Yugi Gurom opened his eyes. No, Yugi Smith opened them. Yugi shook his head and looked above him. The darkness that greeted him was unsurprising, the pod always took a few extra seconds to scan the user’s vitals before ending session suspension. Yugi waited patiently while chewing on his slip-up.

I wonder if there will be problems for the game if people can forget themselves so easily. I wonder if there should be.

His musings were interrupted by the pneumatic hiss of the pod releasing him back into his apartment. Yugi wasted no time in swinging his legs over the edge and reaching his arms over his head, a satisfying pop accompanying the move. He quickly checked his messages and sent a few updates to his contacts at home. A glance at the digital clock mounted on the sleek pod exterior showed the time at 6:42PM Eastern Pacific Time.

Ten minutes to the interview.

Yugi quickly stepping into the shower and rinsed off before throwing on an appropriately professional ensemble. He had just clicked on the coffee machine when a light rap sounded on the door. Yugi noted the noise and finished filling the machine before swinging open the door.

“Mr. Stone, I’m surprised you came all this way personally.” Yugi raised an eyebrow at his direct employer, who seemed not at all bothered by the fact that interviewing should definitely not be on his to-do list.

“Nonsense! I would be heartbroken if I never got to talk to my favorite player.” Gerald Stone waved his hand and strode into the apartment. He paused, glancing at the large sectional sofa set against the living room wall before striding to a small, two-seat table with a view over the city below and setting himself down. Yugi moved back to the kitchen and pulled two coffee mugs from a cabinet.

“I suppose the fact none of your work would follow you here had any impact on the decision?” Yugi mused aloud as he poured.

Gerald Stone smiled, “Of course not. Now, I know you have a kingdom to run, both in RDK and out here so I won’t waste too much of your time. How’s the movement going, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Yugi strode over to the table and set two steaming mugs down before settling into the unoccupied chair. He turned his gaze out the window before replying. “It’s grown beyond me at this point. As long as our deal continues providing the funding, the March runs itself.” He paused momentarily, tracking a rivulet of water running down the window pane. He then murmured quietly, almost to himself. “Honestly, I’m not sure I mind.”

Gerald Stone took a slow sip from his coffee then leaned back in the dark wood chair. “I’ll keep that off the record. But why the change? No longer interested in exposing corruption and all that?”

Yugi smiled and sipped his own drink before leaning forward, both elbows placed carefully evenly on the marble surface of the table. “I used to think it was my destiny, toeing the line between anarchist, revolutionary, and political activist. I would relish ferreting out every level of corruption we could find and seeing every new pair of boots join the March. But...” Yugi, rotated his mug slightly so that the handle stuck out at a better angle, “but while I may have helped found it, the March doesn’t need me anymore.” He let his gaze drift from the table to the décor on the walls. His eyes traced the contours of minimalistic and colorful art as he continued. “When you invited me to play RDK, you claimed it would give me a perspective from the viewpoint of government leaders and would let me revitalize my approach to holding them to a higher standard.” He flicked his eyes back to Gerald and scowled, “you lied.” Yugi waved Gerald down before he could retort and continued, “but it did give me perspective on my own establishment. I’ve spent far too long stagnating, the March doesn’t need me; the fact I can spend so long playing this game is irrefutable proof of that.” Yugi turned back and locked eyes with Gerald Stone. “It’s time I worked for myself. You’re a shitty interviewer, Stone, but you can put this on the record. I, Yugi Smith, have decided to step down as Grand Marshal of the Egalitarian March in order to grasp new possibilities.” Gerald listened, his grin growing wider and wider as Yugi talked until his teeth were bared in the comfortable light of the apartment.

“It’s fun, then?”

“There are aspects of human society reflected in the game wherein one can simulate governmental policies worth pursuing.” Yugi settled back and sipped his coffee.

“Bah! Is a yes so hard for you people?” Gerald groaned, but the grin still lingered at the corners of his mouth. “Now that business is done with, let’s get to the fun stuff. How are you planning on dealing with Eredin?”

It was late when Gerald shook hands with Yugi and walked out the door, yet Yugi found he wasn’t as tired as he expected. The coffee pot was empty and the cups had long ago been placed in the dishwasher but Yugi still found himself practically bouncing back to his pod.

After all, how could I sleep with a kingdom to run?

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

“That will never work you imbecile! We need more time!”

“If we could just evacuate the fringe villages-”

“And what? You want to send mercenaries? Eredin can pay twice our budget!”

“Perhaps a pre-emptive strike?”

“The White Army will never lose to those cowards!”

Yugi Gurom, King of Taron, rubbed his eyes. His expansive throne room was now filled with men and women arguing over how to address the movements of Eredin. They had moved even more quickly than Kaiser had predicted, with nearly half of their army moving into villages and cities in the southern reaches of the country, basically on top of Taron’s North Eastern border. Even worse news was that the light of the hero had begun to manifest in hero candidates around the world.

“Silence!” The crowd of around twenty agitated officials bit back their next words and sat back in their seats. Yugi allowed the silence to continue for a moment before he continued. “The most important thing here is to buy time. We have been moving bodies and training men but these past months have been too short, so I need you to focus on how we can get ourselves more time first.”

A fist almost immediately crashed into the table with a meaty thump. A hulk of a man wearing thick leathers and sporting a beard that somehow managed to grow in every direction thundered excitedly. “Exactly my King! We need to block the pass! My builder’s guild could put a wall up in a month that would take Eredin a century to penetrate!”

“Nonsense!” A woman in deep blue robes with white hair immaculately tied into a bun adjusted her spectacles with one hand and waved the other in front of her face. “My Academy of Magic could collapse stone from either side of the pass and block it in half the time it would take your hammer-swinging barbarians!”

“You dare??” The bearded hulk began to rise.

“Enough!” Kaiser once again brought the assembly back under control. “First off, we don’t have half a year to spare or even a quarter! Without even mentioning that you have just insulted the entire barbarian race we need immediate solutions.”

“If I may, Your Highness.” A voice from the right of the table spoke up. It came from a very well dressed gentleman wearing what could almost pass for normal formal attire even back on Earth. Kaliem, the leader of the thieves guild stood with a bow. Yugi nodded for him to continue. “Can we not simply eliminate the Colossal One? Surely that would convince the Red Queen of Eredin to wait until the Festival? And I’m sure my associate here would just loooove to give it a shot.” Kaliem punctuated his sentence with a gloating smirk toward the end of the table where a large man slouched silently.

“The same problem presents itself in that case, I would need time.” The man, Luan of the Assassin’s guild, responded evenly.

“Hah.” A stocky woman with shockingly red hair and crimson armor trimmed in gold spat on the floor. “We don’t need help from those guilds anyway.”

“Strong words, can you back them up?” The woman in red recoiled slightly as a figure in black armor rebuked her. Black Maiden Brynhild, Yugi’s enforcer among the more unsavory parts of the kingdom, didn’t even move, but the pressure she gave off was more than enough to silence any doubts about the weight of her threat.

“I may have a solution for that too actually~” Kaliem ignored the two fighters and addressed Luan. “Why not send the hero?”

The room exploded in noise as the outcries against his suggestion temporarily drowned out anything anyone could have been saying. Yugi held up a hand for silence.

“Explain what you mean, Kaliem. And remember, the hero is an absolute necessity if we want to be able to contend with the Colossal One’s demon king.”

“Of course, my King.” Kaliem stood with a bow. “We have two hero candidates already accounted for in Taron, and a third headed to Grimax to secure a fourth. There will only be one hero, and if the red queen hears that a hero candidate has gone to assassinate her ally, she will have to move her men to stop it will she not? We cannot send the actual hero to such a slaughter, but what of a candidate we know cannot be the hero? That third, why not send him?” Kaliem’s face cracked into a malicious grin. Yugi felt rage begin to boil inside of him and stabbed his teeth into the tip of his tongue to keep it from showing. The Colossal One had been given a unique power from winning the Festival of Champions decades ago, he could create champions for his country that held such raw power that both enemies of Taron and even the Colossal One’s own allies had called them demon kings. There were only two caveats to that power. Every Demon King would spawn a hero who wielded not equal strength, but a holy light that acted as the greatest poison to the Demon King. The other caveat to his power was that his own blood could never become either hero nor demon king. Yugi grit his teeth.

If only it had been anyone else. Why the hell did it have to be him?

Yugi lost his struggle to hide his rage and glared at Kaliem, desperately trying to incinerate him with only his gaze. Kaliem returned the gaze with sadistic glee.

It was almost exactly three years ago that Yugi had agreed to beta test a new virtual reality game in exchange for some funding for his movement. One year of beta testing. One year had quickly turned into two, and now he had signed up for another with all those ‘early access testers’. What else could he do? It seemed so long ago now when he had first stepped into this world and been adopted by the king. At first Yugi hadn’t paid much mind to the ‘npcs’ since it was the civilization simulator he was here for, but the people had felt so real, so genuine in their actions, so overwhelming in their emotion that slowly his focus had shifted.

“Eat, Yugi my boy!” The Fat King laughed, his belly and cheeks bouncing with a jolly so forceful it defied every law of physics Yugi knew.

The Fat King. You could go anywhere in the kingdom and hear citizens chuckling and toasting the Fat King and nearly every tavern in the capital had a story of the King toasting right alongside.

The warm memories bubbled up in Yugi’s mind and fueled the boiling rage behind his eyes. The King had died in his sleep later that same year mere days after giving officially naming Yugi one of his sons. Sure, the King’s actual heir was one hell of a bastard but the rest of them were family in that impossible, fairytale way that was almost too good to be true. But Kaliem was right. Nothing would draw the attention of Eredin’s forces like a the movements of a hostile hero, and the only hero expendable enough for the job was a direct descendant of Karnaid Gurom, the Colossal One himself.

“Fine.” Yugi growled. “But we aren’t going to just throw him to the wolves on his own. Every guild will choose someone that might actually help him succeed. They will meet here in five weeks. In five weeks we will send a party to kill the Colossal One, led by the hero candidate Grey Exclesias Gurom. Dismissed.”