The New Suchi Arena, a relatively quiet day for The Slums.

News of the venue's extravagant tournament prizes had spread like wildfire throughout the region. Within a handful of days from its opening, the stadium had become Suchi's premier hub for 1v1 PVP. Here, the zone's most dedicated duellists competed, trained, socialised, relaxed, and marvelled at their idols exchanging flesh.

Due to the increased popularity, the Ibanmothe stalls that'd been set outside the entrance to service the foot traffic had expanded into a self-sufficient market town, where one could buy everything from snacks to murder.

Presently, a block of these stalls was being dismantled by a four-hundred-strong mob of protesters.

"Have mercy!" cried a distraught vendor. "Please, comrades, stop! We implore you for the sake of your fellow sufferers!"

But the mob ignored him, their hammers smashing apart planks, their hands tearing apart clothing, and their feet stomping on kebabs.

"Comrades? Hah! You've all shown your allegiances!" The leader of the mob snapped the man's sign over an knee strike. "Come out, you rat!!"

"We demand reparations!" shouted a second protester.

Similar cries were taken up by the rest of the mob, their rage directed at the stadium's monstrous walls looming overhead, at the guards stationed above staring down at them with indifference.

While the one vendor pleaded, the others stood back and sighed, such interruptions being the norm in Slumlife. The protesters destroying their stalls were owners of private PVP establishments whose own businesses had been ruined by the half-kilometre-wide eyesore. Whatever moneybags was funding the stadium had gobbled up all their customers, none of them able to compete with the spacious, uncrowded facilities and the unreasonable usage fee of free.

At that moment, a haggard Offworlder teen happened to be walking towards the gate.

"You there!"

The mob-leader lunged to grab them, but the tired teen side-stepped, causing him to fall and eat dirt.

Henry, who'd been in chirpy spirits after his deluxe spa treatment and swindling of his grandmother, presented a palm in refusal. "No, thanks. I'm not interested."

"Arrogant Offworlder brat!" Leaping to his feet, the mob-leader brushed himself clean in indignation. "First, you cross the picket-line; now, you dare to shove an old man! Where's your loyalty?!"

"Here." Henry opened his shirt, flashing his Spelltomes at the obnoxious man then the rest of the bloodthirsty mob, who were brandishing their weapons.

Many retreated in fear at recognition of the material quality, at the only guild who could acquire it. The ignorant began to inch closer.

Henry refrained from attacking immediately.

The cause of their suffering wasn't his stadium. What had actually incensed this mob was the tanking of the Slum Point, whose hyper-inflation had rendered their fortunes worthless, especially after The Empire put a total moratorium on reimbursement until the currency's value bounced back - which it never would. Unable to complain to the real culprits, they'd resorted to raining their rage and sorrow upon his arena.

"Relax." He jogged up to the monumental structure's exterior and knocked on it, the blow producing a hollow thud. "The owner didn't get the right permit for permanent construction, so this wood-heap is a bonfire come The Cleansing. After that, it'll be business as usual."

Being the owner, he was obviously well-aware of this. Due to his wager with Alex, he'd been forced to build the over-sized arena without his guild's privileges. As such, at the end of the month, The Church would burn it down, along with every other structure left in The Slums. He'd put little thought into this wasteful eventuality due to being filthy rich.

The Ibanmothe could salvage the wood, he supposed.

Shock spread through the protester mob. They'd guessed the stadium's fate due to it being built by sub-contracting to The Empire, but they'd also assumed there must be an exception. Who could possibly waste such vast quantities of gold?

"How can you be sure?!" shouted the mob-leader. "Show me your credentials!"

Another protester screamed, "The Cleansing's half a year away! We'll starve before then!"

For the NPCs, half-an-IRL-month was half-a-year.

Henry shrugged. "For those who got scammed by Ramiro, the WBAE has generous re-homing grants. Act fast; slots are limited. Bye."

With the protesters gasping and swearing at him for openly accusing their saviour, he continued on to join the entrance queue.

An Earthfriend in line flashed him two rows of over-bleached teeth. "Nice save there, pal! Still, it's a shame we missed you flexing one of those fancy styles you've invented."

Henry gave the Earthfriend a quick once-over, not recognising them as a spy or anyone who'd trained with him yet. Therefore, for them to refer to one of The Return of The Cripple's iconic formula jokes, they must have heard his tale second hand.

The legend was spreading!

"Wait for what I have in store today," replied Henry cheerfully. "While biffing a candy wrapper at a fly, I invented an immaculate snack-based projectile art."

The stranger's eyes became two dinner plates.

Henry, the target of their astonishment not being himself, followed their gaze, spinning around to confront the sudden danger.

And how danger arrived...

The rowdy protesters parted to make way for a spring flower, a beauty emerging like Aphrodite from the sea. Her hair teased out into a lion's mane, she sported a fluffy coat ill-adapted to Suchi's heat and lips coated in a layer of red almost as thickly applied as her panda eyeshadow. From pre-torn booty-shorts extended a pair of athletic legs that were stretched even longer by glittering high-heels, and their strut, oh, how sensuous the strut...

In autumn 2050, this trendy get-up was being worn by the hottest female streetwear influencers. Unfortunately, Henry, who'd barely left his apartment in the past two-years/eight-decades, only recognised it from late 20th century films.

-Henry Flower: Yo, what's up with the escort disguise?

Rose did a 180-degree spin and disappeared behind a stall. Moments later, she returned in a pin-stripe suit with a mullet wig.

-Henry Flower: Mafioso? Mayonnaise wears stuff like that.

-Zhangmei33: My therapist recommended that I test various personas to compensate for a delayed adolescence. Cripple-gege, please provide your invaluable feedback.

Henry's response to this blatant ruse was swift and decisive.

-Henry Flower: That's logical; being a mentally ill stalker type is indeed sub-optimal for the social climb.

Why, at the tender age of 8, he himself had considered persona optimisation before tackling the Everest of friendship. After putting in days of preliminary research, however, he'd concluded that the personality path was inferior to the looks path, which was, in turn, inferior to the wealth path. His first friend had cost him a measly 1.5 trillion New Zealand Dollars, the price of a chocolate bar.

Today, he could have refused Crazy Rose's request. But he decided to assist her for both a humanist reason, the charitable treatment of the mentally ill, and another humanist reason, beta-testing his judgement criteria for the upcoming supreme gold-digger girlfriend recruitment tournament.

-Henry Flower: Fair warning: do not be fooled by the guild's award-winning personal development programs. Those are managed by hired experts, not me. It may come as a shock given my supreme battlefield tricks, but I have actually yet to progress far in any psychological field except combat psychology. Also, my social IQ...suffice it to say, you will need to expand the pool of judges to include more veteran perspectives - of course, you should be doing that anyway to average out subjectivity.

Rose, stone-faced, slipped a notebook out of her suit's inner pocket and pretended to write that down.

-Zhangmei33: Increase sample size, noted. So the evaluations?

-Henry Flower: What scale are you using?

She gave him a blanker than blank stare. Why would anyone have a scale for this?

-Henry Flower: You can borrow mine, the 7-point Supreme Scale of Persona Social Appeal. A perfect score of 7 represents the alpha alpha, e.g. a reincarnated Jesus Christ who has been buffed up by designer steroids bought through his god-daddy's infinite trust fund; 0 is a criminally-inclined sentient sack of vomit and tapeworm-infested poo with halitosis - both the sack and the worms. According to the SSPSA, I would estimate a mafioso to be a 2.8, while an escort would be a 3.3. Both roles are naturally penalised for their association with illicit activities. The escort persona, however, would be more beloved by the masses because it exemplifies the noble quality of pragmatism, whereby even one's own body may be employed as a tool in the pursuit of…

Thus, they were admitted into the venue, Rose rapid-swapping her wardrobe and Henry imparting his lobster-level social judgements.

Inside, the stadium flourished with players from Central City and The Slums alike. In the arenas, they duelled for self-improvement and leaderboard ratings; at an ongoing tournament, they duelled for a tropical island bungalow. Amidst the trash of The Slums, here stood a scrap of civility, where the noobs butchered each other in peaceful violence.

Henry—nodding in approval, waving to other strangers who, having apparently caught wind of his saga, too, flung him their adoration—made his way to his pre-booked arena. There, a crowd was watching the duellists who'd won yesterday's slot. A few of them had never logged off, capitalising on every precious second of uninterrupted, luxury training.

Henry, overcome with emotion, clapped in applause. "What a gorgeous sight!"

-Zhangmei33: ...really?

"Not the 5.9 medical doctor persona. I'm talking about them, the hard-working children. In this grandpa's prejudiced eyes, they're all perfect 7s!"

In the Sand sub-map, another beauty, a goddess with flowing sea-weed hair moved in close to her opponent and rammed her man-hating spear up through their groin. As they collapsed upon her shoulder in defeat, she glared at the two approaching figures.

"I'm NOT—"

But Henry still had Loki muted.

The spies were here, too, dotted around the crowd, signing up to challenge him, watching from the adjacent arenas. Henry would try to ignore them.

When Loki redirected his hate at Rose for last night's random assassination, Henry noted a strange silence. It stemmed not from the muted Loki, however, but from the spy's fans, who didn't bolster his hatred with their own.

Scanning their silent rank, he was surprised to see some of the worst offenders glancing away nervously, while the very worst were absent…having deleted their characters...

The way noobs had been greeting him…

Looking now at the crowd, whose ogling had taken on alien qualities, of distance, fear, respect, envy, and brown-nosing, Henry realised that they were seeing beyond him and The Cripple, to the reputation of The Company.

So that was it. Information on his guild identity must have leaked, probably due to him cheesing yesterday's community service event by demolishing the noob quests with his previously-Tier-5, now-Tier-6 Scholar skills.

Henry's thoughts on this development? Awesome.

No more fanatical noobs randomly attacking him and ruining his clothes with their spilt organ-juices - so he had gained something from the community ordeal in the end.

Additionally, after Loki's public actions, it shouldn't be long before news reached Odin of him being detected by the spies of the other guilds. Then, Loki's schemes would skip the hyper-irritating 'Annoying Neighbours' phase to the less-irritating 'Depressed Fraud' phase, when 'he' would try to milk sympathy by pretending to be 'she'.

Nice.

A sudden commotion broke out.

Rose, having exchanged her medical doctor outfit for battle armour, was collecting Flora and Fauna charges while glaring at Loki like a dog waiting for the order to bite.

The crowd stirred with excitement at the possibility of this mute Earthfriend hidden genius writing a sequel to last night's gory decapitation. Most roused up were Artemis's fans, hungering for the catfight.

-Zhangmei33: His insults cannot be tolerated. Allow me to avenge your honour again.

-Henry Flower: You have my permission. Get 'em, girl! Go!

Rose paused, suspicious about his too-easily-given agreement. With an assassin's seasoned scrutiny, she probed the surroundings for threat, spotting the stadium's guards dozing off.

-Zhangmei33: As expected, improvising a superb deceit to rid yourself of your enemies.

If she killed Loki, Cripple-gege would wake the guards and whine shamelessly until they ejected her for starting an unsanctioned fight.

To the crowd's disappointment, she put away her weapons and ran off to change into a horse-girl outfit.

Loki laughed with cocky glee. "That's right, $&*#! Best run away, you dumb sl—"

Henry talked over the spy. "Skip the rest of the pleasantries, kids. Anyone who disrupts today's practice gets the boot. This isn't a democracy; I will abuse my power."

Filtering these external distractions out, he went to his recuperation gazebo, which had been prepared in advance by a butler. Awaiting him was a smorgasbord of delicacies cooked by private chefs, along with several sets of freshly laundered armour and weaponry.

While the butler projected an arena-wide message for the next round of challengers, Henry took a sip of a poison-tainted Legendary Iceberry and Watermelon Thickshake. His sweet-addicted chum Abigail wouldn't be attending 1v1 practice today, having chosen cold turkey over continuing to be his mind slave. This truancy couldn't defeat his plans, though. During The Death Training episode, he'd crafted more efficient team drills for the growth of his worthless noob friends.

Readying himself for another day of blood and sweat, he picked up his weapons and went out to face the challengers.

The tiny audience who'd started to follow the strange teen over Suchi's other genius duellists marvelled when he debuted yet another style.

Hook-Sword in hand, he warmed up by jogging around the arena, scaling walls by using the weapon's unique shape to catch hidden holds, pausing on ledges to perform a kata from the Baby-Faced repertoire for Flying-Weapon-less fighting, and engaging in battles against invisible foes. Diving under their swings, he gave a hook-knee-shove-evisceration infused with the nimbleness and daring of the art's original young progenitors. The next instant, with the wizened reticence of its modern geriatric practitioners, he retreated out of danger. Refilling his straining lungs, he cogitated and considered, he allowed the enemy to lunge first. Calmly drop-stepping to duck inside their stab, he dug the hook into their throat and drag-pulled them off their feet.

In this manner, in the quiet peace of this neglected zone, he hacked away. To some, his cuts and hooks seemed to be aimed at the impossibly-thick foliage of an unexplored jungle, clearing the vines to create an open path - but for what or who, none could be certain.