“Look! French food is objectively overrated! You put more than three grains of salt on it and they’re like ‘NOOOO, what are you doing??? Are you making food that doesn’t taste like piss?’. Same goes for Italians.” Stephan should’ve never tried to use his limited knowledge of food to talk to Maria. He was getting grilled by her on every level.

“Literally every critic disagrees with you.” Because they were rich and rich people tended to think that French food was sophisticated.

“Because all of them are FRENCH.” Ok, that was also right, but to a lesser degree. “And why should I care about what critics think? They’re food esotericists, enjoying things for the amount of ‘excitement’ it gives them instead of how good it tastes because they don’t have souls.” I shouldn’t have been surprised by their choice of words. They were revolutionaries flying the red flag, of course they were going to hate rich people.

“So you’re not going to trust an expert on the topic just because they’re rich? Well, yea, no shit they’re rich, if they’re a respected critic, that means they did a good job and got rewarded for it.” What was I even meant to think at this point?

“We didn’t live in that world until yesterday. If you had money, you could pass any academy test and become an ‘expert’.” Now I was getting suspicious on if Stephan was rich or not. Every school having been replaced with an ‘academy’ ruined the already fragile meritocracy that was in place.

“Sure. Whatever you say.” Oh, Stephen should not have said that.

“Don’t scream Maria.” I was simply too late.

“You fucking bastard! You think you can just ignore what I said? I could choke you right now!” She grabbed Stephan’s shirt collar and dragged him towards her hard enough to tilt the table upwards. She would’ve kept going, but I pressed it right back down and slammed Stephan back into his seat by proxy.

“Hey. Stop beating each other up. This is a day of celebration, is it not? Can we all just agree food critics are obnoxious even if they’re experts.” Stephan and Maria begrudgingly nodded. Maria did it while looking disgusted despite how charitable I was to her in that sentence.

“They’re smug because of people like Stephan always worshipping their words like the scripture.” Alright, I guess Stephan was tagging me in at this point.

“What food do you even think is good? The Turkish stuff?” She nodded… WHAT?! Does she have no taste pallet? “Oh, right, I get why you were talking about salt earlier, because you like how the Turks put enough salt in their food to give an American a heart attack.”

“Are you complaining about flavour? Yea, of course I prefer salty food over fucking onion soup. At least put other spices in it. Onion by itself is not a basis for anything.” I mean, fair enough despite it being objectively wrong, but where was her patriotism? Did she not have the basic decency to hate everything turkish?

“That’s a fine enough position, but some people just like how comforting those types of foods are. Is beef stew that flavorful compared to Indian food? No, but if I wanna feel comforted, I’d pick it any day over a curry bowl.” She rolled her eyes, clearly not giving a shit about my appeasements.

“Wah wah wah.” Did she just… “Cry harder about your food pallet being broken. The more flavour a food has, the better. It’s that simple.” How can someone as old as me act like that? It was childish and… it certainly did remind me of a couple world leaders I had to deal with, and who were even older than her, so I once again fell into the trap of having hope for absolutely no reason. I prayed for strength, and prepared to treat her like I did all those manchildren.

“Me? Crying? Pal, the only one here that’s crying is you because you think enduring spicy food makes you more tough. Just admit that and you’ll be tougher than you’ve ever been while eating a spicy bowl.” This was the technique you always had to use on egotistical people. You blame their idea, and then give the person an easy out, something that would let them take the high road and still end up better off, because they don’t actually care about being right, they care about feeling right.

“...I wasn’t even talking about spicy food.” Sometimes they would redirect, missing out the clear point in that sentence and trying to make you out as a fool.

“Yes you did. Spicy food is more flavorful, and thus objectively better by your standard.” But you always had to either call them out on a lie, or, “And even then, you’re just torturing yourself by not enjoying certain foods just because they don’t meet your criteria of being flavourful enough.” You move on to your broader point regardless.

“God, you suck. Why did Bogdan even pick you up?”

“You’re the one that has nothing to talk about! Complain about adventurers or something, jesus.”

“Wha– Oh, yea, I guess.” Seriously? Had she not thought of it as a possibility before this?

“Who are you people anyway? Adventurers?” Stephan finally got up from his stupor once the discussion about food passed.

“Nope. Those two were pure blooded Silvia inspired revolutionaries.” Silvia was a general who rebelled against the king of the world right before Ian took him out, and that started the chain reaction that cascaded into global freedom. Or at least that’s what I thought, I couldn’t be sure. “I was just here as the Engels to their Marx. I was giving them money so they wouldn’t starve.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“We could’ve managed even without you. We’d just have to eat more soup and drink less… which would’ve been horrible, but we would’ve been fine.” The shiny sword on her back suggested otherwise. If they needed his help to buy themselves weapons… They were truly desperate for cash.

“What’s the plan now? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“We’ll probably go to the German front. I know it’s gonna fire back up any day now.” Said Maria.

“I’m guessing Stephan told you that?” Not only did Maria nod, but Stephan too.

“It’s obvious. Germany is currently not communist, the revolutionaries are, so a conflict is bound to come up. Not only that, but Germany is still somewhat ruled by one of the Kingdom’s companies. They won’t like the first people to rebel from the King.” That… was fair enough based on the information I had, which was not much.

“Why would you want to go to the front though?” A quiet life in the city was much, much safer.

“Well… I think Bogdan’s just going for the sake of it, and I’m bound to follow him” I didn’t talk, implicitly telling her to continue. “Because I don’t know what I’d do without–”

“I’m back! You three got along well enough?” He sat back down with a comically oversized beer mug. “I sure hope so because I was just talking to the five people in line with me and If I got along with them better than you three got amongst yourselves that would’ve been really sad.”

“Are you going to the front, Bogdan?” I said. He looked at me strangely, then laughed once he realised what was going on.

“Maria, we are not going anywhere. I’ve had enough.” Maria immediately turned to look directly at Bogdan.

“What? We didn’t even do anything! We just waited until the country collapsed.”

“And then we ensured that the right people took over it. There’s still a lot of reactionaries and happy adventurers that don’t know the extent of their own crimes. We need to make sure Romania is stable for now before we do anything crazy like sign up for a war.” Bogdan began chugging the drink, while Maria was left stuttering out a response.

“There will be others than stay behind.” Well… not really. All the other conversations I was hearing around me were all about the new war in Germany, or about complaining about the adventurers or the king or the companies.

“Are you sure about that? Everyone else is thinking like you. If they all move on, that’ll leave a power vacuum some stupid cult might fill.” If I couldn’t stop the rise of Liz’s beliefs, I could make others try, and who better than a group of revolutionaries who I could pretend to be spying on? It’d also be an excuse to get away from the weirdos inside that pocket dimension.

I finally left the pub. It was dark outside, but the celebrations still gripped the city, almost like the hand on my shoulder.

“Spying for me I hope? I would hate to think you’d be so… buddy buddy with another woman.” Ah. There she was. I was wondering when Liz would finally show up. She looked… better than I thought she would’ve considering the situation.

“Sure, whatever makes you–”

“Say it better.” Oh, she wanted to be comforted.

“Yea, I was spying for you. We can’t win over the people if we don’t know them.” Elizabetha actually looked relieved. She just fell into my arms after I said that. How hard did Charlotte beat her?

“Good, good. You know I can’t let you slip away, right? You’re mine, forever. My eternal companion. You will never slip away, and I won’t be as kind if you try to.” ‘Kind’? Did she think she was kind to me by only enslaving me? Sure, it wasn’t the worst case scenario, but it was still not kind.

“What happened? You can tell me.” I was morbidly curious. That was all.

“Aren’t you smart enough to know? She was about to tell you something you shouldn’t know, and I teleported her away. It’s just that simple.”

“You should trust me more. How can I be honest to you without you being honest to me?” She didn’t talk for a long time. We just… stood in the middle of the street, with her just leaning down into me.

“I need time. A lot more time.”

“Why do you need time? I can’t leave you, I have the mark. If you have something to spill, do it now. The worst part about a bad event is the anticipation of it.” I could feel her frown, then pull herself back up from me.

“This is different.”

“No it isn’t, and you know it. What I just said is true, and will always be true no matter the context.”

“Nope! We’re going back and I’m smothering you harder than I’ve ever before!” She teleported us into the pocket dimension… great. I guess it was time to live a double life. As if being part of one weird group wasn’t enough, now I was part of two and wasn’t sure who I was a double agent for.