“God I want another one of those skewers,” Jane said. “Squishy ate half of mine. What was the meat called again?”

“War pig,” I said.

“Mmmmm, war pig,” Jane said. “The other white meat.”

“What is a war pig?” Sigrid said.

I shrugged. “No idea. Wild boars, maybe? Crazy Sadie said they live in the forest but I didn’t see any either time I’ve been in there.”

“How much time do we have?” Jane said.

“You could check your own Status and see, you know,” Sigrid said.

“Meh, I’m too lazy.”

“Too lazy to say two words and look in front of you?”

Jane shrugged. “Don’t try to change me.”

“Open quest,” I said, then looked in front of myself. “We’ve still got a few hours.”

“Wicked. Who’s coming with?” Jane said. We were all sitting together in the Dragon Pub, waiting for the Tutorial to end. Jane looked around the tables we’d shoved together so we could all fit. “What, nobody?”

“They have food here,” Sigrid said.

“But I want street meat,” Jane said.

“I’ll go,” I said.

Jane rewarded me with one of her smiles as she hopped up. “You guys are gonna be so jelly when we come back dripping with war pig.”

“Well when you put it like that,” Sigrid said, scrunching up her face. “I’m definitely staying.”

“Boo hiss,” Jane said. “Let’s go Danny boy.”

Jane and I left the pub and made our way up the street toward Crazy Sadie’s. The smile never left her face as she skipped along, and I allowed a bit of her carefree joy to infect me. I’d been feeling a bit dour since we got back from the forest, with a creeping sense of doom I just couldn’t shake. I’ve always been prone to these black moods. To be honest, that’s why I’d agreed to come along. Jane was the opposite. It was as though sunlight followed her around, and I half expected a tiny blue animated bird to settle on her shoulder beside Squishy and warble a happy song. I was hoping that being around her radiance would chase away the dark clouds that seemed to follow me everywhere.

When we got close to Sadie’s, Jane stopped beside a bench. “You wait here,” she said, “this one’s my treat. Squishy can keep you company.” She plucked the slime off of her shoulder and handed him to me before prancing over to Sadie’s cart. I sat on the bench with the slime on my lap and did some people-watching. I noticed that more and more people were starting to move around in groups, usually smaller ones of threes or fours, and a quick use of All Shall Be Revealed on larger groups often found someone with the Team Builder designation at the center. Those Players’ Statuses were still all just a bunch of Hiddens.

One of those teamed up groups caught my eye in particular. They were all dressed in similar all-white outfits with black suspenders and weird helmets that kind of looked like what my great grandfather wore in World War 1, vaguely reminiscent of bowler hats. I was watching them saunter down the street like they owned it when I felt someone sit down beside me on the bench.

Assuming it was Jane I said, “What took you so long?”

“Aw gee, I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

I knew that voice, and it wasn’t Jane’s.

I turned and looked at Kiki, who was sitting there looking very much like the cat who ate the canary, only in this case it was the gal who ate the war pig. She’d changed out of her school uniform at last, trading it in for something still appropriately gyaru: a pair of pink shorts that had obviously once been longer pants she’d cut down to match her fashion sense, which is to say short enough to display considerable underbum, and a leather corset that strained to support her chestly endowments. She still wore the knee-high socks, but her dyed-blonde hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, face immaculately made up complete with long fake eyelashes. Once a gal, always a gal. She was holding three skewers, one of which was mostly eaten. “Here,” she said, holding the remains of that one out to me. “You can have this one. It’s probably yours anyway.”

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“Huh?”

“Your red-headed friend had it. You should’ve seen her gobbling this down. I think she didn’t want you to see what a piggy she was trying to finish one off by herself before coming back to you.”

That dour feeling I had suddenly reached fever pitch and began to seep into panic. “Where’s Jane?”

“She’s fine. For now.”

“What have you done with her?”

“Nothing yet. What happens after this depends on you. You gonna eat this or what?”

I slapped the skewer away. “Where is she?”

“It doesn’t matter where she is now, what matters is where she’ll be when the Tutorial ends. Because that’s where you need to be.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’ll kill her?”

“Nah, clearly the threat of death doesn’t seem to affect you. And maybe that approach wasn't the best. I mean, this place isn't what I thought it was, right? But one thing's for sure: pain is real. So dig this: if you don’t come to the arena — alone — for when the Tutorial ends, and show me that you have dropped everyone on your team, then me and my boys are gonna have a little fun with our abilities on your friend. You remember what that's like. Oh, but don't worry. We'll stop short of killing her.”

“You wouldn’t do that. Not to her.”

“You really gonna bet her well-being on that baseless assumption? I don't even know this chick.”

I said nothing, just sat there with my fists clenched.

Kiki stood and stretched. The leather of the corset literally creaked with the strain of containment. “Remember, come alone.”

I was still sitting on the bench long after she’d left. She’d given me the skewers but I had zero appetite so I fed them to Squishy. They quickly vanished inside the little slime, sticks and all, in a way that reminded me of how spears disappeared into my Inventory.

There were still a few hours left until the end of the Tutorial, but if Kiki thought I was going to wait until the final moments to come she was out of her clearly disturbed mind. I wasn’t going to wait to rescue Jane, and I wasn’t going to go alone. I realized that Kiki had no idea what it meant to be part of a team. If she really did want to win at this game, she was going about it the wrong way.

Less than an hour later, I strolled down the wide corridor that led from under the stands out through the portcullis and onto the arena floor, holding a box of eleven doughnuts and munching on the twelfth. Jane was there, sitting awkwardly in the middle of the floor, securely trundled up in shadow ropes. They covered her mouth so she wasn’t able to speak, whether to prevent her from using her Captivating Presence power or just to shut her up was anybody’s guess, I gave fifty-fifty odds to either, but her bright green eyes remained clear and open. They widened when she saw me, but she seemed to be the only one surprised by my arrival.

Kiki and her gang already knew I was coming, they’d been watching me from the moment Kiki left me at Crazy Sadie’s. It was as though they didn’t trust me to come alone, or something. I counted six of them, including Kiki, which added up. There were the two who followed me everywhere, plus the two posted as lookouts in front of the arena to make sure I really was by myself. A team of ten.

She’d recruited all men. Figures.

Jane was flanked on one side by Derek Smith, the guy who controlled the shadow bonds that were holding Jane and also the guy who’d killed me with that thrown knife, and Kiki on the other. She was holding Jane’s rapier. The other four members of her team here lounged against the tall wall that surrounded the arena floor, trying to look cool and nonchalant.

Kiki’s glossy red lips spread into a wide grin as she rested the tip of the sword on Jane’s shoulder. Jane twitched, trying to shrug it off of her, but the shadows held her too rigid.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kiki said. “You’re thinking, why doesn’t she just use that annoying ability of hers to teleport out of this mess, am I right? Well,” she went on, plowing through without waiting for an answer, “cool thing about powers, they seem to get better as you level them up. And Derek’s shadow rope thingies gained the ability to block the powers of the person they tie up. Neat, huh?”

I took a bite of an apple fritter as I casually strolled toward them. “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “That’s some really useful information. Probably should’ve kept it a secret. Though it does explain why Derek’s looking a bit tired, keeping up those ropes must be a heck of a mana drain.”

Kiki lost her composure when she realized her mistake, but only for a second, then that canary-eating grin was back. “Like it matters if you know. When the Tutorial’s over you’ll be teamless and useless, so who cares?”

I finished off the fritter, then poked around in the box and fished out another doughnut. “Mmm, sprinkles.”

“Okay, what’s with the doughnuts?” Kiki said, putting her free hand on her hip.