Somewhere far away, nearly as far on the map as an officer could go before Part 3 of the story started, and almost a whole day later, Society Page Lasva crossed the countryside with her long, high-society dress hitched up in her hands. She looked as ladylike as anyone had ever seen her, except nobody did see her. Suppose they had, though. Everything might have ended up different.

“There's no reason but one for a vanilla, sprinkle-free donut like Cadmos to go train in the old genius village, and that's crime. 'Oh, don't bother looking for me there, nothing at all is going on, no smuggling or counterfeiting or anything!' Yeah, sure. Maybe a graduate with a pencil sharpened for the first time and mud-free shoes will fall for that, but not this reporter. Yikes!” She pushed herself back up and kicked the rock that dared interfere with her mission. Bribed by Cadmos? Almost certainly. “If this is a legitimate operation, why don't they run a train out here and put up a bungalow? Sometimes I think I'm the only one around here with a brain. The others are just walking forward until they hit something.”

She navigated toward that famous spot guarded by hedges higher than a stuman wearing a showy hat for a festival where once a bunch of genii, the little equippable buddies officers loved and refused to allow out of their sight, attempted to create a colony run according to the highest principles of equality and tranquility. It lasted a couple days. Now officers held punching contests there. The one who staggers back over the line loses, was the usual rule.

But not then, because the coolest cadre of the blandest dudes you ever saw occupied the place and ejected everything and everyone except themselves and hardcore training. Tires from Dust and Highway lay flat on the ground. Get those knees up, Cadmos! An extra bonus tire served as a swing for the coaches. Saptres Muria had drawn a series of concentric circles and put up posts at various distances and angles since he had no idea whether the spinoff's stages would be 2D or 3D. Work on that spacing, Cadmos! A stream with logs floating in it might require more dexterity to cross than it seemed at first, given that there was no stream. Just a ditch. With spikes. Don't fall in, Cadmos!

Weights, hurdles, a kangaroo wearing boxing gloves, all the essentials for training had been assembled, but none were in use. There was only Cadmos and a bunch of officers either clinging to him or yelling at him. Or? And. “Stop jumping! Use the sword, not the fist!” Solemn Declaration stuck to yelling for centaur-related space reasons.

“I'll try, guys.” Cadmos sheathed his sword. He bent his knees, his fingers twitched on the hilt, and his eyes focused on the target post. In the blink of an eye he drew, dashed forward, paused, leapt into the sky carrying all the attached officers with him, and twisted midair to lead with his left arm and its clenched fist. “Oh.”

“This is getting ridiculous. No, it's wrong of me to say that. It started ridiculous, became farcical, and now it's just, well, I'm going to come out and say it. I'm becoming depressed. I can feel it.” Hemt T. Elf extricated himself from the pile after the inelegant landing and shook off Rares like a wet dog. “I've seen you not jump before, or rather, I don't recall ever seeing you jump before the announcement. It isn't something people do much of in Commandment of Hero, if we look at it holistically.”

“Outside of the Annual Jump Rope and Breakdance Harasser Benefit,” Ben I. Sloup added.

“We never ended up doing that, did we? It never happened when I was a Harasser. There just wasn't a lot of interest.”

“No. We didn't. 'Let's do something as a class, like the Reapers do!' I made that my promotional slogan, but now I realize that just put people off. Nobody wants to be like Reapers.”

“Correct. Everybody wants to be a Reaper. We just watched Cadmos try to reap the clouds. Class envy is the only explanation for his sudden exuberance.” Resident Reaper expert Ulrik's assertion won support from fellow Reaper connoisseur Burmin Trivvis.

Prominent Champion Cadmos, however, differed in his interpretation of recent events. “I'm really sorry, guys. Ever since the data capture session, I haven't been myself. Those lights may have hypnotized me into being a, what's it called again?”

“Loser.”

“Moron.”

“Milksop.”

“Low tier.”

“Obligatory inclusion.”

“Slave to unreasoning passions.”

“Platformer mascot.”

“A beneficiary of a corrupt system!” Society Page Lasva charged in before any of the bland clan had a chance to destroy the contraband, or counterfeiting plates, or whatever it was they were doing over there.

“I remember now. A shoto. Hi, Lasva. How's your day been?”

“Aggravating at first, when I didn't find you lounging around Freegate like usual. But after I did some footwork to figure out where you went, I felt a real sense of pride and accomplishment.” Lasva stamped down on the squirming pile of officers to emphasize the powerful confidence she felt. Next she readied her pencil and notepad for action. “Speaking of things you don't deserve to experience, first question. What are your feelings on being guaranteed a spot in Commandment of Hero: Ersatz Struggle based on no merit of your own, but just a whim of the developers when they made you the first character to appear in the story?”

“Well, you're right, Lasva. I don't feel pride at all. Instead I'm just overwhelmed when I reflect on what a priceless opportunity I was given to be a part of this wonderful game from the very beginning, all the more because of how much unimaginable potential the future has. Recent gameplay modes such as National Hunt demonstrate the studio's continued commitment to exploring what can be done with a mobile game instead of aiming for a minimally viable product and collecting money until it gets stale and shuts down. If that weren't enough, the writers are expanding the world and its lore far beyond what anyone expected as we move deeper into Part 3 as they bring us countries with distinctive cultures and history that have already produced officers sure to get huge fanbases of their own.”

“Are you trying to put me out of a job? It'll take me all day to edit that down to something usable! 'Recent gameplay modes such as National Hunt demonstrate the studio's continued commitment to . . . collecting money . . .' That doesn't make enough sense to be plausible, but too much to rile up the plebs. Yeesh. Second question, and try to do better.”

“I have to be honest, Lasva.”

“When future officers are announced for Commandment of Hero: Ersatz Struggle with more justification than you have, what measures will you take to undercut them?”

“I'm not going to undercut them, Lasva.”

The mountain of bland characters, or blountain for short, heaved. Its convulsions sent both the interviewer and her victim tumbling while seven vaguely good-looking youths stood, dusted themselves off, and declared as one, “We'll do the undercutting!”

“I predict that may end up happening, at least,” Saptres Muria appended.

“There's no use trying to distance yourself now, two-star.” Solemn Declaration pointed at Lasva's inescapable notepad. “She's already recorded your words.”

“Huh? Are you a dunce, or do you think I am? Headlines and Rares don't mix. Sometimes one of them sneaks into a story as 'anonymous source,' because I can't remember their names and never tried, but anything more prominent than that and readers' eyes slide right off the page.”

“What if we pull some zany scheme?” Burmin Trivvis asked.

She shrugged. “The public would rather hear about what Minsie S. Triddel had for breakfast than how Nobody I. Careabout made away with all of Freegate like C***** S******. Maybe if you more looked the part, like Sibyl. Best I can do is claim some UR put you up to it, speculate on the sinister motives behind it, and hope AGN buys the story.”

King Ostros joined the conversation after he finished adjusting his fancy crown. “What a battle this is, where we trick Lasva so that she forgets to ask her insidious questions and she confounds us by throwing invented terms into the conversation. I do wonder what victory means in this context, but it would ruin the flow to pause and figure it out.”

“I can't be sure, but usually UR refers to officers of the Ultra Rare rarity,” Burmin Trivvis offered.

“Yes.” Ostros examined the Rare to determine whether he was joking, which is always a concern when one hangs out with new people. All he saw was plate, a halberd, and an unremarkable face. Unremarkably handsome and confidence-inspiring, that is. “Thank you, but if an AGN rarity has been added, no one told me. Certainly not Lasva, whose job that theoretically is.”

“Playing dumb is the first refuge of a scoundrel, King Ostros.” Lasva pulled Cadmos back by his tunic. He was attempting to resume his training, but productivity and press conferences never crossed paths. “You know just from hearing the letters that I mean the All Games Network, and you know from hearing those words what's up. At first they wanted to call it the Pan-Ludic News Network, but I wasn't having any of that. 'Pan-ludic isn't a real word. How do you expect the rubes to trust you if you start out by making stuff up? Besides, you can't say PLNN in a nice way.' I had to tell them that! Yeesh.”

Solemn Declaration scoffed. “I can't say AGN, either. Wait. I just did.”

“You betcha. It's suggestive, too. Does it signify the agony the powers-that-be will suffer when we expose the truth? Or does it come from the agonistic way we compete with all news outlets to bring you the freshest, truest, most significant news items contextualized so even non-reporters can understand the significance the way we intend for them to?”