Her eyes affixed to the tip of Slythorn’s bazooka, Momo yelled “[Possess]!”

She felt a pull at her navel as her soul was sucked out of her body and into the gun. She had forgotten just how weird it felt to inhabit something inanimate. It was like shoving yourself into a suitcase. Her skin became a hard, metallic shell; her head became the gun’s open barrel.

She could feel Slythorn’s fingers wrapping around the trigger, pressing down repeatedly to no avail.

“Stupid thing, work!”

With a groan, Slythorn looked up.

“Wait, where did she go?” she said, whipping her head around.

“Right here!”

Shoving herself forward, Momo flung out of Slythorn’s grasp. She collided hard with the cobblestone, a weird sort of pain rushing into her as a dent welled up in her side. She quickly recovered, flipping herself around several times until she landed on the stock, the barrel of the bazooka pointed back at Slythorn.

“I’ll shoot,” Momo mumbled, trying to sound threatening. “So you better not try anything.”

Slythorn just stared at her – completely gobsmacked. She seemed unsure of what to do next.

“This is ridiculous,” she said finally. “I’m not playing chicken with some talking gun.”

She raised her sleeve to her mouth, revealing a section of skin with a golden bracelet attached at her wrist. She spoke towards the bracelet as if she were talking through a walkie talkie.

“Bellafor, I’m done here. I can’t neutralize the target with the bazooka. She has some sort of new… possessing power,” Slythorn said bitterly. “And I don’t feel like wasting my Holy charges exercising her soul out of it.”

She lowered her wrist again, the message complete, and gave Momo a final glare.

“You’re only making this harder for yourself, you know,” she said, almost like a warning. “We could strike a deal, and this would all be over.”

That gave Momo pause, the wheels of her brain turning. She didn’t expect any of this to be open to negotiation. “Wait. A deal? What kind of deal?”

“The kind where you turn over your new Queendom to us. The Holy Resistance is not so different from you as you may think,” she said slowly. “We’re cut from the same cloth.”

“No offense,” Momo said. “But I find that hard to believe.”

From under her mask, Slythorn laughed darkly.

“I could see why. The tentacles are a bit much,” she said. “But you’ll see in time. It makes no difference if I kill you right now or kill you later. The seeds we’re sowing will come to fruition regardless.”

Seeing no point in elaborating, she turned on her heel.

“It’ll be just like old times, Momo,” she sing-songed. “I’ll lay a plan, and you’ll obediently follow.”

“What? Wait –”

Slythorn disappeared into the crowd, her body absorbed into the bowing and cheering masses. Momo [Demorphed], pushing through body upon body to find her, but she was already gone.

—

“I’m so lost,” Momo groaned, putting her head in her hands.

“Why are you complaining? You won,” Radu said, pouring hot tea into a cup. Matcha – Momo’s favorite, and the only one he kept in his room in Drachenheim. “The people are now obsessed with a chicken.”

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Momo glared at him. “That wasn’t exactly my main goal.”

After the campaign event wrapped up, the chicken was safely retrieved from the vehicle, the vehicle was safely stolen back by Grimli, and Momo made the journey back to Drachenheim, insisting that she meet with Radu about business. The business in question – tea time.

They sat cross-legged in the Heir’s room, a chamber reserved solely for the one to inherit the Dragon’s power. Radu wasn’t a huge fan of the place – way too many relatives hanging from the walls watching him at all times – but he had made it his own, obscuring their faces with wood panels and bringing in his favorite collection of knives.

“The way you tell it, it definitely was,” Radu laughed. “You realized it was the fastest way to get them on your side, and you did it. Conniving. A bit twisted. It’s the Momo I know and love.”

Momo frowned. Valerica better be hearing this.

“Okay, fine, I did want them to join the chicken cult, or whatever,” she sighed. “And it worked. Even the dissenters changed sides – I have a 100% control rating on the city now.”

“Toast to that,” he said, clinking their tea glasses.

“But,” she emphasized, taking a sip and burning her tongue. “Ow. Hot, hot.”

“Why do you always do that? You know it’s going to be hot, but you drink it anyway.”

“I’m impatient,” she said, biting her lip.

“That’s true. On many fronts. I’ve never seen someone rush into so many different political strategies before. Populism. Religious dictatorship. You’re going to be in such a mess by the end of this, I don’t even know if I can watch.”

“Shut up,” Momo mumbled, knowing somewhere deep inside that he was probably right. “Just let me get to my point.”

“Okay, okay.”

“This woman who goes by Slythorn showed up. One of the remaining Knights of the Sun, apparently. She armed a bunch of the dissenters with bazookas, ordered them to kill me – but her plan went up into flames, yada yada.”

“As a sensible plan always does when exposed to Momo.”

She ignored that. “But when I confronted her, she backed down pretty easily. Once she realized she couldn’t kill me with one of the bazooka guns, she just gave up. Something about not wanting to use her Holy charges?”

Radu scrunched his nose. “Charges? That’s weird. Charges are a limited resource that things like armor and weapons have.”

Momo shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t know. And then she gave me this whole spiel on how I could just hand over the keys to the Queendom to her, and that we’re more similar than we think. And she kept saying we know each other – that I was going to repeat history somehow.”

Radu’s confusion mounted. “That is really weird.”

“I know.”

“Any idea who it is?”

“No clue,” Momo sighed. “I’m so bad with voices. And faces. And remembering things.”

“That’s not very helpful, no.”

“But I did receive this,” Momo said, pulling out a courier from her pocket. “So at least there’s that.”

Congratulations! Your holding, [Occupied Jarvirium], has ranked up to Rank 6 due to your improvements to liveability, infrastructure, and citizen happiness.

The city’s chosen deity, Morgana, has awarded the city a [Legendary] perk.

[Great Wall of Nether]: A giant, impenetrable wall of Nether now surrounds the city. All attacks with Holy magic will be nullified on impact.

“Oh, that’s niiice,” Radu said. “Looks like Slythorn and her buddies won’t be having an easy time, then. Jarva neither, in case he tries to stage a little return party.”

“Yeah,” Momo mumbled, still a bit solemn. “It does make me feel better to know Sumire is more protected. But I still feel bad about leaving her – I mean, everyone – in such a defenseless position while I’m on the road.”

Radu gave her an uncharacteristically genuine smile, and gave her shoulder a squeeze.

“Loosen up, Ripper,” he said. “You don’t have to claim to care about everyone when I know it’s just about her.”

She scoffed, blushing. “That’s not true.”

“It’s a little bit true,” he said, leaning back to blow the steam off his tea. “But either way, you’re doing the right thing – and the thing Sumire told you to do, if you recall. The only way to get this crazy continent on your side is by meeting the people where they are, and you’re meeting them there, and then some.” He winked.

“The then some wasn’t necessary,” she muttered, taking another experimental sip. It had cooled off a bit, and she swallowed it down greedily. She needed the calm – the tranquility. “I’m just… nervous, is all. I’ve never been good with uncertainty. It gives me indigestion.”

“The next few months is going to be one long tummy ache, then,” he laughed. She groaned.

—

“Where’s our next tour stop, boss?”

Grimli strummed a few chords idly in the backseat of their new carriage. They were forced to rent it to transport the dwarven vehicle, which was much too heavy for Nightmare to troll along with. Momo had wanted to stay in Mole City longer and hunt down her old friends from the Thieves Guild, but the tour schedule reigned supreme.

Momo sighed, reading the next stop off the back of Grimli’s t-shirt. It hadn’t seemed to occur to him that he could take it off and read the dates himself.

“Ever heard of a little town named Bruda?”