The figure floating atop Hammertal Canyon so little resembled Cunegonde that Natsuko's first thought was that Kane was seeing his former teammate in them as some kind of grief-processing. But the longer Natsuko looked, the more she realized he was right. Despite the outfit change and her hair going from dirty blonde ringlets to sweeping platinum blonde waves, there was something undeniably Cunegonde-esq in the figure and in the way they looked down on the landscape with a disdain ever-ready to break into an ingratiating smile. A disdain aware of its own ugliness.

Natsuko grasped Kane’s arm and backed away. As much as she loved the thrill of a fight, Cunegonde was one rank ahead of her and the reason was sure to be extreme, artificial buffing from the Yishang. It wasn’t lost on her that eight Heroes were promised a place in the Yishang’s new world and the one who turned them down was sitting at #9. Unfortunately, Cunegonde picked then to turn her head towards the open hill leading towards the canyon and her disdainful frown morphed into a patronizing grin.

Natusko blinked and in the next instant Cunegonde was right beside her. She swung her bottle out of instinct and Cunegonde held up a single dainty hand and stopped it instantly.

“Why hello there, Natsuko. How nice to see you!” Cunegonde said.

Natsuko drew her bottle back and feigned a swing which turned into a kick at the last second. Cunegonde skipped backwards, hands clasped behind her back as though performing ballet.

“And Kane too! How are you, sweetie?”

Kane furrowed his brows. “I’m fine…”

“Fine? That’s good! I’m doing fine myself, thanks for asking. Even the day itself feels very fine. No doubt why you two are out for a stroll?” Cunegonde said with a wink.

Kane frowned. He liked Cunegonde, but he couldn’t shake the feeling something was strange about her today. It wasn’t that she was an enemy. That much he knew. What bothered him was something deeper and stranger.

“What do you want?” Natsuko said, fists curled around her bottle.

Cunegonde yawned. “I want to kill my boredom. Zhidao has us sitting on our asses and I thought I might pop down and check out the stage I’ll be performing on.”

Jump-started by adrenaline, Natsuko’s mind fixated on the mention of Zhidao. She already knew the Yishang were meddling with things, but Cunegonde was flirting with the subject like a piece of gossip.

“Pop down? Selenia is pretty far from here,” Natsuko said.

She waited until Cunegonde opened her mouth to answer and lunged forward. Though the Yishang had boosted Cunegonde's stats, the violence of Natsuko’s movement caught her off-guard. Her surprised expression filled Natsuko’s vision until suddenly she was swinging at air and Kane was tossed forward into Cunegonde who caught him in her arms and set him back up. From this Natsuko learned two things: One, Cunegonde had a new move-set which included an upgraded version of her own Swap that allowed her to make two other people switch places. Two, by the fact that Kane hadn’t bowled Cunegonde over, her Force stat was massively inflated.

Cunegonde pouted and pushed Kane off. “That was very rude! Did you want an answer or not?”

“You teleported, didn’t you?” Natsuko asked.

“Hmph. Did I? I don’t recall,” she said, but her eyes glanced elsewhere.

Cunegonde had teleported here, and while a new moveset and inflated stats could simply be Yishang meddling as usual, she knew of only one case where a Hero possessed the ability to teleport anywhere in Po-Lin at will.

“They made you a Xian, did they?” Natsuko said.

Cunegonde’s eyes again betrayed her, this time by lapsing into surprise for a brief second before relaxing back into carefree amusement. Her lips parted in preparation of more taunting banter, but she changed her mind at the last second and chuckled instead.

“All the time I’ve known you, you've been nothing but a dull drunkard raised out of oblivion by the Yishang’s favoritism. Now you can suddenly spot a Xian class. Were the past two years just an act? If so, I applaud you thinking this many steps ahead,” Cunegonde said.

Natsuko’s mind went back to all the times Cunegonde had fawned over and complimented her and her team. She had always known the woman to be a shameless sycophant, but this made it no less jarring to witness Cunegonde’s true thoughts out in the open.

“But, to answer your question, yes, I am a Xian now,” Cunegonde said.

It was subtle, but there was a sneering pride with which she answered this question, as though relishing being able to tell Natsuko to her face that she was superior. Natsuko’s gaze shifted to Kane who was watching the conversation with a growing frown. Even if Cunegonde was no different than she’d always been, Natsuko felt guilty putting that ugliness on display for Kane. Her goal that afternoon had been to show him the beautiful side of Po-Lin.

“Why not kill us then? You’re more powerful, clearly. It’d save you trouble in the final battle,” Natsuko asked.

Cunegonde raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Oh? What’s that? You’re trying to pry information from me? That’s cute, Natsuko, but not subtle enough.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Natsuko shrugged. “Answer or don’t, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“Oh, my love, I am sure it doesn’t matter. Hence why there’s no reason for me to answer. Unless, of course, you want to tell me all about how it really does matter. If you beg very prettily I might deign to answer.”

“Please, Cunegonde. Please answer my question,” Natsuko said, her voice expunged of its usual gruffness.

Cunegonde blinked, unsure if she had heard correctly, then she burst out laughing. “Oh wow, I didn’t think you really would! One surprise after another today from you."

It took every ounce of Natsuko’s willpower to keep a blush off her face. But her pride meant nothing. Coaxing information out of Cunegonde meant everything. If all Cunegonde did was laugh at her, Natsuko lost nothing but her dignity, but if Cunegonde kept her promise and answered, there was a chance she gave up something critical without realizing it. Natsuko stared at her, waiting to see whether she would make good.

“Hmm… I don’t know, that was pretty unimpressive. I think you can do better than that,” Cunegonde said. “For starters, why don’t you get on your hands and knees and put your forehead to the ground.”

Natsuko choked. That was a step too far. Aside from humiliating, it also left her open to a cheap kill

“You’ll kill me,” Natsuko said.

“Kill you! Oh, my dear, dear Natsuko, I could do that right now. I don’t think you quite understand what the Yishang has done for me,” Cunegonde replied.

To demonstrate, she turned towards Hammertal Canyon. The sunset cast the canyon’s hammer-shaped peak, in a deep ochre. Towards it, Cunegonde held out a single hand and the air quivered with an eardrum-trembling snap as the canyon cliff exploded, its shards racing out to the Western ocean. The empty space created by the cliff’s absence stretched to the sea. This, Natsuko realized, was the ability Hemiola had used against her, but on a scale hundreds if not thousands of times larger.

Cunegonde turned back to her, smirk plastered on her face. “And do you know what the best part is? That mountain? It’s gone. The damage I do doesn’t repair overnight like most things. Isn’t that incredible? So believe me when I say, if I wanted to kill you and my dear little Kane here, I would’ve done so already. Now, why don’t you get down on your hands and knees?”

In the wake of the world-shaking explosion, Natsuko barely remembered to note Cunegonde’s ability to inflict permanent damage. But even though she had, she could think of no way to counter or exploit it. She was beginning to wonder whether her information-gathering was accomplishing anything besides confirming how badly the Yishang’s newly-minted Xians outclassed anything their rebellion could put up against them.

With no other option, Natsuko knelt down and pressed her forehead into the dirt. Cunegonde’s foot ground against the back of Natsuko’s head.

“Oh Gods, you really did it! Ahaha, that’s hilarious! What an obedient little doggy. Just like Kane here,” Cunegonde said, giggling. “Now, say you’ll do anything to hear my divine voice answer your silly little question.”

Natsuko bit down on the inside of her cheek until she felt blood gush around her teeth. “I’ll do anything to hear your divine voice answer my silly little question, Cunegonde.”

“Excellent! Excellent! I feel like this is so much more natural for you than running around pretending to be a Top-Tier Hero. There’s no way I could convince the Yishang, but if it were up to me, I'd have them take you with us so you could be my little maid. But, alas…”

Natsuko said nothing, waiting for Cuneonde to answer.

“Oh, pooh! I was hoping you would at least burst into tears of shame. But, oh well. I have one last thing for you before I tell you why we haven’t attacked and why I’m not allowed to kill you yet. All you have to do is raise your right hand up behind you.”

Natsuko complied, awkwardly pulling her right arm up above her. She felt Cunegonde take it in her gentle grasp and splay out her fingers like they were a stack of papers.

“H-Hey, what are you doing?” she heard Kane asked.

A moment later Natsuko felt an icy sensation at the base of her index finger that blossomed into an agonizing pain like she had dipped it in boiling oil. She screamed in pain. Cunegonde’s foot lifted from her head and Natsuko was able to lift her head and look at her hand. Where her index finger had been there was nothing but a bloody stump.

Cunegonde cradled the severed finger with both hands. “Aw, what an adorable manicure too. I love the shade of red. So cute!”

Blinking back tears of pain, Natsuko glared up at Cunegonde, prompting even more laughter from the Xian.

“Oh, and I’m still not going to answer your questions. You know why? Because I think it’s funnier that you had your finger chopped off for nothing."

The next thing Natsuko knew, her ears were filled with the chunking sound of a forced dimension-jump. A panting, wild-eyed Kane stood with an FDJ rod clasped in his hands over a flashing polygon in Cunegonde’s color palette. The ensuing relief was almost enough to wipe away the pain of her lost finger.

“Are you okay?” Kane asked.

Natsuko moaned and her throat closed around her words, but eventually she croaked, “no,” and gestured in the direction of Vermögenburgh with her left hand clutched over her bleeding right. They began to move in that direction when they heard Cunegonde’s laughter behind them.

“Goodness, Kane, when did you grow such a large pair?” Cunegonde said.

An icy fear ran through Natsuko’s mind as she turned to find Cunegonde standing there in the flesh.

“I guess you weren’t supposed to find out you can’t dimension-jump us yet. Oh well! Not like knowing that helps you. Although your attempt was quite uncomfortable. I’m not allowed to kill you yet, but acting this naughty deserves some kind of punishment. Maybe I’ll take your whole hand.”

Terror hijacked the part of Natsuko’s brain telling her to collect more intel and she bolted for the forest while Cunegonde gleefully floated after her. Natsu considered turning on Black Fire, which at least would be difficult and risky for Cunegonde to teleport to, but at the last second realized this would leave Kane at her mercy. Grinding her teeth to distract herself from the pain of her severed finger, Natsu whirled on Cunegonde and fired off Megaton point-blank in her face.