The Maroons’ treehouse was shabby but warm. It had an actual hearth with a small cooking fire, a bed and handwoven rugs, blankets, and a thatch-stuffed pillow for Angel. There was even a vanity, with a bowl for washing up in. No mirror, though. Glass was almost as rare as iron in Malae.

Angel didn’t say much while we got settled down. She sat on the bed and ran her hands out over the quilt, a complex expression on her face. I watched her as she touched the mosquito netting that had likely been woven by one of the ex-Gladiators living in Eden. She didn’t sign a word before she went back out to the main room, took a seat, and started her Inventory and crafting.

“-by ourselves?”

“What?” Lulu and I were sharing the small amount of stored meat I’d kept. I was so busy gnawing on a rex bone that I almost didn’t see Angel sign at us. “Sorry, missed the first half of what you said.”

“I said, ‘do you really think we can make it out there by ourselves’?” Angel repeated. She had an unfinished boot laying in her lap. The other [Reinforced Rex Leather Boot] stood beside the bed, dark brown and shiny new.

“Me, you and Lulu? Sure.” I turned around so I could see her, but continued to chew on the bone. It was oddly satisfying to just chomp and chomp away things now, like a massage for my jaw muscles.

“What makes you believe that?”

“Well,” I thought between bites. “Firstly, you have me. Secondly, you have me AND Lulu, and she and I are gonna become a force to be reckoned with once we hit Level 25 and super-digivolve or whatever it is we’re going to do. Thirdly, you’re probably the most heavily armed badass on the island now. Two rifles, two junk turrets… Oh, and me. Did I mention how awesome that is?”

“That’s what I like about you, Noodles. You’re so modest.” She signed for a groan.

“That’s right. Modest-T Noodles.”

“You and that damn name.” She made a gesture of disbelief. “Where does the ‘M.T’ thing come from, anyway?”

“I dunno. Just felt right at the time.” I shrugged. “Strange, though, because it’s nothing like my actual name.”

Angel cocked her head at that. “You remember your name?”

“I didn’t. Then someone I might have known on the outside messaged me, said my name was ‘Vance’.”

“Vance. That’s a weird name.” Angel made the sign for ‘Van’, as in the vehicle.

“Yeah. Weirdest thing is that I don’t feel like it’s ‘mine’ for some reason.” The thought made me restless for some reason. “I’ll stick with Noodles. It has majesty, not to mention a certain masculine je ne sais quoi.”

“So why is Lulu ‘Lulu’ then?”

I asked her. Lulu blobbed up and down and exclaimed: “Luuu-lu!”

“Because she can say it.” I scratched my head. “I think.”

Lulu wobbled in agreement. “Ooo!”

Angel gave us both a wry look.

“You thinking about Merc’s offer?” I asked her, leaving off the bone to really look up and focus on her hands and expression.

“Yeah.” Angel’s pale eyebrows furrowed. “But something’s bugging me. If she was a General to Imperator… to this ‘Nicolai Kaban’ guy, she had to have owned a champion legion team and two mandalas. Where are her Legions? And the mandala abilities?”

“She got killed and lost it all, maybe? Gladiators drop loot after death.”

“Maybe. Or they were taken from her. I don’t think used mandalas can be stolen from dead Gladiators, though.” Angel picked at the half-finished boot with one fingernail. “Well, can’t blame her for not giving us her whole life story. She and the Maroons seem genuine enough, but I don’t think they have the best shot at breaking the stalemate in the Jungle. I think… I think we do.”

I lifted my head. “You realize I’ve been saying that this entire time, right?”

“I know. And I believed you, sort of.” Angel’s face and fingers faltered for a moment. “It’s just… I’ve been here for months, scrambling to survive. So some of how you felt could just be naivety. I needed to make up my own mind.”

“Fair enough.” I thought back, curious if I’d really only been here less than a week. “Let’s see: We slept outside of Goldrush… then the raid, then before that… uhhhh. Yeah. Five days, guess so. Feels a lot longer than that. How long have you been here, Lulu?”

“Twuu… moos,” Lulu said.

“Twuu moos?” I absently translated Lulu’s responses for Angel while I tried to puzzle it out. “Tomorrow?”

“Nuuu.” She vibrated in thought for a moment, then split her mass and rose up into an approximation of a one and a two. “Twuuve. Mooms.”

Angel blinked a couple times, then stiffened. “Lulu, you’ve been here for twelve months?!”

Lulu snapped back into her usual rotund shape. “Ooo!”

“How were you still only Level… oh, wait.” Angel paused to rub the bridge of her nose. “You don’t like fighting.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Yuu. Nuu fuu.”

“How did you survive all this time, then?”

Lulu formed herself vaguely into the shape of a Roomba, and began to scoot around the floor. “Scoo-woo!”

“Vacuuming? No… scavenging.” I tilted my head, trying to work out the charades.

“Yuu!” Then Lulu mimicked hiding, ducking around the edge of the table. “Scoo-woo, hoo-doo!”

“You survived by hiding and scavenging?”

Lulu trilled, then mimed clapping a pair of little starfish ‘hands’.

“Lulu might not be the fanciest Legion in the game, but there’s a brain floating around in all that jelly somewhere.” I rumbled, looking back to Angel. “The three of us can kick Kaban to the curb, kid. I believe it one hundred percent.”

“I think I’m more like… sixty percent.” Angel admitted. “I dunno. Part of me wants to stay here. Merc seems tough; she’s smart, but she… there’s something not right.”

I nodded. “You already know what it is that’s bugging you. Can’t speak for you, but I know why I don’t want to sign up with her.”

“Why?”

“Because during that whole spiel, she didn’t take radical ownership of her current situation. It’s Kaban that lured her in, it’s the mafia that’s sabotaging her ratings, it’s everyone’s fault but hers. Don’t get me wrong, she seems like a decent enough tactical leader. But I don’t think I’d want to be under her leadership strategically.”

Angel frowned. “What’s the difference?”

Oh yeah: Angel hadn’t been law enforcement in her life before Malae. “Uhh… strategy is the big picture stuff, tactics is the execution of a strategy. You ever ran across the expression ‘win the battle, lose the war?’. Battles are tactical, the plans ruled up for the war are strategic.”

“Got it.”

“Anyway, yeah… weakness within an organization starts from the top, and the biggest problem as I see already isn’t that the Maroons are short on viewers and resources. It’s because they’re still trying to play the game by Kaban’s rules,” I continued. “They’re using a variant of his tactics because they feel safe. Take over camps. Increase your territory. Loot resources and try to build stockpiles to pull more raids and get more resources. But all that does is shuffle the pieces around the board.”

Angel nodded thoughtfully. “I was thinking it was mostly the resources but… now I think about it, you’re right. If what Merc said about Kaban is true, no one is ever going to be able to play catchup to the two big guilds.”

“Right. Nothing’s going to change unless we stop playing by the rules the Centurions and Pigs have established and take some risks,” I said. “Pull off things that command attention from viewers and take us viral. Even if the subscriber algorithms ARE against us, good old-fashioned word of mouth can’t be controlled beyond the limitations of the game.”

“Yeah. I just worry about us getting crushed before we get a leg up,” Angel replied. “God. I nearly got captured so many times as a solo.”

“Key word there is ‘almost’. But think about it: when DID you get captured? Was it when you were relying on yourself and your own power? Or was it when you handed over your power to the Centurions?”

She sighed. “Goddammit. You know, that… that never even occurred to me. But you’re right.”

We lapsed into a brief silence, where Angel fiddled with her hair and gazed into the fire. Lulu slithered over to me and curled up in a little blob against my side, cooing to herself.

“I met Sam out in the wilderness, while she was leveling Kaya. At first, I hid from her. I nearly killed her. But she was so kind to him.” The motions of Angels hands and her expression were halting, at first. “She went into the tunnels and nearly triggered one of my traps. I managed to stop her before she was killed and we got talking. We were both so… so tired. Tired of being alone. Tired of having to watch our backs around everyone and everything all the time.”

I rumbled sympathetically. “I’m the Legion equivalent of a supercharged hotrod, and my life is still pretty rough. Can imagine how being a human woman here is a thousand times harder.”

“It’s the fucking worst,” Angel signed. “Sam kept visiting, and I wanted to be with her, so I kind of just… surrendered. The structure of the Centurions seemed ridiculous to me at first. I’m a competitive athlete, and the ‘cadet’ thing and the ranks and all the concessions to power you had to make was borderline patronizing.” She paused for a moment. “No, I’m being too kind. It IS patronizing.”

“Yeah.” I yawned, lips peeling back from my teeth. “Both the Pigs and the Centurions have a serious cult vibe.”

“They do.” Angel grimaced, and rubbed her eyes. “I was starting to fall for it, too.”

“Ooh?” Lulu looked between us, concerned. She still couldn’t make sense of ASL, telepathic or otherwise.

“Don’t worry, kid.” I gave her a little pat with my foreclaw. “And Angel? Don’t you worry too hard, either. The way I see it, if the three of us level up and fight smart, we have a solid chance at beating these motherfuckers at their own game. What do you say to Team ANL?”

Angel picked up her finished boot from the floor, and threw it at me with the deadly combination of power and precision only a Latina could muster.

“Okay. I deserved that.” Nursing the sore patch on the side of my neck with a paw, I picked the boot up with a tentacle and tossed it back to her.

“Team LAN,” Angel replied. “You ass.”

“Ass was my first sugges- OWW!” The boot took me in the nose this time. “Jesus Christ, Angel!”

Angel narrowed her. “There is no mercy. No hope. Only La Chancla.”

I blinked a couple of times. “Woah. Wait a sec. Did… you just crack a joke?”

She dropped her face and chuckled, reaching up to tuck a looping strand of white hair behind one pale ear. “…Maybe.”

“I love it. Do it more.”

“What? Like on command?” She shot me a peevish glare, but wasn’t able to keep it up. Her lips cracked with a smile. “In your dreams, murder-puppy.”

I flopped onto my back, put all my paws in the air, and gave her a big, goofy, gaping smile with my tongue hanging out. “Arf arf! Golly gee, I sure love murder!”

Angel busted up laughing.

“Ooh?” Lulu leaned one way, then the other, looking at us with consternation.

“I’d wag my tail, but I’ll probably put a hole through the wall.” Wheezing in an approximation of real human laughter, I rolled back to my front and shook out the tentacles until they were neatly aligned again.

“No treats for Murder Puppy if he demos our damn house.” Angel glanced at me, smiled, then quickly looked away. Her hand went up again, delicate calloused fingers beside her ear, the inside of her wrist flashed outward. And I realized, with a start, that she was flirting. With… me?

“Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I need to get some rest.” Angel dropped her fingers down to sign, then yawned and stretched. “We’re going to have to talk to Merc tomorrow and tell her our decision.”

“Yeah. For sure.” I lay my head down and wrapped my tail around myself and Lulu, letting the bladed tip rest across my nose. “You’re decided, then?”

“I think so.” Angel paused for a moment, then looked away from me as she tucked her legs up on the bed. “You know… I’m glad I met you, Noodles. I don’t know if I ever really thanked you for saving me from the Hell Pigs.”

“I don’t remember if you did, but I also don’t remember if I thanked you for saving my dumb ass from Bruce the Bat. Or the volcano frog-rock monster.”

She chuckled. “Me either. Everything’s moved so fast… it’s hard to recall anything. There were months of nothing, then suddenly, boom. I meet Sam, I join the Centurions, I get captured and nearly killed, I meet you. It feels like everything is accelerating.”

“It is.” I lay my chin on the back of my crossed paws and heaved a big sigh. “Anyway, get some rest, kid. We got another big, big day tomorrow.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.” Angel sighed, then flopped face-down into her pillows.