The opening ceremony attendees stampeded, and a contingent of unfortunates just returning from their Public Service expeditions joined in as well after they extracted themselves from the holes into which they had been trampled. Jonathan led them, in the sense of going in first, to the dining hall where Cadmos was setting up the big monitor as part of his boring main character responsibilities. They all knew where it was.

“There's something going on at the publisher event,” Cadmos explained.

“Shut up, Cadmos,” everyone else explained. “Why were you paying attention to the publisher event?”

“How did you all manage to say that at the same time?” Cadmos finished and stepped back. “Someone turned the TV in the Eclipse museum on while I was relating what's happened in Part 3 so far. But seriously, were there rehearsals?”

“Shut up,” they reiterated, and he did, for the monitor activated and revealed something long dreaded by people who hated fun. “A collab!”

Cadmos required no elaboration as to how they managed to say that simultaneously. He had been one of them, inspired or rather compelled by the promotional graphic they managed to catch before the stream ended. Holy Legend Army X Commandment of Hero! A mutual collaboration between their publisher's two most successful games, and the first for Commandment of Hero. With the same awe, the same feeling of unexpected elevation to an exclusive society felt by the player who snags an off-rateup character far superior to the featured one, did the officers view that graphic. Would their future selves even remember they were the same as those novices from long ago who had never even taken part in a R*:Z**** collab, let alone S***** F******? Though their game had been in service for over two years, only then did the officers consider themselves to have made it.

Everyone felt the same in the silence, but speech exposed differences. “Do you think they'll make the HLA guys totally OP since they don't have any presence in the story to help them sell? Like how Cadmos is in every chapter, he's the main character, and he's just terrible for a UR. Not that they have to sell him because he's free, but you get the idea, right? I've never been in the main story, so if I get an alt, it'd have to be crazy OP to do well.” That two-star's energy as he bounced around while babbling suggested the labor to build the lounge had not worn the inferior rarities down enough, and some higher rarities began considering what other projects they might suggest.

Beans Istemus, however, only ran the numbers. “This is Holy Legend Army we're talking about, kid. It's twice as old as us and has fans, fan polls, the whole shebang. You don't gotta put a bow on a suitcase full of diamonds to get a price worth writing down.”

“Would it come closer to the case to hold that it has fans, or that it had them? Our sales and theirs intersected long ago, assuming we, having checked the charts, agree with their analyses,” Count Poitnem said.

“You can only introduce a character once per game. Some of those earlier HLA crusaders are getting fanart to this day.” Skaya donned her glasses, much as Eten might have flexed to demonstrate how serious he was. “Of course, if they just port over Sigmund and Ragnel instead of someone popular . . .”

“Oh yeah, like how they're probably going to get Cadmos instead of Beryllia, Quircy Rau, someone like that. Sorry, Holy Legend Army players! Hilliarde Feablas stays right here.” Flawless Pedigree shook his head, swished his tail, and tried to wrestle his own grin into a frown.

“Unlike Beryllia or Quircy Rau, I fear my popularity derives from my mechanical effectiveness, which may not carry over to another game,” Hilliarde Feablas said.

“Yeah, I was wondering, how will conversion work? They only have three skills over there.”

“Three?” Ben I. Sloup held up four fingers in disbelief. “You mean three plus a Nova, or an ult, whatever they call it.”

“No, just three,” the behalberded Rare insisted.

Those words reversed the feelings of listeners much as if they had shifted colors to absorb a different set of bullets. The officers unlikely to participate in the collab were spared the undignified role of pretending not to be disappointed, while those in the circle of possibles had reason to regret their popularity for the first time.

Which group included Formal Figro, and therefore which direction confirmation would send him, each officer had to decide individually, not that any but him cared. “Is that correct? Pardon me if I seem to doubt you, but you are a Rare, and therefore prone to retreating into fantasy as a way of liberating your mind from your body's drudgery, which I may say you perform very well.”

Burmin Trivvis reached inside his armor and produced a phone. “Sure. Check out my account. I'm only Rank 144, but it's not like you get more skills when you level up.”

“Are you handing a spy your account? Pretty bold. I guess you don't care if you only started playing because you expected this day to come, like me and Zims did.” Quircy Rau's right hand came out of a pocket of her unzipped jacket and brought a tablet with it. “Three skills, but it's no big deal when you look at what they do. Your S3 is pretty much your Nova, and S1 and S2 have passives packed in, if you're worth fielding. I'd say the difference between them and our Skill Stars ends up being about one skill on average. Hey, Halberd. Do you still have open friend slots? I got another when I hit 265. We have to stick together, or we'll all get stuck. Am I right? And what are you Strategists whispering about?”

She cast a concerned eye at the corner conference where conspirators kept their council closed to all outside their class. The finest buffers and debuffers in the roster, whose class name implied they knew something about planning, huddled there. Zimley Boe listened to Gintus Pelluina and ignored Ipons Ulsrada. Another Rare, Saptres Muria, was there too, along with more worthwhile officers such as General Anstralia, Spenito Niu, Castru, Orrevan C. Hinks, and the least strategic but hardest-hitting Strategist of all, Mentor Tendradius Pux. Quircy Rau, a Warper, had not been invited, and neither had any Champions, Reapers, Harassers, or Medics.

“We got an idea we're working on, Quirce. It's not ready for the stage yet, but we'll let you know if it passes auditions. Gimme that Rare's friend code later, all right?” Zimley Boe kept her hands in her zipped jacket's pockets, though slight movements of the leather indicated she was fingering her phone, a signal that she meant what she said. She blew a bubble of the gum variety and returned to the side conference.

The other classes engaged in a less surreptitious activity: speculation about who was to come, who was to go, and who might be overpowered enough to topple Hilliarde Feablas or Tiboleus the Experimenter from their high seats. Fertile topics, but even those might have been harvested and gleaned in short order had not more officers arrived in waves as they heard the rumors, intent on spreading their own fertilizer.

As the garden of idle delights grew, it attracted every officer not otherwise occupied with inescapable obligations such as PvP and farming the New Eclipse Dragon in an endless loop, or most capricious of all, Public Service dispatches. That last responsibility yanked away officers here and there, but one officer left for a reason never heard before.

“Oh, I'm getting paged.” Cadmos checked his pager. “A pre-collab briefing, huh? Gotta go I guess. Try to have fun without me.”

“No one cares! Wait. I was wrong. Why do you have a pager, who paged you, and where are you going?”

“For things like this, I don't know, and I'm not really sure. I walk outside Freegate and end up somewhere. Sorry I can't tell you more, Ulrik.” For once some intrigue attached itself to Cadmos, and the host of officers watched him leave not with the usual contempt owed a bland main character with a sharp sword, spiky red hair, and bits of armor chosen for aesthetics rather than effectiveness, but instead with awe. All held their words till he exited the dining hall, at which point the Strategists removed themselves from their corner to reveal their latest project.