.

The next morning, around the breakfast table, Boulanger made an announcement. “I think we have time for a small break from training.”

Natsuko choked on her coffee. “Are you doing a bit?”

He chuckled. “Natsu, you know I have no sense of humor. I’m serious. I think we’re far enough ahead of the other teams that the most effective thing we can do is give ourselves a little rest. Are you objecting?”

There was that look again from him. Not quite attraction, but intrigue at a challenge. Though Boulanger was rank #3, he still acted as though he was unconquerable, or perhaps that he was the real, albeit temporarily-disgraced, rank #1. Yesterday that attitude had been off-putting to Natsuko, but perhaps due to the strange glow she’d woken up with, she almost wanted to accept the challenge and see whether she could put him in his place. She shot him a smirk back.

“And what are our plans instead, O wise leader?” Natsuko said, fully aware that the team was named after her for a reason. Unequivocally the strongest Hero in Po-Lin, they were all effectively under Natsuko’s thumb. It was her team, not his.

“I’m considering this a free day. Do whatever your heart desires,” Boulanger replied. “Although, I was planning on exploring some craters. Care to join me?”

The offer wasn’t open for Ailing and Koyon and everyone knew it.

“Sure,” she said.

After breakfast, Natsuko switched into her questing gear and followed Boulanger out to the far ends of Selenia that they hadn’t bothered to explore yet because there weren’t any quests or major dungeons out that way. The only useful thing on the craterous dark side were a handful of mobs and some collectable chests, but the mobs weren’t efficient to farm and the chests only had lower level gear to sack for accessory experience and thus weren’t worth solving whatever puzzle they were locked behind. Strangely, the lack of objective made the exploring part more fun.

“No, seriously, why the change of heart?” Natsuko asked in mid-air as she leapt over a crater in low-G. Boulanger jumped after her on a slightly faster trajectory.

“Do I need a reason?” he asked, swiveling so that he came down feet first.

“I guess not. But when I do weird, out-of-characters things I usually wonder why,” she replied.

“Well—” Boulanger skidded to a halt, kicking up moon dust “—I started giving some thought to what might happen if things really did wind down. I’m not oblivious, Natsu. I can piece two and two together and figure out that’s what you and Ailing were talking about with your “girl talk.” I’m right, aren’t I?”

Oh, right. He was still on about that. Maybe because her usual defenses were down, but for some reason, she felt like telling him the truth. All of it. So she did, beginning with Sofiane’s weird dungeon and bringing him up through Hemiola’s prophecy. His reactions of surprise and confusion seemed stronger than usual, but maybe it was just rare to see Boulanger relaxed. The only time she saw something resembling his usual look of harsh judgment was when she mentioned wishing she could've helped Shuixing figure out a way to escape Po-Lin.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

When she was done explaining everything, Boulanger shut his eyes in consideration, then after a deep exhale, opened them. “No wonder you were so anxious and irritable all the time. But I don’t think you need to worry about any of that anymore. The Yishang know what they’re doing. Most likely what will happen is that the important Heroes will be brought over into one of their new worlds, since they’re sure bets with the Celestials.”

That’s true.

Natsuko blinked. “What’s true?”

“Do you mean in the philosophical sense?” Boulanger said, cocking an eyebrow.

“No, I mean— didn’t you say, “that’s true,” just now?”

“No… But forget that. What’s important right now— I mean, why I brought you out here is…”

And then the unthinkable happened, and by Natsuko’s presence alone, she made Boulanger blush. Unable to finish his sentence, he cleared his throat. Smug satisfaction sprouted as she claimed the victory of putting Boulanger in his place. There was something almost endearing about the total collapse of his adamantine confidence.

“Oh? What’s that, Balls? You brought me out here for something other than crater-jumping and stargazing?” Natsuko asked smugly.

Boulanger curled his fist and punched the ground, sending cubic tons of space dust and rock flying away from them. “Gods-dammit, Natsuko, I’ll just say it. I’m attracted to you. I want to date you.”

That was a lie.

“Wait, I’m sorry, that—”

—wasn’t Boulanger who said that again. But somehow, despite the words being crystal clear, she couldn’t make out the voice. ‘What do you mean a lie?’ she thought, trying to hold a conversation with the disembodied voice. But it didn’t answer. She was only left with a lingering sense that she ought to heed it.

“Boulanger, I—”

He took her hand in his, cold from the autumn winds—autumn winds in space, how improbably poetic—and squeezed it, gazing at her with wide, blue eyes.

“I won’t force you, but I think— no, I know we would be good together. Two of the top Heroes, the fiery paragon and her dark ember, think about it!”

Whether it was the overbearing come-on or the voice in her head, there was something about the way Boulanger was laying it on that didn’t sit right with her. It didn’t help that this was all eerily similar to the way Frederick had asked her out, almost down to the word-choice. Worse still, she saw herself falling for it had it not been for the voice putting her on guard.

“Let me think on it,” Natsuko said.

Boulanger tried to press even more insistently, but she didn’t give him the chance. Instead she elected to return to their headquarters early without him. She was hoping Koyon and Ailing had left to do their own things for the day because she wanted to be alone, but upon opening the door, she found not only her teammates, but a visitor in the form of a peach-and-white fox floating on a cloud.

“We are thinking about two teams, so it would be you four and—”

Zhidao stopped talking as Natsuko entered.

“O-Oh! Welcome back, darling. We thought you would still be out with Boulanger,” Ailing said.

“I came back early,” Natsuko replied. “What are we chatting about?”

Koyon cleared his throat. “Just some stuff coming up…”

Natsuko responded with a wide, fake grin. “Really? What stuff? How soon? You know I like to be in the loop about stuff.”

“We can talk about this another time,” Zhidao said.

“Oh, no, let’s talk about it now.”

Before Zhidao could fly away, Natsuko exploded forward with a blast of white fire and managed to catch his fluffy white tail inches before he escaped off the balcony, scorching their living room in the process.

Zhidao yelped. “Ow! Let me go you brute!”

“Start talking, or…”

She squeezed his tail in her fist, putting her Force stat to work. A shudder ran up the length of Zhidao’s spine.

Ailing stepped forward. “Natsuko, there’s really nothing to explain! This is just—”

“I’ll tell her,” Zhidao said. “If she let's go of my tail!”

Natsuko unclenched her fist and the furry tail dove for safety between Zhidao’s hind legs.

The Pengwu exhaled then put on a bright smile. “So, the Yishang is… well, they’re working on de-Misting another world, and they thought it might be a good idea to have some of our best be the first ones over there to sort of… set up a base camp. It would mean a fresh start stat-wise, but a whole new world to explore!”

Natsuko narrowed her eyes. “And what happens to Po-Lin?”

“Well, we have almost driven back the Entropic Axis here, so everyone would be able to live on happily in a freed world and—”

It was stupid of her, and she regretted it the moment it left her mouth, but she was already in a bad mood and restraint had never really been her thing.

“Don’t bullshit me. Hemiola told me how this all works. Po-Lin is getting wiped out, isn’t it? So everyone but the— how many did you say, two teams? Everyone besides them, they’re gone forever, aren’t they? Annihilated?”

The smile on Zhidao’s foxy mouth fell. “You are correct, Natsuko. So let’s dispense with the pretense and talk plainly: You make a good mascot and the Yishang would like to continue using you and your image. However, make no mistake, you are not so important that someone else can’t take your place. Your friends would be going if you are, so we hoped you would want to join them.”

Natsuko’s hands balled into a fist. “My friends? You’re talking about Ailing and the others?”

Zhidao nodded.

She could still hear the voice in her head as Boulanger confessed to her: ‘That was a lie.’ She wondered at the time why he would lie about wanting to be in a relationship with her, but now she had an inkling. But despite Boulanger's subterfuge, looking at Ailing, gazing into her soft, kind eyes, she saw the person who had helped her deal with her anxiety and stress. One of the only people that had listened to her when she needed an ear.

“Natsuko, please…” Ailing said, grasping her hand. “We didn’t mean to hide this, but we just… we didn’t know how you would respond! We want you to come with us to the new world. Please. If you stay here…”

“You’ll be eradicated,” Zhidao said in his child-like voice. “We made you the Top Hero, Natsuko, but you’re a Top Hero because of us. And while we’d like a return on our investment. If you say no, there’s always another team.”

Natsuko’s voice hitched as she tried to protest. There was no reason the Yishang couldn’t take everyone. Every single Hero and Non-Hero, all of whom had rich, internal worlds, and who had done nothing in their short existence but help the Yishang become richer. Now they were going to be abandoned. Tossed into the void. And worst of all, she was so terrified of that happening to her that the idea of selling everyone else out to survive wasn't off the table.

Natsuko swallowed. “I don’t— I…”

Ailing squeezed her hand. Koyon smiled reassuringly.

Zhidao cleared his throat. “We expect this latest bump in numbers to last about two weeks. After that, those teams who accept our invitation to the new world will be taken there. And those who want to remain—” his eyes flicked to Natsuko “—will remain. I’ll ask for your answer then.”