A glass jar, yards wide, filled with tons of strawberry jam, is dropped from a helicopter. That scene would have been recreated there and then had falling damage existed, but as it was, a better comparison might be balls of yarn striking the ground with little thumps, perhaps bouncing a bit and rolling a short way. The crusaders and officers stopped, rose, and checked to see if they still possessed all their parts. In some cases they did not, but their wire frames and flat pink rectangles changed into proper textures before anyone needed to call in sick.

“Oof,” the officers said. “Urf,” the crusaders agreed.

“This is no battlefield I like. It is barren with no wealth to win, and no terrain for clever tactics,” said Oberon, king of the fairies though not nearly so short as such a title might imply, and the officers saw something in that.

“I agree with you, and it's great we're getting along like this. I think the bigger problem though is where are we and how do we leave?” Quircy Rau was shaking out a leg while rotating one arm to test its full range of motion as she spoke. “OK! On my authority as me, Quircy Rau, I declare a truce. Everybody else with sense as much sense as me can sit down together and talk this over. I don't care about the rest of you.”

“Holy Legend Army!” Solemn Declaration shouted while stamping his mighty hooves. “The implications may not be clear. Therefore I will explain. She's inviting you to a conference. All of you, because nobody has less sense than she does.”

“Hey!”

“Solemn isn't the same as rude,” Zimley Boe said.

“Cross-cultural communication is difficult. We may be well served by saying things we otherwise would not. You see? They approach.”

The Lithness prince's pragmatic political techniques paid off, for the crusaders did indeed gather together and sit or crouch in a semicircle while Commandment of Hero's officers formed the other hemisphere.

“Oh, it's just awful,” Darlotte Glofal said. “You in the front, sit down. The second ring must kneel. You must! Yes, Inorrea Villeria, starting with you. It is not the beach here, and you are far from being the star. Those in the third ring will stand, and Gradis P. Dorenz and Eten must move to that section. There, isn't that better?” Whether it was or not, the officers who looked at her then knew she did not ask for responses but rather dared. They adopted silence as the better course.

When all the characters from the two games had settled themselves, a hundred or more, Quircy seized the honor of kicking off the first trans-ludic face-to-face discussion ever conducted. “Great! I deserve to be made empress for this historic moment, or at least prime minister. I'll let you figure that out later. First, does anyone know anything about this place? Anybody? Here's your chance to have Lasva write a puff piece about you.”

“This reporter doesn't dance when some noveau riche Enzetian beats her washboard and calls it music.”

“I've seen that reporter dance, and I don't want to see it again without a signed apology and a promise to improve. Don't let the mean lady scare you, everybody who matters. Yes, you with the laurel wreath and the mustache.”

Knight-Master Gralles Alianura stood when recognized. “Though not my proudest moment, I believe I have been here before. This is the options menu.” The hubbub his words occasioned all about the circle did not dissuade him from speaking, not that there was any reason for it to do so. “I participated in the calendar trick once at the behest of the Perandras, and I recognize the blue floor and those threatening clouds. The idea may disturb some of you, but worry not. To return we need but jump on the Back button. Finding that is the only challenge.”

The officers hooted and told Lasva to do something productive for once like scouting the options, but the crusaders shifted and looked at one another. One among them, a silhouette of an angel shimmering silver and purple, rose and spoke. “Hail. I am Metatron. Your conversation has proved difficult to follow. Please explain the following: Perandras, calendar trick, Back button.”

A Rare began to explain the founding of Perandra Imperia by aliens, its decline, and the current state of eastern Sadalsia in the rich, fully realized world offered to delighted players by Commandment of Hero's world-class writers, but Dr. Stezlinstein cut in and said they could get into the options by clinging to the back of the login calendar.

“Your explanation satisfies us. Please accept our gratitude.”

“Done!”

“Would you have us believe he meant you, Quircy Rau?”

“Should I stand around and wait for private conversations between each of our dozens of officers and their dozens of crusaders to finish? Or do I want to accomplish something? It's the second one, Gintus Pelluina. Who else is in a getting things done kind of mood? Raise your hands!” Enough did to give her the majority she expected, though support for the sit-around-and-have-a-chat position exceeded her expectations. “Zims, make a list of dissenters.”

“Nah.”

“You're right. That's boring. Anyway. Let's find the options, hit Back, fight it out at home, and send Holy Legend Army back through the tube to fetch our tribute. Or, since I'm being diplomatic today, maybe you'll end up taking a few Material Facsimiles and solar system diagrams back with you. Beat us bad enough and we'll let you borrow our Rares. What do you think, Holy Legend Army?”

“We have Rares, Commons, and Ultra Commons of our own,” Ragnar objected. “The rest is enough to my liking.”

“I agree. The rest of you. Up is yes. Down is no,” Metatron instructed. The crusaders held their weapons in either of the two positions to vote, and an agreement was forged. “Very well. I will discover the tube's direction anon.” His wings spread, as did the fuller, more material wings of angels all over the HLA half of the circle, and those wings bore them upward. The feet of angels touched the ground a short time later.

“I cannot find the tube. Higher ascension is not possible,” Metatron said, and other angels agreed. Which others? Difficult to say, till their textures popped back in. The fairies went up next and came down with confirmation, blank equipment slots, and names written in Hangul. The CoH officers next grabbed a Rare and tossed him as high as they could, but Ipons Ulsrada brought back nothing but a realization he suffered from a fear of heights.

“It's fine if we can't get a good view. That means we can march any which way we want and nobody can say we made a mistake,” Heartful Azalea said.

“Blood has ever called to me for its spilling, and the shattering of bone,” Ivar, one of Holy Legend Army's least holy soldiers barring the demons, maybe, declared while he pointed with his terrible ax. “Today it calls from there!”

“No doubts have I on your sense of slaughter, but what you describe might be another game entire. Albeit not a music game,” Puck said.

“Home must be the opposite direction from where I'm looking,” Cloton Zvolo said. “Because I wanna run away, wanna wanna run away.” That reasoning convinced Serdon Miloz, Yutak Zvolo, Wedding Singer Vritia, and the Wizard crusader Vainamoinen, but few others.

Amid all that talk as likely to approach the truth as guesses about the next set of summer alts Otsk V. Zops walked, or rather strode as was the privilege of such a hunter as he, tall and broad, clad in furs provided by unwilling beasts whose resourcefulness proved less than his, over to the fairies and asked a question. He received the answer he wanted, gathered the Rares with stern looks, and punched each of them a few times.

His Skill Star blazed with power demanding to be released. “My will is joined to my weapon! End of the Hunt!” He reared back and hurled, or launched, haunched to cover all the possibilities, his javelin straight in the air.

“Zounds!” exclaimed Turpin, one of the HLA clerics. “What was that?”

“About a three out of five, I'd say.”

Luerre Voine smacked the Rare who said that with his cane and gave a proper explanation. “A Nova. Our five skills form a star, the star fills, and we can do something special. Can I say special when we do it twice in a routine battle? Three times for Reapers? Putting that aside, we calculated we could beat you up because you don't have Skill Stars and Novas.”

“Understandable, and yet I predicted, nor am I alone in this, that the inexplicable failure, though no doubt it could be explained knew we more of your designers' intent, of your game to include stats for Accuracy and Evasion must be your undoing in any struggle between us, given approximately equal numbers,” Ruthven argued, punctuating his captivating oratory with much pointing of manicured fingers and swirling of his cape, gray because the black one had been reserved for Dracula and the red for Carmilla. Each class in Holy Legend Army, from Angel to Vampire, had its own hierarchy, it seemed.

As those two debated their reasoning, the greater public watched Otsk's javelin, thicker than some arms though not his, fly and pierce the sheet of cloud above. No farther than that could their eyes follow it, but soon lights twinkled along the course it had taken as if the stars themselves had descended to check out that sick throw.

“Zounds! What's causing that?”

“Um, well, this is just a guess, and I'd never say anything normally, being a Rare who knows her place unlike some I could mention, but since we really ought to keep our new friends informed, I'd say Otsk, that's Otsk V. Zops, the mightiest hunter in all Brenlond by a hair, tied strands of Spider Silk to his weapon, or some material like that, and stuck fairy lights on that so they'd hang down from the javelin? Then we'd know where the tube was, by extension. But that would mean we'd need more of them to give us a real heading.”

“Right,” Otsk said.

The green archer whose theory he confirmed waited for her applause, but the hands of every officer rooted around in pockets for Spider Silk while fairies cast their glamors on grains of sand and Rares asked for volunteers to help fill Otsk's Nova by getting punched instead of them. Two of those campaigns succeeded, and the skilled and mighty arm of Otsk V. Zops pumped javelin after javelin into the sky while the swift and scared feet of everyone else ran out of the way when the sky sent them back. “No thanks,” the sky might have said. “I have plenty.”

Those missiles may not have punctured any character bodies, but they exploded boasts when they revealed the target locations suggested by officers and crusaders confident in their senses of direction to be empty, tubeless air.

“The dreadful feast still beckons me thither,” Ivar insisted.

“Then go,” Puck told him, “and eat, and never hope to go home, and will anyone be sad?”

“These crusaders aren't shy about letting each other know how they feel,” Quircy Rau observed. “Maybe Cadmos was right when he said something about 'cultural exchanges' I ignored.”

“We all ignored that, Quircy. Tell me though, did you have anyone in mind who doesn't know you hate her?” Luau Lua asked.

“Hm? Oh, no one in particular.” Quircy looked up. “Has another javelin landed yet? In the tube, that is. They're landing all over the place.” She walked off, leaving a concerned Lua behind.

“Is it me? No, it couldn't be. We get along fine.”

“Watch out, Lua,” Eten called.

“Yeek!”

After eight attempts a second javelin stuck, a third after four more, and subsequently Otsk confirmed their heading with no more than two misses each attempt. Uninterrupted hits became common. At that point the travelers lost interest in the spectacle, much as the way teeball games where every kid is a winner fail to attract stadium-filling crowds and television deals.

They entertained themselves on the march with more cross-cultural communication. Holy and Evil explained themselves by their names alone, but what kind of element was Land?

“Sprites, local superstitions, the old gods,” Metatron explained.

Corporeal and Incorporeal? “Manifestations of powers both inexplicable and undeniable attach themselves to some, nor is permission asked, but instead the chosen are left to do as they think best with their gift. Those manifestations, though unique, are alike in this, that they are of a nature either tangible or intangible, and so they are categorized,” Ecke told them.

On the Commandment of Hero side, nobody needed a lecture about Storm, Inferno, Quake, and Inferno, but what was the deal with Eclipse? The power and technology of a star-spanning civilization capable of evading the sun god Haybren's vigilance only during eclipses, of course. “The result is a 20% bonus to damage and Nova gain against all non-Eclipses. Technology has its limits, but skill has none,” Eclipse Strategist Mentor Tendradius said, and his words transcended the cultural limits of his own game to touch the very souls of HLA's Knights, Ninjas, Samurai, Warriors, and Dwarves.

The Reaper community erupted in excitement, a common phenomenon, when one of those warriors was addressed as Reaper. Serdon Miloz, Trainer Eumorsedio, Hot Air Hank, and all the gang converged to swear in a new member, impart the Reaper mottoes and creeds, and test if a new recipient of the dumbest Reaper award had been found.

“'My pardon' is something a Warrior never likes to say, yet I must, for my name is Reaver, an Ultra Common of the Warrior class.”

“Kind of silly for us to think there could be a real Reaper over there,” Trainer Eumorsedio admitted. “Since you can't Nova. How can you have a bonus to your Nova fill rate? A silly sort of bonus, though you can't put it past these designers.” The Reapers apologized for the fuss while Burmin Trivvis rubbed his badge depicting a little guy with a scythe next to the words “#1 Dumbest!” and sighed.

Philosophical discussions about whether players really enjoyed missing and how they could press five little buttons for five different officers in a real-time battle without flubbing it sometimes (“Was it claimed they never flub it?”) opened minds and broadened horizons, not that the horizons around them needed broadening. People who surveyed the light blue floor that ran forever in all directions wished the horizons might be narrowed a bit, if anything.

Commandment of Hero's officers fascinated their new friends with their daring in watching recruitments and sneaking out menu items without being caught by players, while Holy Legend Army's crusaders had inculcated a level of obedience in their lower rarities the URs had to admire. “Do you transport our selves bodily forthwith, on your honor,” they said, and the Cs and UCs rushed to carry the SSRs as if that had been their own idea.

The merry travelers reached the options menu almost before they knew it, except for the Rs, C, and UCs, who studied every inch of indistinguishable ground from the point they started hauling lazy bigwigs around. Buttons longer than a collapsed Eten and taller than a fairy who had taken up long walks in the evening to witness the advent of spring allowed anyone who found them to change text speed and which items looted in Vigilant Patrol would be auto-sold, but the host cared only for the one labeled Back.

“Thataway to home,” an officer said as they arrived, saving them the trouble. Baggy pants and a black coat over a white jacket over a brown shirt! An eyepatch over his left eye! A saber in one hand and a roll of bandages in the other! Some Rare or other was hanging around down there.

“Keeping busy, Stan?”

“Keeping as far from busy as can be arranged, Clyse.”

That conversation assured the horde that, hard as it was to credit, it had run into a helpful Rare and not a phantom that wandered the empty lands beneath the eerie cloud roof for the purpose of tormenting fallen characters. Freed from fear, they jumped on the big Back button.