Bittercup was sick of hiding. But, she was not quite sick of being alive. So, she kept hiding.

It didn’t help matters that more and more Players were beginning to poke their heads into Shinki Itten as word of a new city and Side slowly spread. She knew the chances that she’d be recognized as a Repast Girl were slim; the differences between herself and that of an average elf were fairly minor even without the obfuscating shield of her heavy cloak. And besides, what percentage of Players had even ever taken part in a Repast? A thousandth of a percent? A thousandth of that?

So there were only a few hundred otherworldly demigods out in the world whose idea of a good time revolved around her and the things they could do to her. How comforting.

Even still, she might have been willing to risk it. Sneaking out for the occasional chat with Wren didn’t come close to dealing with her suffocating boredom, and Shinki Itten just seemed so pleasant. She didn’t want much. She wanted to sit in a park and people watch without obsessing over whether or not anyone in the crowd had designs on her. She wanted to float in the city’s crystal blue ocean waters and feel the sun on her skin, unencumbered by the bulky robes that too-often felt like her only defense. She wanted to eat an entire fucking giant shrimp and, for once in her life, not wonder if this was finally the meal where a stranger was going to pay the amount her life was apparently worth and take her away.

She wanted to just throw caution to the wind and take the plunge into her new life. She was the only one of her sisters left, so the least she could do was live the life they never got to. And she might have, if not for that puke Galwenlas.

Ugh, Galwenlas. Her ‘oppa’, as the prick kept insisting she call him. She could smell that creep every time she cracked open her door. Literally. The Grand Elf practically bathed in some awful cologne, and more than once Bittercup had poked her head out her door only to be greeted by the too-familiar stench of musk, verbena and man sweat. Sometimes actually on the door. Once there had even been something…glistening right next to the door frame, and ever since then Bittercup had changed rooms every night.

But he still managed to find her most nights. And so Bittercup spent nearly all of her days huddled in her current hideout, hating that she was trusting her life to the security provided by a flimsy sliding panel, the restraints of common decency, and the big promises of a self-avowed liar.

Speaking of which. Shin had promised to bring her a new selection of books the last time she’d worked up the courage to slip out into the open, and the kobold had yet to deliver. She’d already read through her current options a half dozen times, and she was dangerously close to ripping out their pages to fold into paper gliders or something. Did she dare venture out to give him a piece of her mind?

The last she had heard, the Grand Elf had vanished to wherever it was Players came from, and if the past held true he wouldn’t be back until nightfall at the earliest. And at this time of day, Shin would certainly still be sweeping the pathway to the shrine. That was a remote location, and a straight shot from her current lodgings. She could be out and back in fifteen minutes. What was the worst that could happen?

That would be getting a drugged bag thrown over her head and dragged back to Quercus, or simply into the woods to be some Player’s disposable delight. That would be the worst that could happen.

…Fuck she was bored.

Trees be damned, whatever. She fumbled on her robe, pulling the hood tight before leaning against her door and taking a nervous sniff.

No Galwenlas-Stink. Okay then. She could do this. Shit.

And so she slipped quietly out of her room, clutching her cloak tightly around herself as she picked her way down the tower staircase. Just reach the ground floor, just move quickly out into the street, try to blend in with the crowd of kobolds and hobgoblins as well as possible. Bittercup forced herself to keep to a brisk yet measured pace, knowing full well that an elven lady in a floor-length hooded cloak sprinting through the streets would have attracted far more attention than she would have cared for.

No one was looking at her; she could see that no one was looking at her. But all the same she couldn’t help but feel the pressure of countless imagined gazes burning into her, stripping her of all defenses and dignity and leaving behind nothing but a helpless girl. Bittercup gritted her teeth; it was too late to turn back now. She just pulled her hood down even tighter and pushed forward, turning away from the bustle of the main thoroughfare to start down the much simpler path leading to Shinki Itten’s shrine.

Bittercup forced herself to let out her held breath as she started down the trail, taking a moment to deeply inhale the blossom-scented air of the tree-lined pathway. This was fine. She was fine. Removing herself from the crowds had also removed the itching sensation of phantom eyes roaming across her body, and the light bouquet of plom trees couldn’t be further from the hamfisted miasma of Galwenlas. She’d find Shin, give him a mild berating, and then retreat to a new room to begin her sequester anew. Her spirits were lifting almost in spite of herself; maybe she could swing by one of the dockside taverns and try to haggle up a fried Dire Shrimp to smuggle back with her. Would the sight of a robed elf lugging around a battered crustacean the size of a small child draw too much attention? Probably. But Bittercup was as surprised as anyone to realize that she didn’t–

The elf let that thought trail off as she slowed to a halt, taking another tentative sniff at the air. It was faint, but there it was: Musk. Verbena. Sweat.

Quietly as she could, Bittercup stepped off of the path and into the cover of the trees, dropping to her hands and knees to silently crawl through the foliage. She’d been half right; Shin was still sweeping the leaves from the path. But in a possibly fatal miscalculation, she’d seemingly misjudged Galwenlas’s schedule. Because there the Grand Elf was, in the flesh, his face bright red and his neck straining with tension as he snarled at the kobold.

For his part Shin was stone-face, barely reacting even when the Player grabbed him tightly by the forearm. Bittercup knew that she should be taking this opportunity to scurry away, but…what the shit was going on? Her arduous days working the Repasts had honed her insights into the nature of men, and based on everything she had seen Galwenlas was not the sort to easily lose control of himself. What had Shin said? What had Shin done?

Bittercup had to know. She was simply too bored to be able to stand not knowing. And so she crept closer, straining her ears to catch as much of the argument as she could, all the while praying that wherever her sisters had wound up, they understood. Bittercup was sick of hiding, and she absolutely had to know.

————————————————————————————

“...Think you could get away with this, you worthless little shit?! You had no right! You don’t even have any rights!”

Shin’s face was a mask of calm even as Galwenlas’s raging began pitching up into a shriek, the Grand Elf’s grand spittle splattering across the kobold’s brow. “I’m not sure what you think I’m–”

“You’re denying it?! Still?!” Galwenlas gave Shin’s arm a shake, doing his best to wrench the Schemer around. “Oh you little shit. Just you wait; just you–”

The Player’s rant cut off with a gasp as an explosion of light burst into being beside them, a miniature star born and reformed within a matter of seconds. A vaguely humanoid shape emerged from the supernatural flare, a pulsating outline of a man filled with the swirling stuff of creation Itself that somehow managed to project an air of supreme grumpiness. “Alright, alright; I’m here. Ticket Number Seven Four Nine Dash Upsilon Iota Psi?”

Gawlenlas quickly nodded. “Yes that’s me. I’ve got a complaint.”

The otherworldly figure sighed. “Yes. Obviously. What was it again?”

“This NPC,” –The Player gave Shin’s arm another shake–”Misused my personal payment information, and now my identity’s been stolen! I demand that–”

“Yeah okay, I could deal with a little less ‘demanding’.” The being turned away from Galwenlas for a moment, presenting what served as a vague approximation of a face towards Shin. “Alright you. You stole his credit card?”

Shin desperately hoped that the small swallow he took to fight back his painfully dry throat was missed. It wasn’t that he was afraid of this specific situation; he’d assumed this would happen and already made his peace with all the possible outcomes. What he had not considered was that this being, this voice, was the Sky Voice, the entity from his dreams who was of the ultimate arbiters of his entire existence.

He supposed that in the end, it didn’t matter. “I didn’t do that. He never gave me his credit card.”

Galwenlas scoffed so intensely that another spray of spittle launched itself from his lips. “Of course I did! I wrote it down for him myself!”

“No he didn’t.”

Galwenlas managed to force out a wordless squeal of outrage at Shin’s denials before Sky Voice waved him off. “Do I need to find out for myself what happened?”

Hm. The question was, was the Sky Voice able to do that? Because if so, it was certainly a story worth hearing.

————————————————————————————

Winfred kept her chin up and her back as straight as she could manage, which was very straight indeed. She wasn’t sure precisely why this order had come down from the Captain to her and her Banken comrades, but Winfred didn’t need to know. All she needed to know was that they were her orders, and she had carried them out flawlessly.

Shinki Itten was Winfred’s home, and it was a peaceful place. The hobgoblin knew that, and that was a large part of why she took such pride in her duty protecting her friends, neighbors and family against whatever may desire to disrupt their hard-earned peace. So when Hilde had informed them all that Lord Shin wanted any Players known to have sticky fingers rounded up and brought to him for questioning, Winfred knew precisely who to find.

The Banken looked down imperiously at the sheepish human shuffling by her side. Her first encounter with this Player, this Da Real Neil, had been a disturbance call in the middle of the night. This man, possessing supernatural potential and having the entire world laid at his feet, had chosen to spend his world of infinite opportunities breaking into homes and breaking pots. The startled yet accommodating homeowners hadn’t wanted to see the Player hurt or punished, but did hope he could stop smashing their things. So Winfred had given him a stern talking to, sent him on his way, and assumed that was that.

Wrong.

It wasn’t long before Winfred realized that Neil fit all the markings of a Player profile the Banken were becoming increasingly familiar with: He was a Pack Rat. For whatever reason, a certain subset of Players was absolutely convinced that secrets and treasures lay hidden behind every bookcase and inside every chest of drawers that existed in Magica. And Neil was among the worst of them.

Within the last three days alone, Winfred had pulled him out of two homes, three ship galleys, a rice paddy and from a hole he was trying to dig under the shrine to Tasan Okaa. Lord Shin wanted to speak with Players who saw treasure beneath every rock and leaf, and knew in their hearts that it must belong to them? Winfred had his man, then.

She idly wondered if she’d get a commendation for this. This wasn’t how she’d imagined she would receive her first commendation, of course, but she supposed she didn’t have to tell anyone how she’d gotten it.

The door slid open, and the scribe Mimasu motioned them forward. Winfred could continue crafting her commendation cover story later; the moment had come.

Winfred marched Neil into the chambers of the man who ruled Shinki Itten in all but name, managing to straighten up a little bit further as her eyes fell on the kobold’s deceptively unassuming form. This was the man who had engineered the Grand Alliance. The man who had talked an entire elven army into submission. The man who, if one believed everything they heard, had talked the System Itself into uplifting the kobold race.

And also, Captain Hilde had been right: he was super cute. Gah, no time for distractions!

Winfred stomped her boot heels together and dipped into a picture perfect bow, her voice clipped and professional. “Lord Shin! I am Winfred, and this is Player Da Real Neil, known to have committed fifteen acts of unlawful entry and destruction of property since arriving in Shinki Itten!”

The kobold let out a low whistle, setting aside the scroll he’d been perusing. “Fifteen? In how many days?”

“Four days!”

With a chuckle, Lord Shin rose from his cushion. “Well Neil, no one could ever claim you aren’t efficient. I’ll give you that.” The kobold stepped over towards the chastened Player, tilting his head in interest. “Why did you do it?”

Neil, not the most eloquent man Winfred had ever encountered by a long shot, did his best to encapsulate his complex passions and motivations. “I dunno.”

Lord Shin nodded sagely, looking for all the world as if Neil had just offered up a pearl of flawless wisdom. “I see. And are you going to do it again?”

At length, the Player managed a shrug. “...I dunno.”

“I see. Well then!” Lord Shin clapped his hands together, lifting his eyes towards Winfred. “I think we should give him a moment for self reflection, don’t you?” The kobold continued on before the Banken could reply, moving around to shift the papers on his writing table. “Yes, I do believe a bit of unguarded meditation will give our guest Da Real Neil all the personal insight he needs.” Winfred couldn’t be sure, but it almost seemed as if Lord Shin was positioning one paper in particular in as blatant a display as possible, the string of numbers scrawled upon it plainly visible for all to see. “Shall we, then? Winfred?”

Winfred blinked, a bit taken aback. “You…want us to leave him here?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly.”

“Alone, in your quarters?”

“Yes.”

Winfred hesitated, then made one final attempt. “...But aren’t you worried he’ll–”

Lord Shin cut her off at that, gliding forward to usher the both of them out of the room. “Now now, it’s unbecoming of us to think so little of our guest! He’s turned a new leaf; I’m sure of it! Now why don’t we take a brief stroll; I’ve cultivated a fish of the most singular color, and I can only hope you’ll find it as delightful as I do!”

Helpless under the verbal assault of the man who’d persuaded the world to shape itself around him, it was all Winfred could manage to awkwardly follow along with the happily chatting Lord Shin and his beaming little scribe as the three of them left both the room and the Player inside it utterly unguarded. They were almost halfway down the stairs before the hobgoblin managed to find her voice. “But…you’re not worried he’ll steal your things?”

At that, Lord Shin heaved a rueful sigh. “No? Rather, I’m worried he’ll steal the wrong things. So far I’ve had four Players brought before me, and they’ve all only stolen the wrong things.”

Mimasu piped up. “One of them managed to steal his entire bed!”

Lord Shin shrugged amiably. “I never use it anyway. Who needs a bed when there’s a perfectly good giant ball of kobolds one floor down?”

Winfred did her best to keep up. “So, wait. You want him to steal from you?”

The man nodded. “That’s the plan, yes.”

“Then…” The Banken tried to work her way through that, failed, and gave up trying. “Well where are we going now, then?”

“Hm?” Lord Shin tilted his head, then perked his ears up. “Oh! I was being serious about the fish. Unless you don’t want to?”

Winfred supposed that going to look at some fish with the man who practically controlled her city made as much sense as anything else that had happened in the last hour or so. And he was right; the blue and silver fish that swam majestically in the gardens just outside the Central Tower was a delight. Such a delight that, by the time they’d made it back to the top of the tower and into Lord Shin’s quarters, she managed to be shocked to find the place ransacked and the Player completely missing.

“Lord Shin!” Winfred cried out, her hand gripping at the hilt of her sword. “He’s gone!”

“I know,” Lord Shin offered with a sly smile, his eyes locked on the conspicuous blank space on his writing table that had previously held the number-scrawled paper. “And I wish him the best.”

“Um…” Winfred tried to formulate what the proper response to that was, and came up short. “Okay then?”

“Good word, Winfred,” Lord Shin said, offering the woman a grateful look. “You should expect a commendation for this.”

The Banken let that news sink in. “...Just so you know, I’m going to lie to people when they ask how I earned it.”

“I should hope so.”

————————————————————————————

Shin held his breath as the Sky Voice stared at him, the being’s featureless face boring straight into his soul. This was the moment, then. Shin knew the beings that worked directly for the System, who could control the very essence of his existence, must have had some method of discerning the truth of the matter.

The question was, how? Was the Sky Voice able to simply know the truth? Could he reach into Shin’s mind and take it? Or was it something more mundane, as Shin suspected might be the case? Shin had heard the intimations from the Players, had pieced together a working idea of how they viewed denisons of Magica such as himself. They seemed to believe Shin and the others like him were just…he wasn’t sure of the exact terms. Dreams? Figments?

Whatever the words one chose, the point was that they thought the people they called ‘NPCs’ were conceived of, created by, utterly ruled under the auspices of the moderators of the System. And if that were true, the Sky Voice would be able to simply lay Shin bare. He would pull Shin apart, pluck out the truth of what Shin had plotted and what Shin had allowed to happen, and then woven him back together for judgment.

But Shin didn’t think that would happen. It was only the beginning of an idea, but the shape of it was very Big indeed: Shin suspected that the Players knew even less about the truth behind the existence of him and the others in his world than Shin did. He didn’t know precisely what they were, but in his heart he knew that they were not mere figments to be taken apart and rebuilt on a whim. The System and its adjudicators could destroy him with a thought, it was true. But they couldn’t know him, no more than any other individual could.

Unless he was wrong, and they could. In which case, woof.

And so Shin could barely contain his maniacal glee when, instead of reaching into his mind or unmaking him or some other freaky nonsense, the Sky Voice simply offered a shrug and a grunt. “Whatever. I’m bringing up the logs.”

Galwenlas tapped his foot impatiently as the Sky Voice threw up his hand, a prompt window filled with dialogue scrolling out before him. “Fine, whatever,” the Player huffed, “Then you’ll see exactly how right I am.”

“Hm.” The Sky Voice scratched at the outline of his chin as he began to read, laboriously working his way through what could have only been the conversation held between Shin and Galwenlas in the kobold’s quarters. “...It says here you didn’t give him your credit card number.”

“What?! Of course I–” The Player’s jaw hung open as he suddenly realized some of the exact contours of the conversation in question. “Oh, um, ahem, reading that as text removes all the nuance. I was giving him my credit card number, we were just…talking around it.”

The Sky Voice turned his head towards Shin, who adamantly shook his head. “That’s not true. I even asked him if he was giving me his credit card number, and he said he wasn’t.”

Galwenlas growled in annoyance. “Of course you knew! That was all insinuation!”

Shin looked past the Grand Elf to present the Sky Voice with the sincerest face he could manage. “That is literally the first time I have even heard the word ‘insinuation’.”

The Sky Voice considered that for a moment, then tapped a sidebar on his logs and typed something in. After a moment, the being crackled out a bemused laugh. “Ha! That’s actually true!”

The moderator’s laughter only served to further infuriate Galwenlas. “Well I did insinuate, and I did give you my number! I put it right on your fucking desk!”

“You did?” Shin furrowed. “Well that was stupid. My quarters aren’t under guard, and I leave them unlocked. Literally anyone could have just strolled in and taken it. You should be more careful with your private information, Galwenlas.”

At that, the Grand Elf practically exploded in fury. “It was your responsibility! YOU were the one who was supposed to–”

“Wrong,” the Sky Voice cut in, projecting stern authority. “This NPC made it very clear he was not taking possession or responsibility for any of your personal payment information. You were just careless. I’m finding you guilty of baselessly accusing Mundi property of impropriety.”

Shin, though an almost superhuman display of will, managed to keep his grin to himself. This was the other Big insight he’d pieced together through the questions he’d asked Bittercup and his own observations. As much as the System wasn’t on the side of the people of Magica, it really wasn’t on the side of the Players either. Before anything else, the Sky Voice and others like him were concerned with covering their own asses.

The Sky Voice continued on. “Let’s get this wrapped up. I’m sentencing you to one week susp–”

“Wait!” Shin cried out, concern radiating from his face. “Wait a minute! You’re saying you did give me your payment information?”

“YES!” Galwenlas raved, over the moon that someone was finally agreeing with him. “That’s EXACTLY what I did!”

“But…” Shin flattened his ears, “What for, then? Surely not for…Lady Bittercup, right?”

“Of course it was–” The Player trailed off again, the wheels in his brain visibly turning behind his eyes as he realized just a moment too late that maybe, just maybe, this had been a bad idea. “Um, that is to say, I was actually just–”

It was too late; the Sky Voice had already re-read the logs. “Okay yeah, you’re clearly in gross violation of your ToS. I’m locking your account, expect a permaban within the next hour. Ticket closed, I’m out.”

“No, please~! I just–” It was too late; the Sky Voice had already vanished. Galwenlas slowly turned his head towards Shin, tears brimming in his golden eyes. “B-but, you said~! You said Bittercup and I could…you said we could be together!”

Shin shrugged. “I’m not sure what to tell you, Galwenlas. Tough shit, I guess? Fuck off? Jump off a cliff and die, maybe?”

The Player released a noise of wordless rage, only to stop short when a figure emerged from the brush. “How about all of the above? That’s my vote, at least.”

“Bittercup?!” Galwenlas’s voice was a strangled mix of despair and hope as he reached out towards the elven woman. “Don’t worry Bittercup, your oppa is–!” His words caught in his throat as his body spasmed, the Player collapsing to the ground and nearly falling face-first into the decorative pond by the side of the path. “Bittercup! I, your oppa! I’m gonna, I~!”

Shin leaned forward in fascination as Galwenlas’s limbs locked into place, the Player finally falling silent as his mouth squeezed shut. Wild. This was a lot like what had happened to Leathers, but…unlike what had happened with the Red Player, Shin could still clearly see Galwenlas’s mind behind his writhing eyes, trapped within his unresponsive body. “What’s going on with him? I mean, I understand what a permaban means, but he should have just vanished, right?”

Bittercup shook her head, an enigmatic look on her face. “I’ve seen this once before; this is an account lock. He’s being kept prisoner in his body while they shut down all of his accounts and report him to whoever handles this sort of thing in the Player world.” The woman leaned down, reaching out to lightly stroke the side of Galwenlas’s head. “You can still hear me, can’t you?”

The Player’s eyes continued to writhe, though it seemed to Shin that there was almost a spark of hope behind them now.

“Well don’t worry; I’ll take care of you.” Gently, tenderly even, Bittercup pressed down on the back of Galwenlas’s head, inexorably lowering his face towards the pond. Down and down he went until his mouth and nostrils were fully submerged, the Player’s pleading eyes left to squirm just above the scant inches of water he was drowning in. “Goodbye, oppa~”

Bittercup slowly rose and stepped back, moving to Shin’s side as they both inspected her handiwork. Little bubbles continued to stream out of Galwenlas’s nose, gradually slowing but never fully stopping. Huh. It looked as if he was fully capable of drowning, but until the System finished with his account he couldn’t quite drown to death. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

“So,” Shin offered, glancing sidelong at Bittercup. “What will you do now?”

The elf had already stripped off her bulky cloak, abandoning it beside the continuously suffocating form of her one-time tormentor. “What am I going to do?” She turned to stride back down the path, her shoulder square and her eyes flaring with the confidence of a newfound future. “I’m going to jump into the damn ocean. And then I’m gonna eat two fried Dire Shrimp.”

Shin had to admit: that was a solid plan. Bittercup clearly had the right idea. Because while there was no way of knowing what tomorrow would bring, there was no question about what had happened today: They had won.