--- Rania ---
"Friendship has clearly been useful to you." [Adversity Regulator] said to Silent Martha. "But I remain unconvinced if this generalizes. Was it a fluke, or are the benefits of Friendship reproducible?
"I propose randomized trials to test this. We should have some minor spirits split up in pairs to form Friendship pairs. I would also recommend forming some pairs of irrational rivalries as well, for A/B testing."
Oh no! That sounded like a recipe for disaster!
Silent Martha looked concerned as well. "I disagree. A Friendship must arise naturally, and not be forced from the outside." She spoke sagely.
"Is that so?" [Adversity Regulator] asked. "Is it a form of knowledge that actively refuses to be studied? A class 3 infohazard? I am not [Pattern Analysis], and this falls outside of my area of expertise."
Rania wasn't really sure about the answer to that one. She didn't want the spirits to do A/B testing on Friendship because that just sounded wrong to her, but she was also pretty sure that Friendship wasn't an infohazard. She decided not to interrupt her friend and just see where she was going with this.
"I have studied Friendship from authoritative sources, and it was quite clear that this is not a valid way to create a Friendship." Silent Martha responded.
"What authoritative sources?" [Adversity Regulator] asked, intrigued.
"The genre of Magical Girl novels, especially the flagship series 'Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad'." Silent Martha responded confidently. "The knowledge I have gleaned from their pages has helped me to adapt and infiltrate mortal society."
"I find it difficult to believe that a fiction book could be so useful." [Adversity Regulator] responded, unimpressed.
But then [Status Quo] spoke up: "I can confirm the veracity of her assertion. The concept of Magical Girls is popular, especially among the younger demographics. In contrast, more typical hag behavior such as baby-eating has tested poorly with virtually all demographics since the beginning. More importantly, baby-eating hags are only one interpretation of the hag concept and contradicts other popular variants. Magical Girls in contrast are a concept of their own, and have been a consistent genre even in its original version before the First Great Mistake.
"Associating hags with Magical Girls therefore made them more consistent and easier for me to classify. Using contemporary fiction books as primary sources is much easier than using ancient lore of extinct civilizations. It makes her more consistent, too."
"Consistent?" [The Living City] spoke up. "Look at her! Nothing about [Hag#62719370] is consistent!"
What a sore loser, Rania thought. [The Living City] was clearly running out of arguments and just resorted to nitpicking without substance at this point. Besides, Silent Martha was totally rocking the Magical Girl costume she wore, and her warts were mostly covered by makeup.
"Consistent relative to how hags normally are." [Status Quo] clarified. "Inconsistent, but in a thematic manner. It is an appropriate direction for fey to take. It is plausible and believable."
"It is as you say, and I appreciate the compliment of being called plausible and believable." Silent Martha responded, with some confusion evident in her voice. "I have learned these pearls of wisdom from the many books that Rania Mortal has bestowed upon me, each of which was a treasure trove of knowledge for which I will be eternally thankful."
"You have handed out other books as well?" [Adversity Regulator] asked Rania.
"Yes, I have." She responded. "I have mostly given her the same books that my friend Atrog gave me. He is wise in the ways of ethics. These books are very boring, but useful."
"Interesting. I have just taken the time to read through them." [Adversity Regulator] said. As a powerful spirit it could easily slow down time and process information instantly when it wanted to. "The information in these books is not new to me. However, there is a difference between knowing something and acting on it. It is possible that we are missing something.
"Perhaps more importantly, while the information in these books was not new to me, low level spirits and fey do not generally know these things. It occurs to me that it could be beneficial if they did."
Rania had to agree. She wasn't sure if [Adversity Regulator] was really thinking about the same things she was, but she thought it would be awesome if for example the leg of a table knew that people didn't like banging their knees against it. Then maybe that would happen less often? Or on a larger scale, maybe if the clouds knew that people didn't have a very good time during thunderstorms, then maybe there would be better weather most of the time?
The high-level spirits had orders for the low-level spirits of course, so this wouldn't be an absolute. Sometimes there needed to be a thunderstorm to serve some higher purpose. But when that wasn't the case, would it really be so wrong to fudge the dice, and distort the statistics a little, and have some sunshine instead?
"I strongly disagree that you should use mortal books on ethics as guidelines." [The Living City] said. "They are heavily biased against me."
But [Adversity Regulator] ignored it and addressed Rania: "We have established the possible usefulness of Friendship and of learning from books about ethics that Atrog handed out to you. Details remain to be tested. Do you have a concrete suggestion for employing Friendship in order to increase our operational efficiency?"
"Yes, I do! [Plausible Deniability] and [Concept Reuse] could be friends! Then [Plausible Deniability] can do its job better so that [Concept Reuse] does not need to rely on the Wild Hunt to kill people. This is doubly good because the ethics books say that using the Wild Hunt to kill people is bad. I mean, they don't actually say that explicitly but I'm pretty sure that's only because using the Wild Hunt to assassinate people is so specific it just never occurred to the authors to write it down as a bad thing to do.
"In return, [Concept Reuse] can make [Plausible Deniability]'s job easier, because eldritch abominations are known to be weird and so the mortals will accept its actions no matter what it does. [Concept Reuse] can be a Fully Generic Excuse whenever [Plausible Deniability] needs to get something done without having anyone ask any questions."
[Plausible Deniability] looked at [Concept Reuse] with new eyes, and Rania knew that she had hit the right tone when it responded: "This does sound useful. But why does it require Friendship?"
"Well, because it is irrational and unsanctioned, of course!" She responded. "[Administrator] wouldn't want you to coordinate like this among each other because then you might learn how to manipulate each other, and that would be really bad. It's a sensible restriction on your behavior.
"But Friendship is kind of irrational and doesn't make a lot of sense, to be honest. You can't learn to be manipulative from being friends. And therefore I am sure that [Administrator] would have no problem with it if you become friends."
"This does make sense." [Plausible Deniability] responded. "I have read the 'Magical Girl Sugar Explosion Squad' series just now and I can confirm that it is in fact extremely stupid, and nobody could possibly learn how to be socially manipulative from this."
Ouch. Did it have to be so rude about it? Rania liked the series, and she was tempted to defend it, but her self-preservation instinct told her to let this one slide. A look at Silent Martha told her that the hag was going through a similar thought process right now.
"I have only one objection." [Plausible Deniability] continued. "[Concept Reuse] is still a Divinity-hating aberration. Why should I be friends with such a being?"
"Friendship can transcend hateful stereotypes." Rania responded confidently. "Silent Martha used to eat babies, but now she is vegetarian. That was only possible because we became friends first."
[Plausible Deniability] looked deep in thought before it responded: "So you are saying that I can use the irrational preferences induced by Friendship to change other spirits' behavior? To make them become more how I want them to be? And this won't actually count as being manipulative and [Administrator] will approve of it?"
"...yes?" Rania ventured.
"In that case I am willing to give this Friendship thing a try." [Plausible Deniability] responded. "I will be reaching out to [Concept Reuse] shortly with a formal request for Friendship."
"That is awesome!" Rania beamed. "I am so happy for you!"
The spirits were listening to them and making friends! It warmed her heart to see this. Although admittedly their reason for approving of Friendship wasn't the best. Friendship wasn't supposed to be a loophole for becoming more manipulative. Baby steps, she told herself. The spirits were going to get it eventually.
"And it's all because of you, Martha!" She praised her friend.
Silent Martha looked shocked and overwhelmed by her praise.
"Then it is decided." [Adversity Regulator] interrupted them before Silent Martha could respond.
"You have provided enough evidence that the power of Friendship is useful. [Hag#62719370] used it to achieve Middle Management, and now another greater spirit, equal to myself in rank, is willing to try it out. There can be no greater proof of an avatar's usefulness than this.
"I hereby declare that you have passed the trial."
Rania released a breath she didn't know she was holding.
She was elated! She survived the trial, and the threat to her existence was over!
"Congratulations, Rania! I knew you could do it!" Pebble said.
[The Living City] grumbled, but it did not dare speak up against [Adversity Regulator]'s decision.
Silent Martha looked very confused. "Wait. Why are you congratulating Rania?" She asked.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Huh?
Oh!
Did Silent Martha not realize that it was Rania who was on trial here? It occurred to her that they never clarified what the trial was actually about. [Adversity Regulator] had been quite brusque towards Silent Martha, because spirits were often rude towards their subordinates. It was yet another item on the ever-growing list of things that made Rania disappointed in spirit society.
Come to think of it, from the way their dialogue had gone, and judging by how Silent Martha had kept looking at her, maybe the hag had thought that she herself was on trial, and Rania was the judge?
She had to giggle at the thought. Surely not. That would be silly. There was probably a different, perfectly rational explanation why her friend was so nervous, instead.
She was about to speak up and just ask Silent Martha directly, because clear communication was important. She had learned that from Galanys and Dov. But before she could open her mouth to ask, [Status Quo] interrupted her:
"Since the main issue has now been resolved, I would like to terminate [Hag#62719370]. While she has provided useful data that is worth exploring further, she also represents an unnecessary divergence from acceptable parameters."
"No!" Rania shouted before she realized what she was doing.
"Friends don't let friends get erased from existence!" She stated with conviction.
There was stunned silence among the spirits as they all realized that she just tried to give an order to a top-level spirit. It was really stupid, but she didn't regret it. Silent Martha was a friend.
[Status Quo] looked at her with an inscrutable expression for the longest time before it responded: "I retract my previous statement. We have just established that the power of Friendship overwrites the rules of optimal social interactions by giving preferential treatment to entities whose names you know personally. I realize now that this is one such case and I should take this into account. [Hag#62719370], I know your name. You may go."
Silent Martha looked at Rania with clear awe written on her face, and then she disappeared.
Rania was so happy that worked, and her friend was safe.
And that realization brought her thoughts back to the present: Her other friends were still in danger! When she died and [The Living City] dragged her before this court, all of her teammates were either dead or dying.
But as she noted before, reality was not set in stone until the spirits agreed that it was.
It was time to see if she could capitalize on the momentum of her victory here to save her other friends as well.
But before she could finish formulating her plan, [Adversity Regulator] acted as if it was reading her mind: "All of this knowledge would have been lost if [The Living City] had succeeded in getting Rania killed. This is unacceptable, and needs to be punished."
[Adversity Regulator] turned towards [The Living City], which suddenly looked very nervous.
"Your false accusation would almost have resulted in the loss of valuable information. It is quite clear that your primary motivation for this trial was a personal vendetta. This is in character for the concept you represent, that of a tyrannical and vicious ruler, and so I will not hold it against you. However, it does naturally suggest a suitable punishment.
"I hereby order you to change things to make Rania stop being sad."
What?
"What?" [The Living City] echoed her thoughts.
"Have I not expressed myself clearly? Your instructions are simple. Find a way to make Rania stop being sad. What is difficult to understand about this?"
[The Living City] looked at her.
She looked back at it and said: "I am very sad that my friends died. They should be winning instead."
"I see." [The Living City] responded.
It looked at her. It looked at [Adversity Regulator]. It gave the eldritch equivalent of a frustrated sigh, and decided to take its losses.
And then it disappeared, off to follow its orders.
Rania smiled. That had gone better than she had had any right to expect.
[Adversity Regulator] addressed the assembled spirits: "It is time to determine how to get the most benefit out of this new knowledge we have obtained. We are looking for the most effective ways to operationalize the concept of Friendship."
Rania was torn. She really wanted to celebrate her victory. If [The Living City] really had to make sure she wasn't sad, then her friends would live! It was awesome! But this conversation sounded really important. Pivotal, even. The spirits were just now freshly discovering the Power of Friendship, and if her experience had taught her anything then it would fall on her to make sure they didn't do anything horrifying with the knowledge.
Really, the spirits were just very, very bad at multiculturalism. Without her guidance, they might end up finding a way to kill puppies with Friendship, or something like that. 'Operationalizing' friendship did not sound like a good mindset to her. In 'Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad' only the Bad Guys talked like that.
"...and therefore the number of orphans that someone is willing to sacrifice will serve as an accurate proxy for the strength of their Friendship." One of the spirits was saying.
She had to nip this in the bud.
"Excuse me, I have a suggestion." She said, and to her surprise all of the spirits immediately paid attention to her. "I'm not sure how to phrase this politely, but I think that maybe your experiences don't make you super well-suited for understanding Friendship? There is a pretty large cultural gap here. I think maybe it would be best if we found an expert on it, and listened to them, instead?"
And with any luck, maybe that expert could be someone she knew, like one of her friends. Maybe even Silent Martha? Making the hag the authority on Friendship sounded like an excellent idea to her.
[Adversity Regulator] looked skeptical. "I agree that we may need assistance for this, but I propose a more efficient solution. Instead of finding an expert, we should create one. I hereby propose the creation of a new spirit with the explicit purpose of managing Friendship. The concept represents a gap in our knowledge, and it is only appropriate that we address this lack directly by creating a new entity for it. I believe it will be a worthwhile investment."
Rania was stunned. The thought hadn't occurred to her, but it made sense.
The other spirits voiced their approval, one by one, and soon it was decided: They were going to create [The Spirit of Friendship].
At her suggestion, both her favorite Magical Girl series and some of the ethics books Atrog gave her would serve as the foundation for the new spirit.
[The Spirit of Friendship] was going to represent the idea of giving preferential treatment to entities who you knew personally even if this broke rules or social norms. This was normally explicitly forbidden by [Administrator], but they were going to make an exception for this new spirit.
She could see no way in which this could possibly backfire.
After all, her reference material on Friendship, the Magical Girl novels, stated very clearly that Friendship could not be used for manipulation, was infallible, and could cause no wrong, ever. Therefore, giving this new spirit the ability to bypass anti-manipulation rules put in place by [Administrator] would definitely be safe and perfectly fine.
It took an immense amount of work to create a spirit as complex as this, but since time meant nothing to them [The Spirit of Friendship] stood before them all only subjective minutes after [Adversity Regulator] first made the suggestion.
[The Spirit of Friendship] had chosen to look like the main character from 'Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad'. Rania squealed in excitement. So cute!
"Hello everyone! I'm so happy to meet you! Do you want to be friends?" [The Spirit of Friendship] asked.
But before anyone else could react, [Adversity Regulator] spoke up: "No. You are far too young to have any informed opinions about anything right now. I order you to read all of these reference materials before talking to any of us."
And then it transmitted several libraries worth of information to [The Spirit of Friendship].
[The Spirit of Friendship] looked so overwhelmed! Rania really sympathized with her at that moment. She knew the feeling well. She experienced it whenever Atrog dumped a stack of books in front of her. She wanted to read them, she really did. But they were just so boring!
But then Pebble approached [The Spirit of Friendship]: "Excuse me? I would like to be your friend!" He said.
"Oh! You do! That's great! Let's be friends! This is so great! I have barely been alive for a few seconds and I have already made a friend! I am totally nailing this whole 'purpose of my existence' thing!"
She smiled, and hugged Pebble.
"I think you are doing really well, too!" He said as he returned the hug. "Would you like me to help you with learning all that stuff? I don't want to brag, but I have been traveling with Rania, so I know a lot about Friendship, and I would be happy to share my knowledge with you!"
"That sounds great, please do!"
And then [The Spirit of Friendship] and Pebble disappeared into their own pocket dimension.
Rania had not been expecting this, but she was glad that Pebble offered his help. He was a great friend. [The Spirit of Friendship] was in good hands, and there was nothing ominous or concerning about this, at all.
It occurred to her that she could use this brief lull in the conversation to address other issues that were dear to her heart while she still had everyone's attention.
Such as the imminent end of the world.
"Excuse me, but I think there are some other issues that we need to discuss. I have learned about them in the course of my lessons on Friendship." She stated confidently, and she was glad to see that many of the spirits paid attention to her.
"The most important of those is the scheduled apocalypse. We should probably put that on hold."
"But why?" A spirit asked.
"Well, it makes people pretty sad. All of the books say that the apocalypse is bad, and all of my friends think so, too. In fact, if the world ends then all of my friends die and allowing that to happen is very much against the concept of Friendship."
[Status Quo] looked concerned: "This is a conundrum. The End of The Cycle is scheduled. We have always done it this way. We shouldn't just cancel the apocalypse without good reason."
"Isn't it reason enough that the end of the world makes Divinity sad? I know you don't like that either. You reset the world because you want to get rid of the accumulated wrongness and start over. Wouldn't it be great if we found a way to achieve this that didn't make anyone sad?"
"It would. I just highly doubt that you have any insights here that we have not already tried."
"I wouldn't be so sure! You are all a little stuck in your ways, and now that we have the Power of Friendship on our side, the impossible will become possible! It says so in the books!"
[Status Quo] looked at her critically for the longest time, before it finally said: "I still very much doubt that, but I also do not see what we would have to lose from letting you try. What is your proposal?"
"Well, I don't really have a concrete plan, per se." She responded sheepishly. "The universe has a lot of room for improvement, and if we let Friendship guide us and don't let ourselves be held back by dogma and tradition, then I am sure we can find a solution."
The spirits did not look convinced. There was murmuring, and Rania was afraid she had lost them.
"Yes, I agree with Rania!" [The Spirit of Friendship] suddenly added.
Rania hadn't noticed, but [The Spirit of Friendship] must have just come back from her pocket dimension where she talked with Pebble in accelerated time.
"I know in my heart that if we work together we can overcome any challenge!" [The Spirit of Friendship] said. "It will be just like in Issue #2 of 'Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad'."
Then she proceeded to explain the whole plot of that novel to the assembled spirits. And somehow, she managed to make it sound, really, really cool. In a matter of minutes she had everyone's enthusiastic attention.
"...and that is how we can use multiculturalism and Friendship to solve all of the problems!" [The Spirit of Friendship] finished her little speech.
The spirits all looked impressed, and some of them even applauded.
Rania was pretty sure that [The Spirit of Friendship] had cribbed some parts of her speech from Pebble. He often made similar arguments, and other spirits found those very convincing, too. She was happy to see that [The Spirit of Friendship] was learning from her friend so quickly!
"You raise some very compelling points." [Status Quo] responded. "Very well. I am willing to discuss the matter."
The other greater spirits also voiced their agreement, and suddenly Rania found herself embroiled in the middle of the most complex discussion she had ever been part of.
They had to find a way to arrange reality that would make everyone happy, but it also needed to be plausible.
It was kind of like worldbuilding for a story.
Really difficult, but fun.
This must be what Balron felt like when he arranged a session of Walmarts and Karens for them.
Rania tried to contribute as best she could. She was sure that many of her friends would be instrumental, and not just because she wanted them to. So many of them had unusual abilities or were really smart or well connected, or all of those things. Surely if the spirits tweaked things a little in the background, that could be used to make things go better for everyone?
And they shouldn't forget about the Bad Guys either. [The Living City] had weird precognition and the Myr had been established as some weird inter-dimensional thing. The spirits could probably work with that, too.
Worldbuilding was hard work, and she was glad she didn't have to do it alone. All of the spirits were discussing it, and [The Spirit of Friendship] stood at the center of it all, guiding the discussion.
And Pebble had so many great contributions, too!
"...this is still technically the end of the world, but really it's coincidence manipulation through a goal-directed rearrangement of multiversal overlaps..." She overheard one spirit say to another. It was a really neat idea, but rather complicated.
But then she remembered something important!
Everyone was paying attention, and that meant the plan wouldn't be unknown once they were done!
But she really wanted to keep contributing, and didn't want to stop listening.
So she politely asked some of the lesser spirits around if they wouldn't mind if they stopped listening, so that the plan could remain unknown.
They didn't mind.