“Are you sure you looked everywhere for it!?” Shui asked in a strained whisper.

“There aren’t that many places you can hide a giant wine bottle, Shui. Someone else has it, and I think we can both make a guess who that is.”

Shuixing’s face was even paler than usual. “You don’t think…”

“That the Empress would try and execute us with it? I don’t think so. Probably she just needed us out of the way so she could stash it somewhere. Whoever does have the bottle gets one shot to use it as a surprise before word gets out, and if it is the Empress…”

“She’ll save it for Yuna,” Shuixing replied, finishing his sentence.

It was strange, ever since they’d collaborated on card strategy, Shuixing found herself more and more aligned with Sofiane’s way of thinking, and less with Natsuko’s. Whether his thoughts were any healthier, she didn’t know, but she preferred Sofi’s constant scheming to Natsuko’s defeatism. She hadn’t even noticed how much her friend’s attitude bothered her until being around people who thought differently.

Nonetheless, things weren’t completely screwed yet. There was time to steal the bottle back. And even if—or rather when—word got out to other Heroes about their escape from the Empress, all Shui and them had to do was hide in the jungles and hold out for Daisy’s return. That was all. They could do this.

“Do you think we can find where she hid it?” Shui asked.

Sofiane gave a dry chuckle. “At this rate, Pechorin might be able to serenade her into giving it back.”

The door to the chamber burst open with raucous laughter and cheering as a gaggle of guards steered a wobbly Pechorin—his garnet-colored tie pulled up around his forehead like a bandana—back to his cell. As a parting gift, they left him a gourd of rice wine and a scroll of calligraphy inscribed with one of his poems. After a round of good-byes peppered with in-jokes that left Sofi and Shui baffled, the guards left for the night.

“Oh man, you guys, Shikijima is honestly pretty great!” Pechorin said, abandoning his usual effort to sound dark and brooding.

Somehow, even Pechorin’s drunk shouting didn’t wake Natsuko up. What did was falling over again before Shui or Sofi could catch her. The wooden pillory smacked against the floor.

“Gods-fucking-dammit!”

Natsuko pointed her palms down and set the boards on fire with a Fire Gale. Within moments she was yelping in pain from her ill-conceived action. Shuixing sighed and dinged her rod that Sofiane pilfered from the evidence locker. The burned wood crumbled off of Natsuko and the burns healed, leaving behind scorch marks.

“Not sure being uncooperative is gonna help our court case,” Sofiane said.

“Okay, well, next time, you get to wear the annoying chunky necklace, puffball. Oh, is that booze?”

Pechorin looked like a deer in carriage-lights clutching his gourd of wine.

Natsuko flailed an arm through the bars. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

“It won’t fit through the bars,” Pechorin replied.

Natsuko grabbed one of the thick wooden bars in two places and snapped off a chunk. “Now it will. Give.”

“If you compose me a poem—”

Being slightly too far away for her to reach, Natsuko grabbed a sandal and hit Pechorin’s head with it. “No poems, just liquor!”

Under the pressure of Natsuko’s endless persistence and his own barely-disguised crush on her, Pechorin relinquished the gourd and Natsuko guzzled like it was a waterskin. Only, unlike water, Natsuko made damn sure that even the tiniest trickle was swabbed with a finger and stuck in her mouth so that nothing went to waste. After a passionate make-out session with the neck of the bottle, she pulled away with a sigh.

“Oh yeah! There we go! Already in a better mood,” Natsuko said.

Having satiated one of her basic needs, Natsuko turned to her favorite pastime of letting everyone else know how bored she was. This went on for almost an hour before it was interrupted.

Stolen story; please report.

“Guys this sucks—”

“Shut. Up.”

The words themselves weren’t necessarily a surprise, except that instead of coming from Sofiane, they came from Shuixing.

After an awkward silence, Natsuko said, “you good, Shui?”

“No! I’m obviously not! And I’m getting worse every time you talk about how bored you are! So please, Natsu, please, shut up.”

“Uhh… okay then,” Natsuko said, sliding to the floor against one of the unbroken cell bars. Shuixing laid down to sleep facing away from her. Sofiane stood in-between them, not sure what to make of the argument.

“Wow,” Sofiane said.

“Shut up,” Natsuko said.

No one had anything to say after that. Natsuko kept waiting for Shui to apologize for snapping at her and then, realizing this was probably not going to happen, and that maybe Natsu might even need to be the one to apologize, debated whether or not it would make Shui more irritated to do so. Worst of all, the mood drop killed the buzz she’d gotten from the rice wine. Tipsy, cranky, and bored, Natsuko decided to pick the best of all possible options and went back to sleep.

~~~

Shuixing sits atop a watchtower on Mt. Kibai. Her legs dangle below, swaying above the miles of tangled jungle they’ve just fought through to complete their quest. It wasn’t a hard quest, just rescuing an Imperial archeologist captured by rebels. In fact, it had been on the backburner since they first arrived in Shikima.

Their party is in that awkward, in-between time. Before the Yishang de-Mists a new region, but after they’ve beaten back the advance of the Entropic Axis in Shikijima. These periods always make Shuixing feel a little funky.

Hemiola sighs and sits down next to her on the watchtower, his messy black curls falling into his eyes. His lute lays across his lap.

“Did Natsu piss you off again?” Hemi asks.

Shuixing gazes at the space between her feet. She doesn’t like drama, or perpetuating drama. “N-No, I-I—”

Hemiola laughs. “I’m taking that as a yes. Don’t worry, I feel the same. I think the drop from #1 to #3 messed her up a little more than she wants to admit.”

Shuixing nods.

For the past two weeks, Natsuko has been manic about trying on new outfits, saying out-of-character things to try and nudge her emanation towards being more… provocative, and murdering mobs by the dozen to farm insignificant bits of experience. This mania also manifests in blowing up at her teammates who, in her words, “were destined for the bottom of the Use-Rankings” if they, “continued being lazy pieces of shit.”

Shuixing kicks her feet back and forth and stares up at clouds. She used to find shapes in them. Now they seem like symbols for her own idleness, reminders that she isn’t doing anything productive at the moment.

“I know we have to fight the Entropic Axis, Hemi, I know that. I just… I want a break from it. I want to have time to do things that aren’t, well, clearing dungeons or completing quests or fighting giant monsters all the time,” Shuixing says, interrupted by two or three sighs.

Hemiola picks up his lute and plucks out slow, faint notes on it that lay below speaking volume. It’s in a major key, but Shuixing can’t help but think it sounds a little sad, like newfound hope that everyone else knows is going to be dashed.

“You may get that wish sooner than you think, dear Shuixing,” Hemi says, humming in chordal harmony with his lute.

Something about the way he says this makes her nervous. And something about her own nervousness seems deeper and more significant than just passing concern.

Her swinging legs come to a halt. “What do you mean?”

“Has anyone chatted with you about the recently summoned Heroes?”

Shuixing shakes her head. Her social sphere is basically just Natsuko, Pechorin, Hemiola, and Frederick. She leaves the schmoozing to the others.

“Remember how the ones summoned in Tianzhou were a little stronger than us when we were summoned, right?” he asks.

Shuixing’s mind, the workhorse that it is, makes the connection.

“The new ones must be even stronger. But the difference…” Shuixing bites her lip. “It’s not linear, is it?”

Hemiola plucks a string harder than intended. “No. It’s exponential.”

“So then…”

“We’re not catching up to them, Shui. Not even if our resident Fireball spends every waking moment farming experience points. We’ve got maybe one or two more regions after Shikijima in us before we’re phased out entirely. We need to start thinking about what happens next.”

“Next, huh? I guess that could be…”

Shuixing’s eyes wander up to the clouds again. Wasn’t this what she was wishing for? A break from the endless adventuring and heroics? A passing of the torch to newer Heroes who hadn’t had their own adventures yet? Two years was a long time by her frame of reference. It was, in fact, the length of time that this world had existed in its de-Entropized state. Maybe this would be a good thing once Natsuko settled down and accepted it.

And yet, below her surface optimism lay something whose existence she would refuse to admit for another year: Dread.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

~~~

“The Empress has summoned the three of you to stand trial for your crimes against the Empire of Shikijima,” Tatsuda, the guard from yesterday, announced while smacking an empty scabbard against the wooden bars of the cell.

The pale light of morning met Shuixing’s gaze as her eyes forced themselves open. It took a bit of eye rubbing and muscle stretching before she noticed that Natsuko was gone.