Natsuko wasn’t sure how she expected the battle to begin, but random FDJ bullets and arrows from the dark was not it. It was a humbling moment. Without being told what to do, she, Pechorin, and Sofiane hit the ground. The Non-Heroes around them did likewise, though a few found ranged weapons and returned fire into the darkness with bows, muskets, and slings.

If Pechorin’s re-summoning was anything to go by, she might not have had to worry about being force dimension-jumped. But she also had no desire to test that theory.

“We need to get inside the walls!” Sofiane said.

Natsuko popped up into a frog squat and ran crouched in the opposite direction. Pechorin wasted no time imitating her and Sofiane wasted just a little bit of time wondering why Natsuko did such a good frog impression before following behind. As they moved, the gunshots and whizzing arrows dimmed and they could stand without fear of being thrown through the ground.

“What the hell was that!? I know they have FDJ guns, but does the Yishang really want Heroes to use them?” Natusko said.

“There are probably Non-Heroes on their side too,” Pechorin said.

“Shit! How did I not think of that?” Sofiane said, ruffling his hair. “That’s not in our defense plan!”

Natsuko grinned maliciously and took over the duty of ruffling Sofiane’s hair. “Plans always go to shit, Puffball. Everyone knows that. Time to adapt.”

“How!? I’ve already sent everyone—”

Natsuko drew up her chest and bellowed as loud as she could. “Everyone with a gun, hit the deck and shoot in that direction! Everyone with a bow, stand behind something and fire in an arc! Treat the darkness as your enemy!”

“Natsu that’s— good… no, that’s good! Let’s do that! We’ll hold them until it’s light out since Vermögenburgh is a giant lantern right now,” Sofiane said.

Natsuko responded with a self-satisfied smirk which was immediately wiped off her face by a bullet whistling over their heads. Sofiane looked to where the bullet had come from and watched one catch a Non-Hero in the middle of nocking an arrow, turning them into spasming rectangles.

“Douse the fires! Get them out!” Sofiane yelled, scrambling to find the first bottle of liquid he could find. Pechorin and Natsuko moved to help him but he waved them off. “You two get inside the walls. We need you in reserve for when the Heroes show up. Pech especially.”

The two nodded and sprinted for the bridge.

The town square was only marginally less chaotic than the tent city. Half the Non-Heroes had found their rally point, but the other half either forgot, didn’t care, couldn’t find their weapon, or were stuck in traffic jams created by stuffing Vermögenburgh with more entities than it was ever built to contain. On top of this, Natsuko also spotted some Non-Heroes like Rose and Lawrence who claimed they were planning on staying neutral right up until the first gunshots filled the air and now were trying to force their way into an existing battle plan.

Natsuko couldn’t help laughing. “This is a total shitfest, dude.”

Pechorin nodded. “It was always going to be.”

“A shame I won’t have time to rub it in Puffball’s face.”

The two were left to interpret Sofiane’s sit-and-wait orders at their own discretion. Their original orders—that Natsuko was to intercept the Xians as far out as possible and Pechorin was to pick them off from a hiding spot—were now moot. The Yishang’s unexpected scheduling change had thrown everything out the window.

“You know what’s funny,” Natsuko said as she tugged Pechorin by the wrist towards the Mage’s College.

“What’s that?”

“The other Heroes are probably having some kinda party right now.”

Even the battle-based special events had festivities. It was like the Yishang were adding insult to injury by ruining the feast while the other Heroes were off having a grand old time, most of them expecting to live happily into eternity with the Entropic Axis officially beaten. A part of Natsu felt like they had gone out of their way to ruin her kiss with Pechorin specifically.

“Sure. But they don’t have roast cheesecake at their party,” Pechorin said.

She laughed despite the comment not being that funny. Everything felt funny when life became impossible to predict.

As she predicted, the Mage’s College was dark and nearly abandoned when they arrived. The only signs of life were a handful of Non-Heroes patrolling the hall and some on the roof sniping over the city walls. The muffled shouting and pops from FDJ guns in the distance made Natsu feel guilty, as though she were running from the fight, but she knew this was where she needed to be for the next phase.

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Natsuko and Pechorin were alone in the dormitories for around half an hour before Daisy and Kane arrived, but neither of them felt the desire to pick up where they had left off. Instead, it was like the state of mind they entered while fighting mobs was stretched out until there was a subtle but inescapable edge to the world that enforced the tense waiting. There was no room for anything but the coming fight.

“Hey howdy!” Daisy said, bursting through the doorway with Kane in tow. Her expression immediately turned into a pout. “Gosh dangit, I was trying to walk in on something!”

Pechorin raised an eyebrow. “On what, exactly?”

“Oh”—Daisy wiggled her eyebrows—“you know…”

Natsuko rubbed her temples in a show of annoyance, but it was more to hide her cheeks until they were less red.

“I don’t know, actually,” Kane said.

“If we ascend into a higher form of existence, I’ll explain,” Natsuko said.

Daisy’s upbeat mood seemed for a moment like it might prevail, but after the initial burst of enthusiasm, the gravity of what was happening outside brought everyone back down to Po-Lin. The sheer fact that every minute and every second pulled them closer and closer to a final battle, to their last moments on Po-Lin, stood in the way of any conviviality. Even happy-go-lucky Kane watching the distant flashes of gunshots in silence.

“If I had known that was the last meal I was going to have…” Daisy interrupted, her voice in a half-whisper. “I-I guess I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I just wish I could’ve had even more of it. A little more fun before everything…”

“There’s still time to bake a pie,” Pechorin said.

Daisy gave a small smile and playfully slapped him on the arm.

“I wasn’t joking,” he said. “There might be some ingredients left in the stocks, and the dormitories have a stove.”

“Why a pie?” Kane asked.

“It’s a long story,” Natsuko said.

Though it seemed ridiculous to her at first, the more Natsuko considered it, and the more she realized she might pop from bottled up energy, the more enticing baking a pie sounded. And then she thought of what she might do with a pie and that decided it.

“Let’s see what the kitchen has and we’ll go look for the rest,” she said.

The kitchen in the dormitory was surprisingly well-stocked. They wouldn’t be doing any anti-baking, but the flour and butter were enough to make a Yishang-formatted crust and there were sugar and spices aplenty. The only thing they needed was a pumpkin.

“Alright, Pech, you go bring us a pumpkin,” Natsuko said.

Daisy raised an eyebrow at that. “Uh…”

“You know the right kind,” she added.

Pechorin saluted and dashed off. Within a few minutes he returned with a pumpkin. Daisy asked to taste it but Natsuko waved her off, insisting not only could she not taste-test the pumpkin, but no one could have a slice until after the battle was over.

“Ugh! Fine, I’m already full right now anyway,” Daisy said with a pout.

After the pie was baked there was nothing left to do but watch the battle from their limited view inside the city walls. It was impossible to tell how the tides of battle were progressing. Natsuko popped outside to find someone to ask, but the only response she received was that no one else knew anything either. On one occasion, a passing Sibe-Lander tribesmen told her Sofiane had been killed, a fact proven false by a two second check of the Use-Rankings. The only thing she could gleam was that the opposing Heroes hadn’t shown up yet.

“They’re softening us by turning us against our own kind,” claimed the same Sibe-Lander who told her Sofiane was dead.

Somehow, this was more believable. The Use-Rankings had yet to change. Even still, people were being killed. If Natsuko watched long enough, she could see Non-Heroes along the city wall clipped by an FDJ projectile and thrown through the floor. One had the bright idea to leap before an arrow could hit them to prevent the ensuing dimension-jump, but the instantaneous high-speed launch downwards and its messy aftermath convinced others to take their chances with the dark abyss below the ground.

At some point after returning to the dormitories, Natsuko slipped into a fitful nap. She woke up with her head leaning against Pechorin’s shoulder and a line of drool connecting them.

She wiped her mouth. “Shit, sorry dude.”

Pechorin simply gestured outside to where the sky was turning a dull blue and the shapes of trees and distant mountains were pulling themselves out of the all-consuming darkness. Natsu couldn’t make out the opposing Non-Heroes, though there was movement amongst the trees across the moat along with the occasional flash of a gunshot. The shots were less frequent now, and the line of Non-Heroes along the wall noticeably thinner.

“Where are Daisy and Kane?” she asked, her voice scratchy.

“Out surveying the battle,” Pechorin said. “You might want to join them, but it’s wiser for me to stay here. At least until the big bads show up.”

“I’ll stay with you,” she said.

He shook his head. “You should be out there. We’ll need you nearer to the action when the Heroes come.”

As a compromise, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“This’ll probably be the last time we get to talk normally, huh?” she said.

“I don’t think we’ve ever talked normally.”

She chuckled. “Probably not. I love you, dumbass.”

He nodded broodingly.

“No! Don’t you dare just nod broodingly at that you bastard! You can say some shit like, ‘I love you, but we must fight this battle,’ but you’re not getting away with a gods-damned brooding nod!”

“I love you, but we must fight this battle,” Pechorin said, staring wistfully off at the battle raging in the early dawn.

She patted his cheek. “There ya go.”

Natsuko grabbed her bottle and, afraid she might get stuck if she turned around to look at him, went straight to the door and shut it behind her.