The door closed, evidently for cosmetic reasons, and left all the officers but one outside with nothing to do but guess. Jonathan Brightwater kicked things off. “First we have to decide if we're only looking at perceived popularity. We can look over alts to cover most of the possibilities if that's the case. I don't know much about fighting games. Are there some criteria we should know about?”

“There are certain archetypes. I don't foresee any problem with adjusting officer skill sets to fill them, for the most part,” Dosellian Urapta opined. “None of our moves are one-versus-one friendly as they are, and as part of the necessary adjustment, anything can happen. Make Cadmos a zoner, rushdown, stance switcher, shoto, or anything you like.”

“Except for one.” Coremel broke in with a less measured opinion of his own. “The vilest type of all. I hate even to mention it in association with Commandment of Hero, but there are candidates for it.”

Dosellian Urapta pursed his lips. “You must be referring to . . .”

“That's right. The scandalous puppet character!”

The audience was so impressed by Coremel's seriousness that most of them gasped without knowing the reason for his passionate hatred. Dennet said something about scrubs, but he was much too two-star to be heard.

In response to pleas for elaboration, Coremel shook his head. “I should rather stay silent and hope Ersatz Struggle remains pure. And yet, it is the duty of the wounded to warn the uninjured of the danger ahead. Very well. Go back to the one-versus-one point Urapta raised. What if someone makes it a two-versus-one? That is the puppet method of fighting.”

“How can they do that?” Darlotte Glofal wondered. “Aren't there laws against it?”

“Only the laws of decency. The way it works is that the player controls the puppeteer directly and in full, but various commands cause the puppet to react in various ways. Unpredictable ways. Often the player wins without knowing why. I can't stand to say more. Most Warpers would be zoners, by the way.”

Luau Lua, the hit of the season, though not the current season, the summer season as indicated by her saucy semi-sarong that showed a bit of swimsuit through convenient gaps, shoved her way to the front. She pushed Coremel out of habit when she reached him but apologized before she asked her question. “Wait! Before that, which of us do you think might become puppet characters? I want to know who's too disreputable to trust with running elementercise sessions.”

“You still do those? I would have laid Chunks against Slivers that fad was long since over.” Darlotte Glofal shoved Coremel for emphasis.

“Hey!”

“No no. Pushing freebie officers around is a fad. Elementercise has become a cultural institution. Albeit mostly in Slay Every Dragon. A fabulous country!”

Dosellian extended his arms Coremel-ward, decided on kindness instead when he considered the SR's enthusiasm for fighting games only now revealed, and pulled him out of the reach of intemperate URs. “How wonderful. As for the likeliest candidates, the top two must be Spenito Niu and Adigail Zem because of their dogs.” Adigail fainted. Spenito retained consciousness, but one tear rolled down his cheek as he contemplated the dreadful choice of either social ostracism or spinoff exclusion. Not his choice, but some unknown developer's choice for him. “More recently, the new officers of the ursit race fit the bill. They summon phantasmal bears to fight, correct? It's perfect. Almost as if . . .” His words drifted into silence as if some frightful pot of cursed gold lay at the end.

“As if Miss Uryeong, Mr. Refleang, and the new game all began development together, hm?” Wruden Calx strode forward, the sun glittering on his reflective luman skin and the wind catching his top hat till he caught it back. He moved to shove Coremel, but Dosellian held his new friend overhead to forestall the attempt. “Could be. But if that's true, maybe you, ah, more veteran officers ought to consider what was lacking in your performance that new models were required. How about that?”

“The performance of wickedness!” Coremel shouted. He wanted to make sure he was audible from up there. “Which we have more than enough of. Somebody tried to tunnel into the Armory just last week. At least wait for when Xentas is on duty!”

His uplifter cleared his throat. “Regardless of any of that, those are the best candidates I see. All other roles can easily be filled by actually popular officers.”

At that, Spenito Niu fainted and Adigail Zem righted herself. “Well, really! Is it quite right to say that so bluntly, Dosellian Urapta?”

He shrugged. “There are some judgments which will always be taken badly no matter how they are stated. We have to consider the qualities of everyone involved.”

“Consider them thoroughly, is my advice.” Wruden Calx waved his jewel-encrusted pick at the ursits as well as other recent arrivals such as Diora, Crown After Crown, and Luerre Voine. “All of them. You're making a mistake if you think it takes time for the public to embrace something new. Just remember which stuman will be wearing a wedding dress soon. Not the oldest, I can tell you that.”

Inorrea Vacationer leapt on top of Coremel, called down, “You don't know what hobbies Jonathan Brightwater has,” and vanished.

“Oh? Wasn't Miss Georgia Anne Cooper the first one?”

Inorrea reappeared next to Wruden, her old comrade in the dissolved Information Gathering ministry. “First in the gacha. Jonathan appeared before her in the story.”

“Thank you for the excellent research, Miss Inorrea.”

“No problem.” She vanished again.

With the URs distracted, even Rs felt free to speak. “All right, but what I'd like to know is, what is a shoto?” Burmin Trivvis asked.

He ought to have asked earlier, because happenings transpired eventfully right then. The LCD display above the data center's door cleared its old message in favor of a new one. “No data capture currently scheduled.” How could anyone answer questions with that going on? By talking, maybe, if you were a caveman. Dennet barely had enough time to type out an explanation, print it as an editorial in a newspaper, and cut out the letters to make a ransom note before the door opened and Cadmos emerged.

Society Page Lasva started forward, but the crowd held her back for all her objections. “The public deserves to know what happened in there!” she yelled.

“That's why we're holding you back,” approximately eighty officers said at once.

“That workshop the Fuvati League over in Furious Galaxy put together about how to deal with the press really made an impression,” Clyse observed.

Dr. Stezlinstein agreed. “It changed my life. Incidents of nosy reporters barging into my experiment room have gone way down since I started sitting on her,” she said while sitting on her. “Stay still, my twitchy little rat, and let Cadmos speak. He isn't the type who needs grilling to cough up the info.”

As the trustworthy, mad-scientist-looking Halloween Medic predicted, Cadmos walked up full of news he intended to eject all over them. “Hi, everybody. I bet you're wondering what happened in there. Well, I am too, ha ha.” He looked over his audience, saw it staring back with an intensity that burned away wispy mirth, gulped, and continued. “I tried going left first and then right, but all the doors were locked. They resisted my sword, too.”

“That's an RPG protagonist for you.” Gintus Pelluina got some laughs and thumbs-up.

“I guess so. You don't want to miss any treasure, right?” Attention returned to Cadmos and converted itself back into stares. “I pressed forward through some more sliding doors. In the middle of the building, as far as I could tell, there's a rectangular stage. A blue screen was hung along one of the long sides, and opposite I saw a row of cameras pointing at it. There was an invisible wall that blocked them off, so I couldn't do anything with those. There was a pair of tall, wall-mounted displays on one end. One of them had a listing of what I took as moves I was supposed to do, since it told me to perform a jumping uppercut and fire a ball of Ralarum energy. I was surprised to learn I was able to do that second one. Here, watch.”

Cadmos tried pushing out an eclipseball to no result while Dosellian Urapta returned Coremel to the ground so that those two and Dennet could exchange smirks and winks. “Confirmed for shoto,” Dennet said. The others chuckled.

“That's interesting that it doesn't work outside. Anyway, I did the listed moves as well as I could manage based on the short descriptions it gave. At the bottom it said 'officer's choice,' so I tried some swings and slashes. Domination Blade! You've all heard that enough already, I know. That's where the other board came in. Every time I made my attack, a name went up there along with a series of numbers. The names definitely belonged to the attacks because Challenge Blade, Domination Blade, and Dominion Imperia went up when I did those, but I hope we can all put our heads together to figure out the meaning behind those numbers.”

Dosellian Urapta and Coremel chuckled some more while Dennet began to explain. “Frames are like wafers of time . . .”

“How did you Nova? Enemies?” Youl Sandshaker trampled all over the Rare with her pointed, downright insightful Ultra Rare question. And her feet. Though she had been a Reaper for a short time only, crossing over from the original Youl's Harasser class, a single day of battle had taught her that all her beliefs about Commandment of Hero's combat mechanics rested on a false presumption that anything besides Novas mattered. The Reaper community had never been so proud of a new member.

“Your Nova is permanently charged as long as you stand on the stage inside.”

Ulrik. Burmin Trivvis. Surfs Nesetta. Nonneros Under the Moonlight. Duelist Theena. Crown After Crown. Havamal. Liya. Every Reaper from Inferno to Storm, Rare to Ultra Rare without exception aside from Society Page Lasva, who by then had been secured in a straitjacket, and Hot Air Hank, a man intensely interested in frames, rushed for the door and offered siege to the impassive complex. All their swords, harpoons, and werewolf claws failed to scratch the visible door, much less the invisible wall behind it, but no officer ever became a Reaper by attacking less or thinking more.