The Non-Heroes in the room, other than the Empress, had no idea what just happened. Of those that did, Sofiane was the first to speak.

“Oh. Oh shit…”

Natsuko’s mouth hung half open. The Empress froze with her hands and face covered in glittering glass. Shuixing shook her head, already wondering how they would defend themselves against the person hunting them. The only one who seemed somewhat composed was Pechorin who, if one looked close enough, almost appeared to have anticipated the bottle shattering.

“Do you surrender?” Pechorin asked the Empress.

Empress Sadako shot him a look of filth and raised her arms.

“Pechorin you moron! What did you do!?” Natsuko said.

“Let’s talk about this later,” Sofiane said, hopping to his feet and helping Shuixing up.

Pechorin kept his guns trained on the Empress while they made their escape. He himself was safe, but a stray spear or arrow could harm the others while the event was ongoing. Once they were all behind him, Pechorin fired a couple of shots into the ceiling to startle the Non-Heroes and then started running.

“How large do you think the event field is?” Sofiane asked as they sprinted for the palace doors.

“All of Kazan-to, I suspect,” Shuixing replied.

“Guess we’re taking a trip into the jungle then.”

Sofiane exhaled. There was something degrading about having to run first from Heroes, and now from Non-Heroes. There was no doubt in his mind now that the worst mistake he had ever made in his short existence was opening that damn door in the Vermögenburgh Mage’s College.

As the four of them ran across the open space of the courtyard, arrows flew from walls and guard towers. Ahead, to the sound of pounding drums, the palace gates were being closed, and a former, less enlightened Pechorin might have let them close until the very last second in a dramatic climax. Instead he just shot the guard manning the winch.

Once they were free of the palace walls it was easy enough to lose the guards in the city of Kazan-to. Unlike Tianzhou City, it was all one- and two-story buildings, and even though the streets were gridded, houses and shops were built so close together it was impossible to see very far in any direction. With that knowledge, the four slowed to a fast walk.

“Okay, so, we have a problem,” Sofiane said, trying to be the voice of reason.

“Yes, we’ve got a fucking problem, he’s right there!” Natsuko said, stabbing a finger at Pechorin.

“He got us out of the clutches of that whackadoodle-ass Empress,” Sofiane replied. “None of us could have known the Event Field would make the bottle destructible.”

Natsuko growled. “That was my bottle, dammit! That was the one thing that was mine!”

“Bummer for you, but now that it’s lost, we need to focus on how we’re going to defend against another attack from our #1 fan, or hell, any of the hundreds of Heroes that want to string us up, because right now, we might as well be Non-Heroes for how helpless you three are,” Sofiane said.

This statement was not followed up with any novel ideas. The stress of everything since the card tournament had mounted to the point where their brains felt fried.

Shuixing especially was caught up in her own thoughts. Despite telling Natsuko on the boat about her wish to see the bottle disposed of, she realized how hollow those words were. Quite aside from the intellectual reality of the bottle being an incredibly dangerous weapon, in the course of her experimentation, she had ended up with a weird sort of sympathy for the object. She knew its every curve, bump, and crevice, and it wasn’t until seeing the thing shattered by a bullet that she realized the depth of her attachment to the inanimate thing.

In a way, it was a symbol of being able to move beyond her adventuring past. Unlike Sofiane, she didn’t feel afraid by its absence, she felt depressed.

“Can you replicate it?”

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Sofiane’s voice dragged her out of her head.

“Hmm?”

“Can you make another bottle?”

Shui shook her head. “Not without the papers. The math involved isn’t the kind of stuff you can memorize.”

“Damn. Actually, wait, Natsu, where the hell did you get the bottle to begin with?” Sofiane asked. He was kicking himself for only now thinking to ask.

“There isn’t another one, if that’s what you’re asking,” Natsuko replied.

“Fine, but where did you get it?”

“It was a birthday present.”

“You mean like from a Pengwu?”

“Zhidao specifically,” she said. “Two years ago.”

Regardless of when they were summoned, Heroes had an arbitrary “birthday” they celebrated. Aside from some small parties—or big ones if you were a top Hero—the only thing it entailed was a Pengwu giving you some kind of food item. No one really questioned why birthdays entailed being gifted eggrolls by a shapeshifting animal fairy, but that’s how it was.

Sofiane squinted. “He gave you an empty bottle for your birthday?”

“No, that would be stupid. There was obviously wine in it at the time,” Natsuko said.

Shuixing stroked her chin. Something was off about this. After their run-in with Saruga, her mind had been turning on the role the Pengwu played as intermediaries between Heroes and the Yishang. If it was a two-way street, and Heroes weren’t the ones initiating the birthday food tradition, then it stood to reason that this was initiated by the Yishang.

“Wait, you’re saying Zhidao deliberately gave me the bottle!?” Natsuko said.

Shuixing had apparently been pondering out loud on accident. The crowd of Non-Heroes they were wading through was now looking at them.

Sofiane slapped Natsuko across the back of the head. “Stop talking so damn loud!”

She slapped him back. “Shui was the one yapping about the Yishang, don’t blame me!”

Returning to their natural habitat from captivity, Shui suddenly felt like a mother taking care of her two kids. At 5’7” she wasn’t exactly tall, especially compared with Pechorin and Daisy, but Sofiane and Natsuko were both shorter and very much felt like children when they were going at it.

“The bottle,” Pechorin said.

“A-Ah, oh, right,” Shuixing said. “So if Zhidao gave Natsuko the bottle, the Yishang wanted her to have it.”

“Did they know?” Natsuko asked, her voice lower and more level.

Shuixing knew the tone. That was Natsuko-ese for being in the in-between state of blindly flinging herself at something. Nonetheless, it was an important question, maybe the important question. But for right now…

“For right now, let’s assume not,” Shuixing said. “The hypothesis that the Yishang intentionally gave Natsu the bottle brings up too many unanswerable questions: Why her and not another Hero? Why three years ago? Why ignore her using it against the wyvern attack? I think for now it makes more sense to assume it was a mistake, and that no one knew what the bottle could do.”

It was not a satisfying conclusion, least of all to Shui’s ears, since it was just substituting one unsubstantiated hypothesis for another. But they weren’t exactly in a position to be conducting lab tests on semi-divine beings. It was better to focus on the task at hand.

By mid-afternoon, they were on the outskirts of Kazan-to, where the labyrinth of townhouses gave way to farmhouses and rice paddies. A bright red gate with hibiscus bushes at its feet marked the end of the city. Only a few hundred feet beyond lay a thickly-tangled wall of canopy trees and vines where the jungle began. The moment they took a step outside the gate, the weight and restrictions of the event field released them.

“Oh gods that’s nice,” Sofiane said.

Shuixing took a deep breath, enjoying the nostalgic, vegetal scent of the jungle.

Natsuko said nothing. For once she seemed subdued, which made Shuixing wonder if she had suffered some kind of blow to the head during their escape.

After another couple of hours of off-trail jungle exploring to make sure they couldn’t be followed, the sun was low enough that making camp seemed advisable. On the banks of a pond, Pechorin spotted a clearing shaped somewhat like a grotto formed by trees instead of rocks and they elected not to be choosy beggars.

As far as camps went, it was pretty pitiful since their supplies were still in the evidence locker. This meant no tents, no bedrolls, and no food.

“My baked potatoes! Argh! That fascist piece of shit even arrested my potatoes!” Natsuko said, scaring some tropical birds in the process.

She plunked down on a rotting stump. “Ugh. Let’s see… this part of Shikijima has bird and fish we can kill, hibiscus petals, mangoes, and… Kaji-vines. Pech, go shoot us some protein, Sofiane, you go find some hibiscus petals, Shui you go grab us some mangoes.”

“What about the vines?” Sofiane asked.

Natsuko reached behind her and yanked some Kaji-vines down from a low-lying tree.

“Stick with baking,” she replied.