“Where next?” Eten asked. He had saluted, but there was no call to raise a fuss over that.

“Kullervo kindly recommended we consult Skay Pact Elizonas.”

“Oh. Geez, now I feel bad for shutting your suggestion down earlier, Eten. I hope I don't sound insincere when I say I'm sorry,” said Zimley Boe, who often sounded insincere because of her delivery.

“Don't worry about it. I'm well aware you often sound insincere because of your delivery. We're better off from seeing Kullervo first anyway.”

“Even so, do accept my apologies as well,” Adigail Zem insisted.

“Likewise.”

“Me too, Master Eten!”

Across the metaphorical street, in the back of an inconspicuous wagon, a gaggle of officers with headphones frowned. “Group C is unfailingly polite and considerate. How do they get anything done?”

“Hm,” King Ostros said. He rested his elbows on Ulrik's stupid head while he pondered the issue. Ben I. Sloup bashed Ostros's and Solemn Declaration's more promising heads together in an effort to jostle their thinkboxes into activity. Hemt T. Elf tried to shrug, which took some trying from within the headlock Solemn Declaration maintained on him. “I can't imagine.”

If you wanted to find a slayer, naturally you traveled to Slay Every Dragon, only to realize they had all left. Next you flew off to Magical Menagerie or Dinosaur Rumble where the slayers practiced for their hunting action spinoff by troubling the local wildlife, laying down net traps, and cooking gigantic sides of meat. Team Civilized took a connecting flight to Magical Menagerie first and asked Newlywed Manager Quircy Rau if Skay Pact Elizonas had come to the resort.

“I'm not here. I'm hanging out with Aerywe and Gaelvry instead,” she did not say, on account of not being there.

“Zimley Boe is the brains behind that outfit anyway,” Reginald asserted. “That doesn't help us at all for reasons there's no need to explain. It's just something to remember for daily life.”

Zimley blew a bubble and popped it. “I like to think so too, but you might not like the consequences for saying so out loud. I'm pretty sure Quirce is either spying on us right now or she set up the equipment and forgot about it.”

Deep within the Magical Menagerie hotel, in a chamber accessible only after passing three trials, each more challenging than the last, a light beeped on and off and a bunch of security footage went unrecorded. “I keep forgetting to put in a new tape. Why do they fill up so fast?” Newlywed Quircy asked that question a month or so later. By then it was too late.

Team Count Poitnem Is a Swell Guy Once You Get to Know Him swept Magical Menagerie from aardvark to zebra and found no Skays or Skay-sighters, just club-swingers and ball-chasers. In Dinosaur Rumble, however, everything came up Poitnem. The friendly locals told their guests exactly where to go. “Rargh,” they said. After hearing those clear instructions, they spent no more than a couple hours in the search before Skay Pact Elizonas stood before them. Briefly. He needed quick movements to dodge the terrible teeth of a Supersaurus. If the Ersatz Struggle entrants required any assurance that training yielded results, what better proof could there have been but to watch a slayer roll around on the ground instead of doing that flash step thing they always did?

“Not to bother you if you need all your attention, but would you be willing to inform us why you are not employing that famous movement technique of your game?” Hilliarde Feablas asked. As one of the officers who conquered Slay Every Dragon back in the war, he had come to believe slayers moved by no other method than blinking back and forth. Oh, these cultural misunderstandings.

“Going by,” Skay got out as he passed. The next time he was in the area, he added, “the latest trailer,” and later, “that only takes you,” then finally, “straight ahead.”

“How limiting. I see however that your determination is equal to the inconvenience.”

“Yes.”

Count Poitnem waited for a pause in the sparring to make his inquiry, not wishing to impose. At last the Supersaurus's exhaustion from all that snapping and snarling prompted Skay Pact Elizonas to call for a break. Turning toward the officers he sensed had more to say on the basis they were still there, he adopted an inquisitive expression, whereupon Poitnem explained his request.

Stolen story; please report.

Skay thought it over and made this response. “Experience tells me anything you say will be well-received if a quaver creeps in when you say it. Would you like a demonstration?”

“I would be indebted.”

“Glad to.” When the Supersaurus recuperated, Skay readied his shimmering sword, immense in its length and infinitesimal in its width. He blinked straight toward his sparring partner and struck the air a foot short for safety reasons. “Never stand in my way!” he yelled, his voice trembling.

“He must be a tortured soul!”

“Yeah. This fight certainly has a reason behind it.”

“Marvelous. I can say nothing more than that.”

“Wish we'd have a collab with SED, and that soon.”

“What do I do with these chills I feel?”

“I can't help but take his side even though he's clearly the aggressor.”

Count Poitnem bowed and thanked the slayer as deeply as he was able. He and his compatriots returned to Commandment of Hero, inspired.

“This stinks. It's a little uncouth to be so blunt, but I'll leave the etiquette to the Count Poitnem supporters. Other teams have moved on to speech lessons and tea parties while we're still trying, no, failing to get Cadmos not to do something he never did before in his career.”

“Yaaaah!”

“Surely we all realized from the beginning that we chose stubborn clay to reshape.”

“Yeeargh!”

“Saptres Muria is right. I knew from the day of the announcement that it would end in jabbing the main character of our game with an electric cattle prod. The only doubt was if he would fight back.”

“Aaaaaah!”

Unfortunately, Gold and Dynamite had only three electric prods in stock when Team Generic went shopping, and so Hemt T. Elf, Saptres Muria, and Ulrik concentrated on those irrepressible legs of Cadmos while the rest of the crew catalogued every line spoken by shoto characters in all the fighting games they had. Whether spoken in battle, as an intro, or in poorly translated post-battle scenes, Cadmos must be prevented from saying anything like them, they reasoned.

“Maybe, but if you'd asked me back then which would come first, getting someone not to hop or my learning the names of three whole Rares, I would have buried you in the courtyard until you stopped being crazy. It's starting to seem like we're the only ones making progress. In the wrong direction.”

“It's never wrong to learn more about your fellow uuuurrrrrgh!”

“He's right. Hemt T. Elf. Tell us what disgusts you most about Cadmos.”

“That would have to be, just speaking off the top of my head here, that weird twitching when I poke him with a cattle prod that we customized for increased shock strength. He looks like a fish plucked out of the sea trying to evolve into a G******* through sheer willpower, which is only admirable if he can actually do it.”

“Hm. A transformation character! Do fighting games have those?”

“Dennet has said something about a series called B***** R***. Every fighter in it turns into a monster. It's not common I believe, but since this is a fantasy game, we might be able to . . .”

“News!” The rest of Team Generic ran toward the training area, waving their arms and lifting their knees. Ben I. Sloup held the lead while Solemn Declaration came in last, which might have raised a lot of questions about what good it did for anyone to be a centaur if those had not been long since answered. You could store stuff on their backs. “A new announcement! At the hour!”

Saptres Muria extracted his phone from the folds of his black toga. “It's 5:40 now.”

Ulrik smacked him in the back of his head. “You fell for it. Idiot. Now they know where you keep your phone. Theft is inevitable.”

“Should I mind? My phone isn't anything special.”

“Idiot. Now they know your phone isn't anything special. Give it to me.”

“We'd better get back to Freegate. I'd prefer not to tune in out here, because news is always more exciting in a group.” Cadmos began limping toward home, but Hemt blocked his path.

“Hold on. I didn't spend a couple hours tormenting you for fun.”

Ulrik paused his struggle with Saptres Muria over the phone. “It was fun though.”

“It was fun at first, but I'm the type who loses enthusiasm easily without results. I want to see at least an attempt to hit something. Show me.”

Cadmos flourished his blade. “I'll hit you if you that's what you want, Hemt. I just hope it isn't for questionable reasons.”

“Ah! Wait!” Swerving from side to side, Hemt's eyes caught sight of a nearby phone. He grabbed it, punted the attached Saptres Muria and Ulrik into some bushes, and held it up in front of him. Then he reconsidered and held it down, since the entire point was to keep Cadmos out of the air. “All right, go for it.”

“He'll still hit you,” Saptres popped up from his bush to say.

“Oop!” Hemt hopped to the side while holding the phone out as far as his lanky limbs reached.

Cadmos had already begun his ferocious attack. He tottered forward like a man who had his legs poked by cattle prods for two hours and thrust his straight sword through the device at the crucial moment. Despite a stumble at the end there, he stayed upright, never having left the ground.

“Hurrah!” The bland boys cheered, they jumped, they slapped their hero on the back with immoderate fervor and accidentally thought of him as their hero for a second. “We won't worry about the fireball for now,” they cried together as they hoisted Cadmos up and carried him to his fortress of Freegate, howling the entire way and throwing him ahead into a tiger trap now and then to disarm it.