Sobon and the rest of the sur­vivors of the Iri­des­cent Rapi­er came out in a civ­i­lized part of the as­ter­oid belt, but rocks out­num­bered peo­ple by a fac­tor of thou­sands to one. In fact, it was a rock farm in­hab­it­ed by mas­sive as­ter­oid golems; their crip­pled troop ship ap­peared out­side a gi­ant stone win­dow, the met­al ve­hi­cle tum­bling through the open­ing com­plete­ly un­con­trolled.

Alas, in­side, a ten-kilo­me­ter-tall stone woman was hav­ing a bath, and when she saw the in­trud­er, she screamed, and swat­ted it back out­side. It pin­balled off of sev­er­al dozen-kilo­me­ter-long rock sheep, fi­nal­ly tum­bling into the hy­per­space tran­sit lane just out front.

Sobon bare­ly man­aged to get his bear­ings in time to see the head­lights of a de­liv­ery truck bear­ing down on them. But not be­cause the truck was mov­ing--in fact, it was completely stopped, parked just out­side the building. The troop ship tum­bled end over end, banged once into the hood, then plant­ed it­self straight on the delivery truck's wind­shield with a graceless thwack sound.

The stone golem dri­ver, when he got back into the car from de­liv­er­ing a pack­age, glanced at the ugly smear on the wind­shield and just said, "Eww." He flipped on the wipers, and the trans­port ship was knocked away into open space.

Three months lat­er, it would re-en­ter the at­mos­phere of Crest, un­no­ticed by the or­bital de­fens­es. It, and its last sur­viv­ing pas­sen­ger, even sur­vived re-en­try.

At least right up un­til the mo­ment when it fell on a small­er, hu­man de­liv­ery truck.

Mo­ments lat­er, a de­liv­ery truck woke up in the body of Jom, and looked up at the two nasty Bil­gs who had thought they had just killed the boy. And the de­liv­ery truck squint­ed at them, filled with righteous fury, and said, "I know kung fu."

Ex­cept he was a truck, so it was re­al­ly just a very long, loud "HOOOONNNNK" noise.

----------------------------------------

"...but more cu­ri­ousss­ly," the Bilg butch­er hissed, "I wasss told that you did not pos­ssesss the tal­ent for qi. I hear a great many liesss from a great many peo­ple, young street rat, but I too mussst live in fear of the great pow­ersss of the world." The man's back hand, by his side, ges­tured, and sud­den­ly, the knife that Sobon had dropped was in it again.

"Ssso, I mussst know, who your massster isss, young ssstreet rat." The knife re­versed it­self, from a thrust­ing grip to a back­hand­ed one, and he moved the knife be­hind his body, as though to hide it. "I would not wis­ssh to in­ss­sult a great massster by dessstroy­ing hisss work."

Sobon looked at the man, squint­ing, and said, "Chuck Nor­ris."

The butch­er blinked twice. "What?"

"Chuck Nor­ris? The leg­end?"

"Nev­er heard of him."

"Okay... what about Ran­did­ly Ghosthound?"

"Is that ss­sup­pos­ssed to be a name?"

"Uh..." Sobon cast his thoughts out into the aether, try­ing to find any­thing that sound­ed plau­si­ble. "Would you be­lieve... Maxwell Smart?"

"I would not be­lieve you were re­lat­ed to any­one named Sss­mart, no.

"What about the Calami­tous Bob?"

"I am be­gin­ning to think you ss­sim­ply don't know how to lie."

"Blue? Vi­o­let? Zo­ri­an? Quick­save? Look, just pre­tend that one of the names I gave you was in­tim­i­dat­ing."

"You could have re­al­ly jussst giv­en me any name I didn't know and been mysssteriousss about it."

"Shit. Can I start over?"

----------------------------------------

"We'll be ship­ping out soon, he's wound­ed and a half-star, and I'm al­most out of leg-irons, so would you do us all a fa­vor and throw him in the pit? If he's go­ing to die, he might as well feed the bar­gles."

"Sounds good to me!" The cheer­ful guard dragged him along by his arm into the bar­racks. "More's the pity, boy, but all for the best, you'll see. Open up the bar­gle pit, got a fresh one for you!"

"Fresh one," replied a voice, also too cheer­ful, and there was a metal­lic scrap­ing.

A mo­ment af­ter Sobon was thrown into the pit, he was caught by a strong pair of hands. He looked up, to find a very tall man with a wide and pro­found mous­tache glar­ing dag­gers at him. He wore all white, in­clud­ing a very large, poofy hat atop his head. Even as Sobon took him in, though, the man dropped him and be­gan shak­ing his fist at the hatch in the ceil­ing where Sobon had been thrown in.

"Sacre bleu! 'ow am I to serve th' bar­gles when th' only 'elp you send is 'alf dead street rats?" He picked up a la­dle from the near­by stove and flung it up, but it banged in­ef­fec­tu­al­ly off of the iron grill. "Would it keel you all to send me prop­er help?"

"Aww, shove it, you Fonch Nin­ny," the guard above sneered. "You work your helpers to death any­way, so who'd ever vol­un­teer?"

To death? Sobon swal­lowed, but the chef sim­ply huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, turn­ing to glare at Sobon.

"Al­right, you lit­tle waste of breath. We 'ave over two thou­sand huge, man-eat­ing pigs to feed, and if they get any­thing less than the finest cui­sine, they will turn into a rav­en­ous beast from which there is no es­cape. Your task will be to go to that meat grinder and keep turn­ing it un­til your arms fall off. If you stop, I will per­son­al­ly feed you into it! As I did your pre­de­ces­sor! Now go!" He snapped up a pan and banged it loud­ly with a spoon. "Hur­ry up, hur­ry up! I need one hun­dred pounds of ground meat in the next twen­ty min­utes, or there will be hell to pay!"

Sobon lept at it, con­fused and con­cerned, all the while feel­ing quite cer­tain that he was al­ready in hell.

----------------------------------------

On this morn­ing, af­ter Ki'el set out in her boat to fish, she re­turned to find a squir­rel wan­der­ing around the ru­ined vil­lage, smelling things and paus­ing at each open door­way, as though con­fused why every­thing was emp­ty.

When it turned and saw her, the two sim­ply stared at each oth­er for a long time. And then, sud­den­ly, the squir­rel turned and be­gan writ­ing in the dirt.

Ki'el went and ex­am­ined the scratch­es, puz­zling over them un­til they fi­nal­ly seemed to make sense. "I... am... a... space... alien." She turned and looked at the squir­rel.

It looked back at her.

So Ki'el just shrugged. "Makes sense to me," she said. "Teach me mag­ic."

The squir­rel gave her a very small thumbs-up.

----------------------------------------

As Ki'el's feet fi­nal­ly reached the deck, the most heav­i­ly built man took a half-step for­ward, his greasy skin shin­ing in the ear­ly af­ter­noon sun. "What a lit­tle treat has worked its way up onto our deck. In­ter­est­ed in sign­ing up, lit­tle lady?"

A roll of laugh­ter passed through the crowd, but Ki'el just grinned a fer­al grin, know­ing that none of them knew the tricks that Sobon had taught her, tricks that would let her fi­nal­ly avenge her fam­i­ly.

"No," she said, her voice growl­ing, fer­al. "I have come to chal­lenge you all to a dance-off."

There was a long si­lence, bro­ken when Ki'el flung her arms out to her side and slammed one foot in front of her, as Sobon's aether speak­ers be­gan play­ing a zesty latin melody, and his aether spot­light flashed down onto her from above, to let the en­tire pirate crew know that they were out­classed.

But then, there was a thump. The whole crew turned to the cap­tain's quar­ters as the door was flung open, and a man with a big straw hat, strange noodly arms, and a goofy look on his face came out, blink­ing in the sun­light.

"Did you say a dance-off?" He said, sound­ing un­rea­son­ably ex­cit­ed. "That sounds like fun! Hey guys, break out the in­stru­ments! We get to have a dance-off!"

The crew scat­tered, fetch­ing brass and wood­en in­stru­ments from near­by bar­rels, and from the crow's nest, a man de­scend­ed, sur­round­ed by a full kit of drums held to­geth­er with mops and a nest of rope. Ki'el swal­lowed, and some­where, Sobon felt his heart drop. Both of them knew in­stant­ly that they were out­classed.

"Al­right, guys! One, two, one two three...!"

----------------------------------------

It was a few min­utes be­fore a strange face ap­peared in a glow­ing win­dow in front of him. The per­son in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions win­dow had skin that had once been smooth like a dol­phin's, and fa­cial fea­tures that had orig­i­nal­ly been stream­lined, be­fore tens or hun­dreds of thou­sands of years of se­lec­tive breed­ing had pro­duced a more hu­manoid ver­sion of the same. When the alien opened its mouth, the teeth were uni­form­ly sharp and point­ed, but small, used to eat­ing meat but not prac­ti­cal for a preda­tor.

"Who are you?" The voice that came through was fil­tered, and Sobon sus­pect­ed that the AI was trans­lat­ing the words to the lan­guage of the Crestan em­pire, or else the lan­guage of the lo­cals, on his be­half. He chose not to spend the men­tal cy­cles fig­ur­ing out which. "How--why are you con­tact­ing me?"

"I, uh," Sobon blinked at the screen. "Sor­ry, I wasn't ex­pect­ing you to be a fish."

"I'm not a fish, you're a fish!"

Sobon blinked, then looked down at Alas­si's body. It def­i­nite­ly was not a fish. "What?"

"For­get it. Coro­na, just blow that thing up. Can­cel res­ur­rec­tion pro­to­cols."

"Wait, I was just jok­ing--!"

But it was too late. Sobon saw the red light of a tar­get­ting laser strike the win­dow, and raised her hand, find­ing the beam was trained straight on her fore­head. Some­where in the dis­tance, she heard a fe­male voice say, "Nu­clear launch de­tect­ed."

"Nu­clear launch? For a joke? What did I--"

And a in­con­spic­u­ous chunk of moun­tains west of the Djang em­pire ex­plod­ed, for no rea­son any­one else could de­ter­mine.

----------------------------------------

The no­ble and his body­guard called their rid­ing beasts to a stop well into the clear­ing where the inn sat, and he sneered at Sobon, ini­tial­ly dis­re­gard­ing her. "Let the war­rior who slew the in­no­cent mer­chants I hired step forward! On my hon­or, I will see jus­tice done!"

Sobon's spir­it re­mained even as she stepped for­ward. "They were no in­no­cent men," she said, ig­nor­ing the many and pan­icked in­stincts from Alas­si to bow down be­fore the man.

"I don't care what you have to say! If I say they were in­no­cent, then they were!"

But Sobon just shook her head. "Not if I say, 'nuh-uh.' You know that's how that works."

There was a si­lence, and then the city lord cleared his throat. "That is, in fact, how it works, Lord Mofu. Once 'nuh-uh' has been said, it can nev­er be tak­en back."

"Shit." The no­ble stopped for a minute to think, scratch­ing his chin. "What about pa­per-rock-scis­sors? That still works after 'nuh-uh' has been declared, right?"

Sobon swal­lowed. The man was far more wily than she had an­tic­i­pat­ed.

"Yes," the city lord said. "I believe that pa­per rock scis­sors will set­tle this dis­pute just fine."

Sobon stepped for­ward, one hand closed on top of her oth­er, open hand, but sweat poured down her neck, soak­ing her blouse. With­out her cy­borg agili­ty, she would nev­er be able to form the 'scis­sors' hand sign, leav­ing her only with rock and pa­per. There was still a good chance she could win this fight, but what if he threw pa­per?

What if?

----------------------------------------

Soon enough, though, they took a side road off of the Way of Sil­ver into one of the many ex­pen­sive, well-kept dis­tricts that Sobon had not­ed from a dis­tance. Close in, every house that they passed was con­tained in a walled court­yard, with aether in­scrip­tions of some sort pro­vid­ing ad­vanced pro­tec­tion. She tried to keep a frown off her face--at this point, she still wasn't en­tire­ly cer­tain whether she was be­ing gift­ed prop­er­ty or al­lowed rent, pos­si­bly free rent, but ei­ther way, this area seemed a bit up­scale for that.

When at last their guide brought them to a stop, Sobon was fi­nal­ly able to re­con­tex­tu­al­ize. In the nar­row al­ley be­tween two hous­es was a set of four rather large card­board box­es. Dish­wash­er box­es, from the look of them. She glanced at the guide, who nod­ded in con­fir­ma­tion.

"Okay," Sobon said, pulling a broomhan­dle from her pock­et. "Time to kill every­one and take over this city."

Ki'el, Lui, and Mian just nod­ded their un­der­stand­ing, as the guide stood frozen, a look of ter­ror on his face.

----------------------------------------

Sobon found her­self stand­ing in the mid­dle of the court­yard, con­tem­plat­ing, when she de­tect­ed a spir­i­tu­al pres­ence. That might have meant a num­ber of dif­fer­ent things--every­thing from an ac­tu­al lo­cal spir­it of some kind, to a lo­cal mage, to a plan­e­tary spir­i­tu­al god, or pos­si­bly one of the Ri'lef en­gi­neers, pro­ject­ing across the world with an ad­vanced aether mech­a­nism.

She kept a men­tal eye firm­ly fixed on the spir­it, but couldn't tell much of any­thing from its form or aether sig­na­ture. It chose to ap­pear hu­manoid, but its pres­ence was bare­ly a shad­ow, hid­ing what­ev­er it was ca­pa­ble of. What­ev­er it was, it passed through Sobon's de­fens­es like they didn't ex­ist, and paused to look at Sobon, watch­ing her watch­ing it. Sobon didn't speak first, though she did pro­ject a gen­er­al, in­quis­i­tive spir­it wave.

[ Crestan, ] the spir­it sent back. [ Do you know the muf­fin man? ]

Sobon cocked her head to the side. [ The muf­fin man? ]

[ The muf­fin man. ]

[ Yes, I know the muf­fin man. He lives on the Way of Sil­ver. ]

[ Could you please tell him to de­liv­er me two dozen fresh blue­ber­ry muffins? I'm ac­tu­al­ly a space alien pos­ing as the coun­try's leader, so I can't do it my­self. ]

Sobon blinked. [ You're a space alien? But I'm a space alien! And I love blue­ber­ry muffins! ]

[ Oh gosh! We have so much in com­mon. Let's be best friends! ]

----------------------------------------

A quick pe­rusal of the Ri'lef notes on qi brought her to a sec­tion about the ac­tu­al geom­e­try of qi, which was fas­ci­nat­ing. Ap­par­ent­ly, qi was in­her­ent­ly shaped like a ba­nana, curved and with a lit­tle stem on one end of it. Ac­cord­ing to the notes, how­ev­er, it was ac­tu­al­ly more like sev­er­al dif­fer­ent fruits all with­in a ba­nana peel, and with var­i­ous gaps for peo­ple to in­sert spoons, forks, and oth­er tools in or­der to ex­tract the de­li­cious fruit in­side.

Al­though the doc­u­ment didn't go into depth on ex­act­ly how to ex­tract the fruits, it did re­late them to Sobon's un­der­stand­ing of aether spins, us­ing the Ri'lef words for them: what Sobon knew as left and right spins they called Blue­ber­ry and Rasp­ber­ry, while In­ward and Out­ward spins were Or­ange and Ap­ple, On­ward and Re­verse were Pineap­ple and Wa­ter­mel­on. Strange­ly, both Su­pe­ri­or and In­verse were both la­belled 'Straw­ber­ry', ex­cept Su­pe­ri­or was 'Fresh straw­ber­ry' and In­verse was 'ar­ti­fi­cial straw­ber­ry fla­vor'.

Sobon ab­sorbed all of the in­for­ma­tion greed­i­ly, al­ready en­vi­sion­ing the day when she could proud­ly smack peo­ple in the face with her gi­ant qi ba­nana. With her ad­vanced cul­ti­va­tion, she had no doubt it would be the best qi ba­nana in the en­tire world.

She set­tled her­self down and be­gan to cul­ti­vate, her mouth wa­ter­ing at the thought.

----------------------------------------

Sobon cut off her en­gine be­fore she was close enough to re­al­ly see any­thing aboard the ship close­ly. For her, all that mat­tered was res­cu­ing Ki'el. She flared her telekine­sis scripts to cre­ate a gi­ant air­brake, but by the time she was close enough to stop, peo­ple board both ships were clear­ly on edge and pre­pared to strike at her. She looked down, suit­ably in­tim­i­dat­ing, and am­pli­fied her voice with an aether wave. "You will give the girl to me."

The fig­ure be­low cupped both hands to its mouth and shout­ed. "Nuh-uh."

Sobon sud­den­ly be­gan to sweat. Once 'nuh-uh' has been said, it can't be tak­en back. But she shook her­self. She'd pre­pared for this. "I de­mand a dance-off."

The woman be­low dropped her hands, and Sobon thought she heard her say, "Shit." They be­gan to mill around on deck, but then the oth­er ship, the one with the black sails, came clos­er, and Sobon turned to look at it.

Only, Sobon re­al­ized sud­den­ly, the ship wasn't just a ship. On the front of its hull were two large, white lights, and with a sud­den lurch, the ship leaped into the air, hov­er­ing on an in­cred­i­ble surge of qi, one that seemed to come from the depths of the world.

Sobon stared at the ship as it spend great amounts of qi to lev­el its gi­ant spot­lights on her, and heard a rum­bling voice.

Al­though the ship it­self could only speak with a great, blar­ing "HOOOOONK," Sobon caught its in­tent. [ YOU! ] it screamed at him. [You're the one who killed me! The me­te­or from the skies! You trapped me in this shit­ty world!]

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"What?" Sobon blinked. "I didn't--"

"HOOOOOOONK!" [Now it's time for my re­venge!] And with that, the de­liv­ery truck rein­car­nat­ed into a pi­rate ship ac­cel­er­at­ed sud­den­ly, smash­ing into Sobon and con­tin­u­ing up into the sky.

Mada Rui, stand­ing on the deck of her ship, shrugged. "Okay, well, so much for sell­ing the girl." She turned to her first mate. "See if she's any good at cook­ing. That guy we got from the Bilg has been de­mand­ing more help."

----------------------------------------

The base com­man­der was a Djang woman who, if Sobon didn't know bet­ter, would have passed for un­der­age, with shock­ing blue hair that per­fect­ly matched her vivid blue qi. Her fea­tures them­selves were soft and beau­ti­ful, the very pic­ture of health and youth; if her face had split into a wide smile and--

"OMG!" The blue-haired woman sud­den­ly bounced for­wards, grab­bing both of Sobon's hands. "I didn't know that there were, like, space aliens around! This is, like, SOOOO cool!"

"What!" Sobon pulled away in shock. "How did YOU know I was a space alien?"

Rai Su Anin just gig­gled mad­ly. "I didn't! You just told me! Aau­ugh, Oh-Emm-GEEEE I can't be­lieve that worked!"

"Wow," said the pa­trol­man who had brought Sobon in. "I've heard you say that, like, two hun­dred times. I thought it was all just a joke." He turned and shout­ed down the hall­way. "Hey guys! The base com­man­der ac­tu­al­ly caught some­one with her 'space alien' trap!"

Sobon just buried her face in her hands, curs­ing qui­et­ly to her­self. She should have known bet­ter. She should have.

----------------------------------------

Sobon found her­self pleased, to walk into Lai Shi Po's shop and find it well-stocked. Her eyes roved around the room, tak­ing in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent items, and she filed away var­i­ous rune com­bi­na­tions as she looked around.

Sud­den­ly, an alarm blared. "ALERT - ALERT - COPY­RIGHT IN­FRINGE­MENT DE­TECT­ED"

Two dozen armed guards poured out, half from from the back room, and half from the out­er door, al­though they had not been there when Sobon had walked in. In each one's hand was an as­sault ri­fle, and Sobon swal­lowed, putting her hands up.

"Ah-ah-ah," Lai Shi Po said. "You can't just read my de­signs with­out buy­ing any­thing. They're pro­pri­etary." The woman be­hind the counter sud­den­ly leaped onto the shoul­ders of one of the guards, and then leaped again, catch­ing her­self against the wall and the roof and brac­ing her­self there, in one of the cor­ners, look­ing down. From there, her face fell into shad­ow, though Sobon could still see her eyes, and her teeth.

Those wide, ter­ri­ble eyes haunt­ed Sobon, even as she re­al­ized that all of the guards had trained their guns not on her, but on Lai Shi Po. She turned and grabbed Ki'el, div­ing for the floor, as be­hind her, the thun­der­ous sound of two dozen as­sault ri­fles go­ing off at once briefly over­pow­ered even the shriek­ing theft alarm.

Sobon didn't un­cov­er Ki'el's head un­til the shoot­ing stopped, but when she turned around, all she saw was a blood-soaked Lai Shi Po, back­lit and sur­round­ed by corpses. And all that Sobon could see of her, aside from her sil­hou­ette, was those eyes.

Those eyes.

Lai Shi Po ad­vanced slow­ly, her mouth open to re­veal rows of shin­ing teeth, and the last sound Sobon ever heard was was one word.

"PRO­PRI­ETARY!"

----------------------------------------

Now, in the mid­dle of the night, the spir­it that had come to speak with her be­fore was there, Sobon knew, in the court­yard. Sobon went out to meet it, half sur­prised that it main­tained its se­date be­hav­ior. [ (Spir­i­tu­al vis­i­tor), ] Sobon pulsed the greet­ing along with notes of cau­tion and in­quiry.

[ Crestan. ] The en­ti­ty's spir­i­tu­al voice was clear, and Sobon not­ed, its in­quiry was care­ful­ly di­rect­ed such that the oth­ers sleep­ing near­by wouldn't hear it. [ Dude, we haven't hung out in like, nine chap­ters. Are we not cool? ]

[ No, no, we're cool. I just... was busy. ]

[ You haven't been re­spond­ing to my texts, though. ]

[ I just, uh... ] In truth, Sobon had ig­nored the meme-heavy mes­sages. Worse, al­most all of them them were full of emo­jis. Like... a lot of emo­jis. Waaay too many of them. [ They... weren't get­ing de­liv­ered. ]

[ Dude, you know I have read re­ceipts! Come on, what's the mat­ter? I thought we were cool! Or do you not want me as your girl­friend any­more? ]

Sobon blinked. [ Wait, you're a girl? ]

[ Yes! ] The spir­i­tu­al form re­vealed it­self to be that of the Founder, which was... still grey-skinned and sex­less, as far as Sobon could tell. [ What, you're telling me you don't think I'm pret­ty? ]

Sobon found her­self sweat­ing. [ No, I mean, you're very pret­ty, it's just... ]

[ It's just what? ] There was a pause. [ Is there... is there some­one else in your life? Some­one you love more than me? ]

Sobon im­me­di­ate­ly thought of the most pow­er­ful per­son she'd met thus far. [ Uh... yes. Her name is Rai Su Anin and she's, like, so cool-- ]

Sobon could feel the in­stant the nu­clear blast went off, as the port city where she'd met Rai Su Anin van­ished into flames in­stant­ly. And the spir­i­tu­al form of the Founder be­fore her had bare­ly even twitched.

Then it took one step for­ward, and then an­oth­er. And Sobon could sud­den­ly see the form's eyes, and they were star­ing straight into her soul.

[ So, ] the founder said. [ I'm your girl­friend, and we're cool. Right? ]

Sobon nod­ded, word­less­ly.

[ And you're go­ing to re­spond to AAAAL­LLL of my texts from now on, right? ]

[ Right, ] Sobon re­spond­ed, her men­tal voice very small.

The spir­i­tu­al pres­sure re­ced­ed. [ OK! Cool. You should come over in an­oth­er, what, twen­ty chap­ters or some­thing. We'll have a sleep­over! It'll be so fun! ]

God, if there is a god out there Sobon prayed, word­less­ly. If it looks like that might ac­tu­al­ly happen, just... like... kill me. I don't care how. Tear me limb from limb. Just don't let that woman have me.

Sobon's prayer was heard... but even the gods' best ef­forts could not save her.

----------------------------------------

Sud­den­ly, Mian un­der­stood in his spir­it what he had rec­og­nized in his mind once or twice, that Sobon was not ad­vanc­ing her qi to some great height. No, Sobon Alas­si was re­cov­er­ing. If she only ful­ly healed, she would be a war­rior per­haps as great as the Di­a­mond Lord, per­haps even greater. She had been dis­mis­sive of slavers and cal­lous to­wards the city lord, had ca­su­al­ly of­fend­ed a no­ble Young Mas­ter and his body­guards be­cause like those Star Mas­ters she spoke of, she had held the stars them­selves in her hands, and con­sid­ered them only warm.

And some­where in­side of Mian, a small part of his spir­it that had been en­tire­ly dead be­gan to move.

"Oh god!" he sud­den­ly shout­ed, jump­ing to his feet. "I'm re­al­ly, re­al­ly into pow­er­ful women step­ping on me!"

There were sev­er­al sounds of dis­gust around him, and he dim­ly heard Sobon say, "TMI," but he didn't care. He had dis­cov­ered his place in the world, and it was be­neath a re­al­ly, re­al­ly hot woman's feet.

"Hey, do any of you know any hot, rich, des­per­ate women? Tell them I'll do any­thing they want! Any­thing!"

----------------------------------------

For the Ri'lef, the con­cept was sim­ple--once you had at­tuned a sig­nif­i­cant part of your body, your core would un­con­scious­ly emit a sig­nal, which the lo­cal spir­i­tu­al gods would pick up on, and one would mon­i­tor you. If one sig­naled such a god, they would be smit­ed, and forced to de­fend against a sig­nif­i­cant aether at­tack. But the point wasn't sur­viv­ing the at­tack. Buried with­in the dense aether would be a key re­quired to un­lock the next tier of ad­vance­ment.

It's cute, Sobon thought. Ad­vanc­ing by fac­ing a tribu­la­tion. So Sobon walked out of the city, punched the near­est spir­i­tu­al god in the throat, and was struck by light­ning. Only... the key she re­ceived wasn't the one that un­locked her qi core, but rather, an old-fash­ioned iron key.

She frowned at it, im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­ing the iron key for what it was. She took it, and went im­me­di­ate­ly to a lit­tle-no­ticed door on the side of a bridge along the Way of Gold, glanc­ing around to make sure no one was watch­ing, be­fore turn­ing the key in the lock, and step­ping in­side.

She took a long se­ries of met­al stairs down, emerg­ing in a sub­way tun­nel, where a ma­tron­ly old woman was wait­ing in a near­by door frame. "I'd heard of this place," Sobon said. "Nev­er thought I'd find my­self here."

"Some things are best kept un­der­ground," the old woman said back.

"An aban­doned sta­tion for aban­doned agents."

"It's been a long time, dou­ble-oh Sobon." The head of the Crestan In­tel­li­gence Agency glared at him. "But we're re-ac­ti­vat­ing you. We need you to take down the leader of the Djang Em­pire."

Sobon just nod­ded. "Do you have any gad­gets for me?"

"A stealth car. A ring that will break glass floors. A laser built into a watch. A VR head­set for train­ing."

"Man, those are ter­ri­ble." Sobon shook her head. "You know, if you want to keep your as­sas­sins, you re­al­ly ought to give them bet­ter tools."

The woman just scoffed. "If you think those are bad, you should see what the guy we re­placed you with has to work with. Some­times we don't even give him the things we have. Q makes a game of it. We just watch him on the satel­lite and say, 'Oh yeah, we have a thing for that.' But he doesn't."

Sobon shook his head. "Fine. Where is this... stealth car?"

Sud­den­ly, there is the noise of an en­gine revving up. And be­fore Sobon can do any­thing, an in­vis­i­ble de­liv­ery truck smash­es into her, and con­tin­ues straight into a wall.

"HOOOOOONK!" [ Ha! I got my body back be­fore you did, suck­er! ]

"Please don't do that, Dou­ble-oh Truck-kun."

"HOOONK." [Sor­ry, ma'am.]

----------------------------------------

Weird­ly enough, Sobon's quest for ma­te­ri­als had her cross­ing paths with Kibar, and not in any of the usu­al places. He was sim­ply walk­ing by, when he spot­ted Sobon look­ing rather cross as she left a shop.

"Lady Alas­si." His words were for­mal, if a bit sullen. "You look per­turbed."

Sobon might have snapped at him, but so far, the man had been harm­less. "I am search­ing for ma­te­ri­als," she said. "Un­suc­cess­ful­ly."

"Tru­ly?" Kibar glanced at the shop, seem­ing­ly con­fused. It wasn't ex­act­ly a world-class shop; Sobon had gone to the shops in the Ways of Gold and Sil­ver first, and end­ed up in more of a back-al­ley shop­ing dis­trict by the end. "If I may ask, what is it that you are so des­per­ate to find?"

"Plu­to­ni­um."

"Ah, fas­ci­nat­ing." Kibar tilt­ed his head to one side. "As it just so hap­pens, I have about six kilo­grams of plu­to­ni­um lodged up my ass right this very mo­ment."

"Re­al­ly? That's con­ve­nient."

"Not for me, I as­sure you."

"Can I bor­row it? Like... all of it?"

"Ab­solute­ly."

Two hours lat­er, for rea­sons the lo­cals would never dis­cov­er, the Di­a­mond Lord's palace van­ished into an enor­mous fire­ball.

----------------------------------------

If Mofu Gin hadn't locked on to that sense of the oth­er qi user, he might have been in­sult­ed when Shi­da Ken took him to­wards one of the less­er quar­ters of the city. It in­censed him, to think that the one who had harmed his son had tru­ly been of less­er sta­tion, but when they turned the last quar­ter and found four peo­ple curled up in­side card­board box­es, there could be no more deny­ing it.

"This is ridicu­lous," he said, charg­ing his [Gold­en Sun Shot]. "They aren't even peo­ple. They're un­housed!

He threw the small ball of nu­clear fu­sion for­ward, but sud­den­ly Sobon leaped from one of the card­board box­es with a base­ball bat, and smashed the ball straight back at him. Gin, tak­en en­tire­ly by sur­prise, raised his hands and opened his mouth to shout, but the ball of fire went straight into his mouth and down his throat.

He only had a mo­ment to look sur­prised be­fore the ex­plod­ed from with­in.

Sobon just raised his bat and yelled. "Home RU­UUUN!"

----------------------------------------

"Of course not," the man said, straight­en­ing like he'd just been paid a com­pli­ment. "Any of my de­signs would out­class some­thing a woman could do. I'd stake my name on it."

A cold set­tled over those peo­ple near­by who, un­like this man, had ac­tu­al­ly been pay­ing at­ten­tion. Sobon could feel eyes flick­ing be­tween her and Lord Pan, won­der­ing just how she was go­ing to re­solve this.

"You stand be­hind your weapon de­signs, then? You'd con­sent to, say, a friend­ly duel, each of us with a weapon of our own de­sign?" Sobon had no heat in her voice, though she heard in it a very dry amuse­ment.

"Of... of course!" The man nod­ded, try­ing to keep a sales­man's look on his face, still ob­vi­ous­ly un­aware who he was speak­ing to.

"You with your best sword, and me with, say, the weapon that I de­signed just this morn­ing." She paused, then just as the man would have replied, added, "The one that killed Lord Mofu Gin, at the peak of Mithril Qi, in a sin­gle blow."

The man thought for a minute, then nod­ded, smil­ing bright­ly. "Yup!"

So Sobon pulled out the can­non, and as every­one else around be­gan to flee, the man pulled a knife out of his pock­et, hold­ing in di­re­clty in front of him. Sobon frowned, but true to her word, aimed straight for the knife and fired.

When the dust cleared, Lord Pan stood un­touched, two long trench­es dug, one to ei­ther side of him. The knife glowed red-hot, but was oth­er­wise un­scathed.

"Well, I'll be damned," Sobon said, low­er­ing the can­non. "That's a pret­ty good knife."

"Oh, it's not a knife," the man said, and turned it to face Sobon, so that she could see the switch on top of it. And when he flicked the switch, it sud­den­ly changed forms, from a knife, to a fork, to a spoon, and then to a leather whip. "It's just my best omni-tool ever. I like to call it the 'I'm se­cret­ly the main char­ac­ter and no­body even no­ticed!'"

Sobon blinked, and then re­al­ized it was true: she wasn't the main char­ac­ter. How could she be, when she was fe­male?

And I, the se­cret self-in­sert sex­ist misog­y­nist prick of an en­chanter, then went on to save the world and get all the chicks with my awe­some mas­culin­i­ty, be­cause that's what men do: they win and get all the chicks.

End of sto­ry.

----------------------------------------

Lui scram­bled to her feet and checked on the urchin, but the girl was look­ing out from be­hind shag­gy bangs, an in­tense look on her face, her teeth bared in a snarl. She... Lui paused. Al­though Lui wasn't ex­act­ly great at de­tect­ing wounds, or most oth­er things, what she felt from the street urchin was more than sim­ply an un­harmed girl. She had care­ful­ly masked depths of qi, such that Lui couldn't be­gin to guess what her strength was.

Still, she smiled at the girl. "Come on," she said, and Popo glanced at her, still scowl­ing, but turned and, some­what rude­ly, scam­pered into the al­chemist's shop.

Lui glanced at Lady Fau and Kan Fen, but they re­mained stand­ing and fac­ing one an­oth­er, so she fol­lowed the oth­er girl. She stopped, though, as soon as she walked in the door--be­cause the girl had dived onto the counter, her head dis­ap­pear­ing down be­hind it, her torn and loose short pants fac­ing the door and af­ford­ing the poor girl no dig­ni­ty at all. Lui let out a shocked gasp, but rushed for­ward, grab­bing the girl's legs. "What are you do­ing?"

For her ef­forts, Lui was kicked in the face. When she re­cov­ered from the blow, she saw the woman was hang­ing from one of the planters near the ceil­ing, brac­ing her­self against the wall. From the woman's mouth, she heard a strange hiss.

"What--what are you--"

But then the woman's head sud­den­ly snapped around, to a pot­ted plant that Lui had been work­ing on her­self. And the woman leapt over to the pot, study­ing the in­scrip­tions around the edge. Lui... Lui had re­paired the in­scrip­tion, at Fau Mide's di­rec­tion, and she won­dered just what the woman was look­ing at.

The hiss just got loud­er, though. And then, Lui heard a word that made her blood run cold. "Copy."

"W-what?"

"Mod­i­fi­ca­tion." The woman's head snapped one hun­dred and eighty de­grees around, its eyes wild with ha­tred. "PRO­PRI­ETARY! MOD­I­FI­CA­TION! PRO­PRI­ETAR­RRRYYYYY!"

Lui screamed, and the grem­lin leaped at her, but noth­ing struck her. When she opened her eyes, she found Fau Mide shield­ing her with a sin­gle piece of pa­per.

"Li­cense," Fau Mide said, open­ly glar­ing. "And terms of use."

The grem­lin hissed back. "No. NO! Pro­pri­etary!"

Fau Mide stomped hard on the floor. "Right to re­pair!"

The Lai Shi Po hissed back at those words, as tan­gi­ble burns ap­peared on her skin. "Don't say that! NEV­ER say that!"

The al­chemist just grinned, wag­gling the pa­per back and forth. "Right to repaaaai­iii­iiir."

"Noooooooo....!" With one last shriek, Lai Shi Po with­ered into a gaunt skele­ton, then crum­bled into dust.

----------------------------------------

Sobon shrugged. "I heard from Lord Shi­da that you only ac­cept a small frac­tion of the ring blanks giv­en to you, but it's hard­ly a sur­prise. The var­i­ous ma­te­ri­als and the way they in­ter­act with qi are fussy, af­ter all."

"Fussy," Lai Shi Po said, as she rolled the ring be­tween her fin­gers, peer­ing close­ly at the in­scrip­tions. "Yes, you can call ab­solute mad­ness fussy. But I sup­pose you know all of these things? All the whys and hows of the ridicu­lous re­stric­tions that I have had to learn by tri­al and er­ror?"

"No, I don't know them," Sobon said, and wait­ed a beat, know­ing she ex­ud­ed a sense of smug­ness. "I had them all writ­ten down, but un­for­tu­nate­ly ne­glect­ed to bring them with me."

Lai Shi Po squint­ed at her, as if try­ing to fig­ure out just how se­ri­ous Sobon was.

"Oh, also, I talk like every day with a star­ship. I mean, the AI that con­trols it. I bet it could prob­a­bly give me the plans for its sub­space dri­ve, and maybe it's hy­per­drive as well."

"You're fuck­ing with me."

"Also I'm to­tal­ly just sit­ting on full knowl­edge of how qi works, and the math­e­mat­ics of space time, time trav­el, fate ma­nip­u­la­tion--"

"You can stop mak­ing fun of me now."

"--oh, how much do you guys know about bi­ol­o­gy and ge­net­ics? A lot less than me, I bet! And sure a lot less than the ship's AI, since they cre­at­ed all the star­beasts!"

"That's just not even plau­si­ble."

"Oh man, do you know...? I know how to cre­ate por­tals, so I could to­tal­ly just turn this plan­et to ash by cre­at­ing a por­tal straight into the cen­ter of the sun. In fact, let me show you!"

And then the en­tire plan­et ex­plod­ed, and Sobon felt at peace for the first time in a very, very long time.

----------------------------------------

Lai Shi Po shift­ed her over­size sword and thrust, cre­at­ing an im­pos­si­bly dense stab of pres­sur­ized wind qi that hes­i­tat­ed a mo­ment be­fore leap­ing for­ward. Again, cir­cles ap­peared and van­ished, and the en­e­my at­tack nev­er got close, and again, the oth­er woman's spir­it shift­ed, more qi leak­ing out.

"Since you're tak­ing your time," Sobon said, "let me show you what kind of at­tacks my de­fens­es were meant to han­dle."

She snapped her fin­gers, and a man sud­den­ly ap­peared from nowhere, his fin­gers on his fore­head. He was wear­ing a strange or­ange fight­ing out­fit and had a blue belt tied around his waist.

"Oh, hey Sobon, what's up?" The man waved cheer­i­ly.

"Hey, G-man. Give me a full pow­er blast, would you?"

"Oh, man. Full pow­er, are you sure?" The man, at least, had the de­cen­cy to ac­tu­al­ly ap­pear con­cerned for Sobon's safe­ty.

"Yup. Show­ing off for my friend here. Don't wor­ry, I'll use my 'se­ri­ous' shields."

"Oh, okay." With that, the man sort of crouched in midair, go­ing strange­ly qui­et.

Sev­er­al sec­onds passed, and Sobon stage whis­pered to Lai Shi Po. "Don't wor­ry, he's hav­ing a flash­back. He'll start here in a sec­ond."

And then the man start­ed clench­ing every mus­cle in his body and shout­ing. And sud­den­ly, his black hair turned yel­low, and be­gan to grow longer, and longer, and longer still. And he kept shout­ing, loud­er and loud­er, and loud­er.

Sec­onds turned into min­utes, and sud­den­ly, it was an hour lat­er, and Ki'el, Mian, and Lai Shi Po were all bored out of their minds, but still the man con­tin­ued to shout, his gold­en hair con­tin­u­ing to grow. It was now ex­pand­ing out into a floof ball dozens of me­ters across and five times as long.

Sobon just yawned, though. "Yeah, sor­ry," she shout­ed over the noise to Lai Shi Po. "I should have warned you this part takes a while."

Sud­den­ly, the man stopped yelling and moved his hands close to one an­oth­er. "Kaaaaaaaaa...."

"Oh good. See? We're al­most done."

"...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam­mmm­mmm­mmmeeeeee..."

"He'll fin­ish his at­tack in... about an­oth­er five min­utes or so. So get ready!" Sobon gave Lai Shi Po a thumbs up.

----------------------------------------

Sobon was... not im­me­di­ate­ly im­pressed, to find that the Ap­prais­er was an obese man with spec­ta­cles and qi firm­ly stuck at two Gold stars. Not like Man Gai, who was only mild­ly chub­by; this man looked like he didn't com­mon­ly like to stand or move around, and lounged in an ex­ces­sive­ly or­nate chair with only a sin­gle wood­en table to his side, where a plate of food, a bowl, and a large carafe of wine all laid out be­side him. His fin­gers were fes­tooned with rings, and his hair hair hung long and straight be­hind him.

And yet, once the crowns crossed with­in per­haps ten paces of him, the man leaped to his feet nim­bly and rushed for­ward in a grace­ful bound. The ser­vant, though Sobon saw her jolt, pa­tient­ly stopped and held the tray for his in­spec­tion.

"Oooo­hhh..." the man bub­bled. "Do I smell... MON­EY?" He tip-toed over to the box, and be­gan do­ing strange dances around the box and the woman hold­ing it. "I do! I do! Mon­ey mon­ey mon­ey mon­ey mon­ey..."

"Uh..." Sobon looked at him, con­fused.

"Mon­ey, mon­ey, mon­ey! Ooh! I want to lick it. Can I lick it?"

"Please don't." The man turned and gave Sobon pup­py dog eyes, but she weath­ered the at­tack suc­cess­ful­ly. "No."

"Oh, al­right." How­ev­er, the obese man still put his nose right up to the box, and sniffed very loud­ly. It was ac­tu­al­ly quite im­pres­sive--the man sim­ply kept breath­ing in through his nose, for up­wards of a minute, all the while pro­duc­ing enough suc­tion to be au­di­ble from quite a ways away.

When he let his breath out, all at once, the ser­vant was blown clean out of the room, the blow also knock­ing the box­es into the air. Sobon leaped at them, catch­ing them in midair, and just stared at the fat man in rich cloth­ing, as he stood there with his eyes closed, think­ing about what he'd smelled.

"That's enough," he said, wav­ing dis­mis­sive­ly. "I've got­ten all I need to know. I'll write up a de­scrip­tion for you."

"But I... haven't said any­thing." Sobon stared at the man, who sim­ply re­turned to his chair and start­ed writ­ing.

When the ser­vant re­turned, the sil­ver tray bent in half from what­ev­er she'd hit along the way, Sobon just looked at her, pa­tient­ly hold­ing the tray out in front of her, and then placed the box­es on the tray care­ful­ly, turned, and walked out of the room as fast as she could.

The less she in­ter­act­ed with that man, the bet­ter.

----------------------------------------

"Hon­ored cus­tomers!" The man who en­tered the stage was thin and an­gu­lar, ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly well dressed, and ex­ud­ed a sense of joy that was in­fec­tious. "We have a love­ly col­lec­tion of only the finest ar­ti­facts in store for you to­day, in­clud­ing a new col­lec­tion from our fa­vorite pa­tron, the Hon­ored Lai Shi Po, as well as a mys­te­ri­ous sub­mis­sion by a per­son she has per­son­al­ly vouched for. But our first items up for bid are, of course as al­ways, slaves! Lots of slaves! We've done our ab­solute best to make their lives as mis­er­able as pos­si­ble, de­meaned them and bro­ken their spir­its! Every­body, let's give it up for ssssslav­ery!"

Ki'el felt her­self freeze as every­one in the en­tire au­di­ence hall be­gan to ap­plaud, in­clud­ing Lui, Sobon, and Lai Shi Po. She looked around, feel­ing small, and shrunk back against the wall.

"And up first are a whole bunch of peo­ple from the is­land na­tion of Il­lan! These peo­ple were all in­no­cent vil­lagers un­til a cou­ple years ago! Now they've been bru­tal­ly beat­en and are no longer even aware they used to be hu­man. Let's all give an­oth­er warm round of ap­plause for slav­ery!"

Every­one ap­plaud­ed again, and Ki'el could hear peo­ple whistling and cheer­ing from some­where be­low the booth. Lai Shi Po, for her part, sim­ply shout­ed, "Yay cap­i­tal­ism!"

"Re­mem­ber once again, since we're sell­ing for­eign­ers, you have to say what you'll be us­ing them for and it's the low­est, most de­mean­ing bid that wins. We're short on time, so let's start with the butch­ers down in the front row. What's your bid?"

Ki'el clasped her hands to her ears, col­lapsed against the wall, and start­ed to cry.

----------------------------------------

"But you have to un­der­stand how fate works. The Crown can only ever see its own fate, and that fate is least clear when the per­son see­ing it can change that fate. While wear­ing it, you can only see parts of the Crown's fu­ture that you can­not, or will not, change. The more in­ter­est you have in ma­nip­u­lat­ing fate, the less clear it will be."

"I don't un­der­stand," Lai Shi Po said, sound­ing frus­trat­ed. "Does time trav­el work or not?"

"What? No, of course time trav­el works. It just doesn't work in our time stream, be­cause I al­ready went back in time to stop us from hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion."

Lai Shi Po had an an­swer for that, in a dif­fer­ent time stream, but in this one, her head sim­ply turned into a crab and walked away, leav­ing her body be­hind, be­cause writ­ers just get to freak­ing de­cide how time works, and if the writer says time trav­el turns peo­ple's heads into crabs, then it does.

"What? No, that's not how time trav­el works, at all." Sobon turned to face the nar­ra­tor, con­fused, only to have her head turn into a crab too, on ac­count of her be­ing a smar­tass.

----------------------------------------

Lui just looked away, and Sobon knew she was un­sat­is­fied. She let the girl think for a mo­ment, un­til at last Lui spoke up again. "Tell me about your home," she said. "You nev­er talk about it."

"Home," Sobon sighed. "Well, I might as well start at the be­gin­ning. At age six, I was born with­out a face."

Lui felt a se­vere headache come on in­stant­ly, and she looked at Sobon, baf­fled.

"My fa­ther told me that I would be ac­cept­ed as I am, as a true man. Lit­tle did he know that that wouldn't be the case, ac­tu­al­ly. He didn't lie, he just didn't know."

Lui stared at Sobon. He turned and looked back at her.

"Okay," she said. "Let's not talk about your home. What about your job? You were a pro­fes­sion­al sol­dier, right?"

"Yes," Sobon said, look­ing away. "I was called off to war to join the di­nosaur laser fight."

"The... di­nosaur laser fight?"

"In space. With sharks." He paused. "Did I mention that our army was made up of fairies and robots? I was a robot. Well, half robot, on my dad's side."

Lui, who did not know what any of those things were just buried her face in her hands, ac­cept­ing that she would nev­er un­der­stand this weird space thing that had tak­en over her grand­moth­er's body.