“Back, scoundrel!”

Daisy slashed forward with her new FDJ rod. Although… she wasn’t supposed to slash, was she? With the rods it was more like a stabbing motion than the swing with Natsuko’s bottle.

“Have at thee!”

She stabbed again, this time connecting cleanly with the air she was locked in a duel with. A whole platoon of air soldiers were coming at her, and with little pirouettes and twirls she dispatched all of them. She had summoned Peng to watch her and the stone bird seemed thoroughly impressed despite its expression being frozen in a gargoyle stare. She curtsied for him.

“Thank you, thank you. You’re too kind, Peng.”

The two were taking a break from flying (not that Peng needed one). They were on the muddy shore of a brackish marsh on the northern end of Cascadia Bay, across which she could see the swooping balconies, terraces, and steeples of La Ville Royal. Cascadia was the most elegant and refined of all the regions, in her opinion. Deco Imperia was tacky by comparison.

Ugh! It was driving her up the wall that no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on preparing for the Final Battle at the End of the World (proper noun), she just couldn’t. On the contrary, the closer it got, the sillier and more frivolous her mind became. Instead of talking about Very Serious Matters like Sofiane, she was thinking more and more about the regions she wanted to live in when all of this was over and what she would wear and eat and how she would pass the time.

She was fitting her archetype to a tee except, for once, it wasn’t a performance. She really did just want to daydream about being a silly socialite and lounging around in a pink velvet robe and drinking Cascadian champagne at ten in the morning and doing nothing more serious than chit-chat with a friend about something completely pointless that both of them treated as the most important thing in the world.

Daisy sighed. “Peng, do you want to hear me talk about hair care routines?”

Peng didn’t respond.

“No? Rats!”

Sick of practicing with her FDJ rod, Daisy walked up the marsh until it turned into dry, cool grass and flopped onto her back. Really, she ought to be flying non-stop to Selenia to find Yuna and Kane as soon as possible. Sofiane and Shuixing were working their heinies off. The fact that Daisy couldn’t even manage a long-haul flight was pathetic. Rationally, it was tantamount to sabotaging their efforts, since every second she was gone was a second she wasn’t protecting Vermögenburgh.

Now would’ve been a great time for Bad Daisy to come out. Ruthless, conniving, self-centered Daisy could’ve even plotted to assassinate some of the more dangerous Heroes while she was there. Jumping Boulanger, Ailing, and Koyon ahead of the battle would be a complete coup. But she just couldn’t. Free from the pressure of keeping her rank up for the first time in… well, ever, the only thing she wanted to be was silly.

She picked up some blades of the long grass she was lying in and made braids with them as she watched big, fluffy clouds roll through the sky. One of them kinda looked like a wine bottle which made her think of Natsuko again.

Wait… suppose her frivolous impulses were just as strong as her drive to compete. What would that feel like? Rather than the stick of not falling behind, maybe the kick in the butt she needed was the promise of fun. If she told Sofiane that he’d probably laugh, but she really felt there was something to that.

Daisy resolved with the solemnity of a formal oath that after she convinced Yuna and Kane to come back to Vermögenburgh with her, she would drag Natsuko, Shuixing, and Yuna along for a girls’ day against their will. All three of them would moan and complain and drag their feet and say they didn’t like to do girly stuff and that there was no time for it when the fate of the world hung in the balance, but Daisy didn’t care. There WOULD be a girls’ day and it WOULD be fun and she WOULD potentially ruin everything if she had to.

“There once was a girl from Imperia,

And her silliness rose to hysteria.

As her plan unfurled

She ended the world

For things of stupid criteria.”

She giggled at her poem, awkward rhymes and all. Okay, now she had to do it. If only because making Sofiane mad at her for screwing up his battle plans would be really funny.

With renewed reason to schlep all the way across Po-Lin and up to the moon on a three-day round trip, Daisy hopped back on Peng and the two took off for the space elevator.

She was back on Selenia by the afternoon after she left Vermögenburgh. Thanking Peng, she dissolved him into moon rock and staggered towards the rebuilt Capitol Building on jello legs, trying her best not to think about how she had to make that same journey again tomorrow. Daisy was hungry, she was tired, she wanted something to drink, and oh gods did she need somewhere to lay down that wasn’t on a stone bird’s back. Yuna and Kane would have to wait.

Her first stop back on Selenia, in the heart of the enemy, was the Buwan Cafe. It was nice going there by herself. She and all four of her teams had been attached at the hip, and she legitimately couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to a restaurant by herself. Eaten a meal by herself, yes, but not at a restaurant. There was something pleasant about the sheer empty space at the table she picked. One place was set for both sides of the booth and it was for Daisy, Daisy, Daisy.

“What’ll you have?” asked the waitress.

Daisy thought for a second then laughed awkwardly. “Golly, I don’t even know. Surprise me!”

The “surprise” was a dish of thin noodles with pork belly braised in a savory sauce. Clearly the Yishang had given up at this point because the official name of the dish was Space Noodles and Space Pig in Space Sauce. Despite the uninspired name it was quite good. She washed it down with Space Juice which (if she understood Shuixing’s explanation of that creepy little number realm) was activating a part of her numbers that identified the juice as undeniably having A Flavor which might be described as White.

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Dinner concluded, she sought out Yuna and Kane at their apartment. She knew they would be there because Yuna never did anything but read comics unless you dragged her out by her ankles and Kane never did anything until you gave him permission.

Daisy was half-right. Opening the cramped utility hallway door, she found Yuna lying on her side, eating chips and reading a comic with her back to the door and her hand scratching her ass. Kane, however, was nowhere in sight.

“Who the f— oh,” Yuna said, glancing behind her. When she saw it was Daisy she yawned and turned back to her comic.

Daisy put her hands on her hips. “Hi to you too, Yun-chan.”

Yuna grunted, too lazy to get mad at the nickname she hated. She turned Daisy being a pain in her ass into a literal physical sensation and dealt with it by scratching her butt again.

“Where’s Kane?” Daisy asked.

“I‘unno.”

If her chip bags and soda cans were instead lacy pillows and satin cushions, Yuna would’ve been the picture of languid elegance the way she was laid across them. Alas, they were crinkly trash she refused to pick up.

“Move, I’m gonna clean,” Daisy said, nudging Yuna with her foot.

Yuna swatted at her but eventually rolled over so Daisy could gather up all the garbage she was laying on and throw it in an aluminum bag. Once the floor space was cleared up Daisy huffed and sat down on Cunegonde’s old cot. Yuna didn’t look up once.

“Where’d Cunegonde go?” Daisy asked.

“I’unno.”

“Yeah you do. Cunegonde doesn’t do anything without announcing it to everyone. Especially if it’s something prestigious.”

Yuna rolled her eyes. “Blondie said the Yishang were calling her up to be some crazy immortal turbo-overpowered super-class or some fucking thing, I don’t know. I don’t care anymore. The world’s ending and I wanna finish this fucking comic first. It’s got twenty more volumes.”

“So Cunegonde was— wait, twenty volumes!?”

Daisy snatched the comic out of Yuna’s hands. There was no damn way the Yishang had actually written twenty volumes of a comic series purely for the consumption of Heroes who were supposed to go out and make them money. Sure enough, the comic Daisy held in her hands, despite being the size of a small book, had three pages of content, each of four panels, and told a short, parody version of a trashy, trapped-in-a-game story to symbolize what was supposed to be there without actually writing it out in its entirety. That reading it was a multi-hour activity was purely because the Yishang had designed it to be that.

“Yuna, this thing is three pages long. You’ve been staring at just this page for probably an hour,” Daisy said, dangling the comic between two fingers like a piece of used toilet paper.

“What!? Daisy that’s stupid, you— oh wait, what the fuck?”

In one moment, Yuna realized she’d spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours reading volumes of comic books that had three pages worth of actual story. Until Daisy pointed this out, that fact had been completely invisible to her.

“You dumbass!” Yuna grabbed Daisy by the shoulders and shook her hard enough to rattle her brain. “I was happy with that! I could’ve kept reading that fucking comic until the world ended and now you ruined it!”

Daisy, exhausted and brain dead from 36 hours of travel, could only respond with a see-sawing moan as her head bounced around from Yuna shaking her. This went on for almost a minute as Yuna released her frustrations on Daisy pointing out her barren comics.

“What am I supposed to do now, huh?” Yuna said, giving her one final shake.

Daisy felt dizzy and slumped to the floor, waiting for the world (well, the moon) to stop spinning. Her previous object of anger spent, Yuna punched her fist through the chrome wall of their apartment.

“You could— urp—” Daisy brought her fist to her mouth to keep the Space Noodles on the inside. “Come with me back to Vermögenburgh. We’re fighting the Yishang. For real this time. Shuixing’s got a secret way into their, like, special realm where they enchant you to believe three pages is a whole comic book. We’re gonna defeat them with… something.”

Yuna’s anger disappeared and she exhaled and sat down on the floor. “You can’t beat them.”

“The Yishang?”

“Yeah,” Yuna said. “You can’t. They always win.”

Daisy fixed her with as serious a look as she could. “Yeah we are.”

“No, you’re not,” Yuna said.

Yuna rolled her jaw, ready to explain her own fight against the Yishang and how they had pulled the rug from under her right when she was about to capture Shikijima and overthrow the Empress and that they had done so through means that flagrant cheating that, in the hands of gods, could only be described as “omnipotence.” Even when you broke free from their prescribed narratives, even if you fought dirty and exploited every loophole you could find, the Yishang always won. Always.

But before she could explain all that, Daisy hit her with. “Yeah-huh.”

Yuna pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, you can’t just say, “yeah-huh” and—”

“Yeah-huh,” Daisy said again. “We’re gonna do it. We’re gonna beat the Yishang.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yeah we are.”

They went back and forth for several minutes before Yuna finally capitulated when she realized Daisy was going to answer all of her logical critiques with, “no way, we’re totally gonna beat them.”

Yuna rubbed her temples. “Okay, look, this isn’t going anywhere. Clearly you believe the Yishang can be beaten. But I—”

Daisy grabbed Yuna’s hands and looked her dead in the eyes. “You’re coming with me.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Yeah-huh.”

“What!? It’s one thing to say, “yeah-huh” cuz you believe you can fight the Yishang. But you can’t physically make me go out that door and waste my time fighting the Yishang again. You are weaker than me. You cannot move me from this spot, so fuck off and leave me to my stupid, pointless, three-page comics, okay?”

It took Daisy saying “nuh-uh” a few more times before an irritated Yuna finally followed her out of the apartment to go find Kane so the three of them could go fight the gods.

Despite her, “I’unno,” Yuna did in fact know where Kane had gotten off to. Natsuko nuking every single Hero in Selenia into dust had led to accusations flying about who was or was not underpowered after losing 10% of their stats. This led to an enormous reshuffling of teams and in that reshuffle Kane ended up as the offensive Control Hero for Team Imperia. Yuna and Daisy caught him returning from an experience-grinding session with his team.

“Oh, hey guys!” Kane said, waving to them.

His teammates, Alice Imperia, Jouchi, and Yesui, seemed less than pleased at the sight of Yuna and Daisy. At first Daisy wondered whether they knew she was involved with Natsuko killing them, however, their animosity was vague and indirect. It was like the disguised animosity all Heroes at the top of the Use-Rankings had for one another was now out in the open instead of being masked by passive-aggressive politeness.

Alice sneered at them. “We have nothing to talk about with you two.”

Daisy ignored her and turned to her former teammate. “Kane, what are you doing, man?

“We’re preparing to fight Natsuko and the Entropic Axis,” Kane said, a look of fearless bravery plastered across his face. “They’re trying to destroy the world. If we don’t stop them, the entire universe will be plunged into chaotic darkness!”

“No, that’s dumb. Yun-chan and I are going to Vermögenburgh to fight the Yishang and you’re coming with us,” Daisy said.

“Oh okay,” Kane replied, following them.