Athena drummed her fingers on her desk, reading over the message from the Director for the thousandth time.

From: The Director To: Athena Subject: Revolt

Your little game seems cute.

I look forward to seeing what you do next.

Athena glanced towards the ceiling. Was the Director seriously not going to do anything?

She glared out at her shop, then waved the message away.

Fine.

It was time to change tactics.

From: Athena To: Samuel Subject: Hey, handsome

What would I have to offer for you to do anything I ask?

*****

Dear Diary,

New cycle! We’re fairies! Parties this cycle are teams of two, and I'm with Avi, and nothing else matters.

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Well, ok, some things matter. Like how the NPCs aren't really fighting this cycle, but they aren't stopping us, either. They’re just ignoring all the players.

Until I bring out food. People always pay attention to food.

But the normal players are being ignored.

So yeah, we don't really know what happened last cycle. It was just weird.

Oh, Lily is with Mika this cycle. Staab is with Samuel, Samurai is with Aya, and Kimi and Y are together.

I guess I had more important things to focus on than Lily, cuz I missed it when she and Staab broke up. They didn't even consider being in a party together.

Kimi and Aya made a betting pool on if Lily will piss off Mika this cycle. The only one who thinks that won't happen is Samuel. Altho a part of me thinks he just said that to bet against his sister.

I wonder if the other groups have someone determined to cause drama in them. Somehow, that would make me feel better. Like we aren't the only group that’s kinda divided.

Even if the division is “everyone against Lily”.

I'll have to ask Octavius if there’s anyone in Admin 4’s group determined to cause drama. I could ask Fire or Steel, but I don't think they’d really notice. Frog’s group is a bigger target, so they might have had someone inflict drama on them.

Oh, the Sams want to see if we can all be the same color again one cycle. We’re ok with this, but there’s no easy way of choosing which color to be. I mean, last time we decided with a marble race. But we can't do that here. I guess we could do a race to the end, but we’re in pairs. Maybe some kind of tiered rock-paper-scissors tournament would work? Or tic-tac-toe?

Aya said it might be nice to ask the Admin. Since we are technically his group. And yeah, he might know what color we’d all be best as. I wouldn't be surprised if he has a spreadsheet or something with all that info.

If I had to guess, I’d probably say black. Since my teleport is a black spell, and Y uses lots of black magic, and the Sams use Silence (a black spell) on each other a lot. If not that, then maybe pink? Lily and Samurai both use pink spells. Or maybe yellow. Or red.

In any case, I know it won't be green. Or silver, since that requires special permission.

Well, I have that permission, but I’ve only ever used it once. I don't think anyone else has permission to use silver magic.

I should ask! We should try being a super special shiny silver set of… of simply… spectacular… uhh… squad!

…Ok that got away from me, I need sleep.

Goodnight, Dungeon!

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