The other classes entrusted that effort to them and instead heeded Dennet's lecture on frames. “That means if Ersatz Struggle runs at sixty frames per second, each frame is one-sixtieth of a second.”

“Question!”

“Yes, Heartful Azalea?”

“What if it's not 60 FPS?”

“Then it'll flop worse than Enid Rosebouquet.”

“Got it.” Azalea and Hot Air Hank looked at each other with expressions that promised reckless or even unethical experimentation based on the intricacies of fighting games that were then revealing themselves. Properly speaking, Dennet was revealing them, but as a Rare, he was best considered a natural phenomenon, like a boulder or a talking blond boulder. The continents of Sadalsia and Yoerbla that constituted the enchanting fantasy world of Commandment of Hero thus far probably had some of those.

Dennet proceeded to practical applications of the theory. “The numbers Cadmos saw by each move should be the frame data, which is how long each part of the move lasts in frames.”

“Question?”

“Hot Air Hank.”

“Now when you get to talking about 'each part of a move,' which is the words I recall you as unleashing on us just now, what prezactly is being indicated by that?”

“Allow me,” Dosellian Urapta interjected. Not to seize attention of course, but only out of concern that Dennet's underdeveloped Rare organs would fail if he talked too much. “Fighting game matches are like dialogues between the participants. Consider what happens when you try to listen to Boxer Andit. It takes him time to think of what to say, time to say it, and time to realize afterward how pointless everything he said was. That last step normally takes the longest of all. We call those three segments the startup, active, and recovery periods. As you can see, having Boxer Andit talk to you is exactly like being attacked in a fighting game, right down to how terrible you feel afterward if you fail to block.”

“That's why Reginald always gets thrashed,” Dennet added to relate that highly abstract explanation to daily life. “He just presses buttons and spends most of his time in recovery because of it.”

“Dennet! You never explained any of this to me!”

“You never asked.”

“I did ask on several occasions! 'How can I improve' is what I asked.”

Dennet shrugged. “Well, yeah, you did, but I like winning.”

While the Rares argued, Dosellian Urapta redirected the main discussion to Cadmos's experience. “Cadmos, what sorts of numbers did you see?”

“Challenging Blade was, let's see. I remember. 38, 6, 52.”

“Ahahahaha! Gehehaheha! Oh no! Hahaha! This is it for me! I'm going to die before I get an alt!” Dosellian collapsed on the ground and laughed till he wept. Coremel fell to his knees, wheezing, and Dennet embraced Reginald in an excess of brotherly feeling which lacked something in terms of mutuality.

Seeing that reaction, Cadmos smiled. “I take it those aren't the sort of numbers I should have. Would higher or lower be better?”

“Pfft. Lower. Heehee. On the ends. Higher in the middle. Hrnk.”

“Great. Now that I know that, I can work on getting them in the right direction with help from all of you. As long as we have that, I have no doubt that our spinoff will be something truly engaging for both our long-term players and new fans as well. Right, Dosellian? Coremel? Dennet?”

“Right, right, yeah, absolutely. Haha.” Dosellian Urapta stood, wiped away the tears, and blew his nose. “I'll be happy to do whatever I can.”

“There isn't much to improve,” Coremel said. “It isn't humanly possible to react to a thirty-eight-frame mid.” Then the three experts all lost it again.

The Reaper community returned to report that entry to the facility seemed impossible with the resources at hand. For all that, Santa C. Dorenz remained optimistic. “The solution is to get more resources. That's almost always the solution. First, I think we hire some of those Always Leveling Titan tunnelers. I've wanted to come up with a project for them for a long time now.”

“If you bonehead Nova-jockeys damage that facility and get our fighting game canceled, the only thing you'll be able to hope for from ALT is a nice, deep mass grave,” Luau Lua told them.

“There, you even made Miss DeMereanch angry, who's such a gentle soul. Apologize!” Darlotte Glofal put her arms around Lua's trembling shoulders to calm her. The general sentiment of the crowd supported Darlotte against all inclination and precedent, which shows what those are worth. Truly the announcement of a spinoff had made the past a trivial, weightless thing.

Youl Sandshaker, downcast, dug at the ground with her foot. “Sorry. We got carried away. We'll be good.”

With no evident need for coordinated action, the mass of officers broke up into smaller groups unlike in their compositions, much as how every player used Cadmos when he was all they had, but later some made safe, Nonneros-centric teams, others preferred building around the explosive offense of Hilliarde Feablas, and still others incorporated Minsie of the Waves into their game plan for various reasons. The Rares formed their own society as usual, since no other rarity wanted to be in theirs. Not even Commons, so far as anyone could make out. It was hard to notice Commons even if one wished to do so.

Ulrik settled the dispute between Dennet and Reginald with the decisiveness expected from someone who cared about it not at all. “Reginald. I've decided you're wrong because I want to talk to Dennet. I admit this is an arbitrary judgment, but I have 22,799 Attack now, so I don't care.”

“You do? That means 23,200 should be easy for a Warper. I'm off.” Reginald departed to see what he could make from his latest Vigilant Patrol gear drops in the Armory.

“I win again,” Dennet declared. “He's always going to wash out in groups with that attitude. What do you want to argue about, Ulrik?”

“Which of us knows what a 'shoto' actually is. I lost already. Be magnanimous in victory and tell me so I can make fun of Cadmos.”

“Fine. The term has a long history starting with the S***** F***** series, and I can tell you already stopped listening. Fireball, dragon punch, maybe a spinning kick. There are variants, and they change the names, obviously. A lot of games include somebody with that basic moveset because it has decent tools for most situations without a lot of complications or gimmicks. Usually they give it to the MC so that new players pick it first. It's about the blandest archetype there is.”

“The Cadmosest archetype. I understand.”

“I thought you would.”

Meanwhile, the prediction crowd pumped Dosellian Urapta for more information. “I would put it at eight to twelve fighters to start as the best guess, since it's a new series. ISOT tends to be fairly conventional as far as that sort of thing. DLC will come afterward, of course.”

“That's not even enough for every class/element combination,” Tinni objected.

“I don't think you have to worry about that,” Dosellian assured her. “Those things probably won't matter at all.”

“Aha! I have to start over then.” Jonathan Brightwater ripped a page off his notepad and resumed scribbling. “If we aren't worrying about balancing that, we might end up with a lot of Eclipses. A developer favorite in one game . . .”

“Don't run yourself down like that, Goliath.” Nonneros Under the Moonlight grinned at him, which was an expression not as jovial on a werewolf as on a normal gangster. Or maybe it was. It depended on the audience's loan situation.

“Hm? Oh. Right. I don't feel bad about being a favorite. I figure that usually just comes down to they guessed wrong about who will blow up. Look at Bel Felicitous Fasde, for example.”

“I'm looking. What about him?” asked Captain Hwanimesca, the latest-released officer in two separate categories: bumans and people who care more about sales, advertising, and the industry in general than games as such.

Nonneros filled her in. “If all that looking gets you to thinking maybe he stands out more than a clean shirt at the corner dive, that's because they brought in a fancy guest artist for him. He had a big intro too, the kind where Cadmos gets to be ineffectual for the whole event. The players didn't like him too much, though. None of that earlier stuff matters too much when you get thrown in the Flood Warper pool with Summer Minsie, Quircy Rau, and even that new skuman girl, Plemodioratule. If you rig part of it, don't forget to rig the rest, is the lesson here.”

“Wow! He didn't even slow down on that one! I have to call her Diora.” A passing Local Fisher gave a centaur curtsy to Nonneros, who tipped his hat in return.

“Thanks.” Captain Hwanimesca pondered that and came to the obvious conclusion. “The obvious conclusion is that they'll try to push him again. Bel for Ersatz Struggle! Right? Right? Right?”

“They must have given up by now,” Tinni Ilx objected. Jonathan Brightwater, however, was nodding as he wrote, and Skaya looked thoughtful. Disconcerted, Tinni asked, “But what would be different this time? What's changed?”

“The audience,” Hwanimesca answered. “The context too. Dosellian Urapta said classes and elements won't matter. Yeah?”

“They likely will not, or at least not in the same way or to the same degree.”

“So if that's part of what hampered him, consider him dehampered. And then you'll have all these fighting guys who only know him by the design. Hold on, I'm looking again. Uh huh. Yeah. So I don't know how much they'll take to a guy who looks like he's working an accountant gimmick in a strip club, sure, yeah, but at least he's free of that standard look. You know, the guy you assume is supposed to be handsome just because there isn't any indication he isn't.”