“Citizenship granted,” Empress Sadako announced with a wave of her hand.

“Wait, what?” Sofiane said.

The rest of the court seemed to have the same suspicions Sofiane had even though they were forbidden to say so, but Sofi could see a lot of teeth working the inside of lips to keep from saying anything.

“So, will we be tried as traitors now?” Shuixing asked.

“Huh? No, why would that be the case?” the Empress asked.

“Because we… um… we crossed borders, like Natsuko did.”

The Empress’s face adopted the third of its three emotions: First disdain, then shrewd placidity, and now genuine confusion. “Crimes are not tried ex post facto in Shikijima. You were foreigners when you illegally crossed our borders, and you gained citizenship afterwards, therefore you have not committed treason.”

“Do you have lèse-majesté laws?” Sofiane asked.

The Empress narrowed her eyes. “Yes, we do.”

“In that case, go fuck yourself Sadako, you stupid bitch.”

Empress Sadako rolled her eyes. “Tadahisa-san, please add treason by reason of lèse-majesté to her charges.”

One of the higher-ranking bureaucrats sitting closer to the Hibiscus Throne dipped a brush into an inkwell and added Sofiane’s latest transgression to the court record. While he was doing so, Sofiane poked Shuixing with his toe.

Shuixing sputtered. “O-Oh, u-um, I-I… uh…”

The Empress glared at her with a look of raw authority and malice.

Shuixing looked down at the floor. “Y-You’re not a very good r-ruler…”

“Ugh. Add it to her charges too, Tadahisa.”

As Tadahisa scribbled charges down, everyone’s eyes turned to Pechorin. He continued looking straight ahead and ignoring them. Gathering up a sturdy breath, he did what he did best, and declaimed:

“Dry leaves fall from trees,

The state in disorder wanes,

Heaven in disarray.”

There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. Even the Empress went wide-eyed. Pechorin only realized his mistake a moment later, after it was too late.

“Your third line…” The Empress said, grinding her teeth. “It had six syllables in it.”

Pechorin lowered his head.

“You claim to be a master of Shikijiman poetry…”

Pechorin lowered his head even further.

“Yet you would disgrace and blaspheme our most sacred poetic arts?”

Pechorin’s head was practically clipping through the floor.

“It is one thing to commit treason by way of vile slander against the reigning Empress,” Empress Sadako said. “It is quite another to do so by degrading our entire cultural tradition. Tadahisa, make his charge high treason.”

Sofiane tried to remember if he had had any of that grog that gave Natsuko her weird ass nightmares, because everything to do with the Shikijiman Imperial Court was like a fever dream. He was beginning to empathize with Natsuko’s hatred of the place.

“Are the criminals quite finished being churlish and tedious?” Empress Sadako asked.

Sofiane scoffed. “We’re not criminals! We’re innocent until proven guilty!”

“Reversing the phrase “guilty until proven innocent” means absolutely nothing. Guards, take them back to the prison and we will try them with the other traitor.”

The Empress delicately flicked two fingers and the accompaniment of guards leapt up to drag Pech, Shui, and Sofi back to the jail cell. Upon their return they were greeted by a grinning Natsuko.

“I told you they’re fascists,” Natsuko said.

“I didn’t doubt you,” Sofiane replied as the guards pushed him inside the cell.

Natsuko started to open her mouth to protest that Sofianed had blamed her for their getting arrested. But she said nothing. There was something so pitiful in his eyes that it arrested her. What she saw was resignation. Real resignation. When Sofiane came to Vermögenburgh three weeks before, he still thought of himself as a temporarily disgraced Hero destined for the top of the Use-Charts and it showed. But after being chased off by Yuna, and whatever happened at their court hearing, whatever pride he had left had drained out of him.

“Puffball,” Natsuko said.

“What?”

“Scratch my nose, I can’t reach.”

“Shut up, firecrotch.”

Shui came over for nose-scratching duty and Pechorin was left to his own private cell once again, one-time high treason not negating his erstwhile esteem as a poet. After a couple minutes of silence, they broke the news to Natsuko that Empress Sadako had a noose around their neck with the threat of the Yishang scripting their court case. Natsuko took away only the important points.

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“I fucking told you Pengwu are narcs! It’s not just Zhidao, they’re all little snitches for the Yishang. Can’t trust ‘em. But did anyone listen to Natsuko? Nooo~ of course not! She’s just a cranky old drunk, what does she know!?”

“Natsu, would you shut up!? Forget about the gods-damned Pengwu!” Sofiane said, his voice echoing through the stone corridors of the jail.

Natsuko glared back, which looked much less threatening with her head and hands stuck in a plank of wood, but she let him finish.

Sofiane exhaled and lowered his voice. “Listen, that’s not important. The important thing is this: Empress Sadako is not screwing around. She notices things Non-Heroes don’t usually notice, and that means we can’t trust her at her word. If we want to get ourselves out of this mess we need to figure out what she’s really up to, because this whole “breaking the law” thing is obviously just an excuse.”

“Perhaps she just personally dislikes Natsuko,” Pechorin offered, his back to the shared bars of their two cells.

“While I empathize with that stance,” Sofiane said, “I doubt all of this is because of fake backstory beef with Natsuko. Which she knows is fake, mind you. I wonder if…”

Sofiane’s gaze fell on Shuixing who was huddled in the corner of the cell. Sensing she was being observed, she looked up. “You don’t think…”

“I can’t think of anything else it could be other than your papers, Shui,” Sofiane said.

Shuixing shook her head. “That secret only came out a few days ago at the card parlor. I don’t think she could find out and plan a trap that quickly.

“So what the hell does she want!? Ugh!” Sofiane mussed up his hair. “I should’ve just kept killing monsters even after Koyon got summoned. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to try and cheat.”

For some reason—and it really made no sense—Puffball’s comment irritated Natsuko, but not in the way that most things irritated Natsuko as a kind of ambient annoyance, but whatever you call it when an irritating thing really cuts at you. She didn’t have a word for it.

“Yeah? And Shui and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you, shithead,” Natsuko said.

Sofiane said nothing. Then, with his back to the wooden bars, he slid to the floor. “Probably not.”

They lapsed into silence again. The jail cell had a way of sucking the conversation out of them. And then came the long, boring periods of silence which drove Natsuko insane. Unlike Pech, Sofi, and Shui, Natsuko couldn’t just lay down and sleep through the boring intervals because of the stupid pillory she was stuck in which left her with nothing to do but be with herself and think—something she hated so much that she was constantly trying to drink herself into being incapable of it. Sadly, no matter how many times she asked the guards—even using her nice voice—criminals were not allowed any alcohol.

~~~

The ground trembles with each pounding footstep of the Demon King. Natsuko can feel the hot, cloying air of the Shikijiman summer flooding into her lungs, baking her from the inside.

It feels good. She likes being hot. On fire. Bursting into flames, pushing herself to the redline and then going even further. The Demon King, standing taller than the tallest turrets of the Imperial Palace, stomps towards her. His shining crimson kabuto helmet and ivory tusks gleam in the sunlight. His bone armor rattles as he begins his charge.

“Alright kiddo, let’s dance,” she says, grinning wildly as she strides towards the demon.

Behind it she sees the corrupted Emperor whose body she and her party have just expelled the demon from. Beside her Shuixing trembles and clutches at her rod like she always does, though it’s just for her archetype. When it comes down to it, Shui has her back.

When the demon has Natsuko within range of his enormous iron club, she waits for him to swing, then launches herself forward with a Fire Gale, ducking below it, the wake riffling her hair. With the momentum she kicks herself into a dashing attack from her Jack of All Trades skill, carving through the demon’s legs and torso in rapid diagonal slashes with her fire sword, Tamakaro. When the ability ends, Natsuko is in the air above the demon.

“Pech!” she yells.

Gunshots echo in the broad courtyard, triggering Molten reactions on the scorched demon and causing it to emit a guttural roar. Natsuko doesn’t care how much damage they’re doing. In a way, she hopes it’s not a lot, because she wants this moment to last forever. She doesn’t want to do anything else. She lives to fight monsters. Even as the demon bats her out of the air and knocks off half of her HP, her passive kicks in and her blood catches on fire.

There is no pain, only adrenaline. Only thrill.

The demon spits viscous, black Entropic Acid at her, but she is counting on this, and swipes her flaming blade through the glob, splitting it into two puddles that melt a hibiscus bush behind her. Fuel Injection slams into her heart and a calm blossoms inside her like an island amidst an ocean of adrenaline. She feels like a general commanding an army compressed into the size of her small frame.

Everything slows, and her vision shines with rainbows as Shuixing’s bubbles rain down on the demon, popping against him and against her, harming the demon and healing her with a tingling aliveness.

She laughs. This is everything. There’s nothing more than this fight. Nothing in the world. Just this. She feels like she’s been split into a bunch of little pieces: Her arms, legs, feet, and hands, all working separately, yet together. The whole and the parts, the parts and the whole. She doesn’t even have to think about her Desperation Art unlocking, its potential floods through her.

Hemiola strums on his lute and a wave of Aether Elemental vibrates against the flailing Demon King. Its buffing effects thrum in Natsuko’s body and soul, charging up her Elemental damage to a fever pitch. With another blast of her Fire Gale, she repositions under the Demon King, and when she’s directly under him, she activates Spontaneous Combustion and explodes in a fireball that contains all her passion and elation, adrenaline and ecstasy.

No wonder the ability deals damage to her as well. Everything that she is, has ever been, and will ever be, explodes out of her. A few yards away, Pechorin watches on in awe.

“Ow, fuck!” Natsuko said, falling sideways and jarring her neck and wrists against the pillory as it banged against the floor.

Sofiane laughs—no, laughed—at her misfortune. Time periods were mixing up in Natsuko’s head. Past and present and past. Waking up sober sucked ass. She preferred the oblivion of falling asleep drunk because there were no dreams or memories in the abyss of booze.

While Natsukos was recovering from consciousness, Shuixing snapped her fingers, an idea coming to her with the bang of Natsuko’s pillory hitting the floor.

“Guys, what if Natsuko was right? What if that Pengwu is the key?” Shuixing said.

Sofiane yawned, waking up from his own, much more comfortable nap. “You mean steal the golden bananas and convince him to work for us?”

Shuixing shook her head and looked down at her feet with a guilty look. “No, I mean… if we got Natsuko’s bottle back… we um, we could…”

Natsuko’s and Sofiane’s jaws dropped. Pechorin’s didn’t only because he was focused on a suitable third line for a poem.