“Hey Contra, Why do we eat humans?” The powerful bill clamped shut onto the soft malleable limb. A wave of blood splashed out from the crushing point dribbling down the thick semi-transparent quills of the mokoi and dropping to the cold cave floor. The mokoi craned her neck back tugging against the weakening tendons of the dead human’s shoulder until it final ripped apart allowing her to swallow the limb whole.

She was a large mokoi at least two heads taller than the human she was currently eating. She had a long flat transparent bill which acted like a disturbing viewing port of the crushing gushing food she was chewing. The bill ended on a small round face. The mokoi had a heavy bulbous body covered in hollow semi-transparent quills; her tail, like her bill was long and flat, the tail was composed of strong muscles wrapped in oily leather, a perfect adaptation for swimming, though there was no swimming around here . The mokoi sat comfortably on her large rump with two stumpy hind legs curled up in front of her.

“I don’t know Pinna, because they taste good?” Pinna’s companion offered back dismissively. Contra was a thinner humanoid mokoi who lazily rested against a damp stalagmite. The mokoi had long pointy ears and smooth slimy skin, a constant ooze emanating from his body. Contra lethargically tossed a squishy eyeball into the air trying to catch it with his mouth. He leaned his head to the side in an attempt to line his mouth up with the falling eye but failed, the eye tumbled against his lower lip bouncing off to the floor. Contra grimaced at the eye now covered in dust.

“I guess. We don’t eat other mokoi though.” Pinna pulled the fallen corpse closer to herself and started rummaging through the human’s belongings.

“Sounds about right to me, people tend to avoid eating friends.” Contra replied apathetic to his companion’s catechism. He picked the eye back up off the ground giving it a few wipes before tossing it into the air again. This time he caught the eye with his mouth then crunched down and swallowed the juicy treat with a satisfied smile on his face.

Pinna tore the dead human’s pack open, lifted the human in the air and shook them until the pack was emptied of all its content. “Can humans not be our friends?” Pinna used her sharp claws to open a smaller sack. She was excited to find another one of those packed meals inside. She loved it when the humans brought those down.

Contra snorted out a single uncontrolled laugh sounding more akin to a cackle. “Pfft, yeah, and the devadoots are real gods.”

Pinna gave her companion a disapproving scowl. “I’m being serious. Why not?”

“Well for starters there’s the whole eating thing.” Contra plucked out another eye from a nearby corpse tossing it in the air and catching it in his mouth.

“That’s a begging the question fallacy though. We aren’t friends with humans because we eat them, but we eat them because they’re not our friends.” Pinna finished eating the human’s meal and finished licking her lips of the succulent jam as she resumed perusing her victim’s spoils for other interesting trinkets that they had left.

“I’m begging your pardon?” Contra stopped their lethargic snacking to give his companion a disconcerted look.

“Begging the question. It’s a fallacy where the conclusion is reliant on the statement for its proof. It means that what you said doesn’t make any sense.” Pinna managed to grasp a small booklet from the pile of goods in between her large claws.

Pinna struggled to open the booklet while Contra resumed scouring for the more delectable bits of human flesh. “Well either way there is a simple solution to that problem.”

Pinna stopped what she was doing giving her full attention to her partner. “What’s that?”

“Just don’t eat them.”

Pinna quickly stood up from shock “Woah, let’s not jump to anything drastic here!”

Contra threw both his arms in the air defensively showing his empty hands. “No need to go off on me I was just trying to give you advice. You’re the one who wants to befriend the humans.”

Pinna sat back down and redoubled her efforts on opening the booklet. “I don’t want to be their friends per say, I just don’t understand why it’s not an option.”

“They literally think us as inferior beings.”

“We think the same thing.” Pinna finally managed to clamp down on the book cover and carefully pulled it up to reveal the first page of the booklet’s contents.

Contra, having taken all of the desired cuts of the nearest corpse tried to grab the next nearest one. Sadly, the corpse was just out of range of the mokoi’s grip; Contra being too lazy to get up or put any upper body motion into collecting the meal decided to use his foot that rested next to the body to hopefully drag the body closer. “Yeah but we’re right.”

“I know that, but the human’s probably see it in the exact opposite way. Either way the point is mute. Just because they’re inferior doesn’t inherently negate their capability of being friendly; both humans and mokoi have pets and we consider them inferior.” The booklet cover fell out of Pinna’s careful claws onto the floor closing itself and causing her to grow a tired frown.

“You want a pet human?”

“I’m not opposed to the idea.” Pinna gave up on the book, tossing it back into the pile of trinkets and began looking for other interesting goods.

“Can you get them declawed?” With a little extra fenagling Contra finally managed to drag another body within arm’s reach with his legs. He dragged the body closer and began plucking the eyes out, those were the best part.

Pinna browsed through the options of human brought objects and found a small oddly shaped cloth. The cloth was vaguely in the shape of an isosceles triangle, the one odd end of which being much longer than the other two. Each face of the triangle had a large opening as if two identical triangles were sewn together at their edges. This cloth fascinated Pinna and she felt like she had to know just what it was used for. “Humans don’t have claws.”

Contra tiredly rolled his eyes. For purely internal comedy he also rolled the plucked human eyes in his one palm joyfully thinking to himself about how he was rolling ‘his eyes’. “I know that obviously. I was just using barbarism. I thought you would catch on to that since you’re the so high and mighty philanthroper. I just meant that humans can be pretty dangerous creatures. Or did you forget that they killed our khan?”

The cloth seemed similar in fabric to what most of the humans wear under their armor, so Pinna assumed it was some kind of garment. “That was only one human, you can’t judge all of humanity because of one bad egg. Also, it’s philosopher not philanthroper. And philanthroper isn’t even a word it would be philanthropist… which I definitely am not by the way.”

Contra dropped the severed human eyes, his mouth completely agape. “Pinna! You cannot be serious. First of all, it was five humans not one. And even if it was just the one, they literally call him a hero. He is single handedly praised as the greatest human ever specifically because he is so good at killing mokoi. I think I am far within my rights to think I can judge all of humanity based on this quote unquote hero’s behavior.” Contra made sure to accent the word hero with his own dramatized air quotes even if Pinna was too distracted by the cloth to notice.

Pinna remained far calmer than her compatriot being more interested in this strange cloth than in their conversation. Pinna grabbed the strange cloth and inserted her head into the larger hole while using the two smaller ones as eyeholes: it was a mask! “So, they’ve developed a fairly negative stigma against the mokoi. Does that mean we can never work towards changing that stigma? Maybe even see some form of peace over the horizon in our future?”

Contra acted as if he had been punched in the face visibly being knocked back by the mere absurdity of the comment; he turned his head in either direction as if searching to see if anyone else was hearing this nonsense. “I can’t believe this. You actually are one of those pro-humanist new age mokoi. Is that why you came to the dungeon of Ingress? Not to escape the badlands but to actually get closer to the humans! No, it can’t be. You weren’t always an extremist like this, this is because you’ve been reading those awful human August Chichi books isn’t it?”

Pinna’s attention was dramatically thrown away from the mask, her face contorted in anger and she tried her best to snarl through her bill but due to her vocal anatomy it came out more as an aggressive purr. “August Chichi is an artist who transcends the races! You know he even made mokoi art too.”

“At knifepoint.” Contra huffed crossing his arms.

“And even in spite of his tragic life he still believed in the possibility of a loving harmony with the mokoi all the way to the end.”

Contra spat on to the cave floor, his corrosive spit sizzling away the stone to create a small pond of acid. “Empty words of a painter. He literally killed himself because he was living with some mokoi. If you ask me that doesn’t sound very friendly to our kind.”

Pinna raised her head up high and spoke with haughty vim. “He wasn’t just a painter he was a philosopher, like me! And he didn’t kill himself because of some stupid racism. Plus he wasn’t simply living with the Pleurothallidinae, they had him in captivity. Even then that wasn’t why he killed himself, just like all great artists he had a tormented soul, Those who see the brightest beauty life offers are also cursed to see life’s darkest depths.”

All the tension that Contra held couldn’t help but relinquish to Pinna’s childlike adorating pride of her self-proclaimed philosopher title. “You shouldn’t glorify suicide like that… and why are you wearing human underwear on your head?”

Pinna’s face folded into confused contemplation as she mulled over her companion’s words. Then, in a sudden bout of understanding she vigorously shook her head swiping the undergarment off her head. “Oh ew!” Pinna grimaced sticking her tongue out in disgust at the clothing giving her mokoi friend a good laugh.

“Well Pinna, I guess we’ll just have to hope that your ideals can fruit in others. We’ll all need to start getting chummy with human’s whether we like it or not soon since there is no turning back now.” Contra spoke with a defeatist sigh slumping down deeper against his stalagmite.

Pinna’s grimace made way to skeptical interest. “So it is true then, the immersion is actually gone?”

Contra nodded his head in affirmation. “Yep, apparently the immersion has actually been gone for quite a while.”

“How could no one have noticed?”

“Mokoi that come to the dungeon tend to not have much reason to turn back and return.”

Pinna nodded in understanding. “Fair enough, is the civil war still going strong over there?”

“Impossible to know now. Without the immersion there aren’t any immigrants to give us updates. But I could probably guess yes.”

“I hope mom is okay.” The two allowed a somber silence to hold the room for them. Pinna was the first to snap out of the dreary sadness. “So where did the immersion even go?

The question eagerly knocked Contra out of his grieving. “Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this. Turns out the immersion thinks a lot like you and snuck out of the dungeon disguised as a human.”

Pinna burst into surprised laughter. “No way, seriously?!”

“I couldn’t believe it myself but turns out you’re not the only crazy one with a fascination towards those humans.” Contra replied chuckling in half disturbed humor.

The thought of integrating stealthily into human society filled Pinna’s mind with countless questions. “How do you suppose the immersion works around the bloodlust?”

Contra could only really shrug in answer, but he tried his best to propose a theory anyway. “It could be that since the immersion was never meant to be a fighter they don’t feel the same urge the rest of us mokoi do. Or maybe the immersion is like you, just more extreme.”

Pinna tilted her head uncertain of what her companion was saying. “what do you mean by like me?”

“Well didn’t you say that it felt like the bloodlust had been lessening for a while? I mean if not, then how have you managed to spare that human over there?” Contra pointed over to a corner of the cave where a large unarmored human man was curled into a soft ball crying. Once the terrified human noticed that the two mokoi stopped feasting on his allies and turned to look at him he froze in place, his tears stilled as not even they were willing to test the mokoi’s wrath.

“I don’t know how I managed to not kill him on the spot honestly. It just sort of came to me like an epiphany you know. I just thought, what if I didn’t rip his face off right now and then I actually went through with the idea. How about you? Why haven’t you tried to push through me and steal his rich succulent eyes yet?”

“Don’t tempt me.” Contra jokingly replied but then found himself lost in contemplation. Thinking the question over more sincerely brought about many odd sensations. The very concept of forcing himself passed her and attacking the human completely evaded his mind until she had forced him to think on it. He didn’t answer her right away thinking it through his own head first. “I don’t know, I think it’s easier to control the bloodlust since you’ve kind of marked the human as yours. It would feel rude if I just ignored your wishes and killed him. Besides, and if you tell anyone else about this I’ll deny everything, but I kind of get what you mean.”

Pinna quickly stood back up in excitement causing the nearby human to release a pathetic yelp. “Really!?”

“Yeah, I think the bloodlust is starting to diminish for me too. It’s a really weird feeling actually. What do you think causes it?” Unlike Pinna, Contra was much more disturbed by his increasing awareness during battle. Things were simpler when the bloodlust took over, he didn’t have to think about right or wrong, friend or foe. Humans would just arrive and the next thing he knew the wrong people were dead and the right people moved on, that being the humans were dead and the mokoi moved on.

Pinna eagerly jumped onto this line of questioning. She was excited to be able to share and theorize with someone about these strange sensations. She wondered if the immersion would have liked to partake in this discussion with them. “I don’t really know but I have been thinking about that a lot! Maybe that wretched self-proclaimed queen Arete was on to something when she gave that weird speech about strings or whatever.”

“The one she gave right after the khan’s death? Like about the shackles of fate and how she was going to be a new virtuous ruler? You might be reading into that a little too much; to me that speech sounded more like the mad ramblings of an authoritarian psychopath, something obviously broke in her brain. I think she was just trying to justify betraying her entire species. If you think about it, it’s almost more her fault the mokoi khan died than it was the humans. I guess if you look like a human then you have to act like one.”

“Okay if we’re going to take a quick second to dive into full on ad hominin what is up with that? If you’re going to look human, then at least act like them and put some clothes on I don’t want to be forced to look at a filthy human’s body. What is up with that whole naked thing?”

“Well pretty much the second I heard that she and the White Witch were taking over the mokoi badlands was when I noped myself out of there and came to Ingress so I might not be the best to ask. But I heard from some of the later immigrants that she’s compensating now by just being fully winter prepped twenty-four seven.” Contra mimicked sexily covering himself in an oversized coat. The roleplay caused him to toss some of his poisonous mucus around the room in a gross contrast to his acting.

Contra’s acting made Pinna burst into laughter. “As much as it is fun to make fun of our holy tyrant Arete-“

“And easy.” Contra made sure to quickly add in.

“And easy it is to make fun of her. I still think of that speech a lot. Like, she just so happened to make right around when I first started to feel changes in my human bloodlust. And the speech just so happens to have all of these weird parallels. You know about the khan’s cajoling cloud of the mind and that whole spiel on severing strings of self.”

At another time Contra may have been infuriated that Pinna would even suggest such a thought but at this point he found her delirium entertaining. “Parallels, really? It would take the full power of a team of the most wingnut conspiracy theorists to gleam any semblance of sanity from what she was saying.” Contra paused and his humoured faced slowly turned to horror as he thought on what she said a little bit more. “Please spare me a heart attack and tell me you do not support her reign.”

Pinna shouted back almost offended even by the suggestion “I would never!”

Contra relaxed after hearing that. “Good, good.”

“No way, even if she was somehow right about everything in some weird alternate universe, I would still hate her just based on her methodology.”

“But she’s not right.”

“Not in a million years. I do think there is something we don’t know about going on from her speech. But it would have to be extreme to justify helping the humans kill the mokoi khan. The khan was the only thing keeping the mokoi united. Look at history, pre-mokoi khan: war, post-mokoi khan: war, during mokoi khan: …well still war but at least it was against humans instead of each other.”

Contra was about to make a joke about how the old adage that all conversations lead to politics was still true when his attention was stolen away by the chime of a bell sound out from behind Pinna. It seemed the human in the corner of the room also noticed the sound and began making strange sounds with their mouth. “Um Pinna, your human is doing that weird thing again.”

Pinna turned to face the human worried that he was trying to kill himself again but relaxed when she saw what her friend was talking about. “Oh, he’s just speaking human to this new guy.”

Contra shook his head trying to organize the information which was suddenly thrown at him. “New guy? Is someone else here?”

In fact there was. Pinna’s eyes were memorized by a small pink rhombus. It wasn’t the fact that it was a rhombus that Pinna found enthralling but rather that it refused to remain so, its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other forms. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Pinna holding a glowing parchment.

Pinna excited to flex her human literacy and perhaps even have a dialogue with what was clearly not a mokoi happily took the paper. To Pinna’s disappointment the second she grabbed the paper the pink entity repeated its strange morphing behavior in reverse until it was eventually a pink rhombus again shrinking out of existence.

Pinna frowned at the fact that the pink rhombus left in such a hurry. The human too was very disappointed, so much so that they were crying and swearing spitefully at the void where it had been. “Oh the chauffer left.”

Contra’s eyes boggled as he shook his head again being struck by this new name. Pinna was rather large so he was unable to see past her to any of the activity that had just occurred. “Chauffer? Is there a third person here as well?”

“No the Chauffer was the name of the new guy. At least that’s what the human was calling it.”

“Oh. It doesn’t seem like this human is a big fan of the Chauffer.”

“He thought that it came here to save him.” Both Pinna and Contra burst into a terrible fit of laughter. The human couldn’t comprehend the language the two were speaking but it could feel from the atmosphere that it should both be insulted and mortified.

Contra was kind of sad that he missed out on the even because Pinna’s large body blocked his sight. Of course, he would never dream of saying that directly to her. “So why was the Chauffer here. It would have been nice if you would have asked them. Why didn’t you ask them?”

Pinna’s short ears drooped ever so slightly. “I wish I could, spent all that time learning their language just to find out I’m physically incapable of vocalizing their sounds.”

Contra chuckled at Pinna’s misfortune much to her great dismay. “Well that sucks. Even if you can’t speak it you understand them right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I must have a kind of a similar anatomy; can’t you just translate what they said then tell me how to respond?”

Pinna let out an exasperated groan. “Oh yeah of course, I can just teach you how to speak the language. All you have to do is make this sound that I can’t replicate or explain to you because I am PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE OF SOUNDING IT OUT!”

“Oh… yeah. I guess that would make it kind of hard. It’s a shame we won’t get to find out what the Chauffer came here for.”

“Oh that’s easy, it came to give me this paper.”

Contra shook his head and turned his palms up questioningly. “And why did this Chauffer character give you a piece of paper?”

Pinna didn’t actually think that far into it. She looked down to the parchment that was now stuck in her massive claws: It read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Friend