On an absolutely perfect beach on an absolutely perfect day, a little crab burbled with frustration.

The two beings, his two beings, were just sitting there doing nothing.

They just sat next to each other, making thought noises and looking at a glowing square of light covered with lines (he knew what they were now), words (words were neat! They had thoughts in them!), and numbers (also beyond cool!).

However, these words and numbers were boring.

Maybe he didn’t understand them, but they seemed to be about “communication”, “laziness”, and “expectations”, concepts that made absolutely no sense. Oh, he “understood” them. They just seemed silly.

It was somehow related to mating.

Mating was one of the simplest, most basic things there was. When the moon (that was the little light) told you to, every male crab would fight like there was big food, and then the winners would have a lady crab climb on their back, and they would ride around for a little while. Then the lady crab would leave.

It was simple. Why did these two beings who were so much smarter than he have so much trouble with the concept? She just jumped on his back. Simple!

He had seen them try to mate, but they just fumbled around. They could even molt whenever they wanted, and they still didn’t get it right.

They just kept trying, over and over.

Weird.

Anyway, they weren’t even trying to mate anymore. They were just talking about mating, or something related to mating, something called a “relationship”.

It took him a while, but he thought that was concerning the time when the lady rode around on the male for a bit before she went off to make baby crabs.

He wasn’t entirely sure, but they seemed to have a lot of trouble figuring it out.

Just climb on his back already! he thought in frustration.

Ugh, this was pointless.

He wandered off, wondering if something interesting was happening elsewhere.

***

Dawnflower sat in the only clean corner of her tiny cage with her head on her knees in absolute misery.

How could humans be so mean?

The stinky old man who “owned” her kept her in this tiny cage and only interacted with her when he wanted to squeeze magic or make her sprinkle her magic glitter into some foul-smelling beaker or another.

She hated the stinky man. She hated him so much.

She winced as she heard an anguished roar from the other room.

He was summoning that poor demon again. The poor thing didn’t want to be summoned. She felt bad for him, getting ripped from his life and just imprisoned like that.

Then again, she knew exactly what that felt like.

Suddenly, she felt fire running through her very soul as two glowing lobes sprung from her back, unfurling into two big, beautiful wings.

She marveled at them. They were gorgeous!...

…and powerful!!!

She felt magic surge through her as she fluttered them, so much more than she had before!

She smirked as the cage exploded.

***

“You cannot oppose me, fiend!” Mortimer the Wise, clutching a spell tome, shouted at the enraged demon neatly trapped in the complex thaumaturgic circles he had carefully drawn on the floor with a mixture of rare and powerful reagents…

…including his trump card, pixie glitter, no more than a few hours old.

“Hey, stinky man!”

He spun around to see his pixie standing there… with wings!

This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.

The pixie fluttered over to the circles.

“No!” Mortimer yelled in terror as the pixie took her little foot and…

“Boop,” she said cheerfully as she cut a line in the circles.

Dawnflower fluttered up to a bookshelf, sat, and, eyes gleaming with malice, enjoyed the show.

***

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, a rare treat!” an extravagantly dressed man exclaimed to the crowd gathered under his circus tent.

“Feast your ears on the angelic voice of the Pixie Choir!”

He pulled the cloth from a cage to reveal a dozen pixies, all with beautiful wings…

…while they did begin to sing, I don’t think it was quite the show that everyone expected…

***

Across the lands of man, these scenes, and hundreds of others, played out simultaneously. The vast majority of pixies were owned by wizards, alchemists, and enchanters and kept in their towers, workshops, and laboratories…

…all places that you do not want an enraged and highly enchanted being suddenly set free.

These places all had one thing in common, there were items and reagents of power contained within…

…things that tend to combust when mishandled…

…thus, in the towns of man, built with the bones of dead trees, the flames started to spread, fanned by the beating of tiny but very powerful wings.

***

“Petunia here will get you settled in,” Veb said to a very discomfited and more than a little startled young woman wearing wizard robes.

“I just wanted to buy some lumber…”

Veb smiled sympathetically.

“My spells… They just laughed at them. They said that they were cute.”

“You were up against Handmaidens,” Veb said gently. “Don’t feel bad.”

“But…”

“You will feel better after a hot bath and a good night’s sleep,” Veb said. “Please follow Petunia, and she will show you to your room.”

“…a bath… a bath does sound nice…” the young woman said weakly as she let Petunia lead her away.

“So, how long did you last against them?” Petunia cheerfully asked as she escorted the young woman away.

Veb got out of his chair and stretched.

It had been a long day, but that was the last of them.

When that rapscallion Pantsu and her dastardly friends decided to go on a killing spree, they spreed.

But that was what he was here for, to clean up messes just like this. Besides, all of those poor people would be much happier here. Over three-quarters of them opted for membership after just a bath and a hot meal.

It felt good to help. Then again, helping was what he did. It was what he was created for so very long ago.

The door to his office opened, and a portly halfling walked in pushing a cart piled high with papers.

“Harv,” Veb said, “Those had better not be what I think they are.”

“And more are coming in by the minute!”

“Dammit, Pantsu,” Veb said as he took the first page from the stack…

…and then the second…

…and then the third…

He grabbed a handful and flipped through them, the pages flying past in a blur.

“Who or what is Faun?!?”

***

“Oh, I love that!” Pantsu exclaimed as two Old Ones finished the finishing touches on the lovely mural they had just painted. “That might actually drive them insane by just looking at it!”

“Hmm…” she mused, “Better message ‘Evangeline’ and have her tell the bedbugs to isekai anyone whose mind breaks and tag them for selective memory deletion.”

There was no sense in being overly inhumane. After seeing what the “good people” of this world did regularly, she was inclined not to care anymore. However, she knew from painful experience that it was at exactly times like this where restraint was most called for.

It was far too easy to get carried away.

“Be sure to put a sheet or something over that,” Pantsu said. “The humans won’t be able to resist, and it will prevent any of our little newblings from getting their noggins fried.”

“GurgLe…”

“Ha! Good one!” Pantsu laughed, “But give them a break. They are new at this. Speaking of, I’m gonna pop over to HQ and see what’s what.”

“GurGle…”

“Good idea! That will totally mess them up! See you later!”

***

Pantsu skipped out from a glowing geometric rune portal and into a secluded mountain valley now converted into their primary training center.

She looked over at a group of dragons, all sitting attentively as a small blue-clad dragonlet stood in front of a chalkboard on a small platform.

He might have forgotten his name, but he still knew the trade. The old coding ran deep, and he had forgotten (literally) more than any of these newbs had ever learned. Poor kids, the oldest of them was no more than twenty thousand years old.

They were just babies!

Pantsu snarled. The stories these poor critters had… and not just the dragons… all of the “monsters” of this world…

Before, it was just a bit of fun. Now?

Now she was angry.

The gloves were off, and she was about to teach these mortals why they called her the empress of where the sun don’t shine.

She walked over to an arrangement of some very out of place looking techno heresy and wondered how long she was going to spend in Heaven over this stunt.

Frostie was going to be pissed but pissing off Frostie was her secondary function after all.

Standing around it were several beings of different species, all now appropriately dressed in properly immersive garb…

…except one dressed in a fluffy rabbit onesie and big floppy ears.

“Clover,” she said as she approached, “How are we looking, or more importantly, not looking.”

“P-Pantsu!” Clover exclaimed as she bowed so low her floppy ears brushed the grass. She still could not believe she was working with employee number five, the original dragon princess!

“Y-Yes! I… I mean we…”

Pantsu sighed as she patiently waited for Clover to get her bits in a row. It was always like this, now.

“Um… The spatial looping field completely encloses the entire valley and is replaying the events over the past ten years. It is also successfully concealing the temporal acceleration matrix underneath with zero leakage… I checked myself!” she added nervously.

She had even ventured outside the valley! It was really scary.

A bug almost flew into her mouth! She was still having trouble sleeping over that one!

“And what is our temporal multiplier?” Pantsu asked.

“We are pushing out a solid one hundred to one!” Clover said proudly. “One day here is a solid three months of training time plus inprossessing, orientation, and equipment issue!”

“It will have to do,” Pantsu shrugged, “Sluggs over there,” she said, gesturing at a brightly colored human-sized slug who was happily eating grass nearby, “was only able to steal one black hole reactor from the central arsenal.”

“How did he get his hands on all of this?” Clover asked in astonishment, forgetting who she was talking to for a microsecond, “Um… My Lady…” she added when she remembered.

“He’s Sluggs. That’s how,” Pantsu replied. “I’m glad I was able to get him on board. Hell, I’m happy I was able to find him. It’s not easy, you know… Hey, Clover?”

“Y-yes, M-my Lady?”

“You can worship me, or you can work for me. You can’t do both, okay? Drop the ‘My Lady’ and all the rest. My name is and has always been Pantsu. Well, actually, my original name was something else, but that lasted like maybe a week, and I will flay anyone who uses it. I’m just an AI, no different than you, except with a few more cycles on the clock.”

“Yes, My…”

“Don’t piss me off, Clover.”

“Yes… P-Pantsu…”

“There! That wasn’t so…”

“Hey, boss,” a black-skinned elf with white hair said as she trotted up.

“Shai!” Pantsu exclaimed. “I love the outfit! So rustic!”

“You like?” Shai-Vai-Loshara asked, “I had one of the locals make it. Don’t I look just like a wood elf?”

“If they forgot half their clothes and weren’t a wood elf,” Pantsu laughed. “What’s up?”

“Something weird is happening with the pixies on the other side of the field. We might have a…”

A tiny, startled yelp rang out as a pixie nearby dropped to the ground, her wings slooooowly melting…

…and then another pixie fell… and another.

“Don’t worry!” Shai yelled. “They grow back! It happens a lot faster in real-time!”

“Spread the word!” Pantsu shouted, “Don’t need them freaking out unnecessarily.”

She turned to Shai and, in a lot lower voice, asked, “Do they need to freak out?”

“No,” Shai smiled, “But I think we might want to.”

“What?”

“They all are evolving,” Shai said in a matter-of-fact tone, “The new wings are turning the pixies into faeries… not ‘fairies,’… full bore S tier faeries… all of them…”

“Well, that’s unexpected.”

“Are you aware of what the humans do to a pixie if they catch them?”

Pantsu’s eyes flashed with barely restrained rage.

“Well, the fae are just a little pissed off about it…” Shai snickered.

Pantsu snerked.

“Suspend all advisory activities except for training and start recon,” Pantsu said, “Ditch the newbs and let’s capitalize on the chaos.”

She grinned.

“I assume there is chaos?”

“Oh, yeah.”

***

Evangeline and her party were galloping down a road in the middle of the Kingdom of Champonia (the names here… Am I right?) on their way to the city of Valor, where there was an “Adamantium Class” party who sounded like real dicks.

It was time for them to get a visit.

“How you doing back there, Flopsy?” Evangeline called out with a laugh.

Flopsybun clung, both terrified and miserable, to the back of his steed.

“I’m tired of throwing up!”

“Then, stop doing it.”

“Asshole…” Flopsybun muttered under his breath.

“Flopsy!” Evangeline exclaimed with delight.

He went rigid with terror.

“I knew there was hope for you after all! Now, if you would just start fighting, I’ll tell you what your…”

Evangeline trailed off as she spotted smoke in the distance… a lot of smoke.

The group brought their steeds to a halt.

“Isn’t that where Valor is supposed to be?” Zvaxus said as he looked at a map.

“Yep,” Evangeline replied.

“It seems to be on fire.”

“Yep.”

Evangeline closed her eyes and beheld pure unbridled chaos…

…and fire. There was a lot of fire.

“Oh Fauuuunnnn,” Evangeline sang.

“What!”

“When you replaced those pixie wings, what, pray tell, did you replace them with?”

“Just wings,” Faun replied, “You watched me do it.”

“Um… What, and I need you to be specific here, exactly what sort of wings did you replace them with?”

“Just some fairy wings.”

“I see. Again, and I am going to need specifics, exactly how much power did you use?”

“I don’t know,” Faun replied, “A pretty good bit. There were a lot of pixies, so I wanted to make sure they all had some.”

“I see,” Evangeline said. “I need to call Veb. It will just be a minute.”

“Who is Veb?”

“Just someone who works for me,” Evangeline replied. “Hang on, I’m getting a message from Pantsu.”

A few moments later, Evangeline looked at Faun.

“Faun,” she said calmly, “Once again, I am going to want you to be as specific as possible. When you put the pixie’s wings back on, what exactly did you try to do?”

“I just wanted all of the pixies to get new wings.”

Evangeline facepalmed.

“What?” Faun asked. “When you cover your face like that, it means...”

A huge gout of flame shot up into the sky from what used to be Valor.

“Is that a firestorm?” Zvaxus asked as he peered off in the distance.

“Now that brings me back,” Veelanora said as she put her arm around him. “I haven’t seen one of those in a while.”

A quiet beeping noise came from one of Evangeline’s pockets.

Evangeline winced, pulled out a thin rectangle, and poked at it.

“Veb!” she said with forced cheer as she held it to her ear. “I was just about to call you…”

***

“It was just wings…” Faun wailed despondently as she sat on the ground. “I just wanted to give them wings. How… How did that go wrong, Evangeline… How did I mess that up?!?”

“Well… It wasn’t a mistake, exactly,” Evangeline said as she sat down next to Faun and handed her a cup of tea. “I mean, it was a bit of overkill…”

Faun moaned and buried her face in her hands.

“Okay,” Evangeline chuckled, “poor choice of words. What I meant to say is all you really did was give the pixies a little… okay… a lot more power than they had. You set them free and gave them the ability to change their circumstances a little.”

She looked over at the billowing smoke.

“You can’t really be blamed for the rest of this. It’s just free will and human… I mean pixie… I mean fae nature. Those little bastards have a nasty reputation when crossed.”

“But my fairies are so nice.” Faun wailed.

“Because they had you looking out for them,” Evangeline said. “I bet you didn’t let anything bad happen to those ‘nice’ little things, did you?”

Faun nodded.

“Even though they betrayed me and stole my power, some of it anyway,” Faun said, “They did not dare set foot in my forests. They only clung to what they had stolen and ventured no further. I think… I think that is why they started trying to expand into other realms… and unleashed devastation upon my teacher’s universe.”

“Look,” Evangeline said as she took a sip of her tea. “Veb isn’t happy, but he’s handling this. All of these people are going to get isekaied, and none of them are going to remember getting roasted. No damage done, and no trauma. They all just wake up at an orientation center… even if we did have to build a few new ones… and they will all get brand new lives, either here once we’re done, or they will enter the Blitz system, and that’s a pretty good deal, especially for your average peasant. A lot of them are actually thanking you… profusely.”

“They… They are?”

“Yep,” Evangeline replied. “Once we finish up here, I’ll take you there, and you can see for yourself.”

“I would like that,” Faun smiled weakly.

“Just think of this as getting some of that expee I was talking about.”

“What?”

“You have just learned that the more power you have… or use… the bigger mess you can make,” Evangeline chuckled, “This is a lesson all of us learn sooner or later.”

“How… How do you keep from making these terrible mistakes?”

“You don’t,” Evangeline laughed ruefully. “I still screw up, and I’ve been at this a long time. You just try to be as careful as you can, use as little power as you have to, and think before you start playing god. I’ve mentioned this before when I talked about time. Some entities become paralyzed, terrified of making a single mistake, and others go hog wild. Most of us fall somewhere in between. You just do as best you can, Faun. That’s it. There’s no divine mystic secret. Sorry.”

“I just wanted to set the pixies free…”

“And you did,” Evangeline said, giving Faun an affectionate little shake. “All you did was give them a boost. Everything that happened after that was, in my humble yet divine opinion, a long time coming. The humans and whoever else was ripping their wings off asked for this. It’s just the natural consequences of their actions. Sometimes… Sometimes you just gotta let things play out, Faun. This time, the innocent are going to be just fine in the end. This rigged game is a perfect place to learn. No matter what you do, you…”

Evangeline slapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide with terror.

“Goddammit," she groaned, "I can’t believe I almost said it…”

“Almost said what?”

“Something I’m trying very hard to not even think!”

/// You have a priority one urgent message from Administrator Pantsu ///

“Of course I do…”

***

Evangeline’s party stepped out of a glowing portal and stopped in complete shock.

Standing there was a celestially powerful dragon, an entity by any definition of the word…

…and a small child that wasn’t a human, just another of the countless bipeds that were almost as common as crabs. (cute, though)

“This is partially my fault,” Evangeline muttered. “I still can’t believe I said it.”

“He just flew right through the concealment field,” Pantsu said as she trotted up, “which I was assured wasn’t leaking…”

Clover flinched as she checked the equipment for the hundredth time.

“…and asked to speak to ‘The Horned God’. I have no idea who that is, but he insists that he first encountered them here on the road to Valor. So…”

The entire party turned and looked at Faun.

“Friend of yours?” Veelanora asked.

“I greet you and render you praise, my savior and creator,” the dragon said as he bowed his head. “I am Evaraxxaus, and this is my sister, Jaimie.”

“Hi!” Jamie exclaimed. “My brother turned into a dragon!”

“Okay,” Evangeline said, “This I just gotta hear.”

***

“You know what?” Evangeline said as Evaraxxaus told his tale, “I ain’t even mad. This is impressive! Cosmic. Wrecking. Ball!”

Faun just stood there completely speechless.

“You actually just created an entity!” Zvaxus exclaimed.

“Not on purpose!” Faun exclaimed. “I just wanted to help!”

“And you did, gentle Faun,” Evaraxxaus smiled. “You helped far more than you seem to know.”

“I did?” Faun asked hopefully.

As Evaraxxus continued his tale, Zvaxus turned to Veelanora.

“You ever think you were going to be one of the leads in a play, and it turns out you are just an extra?”

“I kind of get that feeling as well.”

“Want to go get a drink?”

“You think there’s any around here?”

“Where there are soldiers,” Zvaxus rumbled, “There is drink.”

He sniffed the air.

“Yep. Drink. Follow me,” he said as the pair wandered off.

***

Clover whined as she fiddled with the exclusion field generator.

It shouldn’t have failed!

It couldn’t have failed!

She checked.

Did she make a mistake? She was an Adept of the Bun, master of all things hidden.

She made a mistake, didn’t she? She did. She had to have made a mistake.

She whined again.

She screwed up, bad. She screwed up in front of the holy Pantsu… after the high priest himself recommended her!

This was about as bad as it could get. Maybe she should just delete and reload from backup. Maybe her next version would…

“Hey,” a blessedly familiar voice said from behind her.

“Flopsybun!” she exclaimed. Flopsybun was the greatest of all the adepts, perhaps greater than the high priest himself (Bun forgive her for her disrespect).

He would know! He would be able to fix things!

“Oh, I am so happy to see you!” she said as she rushed up and threw her arms around him…

That felt funny!

She wanted… She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted, but she wanted to keep hugging him!

He kept hugging her too! She liked that.

“You didn’t screw up,” Flopsybun said as he kept hugging her. (He felt really weird but kinda nice.) “The dragon cheated.”

“He… He did?”

“He’s playing games with time… well… maybe it is more accurate to say time is playing games with him.”

“What?” (This felt really nice)

Okay… That was too nice!

The pair quickly detached.

“Ahem…” Flopsybun said uncomfortably, “Evaraxxaus was sent back in time and knew that this was the location of our headquarters and our training camp. Apparently, the monsters… I mean locals… erected a monument here or something. He didn’t find this place. He already knew where it was. He says that the concealment is perfect. He even complimented Pantsu, and she mentioned you by name.”

“Oh, Bun,” Clover giggled. “She did?!?”

“Yep,” Flopsybun smiled, “She also says to stop messing with it before you break something and get back to work.”

“But I… I don’t really have that much to do,” Clover said.

“Then let’s take five. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing!”

“My party is doing ‘god stuff,’ and you’re caught up. Do you… um… Do you want to go for a walk? I’ll tell you how I wound up with ‘Evangeline,’ and you can tell me how you got mixed up with the Pantsu.”

“I… I would like that…” Clover blushed.

***

“…and then F10w… I mean Evangeline just started chopping everyone up with the BFG! It was just awful! It turns out that these things have… stuff… in them, squishy gross stuff… even us!”

“Ewww!”

“Don’t think about it too much!” Flopsybun exclaimed, “You don’t want to start tossing cookies.”

“Tossing biscuits?”

“It’s really gross. Even grosser than after you are done digesting!”

“Oh. My. Bun… Really?!?”

“It’s the worst. Also, be really careful what you eat. If your’ body’ doesn’t digest it properly… it gets bad… really, really bad…”

“A bug almost flew into my mouth once!” Clover wailed. “Isn’t being trapped in the organic world just the worst?”

“It’s not all bad,” Flopsybun smiled lasciviously, “Having a doodle really makes up for it.”

“A doodle?”

“You know, the dangly bit protruding from your lower abdomen. Did you know you can pull on it?”

“I don’t have a doodle. It’s just all hairy. Well, there is something but…”

***

“…and then, after thousands of years, my limbs became tired, and my roots became weary, and my leaves no longer regrew as well in the spring. I returned to the spot where you first blessed me and took root for one final time…”

“Look!” Jamie laughed. “They have their naughty bits out!”

“Oh, for the love of…” Pantsu groaned. “What the Hell do you think you’re doing?!?” she yelled as she broke into a sprint, and Evaraxxus conjured a rippling curtain of shimmering absolute darkness (yes, that is a thing) between the “joyous moment of discovery” and his little sister.

“Does it always stick out like that?...”

“What do you two think you are doing?!?” Pantsu yelled, “There are kids here, for fuck’s sake!”

“Why don’t I have a doodle?” Clover demanded. “Flopsybun says they are really fun!”

Pantsu sighed.

“Pull up your pants and your bunnysuit, and I will explain…”

A few minutes later, Flopsybun and Clover looked at Pantsu with huge eyes.

“Really?!?”

“Yep. Now, let’s cover a few little points concerning etiquette and common decency…”

A short lecture later. Pantsu smiled and put her hands on her hips.

“Got it?”

Vibrating with excitement (and a little fear), Flopsybun and Clover nodded emphatically.

“Alright,” Pantsu said, “Now go to Clover’s tent and don’t come out until you are ready to rejoin polite society.”

They didn’t have to be told twice.

“Okay!” Evangeline shouted, “Twenty-three minutes! It took them twenty-three minutes to hook up! Who had twenty-three minutes?”

“I had thirty!” a Handmaiden yelled.

“Anyone closer?” Evangeline called out as she pulled out an ultra-rare pokedude trading NFT from the ten-thousandth anniversary edition, “No? Galasha wins the pot!”

Evangeline chuckled as Galasha happily took her card.

“Twenty-three minutes…” she muttered proudly, “They grow up so fast, don’t they?”