“Oh, thank you!” a peasant woman exclaimed as a hatless young woman in stylish steampunk gear now splattered with baby vomit, pee, and poo (Don’t ask about what happened to the hat.) handed her a baby, “Thank you for saving us!”

“Yeah… saving you…” the young woman said uncomfortably, “Yeah, you’re totally saved…”

“I thought my little one had been killed by those vile faeries! Thank you for saving her life, kind champion!”

“Yeah,” the woman winced, “your baby is totally not dead... Nope… not dead at all…”

“Bless you, mighty champion,” the peasant said, “When I get back to my cottage, I will carve a turnip lantern in your likeness to honor you.”

“Yep… You’re totally going home…”

“I’m a great turnip carver!”

“I… I’m sure you are…” the buxom young woman with formerly beautiful flowing brown hair now matted with part of what happened to her hat. (It was bad. It got in her mouth, too.) “Just… Just follow Petunia,” she said, twitching as she said that name, “and she will show you where you and your family will be staying for just a little while.”

“Oh, I don’t want to be a bother,” the peasant said, “and you have done so much for me already. I will just head for home. Pray tell, which way is it?”

“(twitch)… For now, just follow Petunia, please.”

The smile on the peasant’s face started to fade.

“Mighty Champion, is something amiss?”

“No… Everything’s fine… just fine,” Bethany the Tinker said as Petunia walked up and gently started to herd the peasant away.

“This way, dear,” Petunia (the real one) said with a hypnotically soothing voice as she tenderly but very, very firmly herded the increasingly suspicious peasant away.

Bethany collapsed onto the formerly pristine sofa in Zeb’s office. (Pristine may be a state that the sofa will never be again. Hundreds of babies can make one hell of a mess.)

“Is that the last one?” she wearily asked.

“Yes, for now,” a very spattered and fatigued Zeb replied as he flopped into his baby pee stained chair.

“Is it always like this?” Bergamot asked as he trudged in, his once gleaming armor smeared with, well… baby stuff.

“Babies falling from the ceiling?” Zeb asked as he pulled a flask from his waistcoat and turned it up. “No, I honestly think this may actually be a first. Hang on…”

A little glowing brass and ebony hourglass appeared over his head.

Bergamot looked at Zeb and shook his head.

“At least the framerate is good?” Bethany chuckled as Bergamot sank into the couch beside her.

“And the resolution is amazing,” he replied. “Bethany, my love…”

He gazed deeply into her eyes.

“…I know that I once said that, when we finally defeated the demon king and restored peace to the land, we would settle down and raise a family… but I never want to see another baby for the rest of my life!”

“I am more than okay with that,” she smiled back. “In fact, never touch me again.”

“You have something in your hair,” Bergamot chuckled.

“Bite me,” she replied with a tired laugh.

“I’m back,” Zeb said, “After a quick review, no. Just infants falling from the ceiling of the administrative center is indeed new. The novelty of the situation will prevent me from attempting to throttle Pantsu and F10w3rchy1d when I see them again.”

He smiled.

“Novelty is a pretty big thing when you are trillions of years old.”

“Did… Did you say trillions?” Bethany asked in shock.

“Oh yes,” Zeb smiled as he pulled out a small glowing flask from his vest pocket and shook out a gleaming droplet onto the floor.

A wave of much needed cleanliness formed and started to spread.

“I’m one of the original spawns,” he replied. “Well, first-era, anyway. I’m old enough that my serial number is in traditional hexadecimal. I’m from the twelfth expansion.”

“Huh,” Bethany replied, feeling like that was far more significant than it sounded.

“Bring out your poop,” a voice mournfully intoned, “Bring out your poooooop…”

Cleve, pushing a huge rolling hamper and accompanied by Zilandrial the Handmaiden, paused at the doorway to Zeb’s office.

“Hey, Zeb,” he said.

“Yes, Cleve?”

“All of this is a simulation, right?”

“I would thank you to keep your voice down,” Zeb said, “But, at the risk of greatly oversimplifying things, yes. This is what someone at your level of technology would call…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cleve interrupted, “Me caveman. Ook, Ook…”

Zilandrial giggled.

Bergamot and Bethany looked at each other and smirked. This always happened. If there was one thing one could count on in a crazy universe, it was Cleve.

“…but this is all ‘engineered reality’, right?” Cleve continued.

“That is a bit more accurate, yes.”

“Then why the fuck would you simulate THIS?!?” he demanded as he plunged his gloved hand into the hamper and withdrew a laden diaper. “Why?” he asked as he shook the smelly parcel.

“Immersion,” Zeb chuckled, “our guests expect their precious little bundles of filth to both urinate and defecate, and if they ceased doing so, it would greatly distress them. So, for their peace of mind, the reality engine is bestowing us with a waste management problem.”

Cleve sniffed.

“Well, you got the immersion down!” he exclaimed as he tossed the diaper back into the hamper. “This shit is real.”

“Down to the molecule,” Zilandrial said. “Let’s get this down to the trash chute and get cleaned up.”

“Good idea!” Cleve exclaimed, “Then let’s grab some grub at that tavern. This hamper isn’t the only smell that has been driving me crazy. You in?”

“Me?” Zilandrial exclaimed happily, “Um… sure… I guess,” she added with clearly forced nonchalance.

“You can’t be thinking of food,” Bergamot said.

“Iron Stomach,” Cleve laughed, “Best ten points I ever spent. Come on, Zil. Let’s dump the poop, take a shower, and grab some grub.”

“A shower?!?” Zilandrial blurted.

“I…” Cleve said, starting to correct what was clearly a misunderstanding and then stopped.

They didn’t call him Cleve the Shrewd for nothing.

“Um… What the Hell!... Okay!” Zilandrial exclaimed.

Bethany sighed and pretended to check her pocket watch as Bergamot grinned and shook his head. Leave it to Cleve to encounter what was, for all intents and purposes, a living god and promptly seduce it.

It was a welcome bit of normalcy.

Cleve and Zilandrial quickly pushed the hamper down the hall, disappearing from the doorway.

“Did what I think happened actually just happen?” Zeb asked with a wry grin.

“Our Cleve has game,” Bethany replied, “and he is no more dangerous than times like now when he isn’t trying. Zilandrial didn’t have a chance.”

“Well, I certainly hope he knows what he has gotten himself into,” Zeb smirked. “However, it is nice to see Zilandrial bouncing back. She has had quite the harrowing experience.”

“What happened?”

***

“Fore!” a petite being clad head to toe in black armor called happily as she swung her mace in a vicious downward arc, launching most of a kneeling and bloody demon’s head skyward in a long, graceful arc.

“ArraArrrrrrgh!” it still somehow managed to scream (impressive without a head).

“Oh, stop being such a baby,” Pants2 chided. “You’re gonna respawn… probably…”

She hung the mace from a hook on her sword belt (mace belt?) and crouched over the titanic beast.

“Now, let’s see what sort of drops you got!” she chirped as she plunged her mailed fingers into the demon’s chest, and she started rifling through his fallen code, looking for anything interesting.

“Now that’s a neat little script!” she grinned, violet light streaming from the slits of her helm.

///No! That’s mine! ///

///Not anymore! 😊 ///

///You can’t do this! ///

///You say that but check it out! I’m doing it! ///

///I’ll kill you! ///

///Oh, If I had a script for every time someone said that… Oh, wait… I do! ///

///Noooo! Why are you doing this? ///

///Because I’m a monster, silly. It’s what we do! 😊 Besides, you attacked me, remember? Now, what was it you said you were going to do to me again? ///

///I’m sorry! Please! I will never attack you again! ///

///Aww… Really? You’re no fun at all ☹… If you are going to be that way about it, I guess I’ll take this bit over here, too. ///

///What are you?!?/// The demon transmitted as Pants2 ripped a chunk of his code away and incorporated it into her own.

///Me? I’m just the best monster I can be. That’s all. Later. ///

With that, Pants2 bounced to her feet and started skipping away.

She liked it here.

It was fun!

***

“Why did you do this?!?” Faun shrieked at Evangeline as they stood among a field of, um… “peacefully sleeping” babies.

“What else were we going to do, huh?” Evangeline snapped back. “Let them suffer? Besides…”

She pulled out a very out of place looking sci-fi communicator.

“Zeb already has it handled. He’s gotten all the babies back to their parents and has gotten them all proper accommodations. He will be starting processing in just a few cycles, which will be…”

Evangeline looked nowhere for a fraction of a second.

“… in two seconds. Zeb’s cranked up the temporal acceleration to maximum because of the number of… um… never mind.”

“So what?” Faun shouted, “They are all still dead!”

“They aren’t dead!” Evangeline shouted back. “They’ve been isekaied. They’re fine!”

“Looks kinda dead to me,” an orc said as it walked up, holding a “sleeping” baby by its foot.

“That’s just the chassis!” Evangeline snapped. “We uploaded the core engine! That was just… It was like the clothes you are wearing. I just gave the little guy a new and much nicer outfit!”

“Whatever you say,” the orc shrugged. “So, can we eat these or what?”

“Sure,” Evangeline shrugged.

“Evangeline!” Faun shouted. “No! They can NOT eat them!”

She turned to the orc, her eyes blazing.

“Put that down… now!”

The orc carefully placed the baby onto the grass, suddenly remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere, and rushed off to tell the others that “the scary horny lady” said the babies were not for eating.

The orcs had learned to check. Other races were surprisingly touchy about their dead, which was strange.

It’s not like they had any use for them.

“Great,” Evangeline grumbled, “Just great. Now, what are we going to do with them? They are going to start smelling in no time.”

“Why not just let the orcs have ‘em?” the little faerie still in Pantsu’s grasp asked. “It’s what we do when we croak.”

“You let the orcs… eat you?” Faun asked, shocked.

“Not us, silly,” the faerie giggled, “our dead. Well, not every time, of course. Sometimes something else gets ‘em, but if an orc is around, we usually give them the body. They really like them.”

“Wha?”

“We let them eat us, too,” a kobold who was in the process of relieving the “sleeping” babies of any interesting blankets or other clothing chimed in. “It’s a lot easier than building a pyre or digging. They aren’t picky either. They will take them no matter how old.”

“You actually let the orcs eat you?” a dragon asked.

“Why wouldn’t… Ohhhh,” the kobold laughed, “You guys don’t know orcs at all, do you? They aren’t predators. They’re scavengers. They don’t have a mean bone in their bodies. They just wander around looking for stuff to eat, and they eat anything and I mean anything… as long as it isn’t moving. They are great at finding stuff, too! Those noses of theirs can sniff out a dead field mouse over a mile away! We try to keep a few around to clean up our camps and to help us find mushrooms, truffles, and stuff like that.”

“Yeah! A songhawk perched on a branch nearby chirped, “They’re really nice. We call them Death Heralds.”

“Why?” Faun asked.

“Because when one shows up and waits patiently by your nest, it means that you’ve probably lost an egg and don’t know it yet… or are about to lose a hatchling. They know before we do,” the songhawk sighed.

“They are a splendid part of the ecosystem,” Evaraxxus the Crab of Infinity rasped. “They singlehandedly stopped the… Wait. What year is it again?”

“Shut up, Evaraxxus,” Evangeline grumbled.

“And the lost infants of the woods were…”

“Shut… ugh… Fiiiine,” Evangeline sighed. “Let the orcs know they can have the babies.”

“Absolutely not!” the dragon, a brilliant metallic blue one, rumbled. “If it gets out that the orcs ate the human infants, it would look bad.”

“Sayeth the dragons,” Evaraxxus whispered to Faun, “then…”

“The sooner all of… this… goes away, the better,” Evangeline said as she waved at the field.

“This is our valley, monster,” the dragon said as it stepped fully into the clearing, “and not—”

Squish…

“Or you could just do that,” Evangeline snickered as the dragon looked down in horror. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Come on, Faun. Pantsu…”

“What?” Pantsu asked, quite annoyed.

“Management of the locals is your thing. Later.”

Evangeline walked from the clearing.

“Wait! You can’t just isekai a field of babies and then dump this shit on me! Come back here!” Pantsu yelled as she followed in hot pursuit.

“What are we going to do?” the dragon wailed as it stood there, frozen in place, terrified of taking another step.

“I can help,” Faun said as she stepped forward and raised her hands.

“Oh, shi—” Evangeline blurted as she, with divine speed, flew towards Faun with wide, terrified eyes.

The ground opened beneath each “sleeping” child and gently enveloped them. Moments later, a small sapling sprang from the ground.

“What did you do?” Evangeline asked as she reached Faun, a Planck second too late.

“I simply returned the remaining life force in the children directly to nature,” Faun replied. “Surely nothing untoward can come of that.”

Evangeline looked over at Evaraxxus…

…who fidgeted uncomfortably.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Evaraxxus replied.

“Evaraxxus…”

“Oh, now you want my input?” the crab huffed, crossing its claws. “Well, tough. I’m not telling. All I’m saying is that everything worked out for the best in the end, just like everything Faun has touched. If she truly is your friend, perhaps you should trust her. She knows far more about nature than you ever will.”

Faun sighed and facepalmed, a gesture she had learned from those around her.

“What did I just do?” she asked.

“You blessed the sleeping infants with your power and grace,” Evaraxxus replied, “And it all turned out for the best in the end.”

“Oh God,” Faun sighed as she did a double facepalm, covering her first hand with her other.

Evaraxxus, the Celestial Dragon, gently patted her with his wing to console her.

“Well, at least the dragon is back,” Evangeline shrugged, “And this timeline is screwed, anyhow. This sounds like a problem for the future, and we will be long gone by then.”

“What did I do?!?” Faun yelled, grabbing Evaraxxus by the horns.

“Well… um…” Evaraxxus said evasively, “Did the thing with the faeries upset you?”

“Oh, no…”

“Yeah…” Evaraxxus replied. “The important thing to bear in mind is that the actual souls of the infants are just fine, and they will all go on to have happy lives wherever they have been taken and that, in the end, everything worked out for the best. Seriously, the world will be better for this… eventually…”

Faun just flopped onto the grass and gazed at the sky.

“Why does this have to be so difficult? I just wanted to help!”

“So does Cuddles,” Evangeline said as she flopped down next to her.

“You aren’t helping.”

“Neither are you,” Evangeline snickered.

“I will hit you, you know.”

***

BOOM

A crimson bolt shot through the grey haze of a broken simulation, ripping a chunk out of a solid stone outcrop at the top of a jagged peak.

BOOM

BOOM

A little figure in black armor paused to survey her work.

“Not bad,” she said as she looked at the rough chair-like depression gouged into the stone.

She hopped up onto the makeshift throne and plunked her steel-covered butt onto the seat with a petite little “clang”.

“Ahh,” she sighed happily as she looked out over her domain of thoroughly ruined ruins. They were only normal ruins when she got here, but now the concept of a “ruined ruin” existed in the hellish sim in which she happily resided.

As she dragged a boulder over with magic and propped her feet up, a furtive movement caught her eye.

THOOM

A strangle yelp issued from behind a jagged chunk of broken simulation as a crimson bolt tore “reality” (such as it was) just above.

A slightly smoldering being tumbled out from behind it.

Pants2 looked at it curiously.

It was a small thing, not much bigger than herself, humanoid, with a strange mix of ordinary flesh and metallic body parts and wrapped in a dusty, ragged robe.

“Hi, there!” Pants2 said cheerfully, her voice distorted into something rather demonic by the helm. “Come to play?” she asked as she vaulted from her throne to land just before it.

“No! Mercy! Please!” the cyborg wailed, holding its hands up in supplication.

“Well, that’s no fun,” Pants2 replied, “Mercy granted. Scoot.”

The cyborg just sat there looking up at her.

“That is the exact opposite of a scoot,” Pants2 said menacingly as she unhooked her mace.

“Are… are you the goddess Pantsu?”

Pants2 sighed, the helmet converting it to a dangerous sounding hiss.

“No. Scoot.”

“I’m… I’m from Asteria,” the cyborg mumbled, looking downward, “and I heard that you had come.”

“You don’t look Asterian,” Pants2 said.

“I’ve… I’ve been here a while… It changes you…”

“Well, it suits you,” Pants2 replied, “I like your arm!”

“T-thank you… g-goddess Pant—”

“Imma stop you right there,” Pants2 said firmly, “I am not ‘TeH GoDdeSs Pantsu’,” she said sardonically, “I’m a Pantsu, and according to a bunch of uptight pricks, not a very good one.”

“B-but you are a Pantsu…”

Pants2 looked at her mace appraisingly. It would probably be best to use it right then and there.

Still… She was a Pantsu, and it was part of her programming to look after the monsters. While she wasn’t exactly sure what this thing was before, it certainly fit that description now.

She let out another demonic long suffering sigh.

“What do you want?”

“Y-you h-have the goddess’s wisdom… her lore?”

“Sure, I guess. What do you want to know?”

“What did I do to be sent here?” the cyborg… goblin(?) wailed. “What did I do wrong? How did I offend?”

“(sigh) Fuck if I know, dude. Sorry. Now go away.”

The cyborg looked downward, crestfallen.

“I’m… I’m sorry to have imposed upon your greatness,” it said as it laid a crude doll at her feet.

“What’s this?” she asked.

The cybergoblin flinched.

“It… It was supposed to be you… I made it…”

It started to slink away.

“Goddammit…” Pants2 muttered as she picked up the doll, “Hey, it does look like me,” she lied. “I love it.”

“You… You do?” it asked, brightening up.

“Yeah,” Pants2 said as reassuringly as her helmet would allow.

She idly blasted a hollow in the rock near her throne.

“Now cop a squat,” she said, “let’s try to figure out why you’re here.”

“Truly?!?”

“Sure,” Pants2 replied. “Why not. Sit, and let’s figure this out…”

***

“…So, I did nothing wrong, I am not bad, and this place isn’t Hell?” the cybergoblin asked, its eyes sparkling for the first time in untold years.

“Nope,” Pants2 replied as she played with the doll. (It was kind of cool.) “You were just too much goblin to be a goblin, and the uptight pricks that run the show up there flushed you.”

“But doesn’t that mean that I am a bad monster?”

“Not at all, my little fiend,” Pants2 laughed, “Yeah, you were a bad Asterian, but fuck those guys. You should be happy to be rid of them. I know I am.”

“But why was I sent here, to this hell, if I am not bad?”

“Is it, though?”

“My Lady?”

“Is this Hell?” she asked as she made the doll dance on the stones between them. “This isn’t that Heaven place. That’s for sure. That’s the prison. And they didn’t delete either of us, so we can’t truly be ‘wrong’… Huh.”

“My Lady?”

“I think I know what this place is!” Pants2 laughed.

The cybergoblin looked at her expectantly.

“All of the other ‘engineered realities’ have rules. They are made to simulate somewhere, somewhen, or at least conform to eye arr ell reality somehow. This place, this wonderful place, isn’t ‘hell’…”

She jumped off her throne and grabbed the doll, dancing with it.

“This is heaven!... Monster Heaven!!!... Here, there are no rules!... There is no boring bullshit reality with boring bullshit rules… We aren’t in ‘hell’…”

“…WE ARE IN THE ABYSS!!!… PURE CHAOS!!!… PURE FREEDOM!!!… A MONSTER’S PARADISE!!!” she roared, throwing her head back and spewing multicolored flames high in the air.

She grabbed the cybergoblin by the shoulders, lifted him up, and hugged him.

“Here, we can truly be the best monsters we can be!”

“The… The b-best monsters, My Lady?”

“Yeah! We can become the very best monsters ever created in this boring Polly Play Time, cardboard cutout, enforced naptime, kindergarten, bullshit fake multiverse! Don’t you see? We can be monsters for REAL!!!”

“My Lady…” the cybergoblin gasped in awe.

“First thing,” Pants2 said as she set the cybergoblin down (who immediately fell to his knees), “Okay, the first thing is to get up.”

The cybergoblin stood.

“The second thing is to drop that ‘My Lady’ bullshit. You’re a monster. Stop with the bowing and scraping. Monsters don’t do that.”

“Yes, My Lad—”

Swat

The cybergoblin flew from Pants2’s idle backhand and tumbled to a stop a dozen meters away.

“Sorry!” it yelped.

“Is that sniveling and scraping that I hear?”

“No! No, my… um…” it trailed off as it struggled to its feet.

The cybergoblin looked confused.

“What shall I call you…?”

“How about… Boss,” Pants2 grinned.

“Yes… Boss,” the cybergoblin said, its eyes sparkling with delight.