Sofiane was about to fall on his face. Apparently, not that anyone thought to tell him, this was a comedy event. The Yishang had a sense of humor. Great. He’d be laughing too if it weren’t for the fact that this made them easy prey for any passing Hero who might want to pick them off. He needed to wrap this up. Quickly.

While an official was informing Minister of the Left what exactly was going on, Sofiane nudged Pechorin with his foot. “Do a poem.”

Pechorin shook his head and whispered. “It’s not the right moment.”

“The right moment!? What the hell—”

“Quiet! Show some respect, little girl,” said one of the Minister of the Left’s guards.

Pechorin tutted. “Sofi, the one rule is you have to play along.”

Sofiane’s nostrils flared. He was going to remember this particular Non-Hero once the event was lifted and devote at least three days to hunting him down every morning.

“It has come to my attention,” Minister of the Left announced after having the case explained to him after the trial was already in session, “that the three criminals here before us are guilty of numerous crimes against the Empire of Shikijima, including illegal border crossing, suspected espionage, and— and—”

The minister shifted on his cushion and looked helplessly at his assistant.

“Treason, Minister.”

“Oh wow. Dreadful stuff,” Minister of the Left said. Swiveling back around on aching bones. “How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” Shuixing said.

“Not guilty,” Sofiane said.

“Guilty,” Pechorin said.

The crowd gasped. Sofiane rolled his eyes. He could envision the entire thought process that Pechorin had put into his answer, which was a flow chart of “Do you want drama?” leading to “Yes.”

Minister of the Left stroked his thin, wispy beard. “Interesting. And this one… he is the barbarian poet I have heard stories of?”

“How does everyone on this stupid island already know about your damn poetry!?” Sofiane said.

“The true poet,” Pechorin said, “does not seek to produce a work to accommodate the current fancy, but to pull truth itself out of the air to free oneself and others from the rut of conventional thinking.”

Sofiane stared at him for a moment. “Did you tell your fishermen friends to go advertise for you?”

“No, they did it themselves,” Pechorin said.

Sofiane rubbed his temples. So long as it could get them out of this special event quicker, he wasn’t going to quibble about Pechorin’s poetry. Though it did bother him that he couldn’t figure out which stat made Pechorin—at least according to Shikijiman tastes—so good at it. Did Pechorin have a relatively high Insight stat? No, that was impossible. Pechorin didn’t put points into making his Elemental abilities stronger, so there was no way. Maybe Cognition? But if that was the case, wouldn’t Shuixing be an even better poet?

While Minister of the Left grilled Pechorin about his artistic philosophy, Sofiane nudged Shuixing.

“Hey, are you any good at poetry?” he asked.

“What? No,” Shuixing said. “Physics is my poetry.”

“I can’t figure out what stat Pechorin is pulling his poetry skill from.”

Shuixing gave Sofiane a strange look. For some reason it made him uncomfortable.

“I don’t think it’s tied to a stat,” she said.

Before Sofiane could ask her what she meant, Minister of the Left interrupted.

“The State of Shikijima will now present its evidence for the charge of illegal border crossing,” Minister of the Left declared in a voice fighting for its life not to blow chunks of phlegm.

An official stood and padded over in front of the Minister and displayed to him and then the rest of the court an Opto-box picture showing a very wet Sofiane flapping himself dry on a dock. He flipped through several other pictures including one of Shuixing gliding across the bay, Natsuko careening through the air with fire coming out of her feet, and Pechorin casually walking off the gangplank while the customs officers were talking with the captain of the ship.

“As you can see here, Minister, the defendants all sought to illegally circumvent our border security measures in order to infiltrate our glorious Shikijiman Empire for their nefarious purposes,” the official said.

“And what have you three to say to that?” Minister of the Left asked.

“The whole law is stupid!” Sofiane said, “Non-Heroes can’t keep Heroes from entering a region! You’re interrupting our work in— in fighting the Entropic Axis and—”

Stolen novel; please report.

“And so you think you’re above the law, is that it?” Ministero of the Left asked.

The room murmured, clearly finding Sofiane’s argument less than convincing. Insulting, even.

Pechorin bowed slightly with his palms on the floor. “Minister, if I may?”

Minister of the Left nodded.

“The autumn winds blow,

And the farmer picks his gourd

By heaven’s command,” said Pechorin.

The court went fucking nuts for that one. The fishermen were on their feet, stomping and clapping, others in the audience were muttering words of astonishment at the elegance and refinement of this strange Hero, and even the court officials themselves were humming appreciatively, the greatest compliment they could give in their esteemed position.

“Ho-ho…” Minister of the Left said, popping open a fan from his kimono and fanning himself with it. “So that’s how it is, eh? Now I understand your guilty plea. Fair enough. You are acquitted of the charges of illegal border crossing.”

Pechorin’s face, as he gave a small nod to the Minister, was transcendently neutral. Not even a hint of pride passed across his face. This, more than the poem, was what impressed Sofiane. He himself would be gloating right about now.

“Well then,” Minister said, snapping his fan closed and pointing it at Pechorin, “let us see how you deal with the charge of espionage, Kurashi.”

“Wait, are we also acquitted?” Shuixing asked.

Minister of the Left’s eyes narrowed. “Why should that be the case? You certainly have done nothing to defend your obvious transgression.”

Pechorin cleared his throat. “May I add a couplet to my poem, Minister?”

“You may.”

“The autumn winds blow,

And the farmer picks his gourd

By heaven’s command.

Yet ‘tis from the Earth he comes,

And for his fellows he farms,” Pechorin declaimed.

Minister of the Left grinned. “Very well then. Howsoever I judge your crimes, Dark Poet, so too shall your friends be judged.”

“Nice,” Sofiane whispered with a light punch to Pechorin’s side.

While this was going on, Shuixing was trying to figure out why the Shikijiman officials weren’t cracking down on the raucous behavior of the audience. She had been expecting something much more serious and official, yet the fishermen currently chanting “Beat the charge! Beat the charge!” seemed as far from official as you could get. Shikijima hadn’t been like this at all when she, Natsuko, and Pechorin first came here years ago. The previous Emperor’s dictatorship had been serious business.

Shui wanted to ask Pechorin what was going on here, since he’d become an expert on Shikijima, but she didn’t want to distract him from his poetry.

“Now, as to the matter of your espionage on behalf of a rebel group…” Minister of the Left said.

Everyone went silent while Pechorin thought through his next poem. Shuixing couldn’t tell whether this was all an act with the foregone conclusion that they would be acquitted, or if the minister was seriously judging them based on Pechorin’s output.

“A blind squirrel gathers

For the coming winter. Nuts!

Rocks shaped like acorns.”

The court erupted into laughter at the punchline. Shuixing looked behind her to see the audience passing around a gourd full of rice wine and flasks full of plum rum. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

“Hungry—the squirrel cracks his teeth,

And says, oh good, some crumbs too!” Minister of the Left added before slapping his knee and launching into his own wheezing laugh.

Pechorin joined the laughing crowd with this. Sofiane just held his face in his hands.

“Shui?” he said.

“Y-Yes?” she replied.

“I think we got force dimension-jumped and ended up in hell.”

Minister of the Left cracked his fan again and wafted. “Oh my. You’ll do my lungs in, Kurashi, you really will. You are officially acquitted of the charges of espionage. Now, onto the— hehe— the matter of— snrk— treason, hehehe.”

The official to the Minister’s right gave a faithful account of their breaches of lèse-majesté including Sofiane calling the Empress a “stupid bitch” that could “go fuck herself,” Shuixing claiming that she was, “not a very good ruler,” and, worst of all, Pechorin performing a poem with a 5-6-5 syllable scheme.

Minister of the Left grinned. “Very serious crimes indeed.”

Pechorin responded without missing a beat.

“Like red hibiscus,

My cheeks blush when I think

Of— oops, I flubbed it.”

This earned another round of laughter. Sofiane felt his sanity fleeing with each poem. Nothing happening in this courtroom lay within the coordinates of his understanding of the world. Even the strange anti-dungeons they’d messed around to cheat the Use-Rankings made more sense than this. Looking over to Shuixing, he found her just as baffled.

“Your wit could make a rapier consider a career change, Kurashi. It would be a terrible waste to lock you up in our prisons, so I am given no choice but to acquit you and your friends of all charges in my capacity as the distributor of Her Imperial Majesty’s justice,” Minister of the Left said.

Sofiane felt some measure of relief since it meant that the event they’d been forced into would be over soon. However, there was still the matter of what was happening with Natsuko. Clearly the event wouldn’t end until she’d been dealt with, and unlike their own situation, the Empress herself took things seriously.

“Pechorin…” Sofiane whispered. “We need to go find Natsuko as soon as possible.”

“The event takes as long as it takes,” Pechorin replied.

“Yeah, well, the Empress has her bottle, so make it take less long, would ya?”

“I can’t…”

Pechorin’s fists curled around the mat he was kneeling on. In the process of declaiming poetry, he’d noticed the hold the Yishang had placed on the event area was slowly lifting, as though each verse freed him more and more. He didn’t know if that only applied to him, or Sofiane and Shuixing too, but he had enough control back that clearing a way through the guards to get to Natsuko would be easy. So what was holding him up?

If he was honest, he was having fun. For the first time in years, Pechorin was doing something that he and other people found worthwhile. He’d played his archetypal role of misunderstood loner because, after doing it for so long, it felt like the only thing solid about himself. But in the span of two days, that changed. After being treated so well for his poetry, and finding a receptive audience for something so personal and important to him, the lone wolf act felt more and more like the coping mechanism it was.

But freeing Natsuko meant attacking the Empress.

The guards explained to him yesterday that these charges were basically jokes. However, attacking the Empress was not a joke. The moment he did, they would be kicked out of Shikijima. Permanently. There would be no group of fishermen coming to his defense and he would be locked out of the only place in Po-lin that had ever taken him as he was, without mocking his poetry or calling him a useless and forgotten Hero.

Was that enough to abandon Natsuko for? He’d had feelings for her since they were on a team together, but that was so long ago, and this Natsuko was a very different Natsuko from the one he’d fallen for. Did that make a difference?

“No!”

A scream echoed through the wooden halls of the Imperial Palace, one that could only have come from one, particularly loud, set of lungs.

Pechorin drew his guns, silencing the laughter in the courtroom. A pair of guards stationed at the exit pointed their halberds towards Pechorin and he put one bullet between both of their eyes.