Barett should have taken the chance to come after me immediately. Instead, all he did was stand around and stare at my face. Even Viina seemed to be getting tired of his schtick, and threw her busted laser rifle, which hit him in the back.

“Move you idiot! You only had a minute! What in the Starlord’s sweet void are you doing!?” Her face was curled into a sneer, and Barett just avoided her gaze.

“It’s ok, I’m actually feeling generous.” I stood loosely, dropping my guard. I’ll give you ten minutes instead. Surely one minute was too little for Barett to properly show off his stuff.

I sent that last part privately, letting Viina ruminate on it. She looked at him, and must have sent a message, because he looked up at her. This silent exchange continued for more than a minute, and eventually Three’s voice came into my head.

‘Do you want to listen in? It’s pretty fascinating.’ I grinned slightly. Since experimenting with Three’s powers more and more this past week, I’d discovered that she was pretty useless in actual combat situations.

Her best usage came from espionage utility situations. No, you can give me the gist though, if it’s not what I’m thinking it is: She’s basically telling him to man up and redeem himself again, or there will be dire consequences.

‘Well… something along those lines. There’s a bit of a plot twist in there, but I’ll just let you hear it from the princesses’ mouth, if you get close enough to talk to her about her secrets.’

“Fine with me.” I shrugged, and realized that I had just spoken aloud. Thankfully, the two of them were preoccupied with each other, and didn’t notice my slip of the tongue.

“He’ll take the time, Paladin Cole.” Viina said, and sent a very disapproving gaze down towards Barett.

“Ok then.” I walked until I was standing opposite of the princeling, and held out my hand. He took the opportunity to charge me, aiming a punch at the side of my head.

Trying to ring my bell this early, huh? My head moved out of the way of his telegraphed punch, and I stepped back as his leg came up to kick me in the chest.

“Hah! Where was that fighting spirit before? I’m curious as to what exactly she threatened you with.” Barett clicked his tongue and grimaced.

“It doesn’t matter to you what she said. Try and hold on for as long as you can, paladin.” I took up a stance as he came at me once more.

I ducked under a fist, moved left as a frontal kick came in. I continued to avoid his blows as the first minute passed.

Barett had a smile on, but I could tell that his heart wasn’t truly in this fight. He had been broken the moment I killed Hector, and that fear was doubly reinforced when Lena’s head imploded.

Good, Barett. Keep swinging. Keep kicking. Keep putting energy into it. The less people who figure out that you’re damaged goods, the better. You need to lead this country… or at least, be able to make amends for it.

I wanted to roll my eyes at how pitiful this all was. Viina knew that Barett couldn’t beat me. She was aware of the Judgments, after all. Barett knew as well, and so did I. This wasn’t a fight. This was a play.

However, this performance only had one marionette. I had to wonder how his puppet master was feeling right about now.

---

Queen Laina Secela’s fist slammed into her personal throne. The royal viewing room went silent as they watched the broadcast with a range of different emotions.

Warrior King Peter Ramire looked on with resignation in his heart. He knew that the current regime of the People’s King was probably done for. Amongst public outcry over Laina claiming the throne after the death of her husband, the nay-sayers would also use this as ammunition to try and oust the Secela family.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

On the bright side, he had made a deal with Lillian, a close confidant of the Paladin, to get his daughter to safety. His other children were already too ingrained into Primal Kingdom society to leave, but his youngest daughter should be able to live the way she wanted. If she was truly in love with that man, then Peter truly wanted to give their relationship a fighting chance.

The other Ramire brother wasn’t faring much better. Like his brother, he was aware that the Secela’s had just taken a huge hit. This, on top of the fact that he was the one who had pushed for a partnership with them, meant his own position was in just as much, if not more jeopardy than the Queen’s.

Machine King Sovix had mixed emotions. He never liked the Secela family in the first place, thinking them upstarts and liars. Laina’s husband, the late People’s King, had stolen technology from Sovix and disseminated it amongst the citizens.

Prior to that betrayal, only the nobles had access to the Judgment System. That was the true meaning of the ‘Primal Kingdom.’ When Judgment first booted up on earth, theirs was the only place to be considered primitive.

So on one hand, he felt fantastic that the situation had blown up in Laina’s face, and the failure was placed solely on her children’s inability to lead.

On the other hand, the machines that Sovix had lent the cause as a show of good faith, as well as his old war buddy had been decimated at the hands of the Metron Kingdom. And the way that his machines had been interfered with…

‘I need to get my hands on the black boxes. Looks like my reign still has a few more surprises left for me.’ A smirk stretched onto his face as he looked on at Barett’s fight.

The kid didn’t look too bad, but anyone with half a brain could see that the paladin had just done the Primal Kingdom a huge favor, meaning that he was practically untouchable when it came to assassination attempts.

However, Queen Secela wasn’t of that mind at all. All she could think of was how to repay Joshua for impeding her chance to solidify her grasp on the general public. On top of that, he was making Barett look like an utter incompetent, which would also refect poorly on the Queen.

‘Viina, answer me now. What happened between you and Paladin Cole!?’ To the Queen, who was grasping at straws for a way to pin the blame on someone other than herself, and her own foisting of the project onto her children.

Thus, she wanted to probe her failure of a daughter in order to understand what had transpired between the two of them. Queen Secela drummed her fingers on the chair.

She had told her daughter beforehand to keep any and all conversations with the enemy out in the open, to give the viewers a better product. Hah! This is what she should get for leaving this all to her Neuromancer daughter.

She had given the role of commander to her daughter specifically to raise her popularity with the general populace, and give the impression that she had an air of competence around her.

‘So much for that.’ The Queen was seething, but what made her even angrier was the lack of response from her daughter, who merely watched her brother’s fight with disinterest.

King Metron was pleased, although for fear of upsetting the room more than his wife already had, he held his tongue. He had made back quite the amount from his bets, including the correct prediction of the MVP. However…

Looking at his wife’s winnings screen, he thought his own amount was rather tame by comparison. Queen Cindera Metron had predicted everything correctly, including the number of deceased on the side of the Primal Kingdom, and even the ranking amongst her own children.

Raiden looked down at his own screen once more as the ten-minute spectacle was winding down, and once again thanked the Starlords that he hadn’t chosen to stand with his wife back then, and make an enemy of Paladin Cole.

---

Lucina walked through the double doors of the desert palace’s throne room. Barett was still trying in vain to hit Joshua, and Viina was looking down on the whole thing as if she weren’t paying attention to it in the least.

They had left Raiden, Akahime, and Winter to handle the cleanup and reorganization of their forces in preparations for the closing ceremony.

Winter had objected to not being able to be there for Joshua at first, but she had quickly acquiesced when Lucina told her the rewards she would receive from the princess personally for doing this for her.

That, and the fact that the rest of the Strafes only listened to her and Joshua helped immensely with reasoning with her.

“Oh, almost done, huh?” Lilian spoke, jolting Lucina from her idle thoughts and coming to a stop behind her. He had been more of a help than Lucina had initially thought.

“Well, I guess. Still, it seems kind of sad to have had to come to this.” Reya said, coming to a stop next to her sister. “Are you sure this is how it had to end? There wasn’t another solution that we could have worked towards together?”

Looking on at the pitiful sight of Barett doing his utmost to hit Joshua, Lucina shook her head. “No. Considering the person we were up against was a pure elitist, and looked down on the very person she gave an opportunity to lead her army to, I would say it was impossible.”

They stared at the fight as time wound down for Barett, and he collapsed to the ground in frustration. “Queen Secela sounds a lot like mom.” Reya said quietly, prompting Lucina to place a hand on her head.

“She does, doesn’t she?” Lucina did her best to comfort Reya, who was coming off an adrenaline high.

“The Primal Kingdom forfeits! The winners are the Metron Kingdom!”