Topher made his way carefully down the stone steps into the darkness, wishing for the hundredth time that he had real shoes on. I really gotta get some local clothes, he thought to himself sourly. And some way to do laundry.

As the light from above dimmed, he began to worry if they should have brought a light source, but eventually torches began to show on the walls; the illumination was dim, but he supposed it was good enough. Everything was eerily silent; as they reached the bottom of the stairs and began making their way past rows and rows of barred cells, he and Hotaka quickly understood why. "This whole place is empty, Bailey-sensei. Did they really build this entire dungeon and then only throw one man into it?"

"Kid, if you want answers, you're asking the wrong guy," Topher groused. "I'm a lot more concerned with the fact that I'm not seeing any guards down here."

It took them several minutes to find Ichirou's cell; the thin young man was sleeping on a pile of straw, nearly fifty cells into the dungeon. To Topher's astonishment, the cell blocks continued on into the darkness seemingly without limit; it boggled the mind. Exactly how many people are they planning on putting in jail down here? And how are they going to keep them in here with no guards?

"Hey, Ichirou," he whispered between the bars of the cell. "Wake up."

The other man stirred, groaning. "Oh man. They clobbered me good."

There was a scraping and shuffling noise, and the young man's face appeared on the other side of the bars; Topher recoiled. His thin little beard and mustache were matted with dried blood, and half of his face was covered with bruises. "Jesus," exclaimed Topher, shocked. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, man, probably." Ichirou sat back a little and rubbed at his face gingerly. "Don't suppose you guys got any water, or anything?"

Topher winced. "No, I didn't think --"

"Here you go, Watanabe-san." Hotaka's hands moved forward between the bars, and a large head of lettuce appeared in them. "You can squeeze it for some water, and eat it for hydration and fiber. I can make more, if you need them."

Topher blinked. "Hey, good idea, kid. Do one of those gourd things, too, and he can use it to store the extra." Hotaka obediently summoned a bottle-shaped squash-like plant, and Ichirou accepted both gratefully.

"Thanks, you guys. They haven't given me any food or anything." He broke the top off the gourd, then started pulling the seeds and pulp out of the interior with his fingers and eating them. "Makes you appreciate a plain rice ball, let me tell you."

"Bailey-sensei actually made us rice yesterday," Hotaka commented. "It was pretty good."

"Yeah, yeah, everybody loves rice," said Topher hurriedly. "Ichirou, I don't know how long we have to talk, but we have a lot of questions. Why did you get arrested? Did you piss off that centaur, or something?"

Ichirou sighed. "Man, I don't know. I sold the stuff in our initial lot, and I was heading back to you when all of a sudden that huge thing bowls into me and starts yelling about how I stole his coin pouch. Craziest thing I ever saw."

"Was it this coin pouch?" Topher lifted the pouch he'd found on the ground. "Or is this one yours?"

The other man shook his head. "That's mine, man. I almost feel like it was a hustle."

"Watanabe-san, does that sort of thing happen often here?" interjected Hotaka. "Have you had trouble with the guards before?"

"I mean, they generally don't have a lot of love for F-Rankers," hedged Ichirou, "but they never went out of their way to hassle me before. I didn't expect any kind of trouble like this."

Topher decided it was time to move things along. "What do we do now? They don't seem like they're in a hurry to do anything about you."

Ichirou blew some air out through his lips. "To be honest, I think they're hoping I die down here. If they just lock me up, and don't bring me food or water..." He shrugged. "I haven't seen a single guard down here since they threw me in here."

Hotaka nodded, mournful. "I can believe it. They seemed to want to go out of their way to ignore us, too." He pondered for a few seconds, then spoke up. "Watanabe-san, is there anyone who would go out of their way to get rid of you?"

"Huh? Me?" Even to Topher, Ichirou's disbelief sounded forced. "Why would anyone want to get rid of me?"

"That centaur tried to kill you outright," Topher pointed out, "and now the guards have basically sentenced you to death by starvation, all without anybody explicitly giving them orders to do it. It looks more like a conspiracy than anything."

Ichirou was silent for a long time. Then, finally, he let out a long, slow breath. "I don't know anything for sure. But... yeah, I guess it might look that way."

"Watanabe-san, if there's anything you can tell us, you really need to do so," cautioned Hotaka. "We can't help you if we don't know what we're up against."

"And maybe start by telling us where you got those clothes." Topher wanted pants more than he wanted subtlety.

Ichirou sighed. "I know a guy. He's a D-Ranker mage from my class who deserted the army before they got wiped out. His Unique Skill is Item Shop, and he can convert items to coin and vice versa. Including items from our world."

Topher blinked. "Holy shit. And you were gonna just give us a few measly coins and let us keep living like cavemen, while you were eating KFC?"

Ichirou's face twisted in confusion, and the conversation stopped dead for several seconds. Finally, Hotaka's voice broke the silence. "You're not really from our world, are you?"

Ichirou let out a long groan, then sank down into the straw. He buried his head in his hands. "What gave me away?"

"KFC." Hotaka's voice had gotten a little hard-edged. "You might have gotten away with pretending to be ignorant of most popular-culture topics because of the ten-year gap, but Kentucky Fried Chicken is a Christmas tradition in Japan. I guess that never came up when you were studying to pretend to be one of us."

Ichirou held up his hands. "You got me, man." His form blurred, and some kind of elf sat in the cell where Ichirou had been a few seconds before; Topher gawked. "The real Ichirou Watanabe was the one who contracted cancer; he never married the Hana girl. Hideo and I collaborated to create this plan." The elf's real voice was smooth and lilting, not at all like Ichirou's smoker's rasp had been.

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

"Hideo-san is the mage with the Item Shop skill?" guessed Hotaka. The elf nodded.

"So what's your real name, pal?" queried Topher. "And I suggest you play straight with us; our incentive to help you just got real flimsy."

"I am known as Cailu Leafwind," said the elf serenely. "Though I have many names; to elves, names are somewhat like clothing. We bear different ones in different contexts."

"Yeah, yeah, real culturally interesting." Topher started ticking off points on his fingers. "So, here's what we need to know: how to find this Hideo guy, why somebody would try to kill Ichirou Watanabe if he was already dead, how you managed to imitate him so well, and what the real situation is with that loft you rented us." His blood was starting to boil; he'd left the other kids there alone.

The elf shrugged. "You need but only ask around; he is known in the city. His full name is Hideo Oguro." He shifted a little, then resumed hollowing out the gourd Hotaka had given him. "The loft is public housing; no one will come to evict you. But as for why anyone would wish to kill Ichirou Watanabe, I cannot help you; I certainly would not have assumed his likeness if I had known someone was targeting him. As for how I impersonated him, it was a simple amulet imbued with the magic of Illusion of Disguise." The elf pulled a small necklace out from under his shirt, then put it away again. "Trivial for Hideo to produce."

Topher growled unhappily; he could already tell he wasn't going to get nearly as many answers as he wanted out of this conversation. "Okay, then I need to know one more thing." He crossed his arms. "Give us a good reason not to leave you down here to rot."

"In our current situation, you are as much at risk as I am," the elf countered coolly. "When you entered the dungeon, Ichirou Watanabe was alive and in captivity; when you left, he was gone, suggesting that you conspired to free him. I suspect the authorities will take a dim view of such a sequence of events."

Hotaka cursed; Topher had to stop himself from admonishing the kid not to swear. He's fifteen, not five. I gotta give these kids a little more benefit of the doubt. "He's correct, Bailey-sensei. We'll have to work together, at least for now."

"All right." Topher didn't like it, but putting up with things he didn't like was definitely a skill he had, even if it didn't show up in his status window. "We'll try to convince someone in the castle to let you out, but that means you have to keep on pretending to be Ichirou; if you don't, you'll definitely starve down here."

The elf nodded. "Extremity makes for strange bedfellows." He blurred again, and his appearance returned to that of Ichirou. He waved, a little nervously. "Be seeing you guys," he said in Ichirou's voice, then continued on his his own. "You have until my provisions run out; after that, there remains little incentive for me to honor our agreement. If I am to die, I will ensure that the blame will fall upon you."

"Big threats from Jaily the Elf." Topher rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Hotaka, load this guy up with as much produce as you can. The longer we can give ourselves, the better."

Hotaka obediently spent a few minutes summoning various forms of water-rich vegetables; Topher saw celery, cucumbers, and tomatoes. "Eat sparingly, Leafwind-san," he cautioned. "It may be some time before we are able to return." The elf nodded, but didn't speak any further; can't blame 'em, thought Topher. We went from friends to frenemies real fast, there.

As expected, the conversation trailed off after that, and Topher soon found himself and Hotaka retracing their steps back towards the dungeon's exit. Again, he was struck by the echoing, empty sameness of it all. "Look at these jail cells," he complained. "They're totally identical. What, did they just wake up and put in an order for 'one dungeon, extra large, hold the trolls'?"

Hotaka bit his lip. "It's not the strangest theory I can think of, Bailey-sensei. If magic created all this architecture, it would explain why everything is so large and uniform."

Topher frowned, adjusting his glasses. "Exactly how powerful is magic here if it can do that, though?"

"I... guess it would depend on your Skills?" Hotaka rubbed his chin contemplatively. "Oguro-san's Item Shop power sounds like the sort of thing most of the higher-ranked people would look down on, but if it can really get items from our world it could be incredibly powerful. You could order computers, generators, all that kind of thing."

Topher daydreamed, rather indecently, of a sweet tea and a rack of ribs. "You think maybe the locals are just nuts?"

Hotaka shook his head. "I don't think so, Bailey-sensei. I think they might be just making decisions based on what matters to them. If their main concern is defeating the Demon King's armies, anything that's not combat prowess probably seems useless in comparison."

"Yeah, well, I haven't even seen any evidence of demons yet," grumbled Topher. "Mostly I've seen a town that's too small, a dungeon that's too big, rules that don't make sense, and people who keep telling us things that are either misunderstandings or lies."

"I don't think Leafwind-san was lying about Watanabe-san being dead, though," Hotaka demurred. "Otherwise he wouldn't have risked doing what he did."

Topher began the arduous process of climbing the stairs out of the dungeon. "It's just weird. Ichirou gets summoned ten years ago, and nobody gives a crap about him, right? Then he dies, and nobody still gives a crap. Then, yesterday, out of the blue, he becomes a big enough threat to somebody that they decide they want him dead, and hire that centaur to do it, then kill the centaur afterwards and burn the body to erase the evidence. If someone was that strong..."

"What do you mean?" Topher started and looked back to see Hotaka staring up at him from a few stairs below. "The centaur who tried to kill Watanabe-san was murdered as well?"

Topher sighed and rubbed his forehead; stupid sleep deprivation. "Yeah. I didn't want to tell you kids, because I thought it would just worry you. But I stumbled across the corpse turning to ash in an alleyway on my way back from buying food yesterday."

Hotaka pondered as they continued to climb the gray stone steps. "Well, that rules out the King and his people, doesn't it? If the guards were in on the plot to kill Watanabe-san, they would have let the centaur do it, right?"

"The guards did practically let the centaur do it," Topher countered. "Takano was the one who saved him, and he probably only did that to impress Haruko. I don't think we can discount anybody yet."

Hotaka was silent for a few minutes -- whether from deep thought or from lack of breath, Topher wasn't sure. "I think the guards were just scared, Bailey-sensei," Hotaka said at last. "But I think you're right -- I think the only people we can trust are Takano-san and the other people from our world, at least for now. They may not care about us, but at least they aren't actively out to get Watanabe-san or anyone else."

"Not yet, anyway." Topher puffed to the top of the stairs and shoved open the heavy wooden door, emerging back into the sunlight. "But like my Dad used to say, 'If you don't trust 'em, they can't betray your trust'."

Haruko had already returned, and was watching Arima and her party members train with visible awe; Topher couldn't help wondering where the other two S-Rankers were. Not like anybody would tell me if I asked, though. When she caught sight of them, Haruko bounded up and ran over to them with visible happiness. "Hotaka-kun! Bailey-sensei! I was getting really worried."

Topher shrugged. "We were pretty safe. And we got a new lead, so things might be looking better for us in the next day or two." He leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath; the stairs hadn't done him in, but it had been close. Stupid Rank F Constitution. "How'd things go with you?"

The young girl laced her fingers together and looked down shyly, but Topher could tell she was thrilled. "They made room for me in one of the mage training classes. They said I'll have to sit on the floor in the back, and I can't ask questions, and I'll have to bring my own supplies, but..." She looked up, and her eyes were half-brimming with tears of happiness. "It's something, Bailey-sensei. I get to be part of the class again, even if it's just in a little way."

Topher opened his mouth to ask why she was so excited to hang out with a bunch of people who constantly snubbed and belittled her, but he caught a look from Hotaka and closed his mouth instead. "That's... that's great, Haruko. I'm really happy for you."

The girl looked down again, and Topher could see the slight pink of a blush across her cheeks. "Thank you, Bailey-sensei. And you too, Hotaka-kun." She reached out and took the bespectacled boy's hand, a little shyly. "You've been... really brave and strong for us."

Hotaka coughed, turning even redder than Haruko. "Thanks, Haruko-chan." After a moment, a mischievous grin spread across his face, and he looked at Haruko slyly. "Maybe... maybe you could tell Makoto-chan how brave and strong you think I am?"

Topher laughed. He couldn't help himself. Teenagers.