“It's immodest of me to say so, but I was hoping to win. I did not. But then, neither did Count Poitnem, and look at his reaction.” Darlotte Glofal contemplated for a time that man's energetic defiance against the heavens themselves as he stood fixed in the public training grounds firing elementally themed psychic blasts upward before she spoke again. “Oh, but I'm simply not audacious enough to follow in his well-formed footsteps. Why shouldn't we all take a moment to consider what sort of improvement is right for me?”

Quille Treten and Stan tasked their brains with inventing a justification for her to keep doing their chores for them, but their two-star minds failed to overcome that four-star challenge. Being a three-star, Local Fisher cast a line out there and hoped a fish would wander by, metaphorically but also less so. “You've got speed and technique. You need a secret move that isn't on your Skill Star. We'll call it Command Grab of Hero! Ha ha!”

King Ostros laughed along with her. “A maneuver capable of renaming the game. Perhaps the developers came up with Commandment of Hero after a long night of fiercely playing K*** o* F****** instead of doing their jobs. They remember as the light of dawn spreads over the sleeping Earth the publisher told them to provide a list of name suggestions. That scenario I invented reminds me of something true I learned while we poked around the game's foundations before we had events to occupy us.”

Torn between his interest in fun historical facts and his unwillingness to respond to King Ostros's question-bait, Stan approached the issue at an angle. “When you say foundations, that reminds me of something too. It was you and your royal sister who discovered how to reach Opuwa in the first place, wasn't it? We ought to have some statues made up in your honor and place them around the options menu, spurting water so I have something to drink when I'm down there.” He moved to demonstrate by spitting but left off when he saw Darlotte Glofal shiver.

Ostros adopted a spitting pose himself for a second before he relaxed and responded. “I'll have to insist you not do that. The more substitutes for us there are, the more likely we'll be dumped in a pit and forgotten someday. Replaceability has been on my mind lately, thanks to UTAS proliferation and this little story.

“Did you know the developers considered several designs for the main character before they settled on the Cadmos we see every day? Or used to, since he's evolved now. 'It's obvious something like that happened,' you think now, but if you're as honest as I know you all to be, you'll admit it's only obvious if you think about it, which none of us do until someone else brings it up. Now that we're all at the same point in the syllabus, I can confirm some of the rejected designs were recycled as normal officers.”

Local Fisher reared in excitement. “Oh! Oh! I want to guess! How many?”

“Three besides Cadmos, so far as I know.”

“Great! Are they bigger than a breadbox?”

“Probably are unless one of them is Tramda Olex,” Quille Treten muttered to Stan, who chuckled.

Uamna had been staring at King Ostros and his smile that every moment seemed wider than before despite having long since reached its maximum extent. “Are you one of them?”

“Was it that obvious? Yes. Two left.”

Local Fisher kept her focus on her internal processes, which made sense seeing how unlikely it was that the other two were within visible range. “Hmmmmmm. Are all of them generic main character types?”

“I don't mind the insult, but that question's far too vague.”

“Right. Sorry. Are the others in Team Generic?”

“One is.”

“That's too bad. It's no fun if I just guess every member.”

King Ostros inclined his head and waited for Local Fisher's sole shot.

“Main character . . . proposed but NOT accepted . . . lost to Cadmos . . . no way it's a centaur, so my brother's out. Ben I. Sloup came in so much later than the others, and he was clearly made to look unimpressive on purpose so it's a surprise when he does something big in the story. Um. I've got it! The rarity-challenged guy in the toga! Sapper Muriel!”

Neither of the Rares bothered to correct the name, but Ostros had to set her straight on a different point. “You were close. It's the other Rare.” Quille Treten snorted at that while Stan opted for a bit of snickering. Later, in their even freer time, they collaborated with a symposium to determine how best to mock Ulrik over that new information.

“OK! That leaves me one to get right.” Local Fisher crossed her arms, during which maneuver her agile teammates managed to dodge her fishing line as it swung around.

Darlotte Glofal stamped her foot charmingly but decisively. “Come now, Princess Local Celebrity. How long will you go on with this before you come out and say it's Figro?”

“It is?”

“It is,” King Ostros acknowledged. “Could you elaborate on the process that led you to that conclusion? I was surprised when I found out, and now it falls upon me to learn how dumb I am.”

“There's no need for any process. Have you seen the way Figro behaves? It's positively a scandal, the things he does. It's more the way he does them, but regardless. Imagine what our game would be like with him as the lead!”

Obedient to Darlotte's urging, all of Team Takedown whipped up some quick fanfiction. Start with a spaceman who comes to a fantasy planet and never leaves it, or else does so late to resolve the main plot, just like a S*** O**** game. That part was obligatory based on Figro's backstory. The hero will be captured on a regular basis owing to sneaky traps and betrayals, whereas Cadmos lost fights in events to make new officers look good. One-liners after kills instead of skill names just before them. One to five beautiful women for each new chapter, so no change except that in Cadmos's Commandment of Hero the lucky ladies showed up in later chapters and events sometimes. No wonder Darlotte Glofal hated the idea.

Hyl DeMereanch finished his mental sketch first. “Sadly, that does sound worse. Worse because it counts on the main character to carry the story, which is impossible in a long-running live service mobile game. Sad, because as a singleplayer game with a normal story mode, it seems fine. Formal Figro was implemented in the wrong type of game. Who will weep for him?”

“I won't. He'd be insufferable as the male lead. At least in our game he can ply his disreputable trade in the occasional event to entertain players, which is the most we can hope from him. Why, if I had to choose between having to see a one-star become an Eclipse and Figro replace Cadmos, even in a spinoff, I would surely collapse dead at the merest prospect of either of those things coming true. And if I did truly have to decide, ugh!” Darlotte Glofal shuddered. She discovered in her distress an unshakable conviction deep within, much as when a player who has failed to get the weekly PvP rewards decides to get serious about gearing up Nonneros Under the Moonlight. “It wouldn't surprise me one bit if he were listening in on us right now and heard the Command Grab of Hero joke. Even now that scoundrel is concocting a way to make that move real so he can become the new main character. That won't do him any good of course, because it won't work. Riches below! What if it does? With all of you as my witnesses, I swear to develop the Command Grab of Hero before Figro can!”

Hyl DeMereanch somehow managed not to applaud. “Uh, all right. It's good to have a goal, they say, and I'm not against appending 'any goal' to that. I recommend caution about letting your ambition grow so big that you try to become the main character yourself, though. Your popularity would suffer.”

“Do you think so? That it isn't an inherent quality of Cadmos himself?” Darlotte twirled her handbag in thought while she engaged her underlings in a dense philosophical conversation on the topic of popularity, story roles, and why the people who always say such-and-such supporting character should get a spinoff series are wrong.

“So that's their angle, huh? Command Grab of Hero. That proves one thing. They announced the spinoff too early. People are getting weird during the wait.” Gary Whitecrest began to operate the retracting function of the giant, curved novelty telescope with a big eyeball painted on the end which at the time arced through the sky from Team New Blood's bungalow to the open field where Team Takedown was having a tea party.

Ozric Orn Pallad watched the procedure, fascinated. “That's a remarkably handy machine. I still don't understand how you can hear conversations through it.”

Captain Hwanimesca patted her latest purchase with pride. “That function cost extra. I was happy to pay it. Lunacy Bike has a lot of neat stuff. Dungeon Express Re:Development is overrated because everybody starts out wanting a fluffier pillow, and after that you start browsing catalogues and feel like you're real wild if you order a double-ended broom so you can make your UTAS clean the floor and the ceiling at the same time. Meanwhile, this kart game has a cannon that launches a grappling hook you can snag on the summit of a mountain and pull back to double it over and turn it into a catapult. Are you kidding me? No, go ahead, buy your bidet, it's really cool. Yeesh.”

Regardless of Captain Hwanimesca's biting, hurtful opinions about Dungeon Express Re:Development's inventory which caused most of Team New Blood to look away from her and scuff the floor with their footwear a little bit, the telescope was a big hit. It even caught sight of Formal Figro where he hid behind a plastic tree planted near the tea party in an attempt to make the fields around the data renewal facility less sterile. None of his affairs seemed relevant to their concerns, but one likes to keep abreast of things.

Things such as beta tournament results. “It's a good sign to see a Marileanna player in the top eight. Congratulations, Ozric Orn Pallad. We're proud of you. In your expert opinion, would it be an advantage for Marileanna to add a command grab to her toolkit? The name notwithstanding.”

Ozric thought over Flawless Pedigree's question. “Yep,” he answered. “Ahem. Yes, it would of course. There is precedent. If we examine D*** o* A**** closely, even intimately, not that I, uh, well, anyway, K***** has one of those. It's helpful and productive.”

Hwanimesca shook Ozric in case elaborations might spill out of him, but he was empty. “I don't know get what all the hemming in there was about, much less the hawing, but you're saying there's no reason not to try to learn a new throw in the gap before release, right? Does anybody else have a reason why not?”

“I have two.” Marileanna held out one hand holding a rake and another that gripped a broom.

“The point isn't lost on me, but the animators clearly don't care because you can still throw. Never mind though.” Flawless Pedigree examined a sheet of paper tacked to the wall on which Marileanna had copied the data from her last session on the advice of Dosellian Urapta. “Speaking of K***** from D*** o* A****. What about getting the startups on these low attacks down? Ideally below twenty frames. To practice, we can even make you do the duck walk.”

He hoped to get some smiles from that, but instead Marileanna agreed instantly. Clazdius Oranio consoled him. “Spend your time among the younger crowd and you get this sort of result. Nothing for it, my friend.”

“Yeah. Let's go back to talking about summer like proper old officers.”