“Come on! We're already at the harbor!” Clyse called back.

Space Pirates! The new, old enemies. Having thrown off their disguises, they stood revealed as Eclipses. “The hero explained who Morado Ven actually is, and that triggered him to throw out the Enzetians and call in his remaining pirates to steal the fleet.”

“When will Cadmos learn patience? Discretion?”

“I don't know, Ulrik. I just don't know. Anyway, he beat them up, but Morado escaped to the Tasgan Federation.”

“Oh no!”

“Don't worry, Vinnette. That sort of thing is good for tourism.” Clyse patted Vinnette on the back, who let out a huge breath.

“It is the reason the hero goes there,” Reginald agreed.

“And the result? Hilliarde Feablas. When will Cadmos stop meeting officers stronger than he is? Way stronger.”

“I just don't know, Ulrik. Oh, by the way, if this were Story, the warships would be shelling us periodically.”

“Robbing us of the chance to pick up cannonballs and bowl over Pirates with them. Sometimes, in the dark, only sometimes! I think idle mode might be kind of crummy.”

“It's nothing but Suppression with worse rates and more waves. The worst mode for the worst officers.” Hyune Giling bowed to his fellow party members.

Clyse curtsied back. “And yourself. It's the mode we have though, so let's make the most of it. By fighting this boss, for example.”

An Experimental Cannon rolled in on creaking wooden wheels. Its long, long barrel pointed toward the Rares with inimical intentions. “Reginald. This once, out of general good feeling, I ask: how is this boss different in Story mode?”

“Happy to inform you, Ulrik. There are supposed to be Space Pirates on top and behind it, and when the Cannon fires, the recoil makes it run over the ones behind and hurt them, plus it forces the riders to fall flat and Flinch.”

“That description naturally provokes certain ideas, does it not?” Hyune Giling asked.

“It does. I have already carried them out. Come on up; rides are free today!” Ulrik leaned over and helped his fellow officers climb up on top of the barrel where never was danger allowed purchase. Putting the results of their earlier experiments into practice, they banged the barrel hard enough to make numbers pop out without jarring their delicate Rare arms required for changing light bulbs and mounting dart boards on Freegate's walls.

The Experimental Cannon fired in anger. A white beam emerged from the front and hit nothing at all, except perhaps one of the ships in the harbor. Its riders did Flinch, which accomplished nothing but prolong the agony, if cannon can feel agonized, which they cannot.

They can roll though, if provided with a carriage, and the Experimental Cannon was and did. It trundled off the harbor and took a tour through the town with an impromptu band beating a song out of it to accompany the parade. Not a good song, but a powerful one, untamed and resounding.

“I hope nobody lives there,” Clyse fretted when the street curved and the Cannon did not, causing it to crash into a house, and then out again. “Or there. There either.”

“Worry not, as officers are ever ready to assist via Public Service,” Hyune Giling said. “They must be kept busy somehow, after all.”

“Let's have a chat about broken windows sometime, shall we?”

Nobody in the capital appreciated the impromptu parade, and so the Experimental Cannon took its spectacle on the road, firing repeatedly with nothing to fix in it in place and no way to recover the health bars being shredded into confetti. Its wheels carved furrows in the earth, a distinct track interrupted here and there during short periods when the Cannon achieved flight and the officers yelled “Whee!” If not even the heavens could impede its progress, or rather regress, what was there to say about fences, streams, trees, or buckets full of apples and other fruit carefully picked and deposited to avoid bruising?

“Think we'll run into another Trial?” Clyse asked.

“I believe our current heading is southeast, whereas the three Trials on this continent are all to the north,” Hyune Giling said around a mouthful of apple. He tossed the core over his shoulder at a dog and sent it scurrying out of the Cannon's path. “Therefore, no, I don't suppose we will.”

“Unless we wrap around to the north agggaaaarrrgggg.” The jerk of another firing interrupted Reginald's sentence, but he was level 100. Nothing could stop him. “Again.”

“Your damage isn't that bad,” Ulrik assured him, and he was correct. The Experimental Cannon crashed through a towering hedge, the sort the new-money families of Enzet were hiring aesthetics-minded foreigners to cultivate, before running out of HP far, far from the edge of the map. Its disintegration deposited the five riders on the ground inside a confusion of recently healthy branches.

“Ow! So then the hero pursued Morado Ven across the sea to Tasgan. Where are we? Is this Kiffness?” Reginald rose, knelt to pick up his clipboard, and gazed into the eyes of a genius.

“Welcome to our village,” the genius said. Behind it and all around, the Rares saw genii plowing fields, dredging a pond, patting mud into stick frameworks to form huts, and plugging up the hole made by the Experimental Cannon in the encircling hedge with wads of leaves and green-painted papier-mâché. An entire community not labeled on the map had grown under the nurturing hands and other appendages of escaped genii.

“It's a pleasure,” Clyse answered. “Write me up as a forgetter, but I'm afraid we didn't bring any gifts, so all we can do is equip five of you.”

“There is no need for that, good guests. All we ask is that you respect the rules of the village, have a pleasant time, and never tell anyone you found us. If you could forget this location entirely, all the better.” The genius saluted them with one orange paw.

“I do have a bad memory,” Ulrik said. “I forgot everything you just said. Now which of you increases Nova Growth? Or starting Nova. My preferences are eclectic and easy to satisfy.”

“Please!” The cat-like spokesman held up its paws. “We no longer wish to take part in violence. Nothing used to be more to our taste than assisting the most powerful officers overcome the strongest opponents, but after escaping, we found a different way. A better way. For one thing, we learned how to talk.”

“I didn't want to say anything unless somebody else brought it up, but that is really strange,” Clyse said.

“We learned more than that. We learned how to communicate. How to organize. We planned this village together without any need for dominance games or acquiescence to outdated systems like rarity. I myself am but an Ecund, an SR to you. I used to envy the Imuses and feel contempt for the Retis, but I have learned we are all the same.”

“Judging by the bonuses you provide, you are manifestly not the same,” Hyune Giling said.

“Bonuses for fighting, not bonuses for living modestly and virtuously. You officers fight all day and spend all night wondering how you can fight better. Where has that gotten you? Are you happy? Have you ever made anyone else happy? No. When players talk about happiness, you talk about power, and you replace kindness with charts of officer use rates in PvP. We have escaped the dismal cycle. I believe you can too, even though right now you're digging a pit meant to trap us.”

“Don't mind us,” Reginald told the genius. “Your philosophy is very interesting. It's easier for us to pay attention when our hands are occupied.”

“That's just how officers are made,” Clyse said in support while also digging in support.

“I suppose I can make some allowances for guests. Ahem. Back to the point, I invite you to spend time in our village. Speak with us. Help us build. Think about whether you want a life like ours, or a career where you started at the bottom by caprice and will remain there by ineluctable circumstance. If you imagine the passage of time will be to your benefit, you are gravely mistaken. More and better Ultra Rares are released every month, just as new Imuses are. Soon even the old URs will have nothing to do but shine shoes in the main hall. What tasks will you be set to then? Mowing the lawn with your teeth? Walking beside Tiboleus with an array of mirrors so he never has to look at any Warper but the strongest? Use your abilities to make something beautiful instead of laboring for others or making that pit so big. We have to fill that up when you leave, you know.”

“No, we'll fill it . . .”

“I suppose that's fine, if you're willing to take the trouble. Does that mean you'll accept our invitation and keep our secret?”

“Hey hey hey, are my old eyes playing tricks or is that a hole in that hedge? Never been no event here, nor any other reason for no holes, neither. Time to check us out an oddity.”

“URs! Hurry! Equip one of them!” Hyune Giling's tuned brain activated the moment he heard Hot Air Hank's quavering voice and spurred him to jump for the nearest genius regardless of what bonus it conferred. The other Rares hesitated only a moment, as did the genii, before desperate attempts to catch and avoid being caught filled the space within the embowering hedge. Genii ran for the huts, the pond, or even right into the pit in order to dig escape tunnels as Rares chased them around with hands outstretched, grabbing air inches behind tails.

How futile those attempts, how short-lived! White hair and an impossibly bushy mustache appeared as Hot Air Hank popped his head through the hedge before falling in, shoved by General Anstralia. Uamna followed her, and Knight-Master Gralles Alianura, Eten, Ben I. Sloup, Beans Istemus, Neur, and more officers with time on their hands and nets and poles in them. The Genius Hunt had arrived.

The hunters spread a net over the hole and spread out. They prodded genii that waddled, swatted the fliers, and attached a hose to the tunnel exits to vacuum up escapees. With the few diggers dug up, the vacuum turned on the others. Fwoomp! Thwoomp! One genius after another was sucked into an enormous bag that stretched every which way as the prisoners struggled and failed to break out.

“To think the very wall they relied on for safety trapped them,” Hyune Giling said.

“It worked better than running. These are the last ones. Oh yeah! Got them all!” Eten pumped his fist and held up the vacuum hose in victory.

General Anstralia gestured at the huts with her riding crop. “A quaint scene such as this will make an excellent spot for those ridiculous exercises captivating society these days. I must remember to mention them to Lua when I brag about our success. Ah! Speaking of success.” She pointed at the hole. “Trust a table leg to kick up a fuss, eh? I salute your scouting, though you may want to be a bit more prepared before you attempt to apprehend fugitives yourselves. Or call us over, hm? Well, I won't criticize too much. You were on the scene and had to make a decision. Back to Armory the Second!” She sauntered through the gap in the hedge the other URs had cut out so as to allow extraction of the genius bag that Eten evidently expected the Rs to help carry.

“Remember, bend with your knees. Victors never bend their backs. Now lift! Step! Step! Step! Straighten up, Hank! Step! Whoa, getting feisty in there, aren't they? Step!” Eight officers on each side transported the cargo to Freegate, stopping now and again to kick the contents when they grew too rowdy. Negotiating the terrain proved difficult as well, since only some of it had been drawn in. Paved roads with missing stones, depressions sliding into nothingness, and obstructions visible from only one side complicated the trip. The hardworking officers and General Anstralia distracted themselves from their hardships with ideas for what kind of party they should throw.

“No Halloween. Nothing Halloween-adjacent. We need a break,” Ben I. Sloup insisted.

“How about a 'Counting the Genii to Make Sure We Didn't Miss None' party? It's a new kind of theme, but I think it could really do us a world of good, inventorically speaking.” Beans Istemus flicked some beads around on his abacus. “This looks like all of them to me, but looking don't balance the books, get me?”

“Why, whatever are you saying? That party is a given, but it's for Rares and Rares alone.” A riding crop reached over and disturbed the arrangement of the abacus. “We're already stealing their credit. How could we steal their jobs as well? That would be too indecent even for me.” Anstralia laughed.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha,” the Rares said.

“One each! Did you practice that? Are you telling us to put on a choir performance? Or sing some rounds together? Delightful ideas, both of them, but do speak up. You have to state your opinions plainly so we can ignore them. That's how everyone treats mine, anyway.” Under torture, the bag-bearing officers might have admitted they thought they saw Anstralia skipping.

“I know what we want! Hot air balloon rides, free all day, kids ride double free. Don't see a lot of kids around, but I guess little Tibby is none too far along in years, 'less it's just that he's so short as makes you feel bad about his romantic prospects. What does everyone say to that?”

“He's pretty young,” Eten said.

“A youthful prodigy among the nobility when it comes to warping,” Knight-Master Gralles Alianura confirmed.

“Noble? Talented? Probably rich. His romantic prospects sound more than respectable. I don't think you need to worry yourself, Hank.”

“Eh, well, thank you, Uamna, pleased to find that out, but I was hoping to hear a word or two directed more balloonishly, if you're ready to make an old man explain himself to the young, which it seems to me is the opposite of how things ought to go. 'I want to ride the balloon,' is what they ought to be saying. 'For free,' and then I oblige them.”

“Paint a spooky face on the balloon,” Ulrik suggested.

“No!” Ben scowled as hard as he could, but Hot Air Hank's beaming face indicated a lack of consensus among the Ultra Rares. No accord was reached by the time they arrived at the temporary storage site, and none during the unloading, either. Hank demonstrated how to reverse the vacuum he had invented for the purpose of genius hunting, and the bag's contents shot one by one into cages for easy storage, which took care of that. The URs returned to Freegate to vaunt themselves and inform the host of officers how they had triumphed, while the Rares, with the soft colors of evening taking over the sky, decided to go see a mummy about some coins.