Nighttime in Mutsu City is honestly a little chilly, even in summer. This must be the result of the magical energies concentrated in Mount Osore. The heat from the sulfur and magic rise up so much that it causes immense snowfall in the winter. I am not a scientist or a [Mage] though, so my guess may not be completely accurate.

Still, walking through the downtown Tanabu district is pleasant at night, even if my partner next to me is a very unexpected one.

Julie Rafati, wife of Delta Rafati. The latter is one of my dearest friends, even if she sometimes takes a word like friendship and violently rejects it. But Julie herself has never had much in connection with me. Our only encounter before the war was when she came to Los Angeles to pick Delta and Francis up and pummeled my obnoxious clone into submission with a single slap.

We should be rivals, or something like that.

But there is one thing that we both realize keeps us from being total strangers: We’re both reincarnated North Spirans. But only I possess the memories to keep my identity. She only possesses the hair and the eyes.

I ’m glad we are out here tonight, even if I have more than a small amount of anxiety towards being with someone who has mostly been hostile to me thus far.

“It’s the first time I’ve been in company with another of my kind in a long time,” I say. “Aside from my sibling who is partly to blame for the entire war, but that’s neither here nor there since I myself have much fault in it as well.”

“Wait, you helped cause all this?” Julie shoots a glare of me that reminds me a little bit of Delta. But without the open menace. She’s very good at shrouding her emotions.

“Not directly, no. I was manipulated into it, honestly. I am what your wife would call a ‘fucking moron.’”

“Ah, that sounds like her,” she says. “But how did you get manipulated? Also, want to go into this place?”

“Sure thing. It says ‘Snack Bar Grande’ on the sign... What in the world is a snack bar?”

“I guess a bar that serves snacks,” she says.

We enter the place, and indeed it is a bar that serves snacks. The bartender is an older woman, probably above sixty, and most of the other guests are elderly as well. They greet us with heavy dialectal Japanese that I cannot parse whatsoever.

I look at Julie and she shakes her head. “Not a word.”

“Your Japanese is better than mine by now, though, right?”

“A little. I studied it with Master Keitou as a guide to aid in spellcasting. But after a while, I didn’t really need it anymore. She says it’s because I’m able to draw and use Destiny Cards without even really trying, or something like that.”

“All the benefits of Destiny, without the curse of Life Points... What a life that would be. Although they are much less of a hindrance now that I am B-Rank.”

“I don’t even know what class I am, let alone rank,” Julie says. “Anyway. About your history with the war?”

We take our drinks and cling them together. I have a lemon sour and she has a whiskey on the rocks. We consume away. Thirty minutes of free refills for about twenty American dollars means we are certainly getting a bad deal out of this, but oh well, we are supporting the local economy.

“I will divert as much blame as possible, you know,” I tell her. “I am a biased source.”

“Still.”

“Then I will say that I am not faultless, but I did perform some fairly stupid actions that led to everything that happened here. When I became King of Santa Barbara, I put a public face on myself that made it much easier for the U.S. government to capture me and learn the secrets of the Destiny Deck System. I was explicitly told by the South African Secret Service to keep my head low and I failed at that.”

“Well, you’re a hero,” Julie says, sipping her whiskey. “You can’t just stand by and let bad things happen, I assume.”

“Not at all.”

“Then that’s fine.”

“But I also became far too trusting of allies who were using me to my own ends,” I say. “On Mystix, I had a ghost. Um, long story. But I had two allies who were both working against each other and I was so blinded by loyalty and familial bonds that I let them destroy each other in the process. And one of them, my own sibling, helped open the pathway to allow the U.S. to cross into The Goddess’s Domain.”

“So you think it’s all your fault?”

“No. Well, yes. I know it wasn’t, but I still feel very much at fault for my stupidity.”

“Can’t be helped.” She finishes off her whiskey, taps the glass twice against the countertop, and the bartender takes it for exchange. “If you’re an idiot, then you just have to make that an asset. Not an excuse.”

“Eh?” I’m less than halfway through my lemon sour. Old orc Borguk on Mystix would be ashamed at how slowly I’m drinking right now.

“Sounds like you’ve got a whole horde of chessmasters trying to use you to their own ends. Only way you can get around that is by being too stupid to control.”

“Chessmasters using me... I guess you’re right. At every turn, I’ve had leaders with master plans guiding me. Mestopholees, Rare, Joe Biden, now even Master Keitou...”

“Keitou’s fine. A little ambitious, but she means well.”

“Do you think her plan is solid?”

“It’s the only one we have.”

“Mm.”

“But.” Julie stares me in the eyes with an intensity I’ve never seen. “We’re definitely going to fail.”