Sal Silverfish thumped the papers onto the desk. “Alright! That’s all major repairs accounted for, excellent work and a hearty thank-you to all of our construction and demolitions experts for their tireless efforts! And since that takes care of all of the small updates, onto our final order of business!” He squinted momentarily at his documents. “Contessa, would you please be seated with the arbitrators?”

A monstrously tall woman made entirely of gold stood to her full ten feet of height, her featureless golden eyes and owl-like visage locked in an eternal neutral impasse. She made no attempt to soften the impacts of her steps, rattling the loose tiles with each graceful stride. When she finally made it to the table, she waited for Sal to pull a chair out for her, which he did... then pulled it out a lot further, hoping it was enough. She sat gently down on the seat, which groaned under her weight despite how thin her frame seemed proportionally. “Present,” she stated almost boredly.

“Ah, right!” Arbitrator Melliode, a wisened owl in a feather-pattern dress, nodded after a moment. “You’re the one representing the Automa for this meeting?”

“That’s correct,” she said, seemingly uninterested. “My brethren are a simpering and apologetic lot by nurture, so it falls to me to handle their affairs in this situation.”

“... Okay then,” Arbitrator Chen, a stout panda with a friendly face, acknowledged. “Well, we have an impassioned argument from one of our citizens that gained a lot of ranks on the PETnet, and it boils down to this: the Inklings invaded Earth and not weeks later were made citizens. Now, past a terrifying attack by the Automa, we are asked to make you citizens as well. What message does it send when we react to violence with open arms?”

“’The Automa’ did nothing of the sort,” Contessa smoothly rejected. “You faced a tiny contingent of recalcitrant militants and we,” she emphasized, “Came to your aid.”

“You say they were rebels,” Melliode put her glasses on and read some documents. “But they were enforcing your standard doctrine at the time, were they not? Taking out any rogue elements and going back underground?”

“No,” she said flatly. “The aliens had already been voted on as an element outside of our influence. They were acting purely on their own.”

“Not... completely,” Chen argued. “They were accompanied by the terrifying entity known as Grendel, whose face will haunt the dreams of our children for years to come.”

“Ah yes, Grendel, whom we had contained completely for centuries, only for The Destroyer to come and free her, duped by an idiotic ploy made by... who was it again? Authoritus? Mmyes, I do believe they were yours.”

Melliode objected. “They were a–”

“–band of rebels?” Contessa finished for her.

Chen sighed softly. “We take your point. But beyond the legal and logical arguments, there is still the emotional one.”

“Emotional arguments??” Contessa demanded.

“... Yes,” Chen affirmed. “You cannot simply tell a populace what is logically true and expect them to eat their feelings on the matter. All governments who tried were obliterated in their hubris. We would be remiss to leave them off the table.”

“Bah, now we’re doing a therapy session? Massaging furry feelings is not my forté.”

“Like it or not,” Melliode insisted, “Our people will be slower to accept yours. You’re synonymous with ‘monster’ in our visual vocabulary, and holograms will only do so much– not that you should have to use them.”

“So you admit to your prejudice,” Contessa leaned forward keenly.

“Of course,” the owl woman affirmed. “Pretending won’t get us anywhere. You cannot substitute statecraft with pride.”

“Though it is worth pointing out,” Ginsmen butted in, unmoved by the towering metal woman, “That there was a reason for that genetic memory buried so deep in our collective psyche, wasn’t there?”

“Yes, and what of it? If you miss your ancestors so much, I have good news– they’re us.”

“Are you sure you’re really human underneath all those pieces of artifice? After all those, erm, rakings, was it?”

This genuinely amused her. “Hah! We’re more human than you are.”

“An interesting assertion,” Chen remarked. “How do you figure?”

“I’ve seen how you carry on, group-bonding through obscene rituals of flesh. You’re more like bonobos than anything we would recognize. We’re too jealous, too possessive.”

“Of partners?”

“Of everything.” She glared at an artificial arm that darted up in the dark. “And no, the Dowry System Theory of Human Subjugation does not explain this nature away.” It lowered sheepishly. “And we’re so fond of dominating one another. Some of us like to pretend that the possibility of silicon means we can escape these eventualities, but even fully raked individuals– all memories wiped, no personality snapshot to speak of– still exhibit these behaviors.”

A small digital voice cleared her throat from the front row. A very small automa with a blue chassis and white hair sat with her legs crossed. “Please note that Contessa is not an expert in psychology, pre-splice or otherwise.” The small girl gave the huge woman a stern look. “Those opinions are entirely editorializing on her part.”

“Would you like to run these proceedings?” Contessa countered.

“Not at all,” the girl retorted with smarmy pleasantry. “Please return to dispensing your legal expertise.”

Contessa dragged her claws across the groove in the polished table’s lacquered exterior, left when Jacent punched it in half. “Fine. Despite the fact– and it is a fact– that we do not owe you reparations, I’m not an unreasonable woman. What sort of compromise do you propose?”

“Well!” Melliode jumped at the opportunity. “Your man, ah... Truss, was it? He was indispensable during the repair efforts; he showed a strength and dexterity with large tools and materials that even our most advanced power suits can’t replicate. We’d very much like to have his assistance on further direly overdue projects to beautify and modernize the city.”

Contessa would have rolled her eyes if she could. “You had to ask me for that? If you’d just asked him, he would have jumped at the chance like a loyal puppy. Sorry, is that racist?” she asked smugly.

Chen kept a stiff upper lip. “Also, we would like to utilize your teleportation technology.”

Contessa tilted her head, tapping the table. “A trickier proposition. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t jealously guard it or anything, you’re not monkeys– I’m realizing how many unflattering comparisons summon animals to mind, unfortunate, that– but there’s the problem of... unforeseen consequences.”

“What do you mean? Is it not stable?”

“It’s stable for us,” she answered. “We have no idea what it does to organic things. We haven’t had the opportunity nor inclination to test it. We do have some feature films imagining what might happen, and they all belong to the Horror genre.”

Melliode’s nose wrinkled. “Noted. But the Ink Well seemed to use it just fine, didn’t it?”

“You tell me, they’re your citizens, not ours. Maybe you should examine them sometime.”

She nodded, it was a good point. “Further research needed, then. Ah, last item: The weaponry you can hide in your bodies is the subject of some great anxiety in the public’s imagination. Could you properly explain what ‘Asimov Triggers’ are?”

“Of course,” Contessa replied smoothly. “You see, there were a series of silly little books by a man in the times of your ancestors that imagined some far off future when machines gained sentience– an absurd flight of fancy, you’ll agree– and in them, he imagined mankind creating the Rules of Robotics. The very first one stated that a robot could not harm, nor by inaction allow to come to harm, any human being. We designed these functions to interpret any digitized neural signals that resemble this impulse, and, quite simply, disable them.”

“Any human being, eh?” Ginsmen peered suspiciously. “Do we qualify?”

Contessa laughed. “A keen question. I will answer by demonstration. Arbitrator Ginsmen, I am going to crush your frail body underneath my heel.” She rose fully to her feet, lifted her leg–

“That won’t be necessary!” Ginsmen looked up at the huge leg with concern.

Contessa froze, her limb seams glowing danger red, then jerked back, and slowly lowered her limb. “Fully functioning, as you can see. I really wanted to step on him.”

“I know the feeling,” Melliode joked. “Compelling. But let’s really test it.” She stood up, turned around, put her arms at her chest, and fell backward.

Contessa moved with great speed and care to catch her, slowly lifting her back to her feet. “Don’t do that again, it hurts my reputation.”

Arbitrator Melliode chuckled. “Well, I’m convinced.” 

Chen grinned. “Make Ginsmen do it, then we’ll know for sure!”

“Not on your life,” he drawled, to the laughter of the meet.

-
- -
-

“HUP!”

Natalie Grayswift smelled floor mat as she hit the ground once again. 

“Hao de! You’re getting better!” Jazz smiled from above, making a point to not help her up.

“Ugh... not good enough.” Nat pushed herself up with the help of her giant mechanical hand. “I need to know how to counter that.”

“Ohhh. That’s the move he used, huh?” Jasmine tilted her head.

“Yes, and I have to be able to–”

“No.” Jazz raised a hand. “This isn’t Jie Xian’s favorite, Changquan, where there’s a manual full of moves and they all come with answers like it was a math test. It’s more like... Wing Chun, where you work on your fundamentals until you’ve got it down enough to cut corners and make hard reads on your opponent.”

“So Wing Chun’s your favorite...” Natalie noted conspiratorially.

“Don’t say it like that, that’s so creepy!”

“So then why aren’t you teaching me Wing Chun?”

“Because Muay Thai is stronger.”

This surprised Natalie. A sly smile spread across her face. “So you’re saying, I could beat you?”

She laughed. “No.”

“Aww...” She frowned and sat on the ground, looking frustrated. 

“This Manfield guy really got in your head bad, huh?”

Natalie stared out into the middle distance. “Both times I went over there, I felt like I was in one of Cedric’s traps. Except, where I could just wait until Cedric got too greedy or angry, this guy just... didn’t. He took no unnecessary risks. When one thing failed, he tried another, no hesitation. He didn’t even look at me like a person, just like... an obstacle, a puzzle for him to solve.”

“Oh, like you do to your enemies.” Jazz smirked. 

Natalie frowned up at her. “That’s the worst part. I see so much of myself in him, but he does the bastard version of whatever I would’ve done. When he baited me into using his powers, it was to send me a message: I can beat you at your own game. And he did. He literally beat me by popular vote.”

“So? What are you going to do?”

“...Good question.” Natalie took a drink of her water bottle and got up, initiating the spar again. She’d been surprised back when Jacent taught her that he and Jasmine had developed a soft way of sparring when they were kids, one that used very little force and focused on tagging rather than striking; it almost felt like playing. She’d imagined Jazz to be much rougher in practice, but sure enough, it was the same here, with her. She couldn’t fault her on effectiveness; it was much less stressful than hitting each other, and raised her confidence a lot. She traded tags and blocks and got into the rhythm once more, her body allowing her mind to wander as she went through the motions. “I don’t want the crown, but I don’t want Manfield to have it either, and it’s clear he wants it. He’s too dangerous to have even more power.” She jabbed and ducked and managed to tag Jazz on the hip with a faint kick. “What would you do?”

“Kill him,” she said without hesitation or emphasis.

“Haha, yeah, that’d make it easy, for sure.” Nat chuckled for a moment, before realizing. “Wait... you’re not joking, are you.”

She regarded her seriously. “Nope.”

“Wow. I guess I’m a little surprised.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention.” Jazz spun around and stopped her elbow inches from Natalie’s throat. Once the shock wore off, she went back to a neutral position. “Listen, power hungry old men are the worst thing on earth. For you, what happened was history, a bunch of stories and names. For me, though? I let one old man live, and he ended the whole world. Jie Xian may hesitate, but I don’t.” 

Natalie considered the other girl. The fact that she was half of Captain Comet really impressed on her just how much Jacent had to have been holding her back. The whole picture was starting to come into focus. “Yeah, I get your point... but I don’t think I can do that.”

“Fine. Let me do it.”

“Look, I’m just not even sure I physically– wait.” She creased her brows. “Are you serious? You’d take the life of a man you’ve never met, just because I asked you to?”

“Grayswifts are the reason I have a life at all,” she regarded her with those intense blue eyes. “Just say the word, and I’ll carry that load for you. It won’t burden me even a little.”

“... You’re more intense than I imagined.” She wiped sweat from her hair. “Look, I’m not... this isn’t a matter of me having some kind of strict rule against it or something. I understand that some people can’t be reasoned with. I know some people are too dangerous. I’m not a kid, life’s complicated, I–... I get that.”

“Smart. I could never get Jie Xian to see that.”

Pathos’ games ran through her memory. “The problem is that he’s too prepared, too strong; killing him would take everything I have and then some. I’d probably have to sacrifice someone in the process, and that’s what I’m not willing to do.” She nearly tagged Jasmine with a couple of jabs. “And if I killed him, I’d probably have to kill Cedric as well. And, well. I know exactly what killing him led to.”

“I guess you saw how that plays out. So my way’s the wrong way, huh?”

Natalie shook her head. “Neither you nor Jacent were wrong. You chose your way because the world can’t work if people never face consequences. He chose his way because he wanted other people to see that he could be trusted.”

“Yeah, well, that got us a world that gave up on him, and a man that destroyed that world.”

Natalie smiled. “I’ll just have to be better than both of you.”

Jasmine sneered, then grinned. “Let’s see how you deal with THI-” Her hip joint made a loud pop, then a sharp click as it popped out of place. “Ah, shit!” She hit the mat unceremoniously.

Natalie blinked. “Whoops. Well… say ‘hi’ to Mom for me.”

Jazz grumbled. “You’re dismissed.”

Natalie shook the sweat off and walked off to change, checking her PET.

[PrettyKitty: Patrol’s getting boring, I think we finally got the last of these gear boys.

BagelHunter: Good, I’m honestly running out of creative ways to blow them up.

PrettyKitty: You almost done learning My Ties with Jazz?

BagelHunter: Yeah, just got done. Wait, ‘Jazz?’ No nicknames? =P

PrettyKitty: It’s the weirdest thing, we’ve been hanging out, but I still don’t feel like I know her, you know?
PrettyKitty: She’s so clowny when we’re all in a group together. I can’t really get a read on her.

BagelHunter: Yeah, true, she doesn’t open up much to me either, even though she always wants to hang out. You think it’s a problem?

…

…

…

BagelHunter: ... You’ve been typing a long time.

PrettyKitty: Yeah, no, I dunno, I guess I’m not sure what direction to take it from. She’s like the opposite of Jacent, wants to eat, drink, OC, everything a pack does, but everyone’s hesitating because she’s just not that open, it’s hard to trust her like that just yet. I feel like she’s gonna get frustrated if somebody doesn’t do something.

BagelHunter: I could see that happening. I was able to slide Jacent into stuff gradually because I speak his language. I feel like Jazz is sorta... too cool for me? Hahaha.

PrettyKitty: Yeah I could see that.

BagelHunter: Hey!

PrettyKitty: Enough about Jazz tho, I don’t want to talk about pack stuff. I wanna go to the comic shop.

BagelHunter: ... Oh! Oh you wanna go on a date.

PrettyKitty: She can be taught!

BagelHunter: HAHA shut up! When should we meet up?

PrettyKitty: Five. I need a shower and some food.

Bagelhunter: See you then.

-
- -
-

Jazz sighed in boredom. “Doc, are we almost done?”

Lorna Grayswift stared intently at a screen that was magnifying something. “I have to make sure the fix to your pelvis socket worked. You’re lucky this wasn’t one of the expensive bits; be careful with this thing, will you?”

“Yeah you’re right, next time I’ll let Spinny The Doom Monkey eat a class full of kindergartners.”

“Ugh, you sound like Natalie.”

Widget smirked. “Give her a break, Jazz, that frame is really hard to fix. There’s a lot of finicky components.”

“Yeah! What she said! I mean there’s your servos, your daughter boards, your refillable gel packs–”

“Can I get bigger thighs this time??”

“– I... yes, sure, honey, whatever you want.” She ran her hand through her hair. “How did you even do this?? I thought the monster was squeezing your chest??”

“Ah, well, you know, I fought it too.”

Widget was taken aback. “Natalie didn’t tell us that.”

“She didn’t see it. By the time she got there, I’d already got grabbed. I hit it with my bat, then put it through the wall, and I didn’t think help was coming so I turned off the limiters and–”

“–Wait, what? Limiters??” Widget asked.

“Yeah, you know, Bad-ass Mode, Warning, We Will Call The Cops Because You’re A Bad Bitch.”

Lorna ahhed in understanding. “Right, yeah, I gated her clock frequency behind a rechargeable power bank in case of–”

“YOU WERE CLOCKING?!” Widget hollered in a panic. “Ohmigod are you okay?! Doc, why did you let her do that at all, that’s insane!”

“In case of an emergency!” Lorna said defensively. “I thought she might need to run away in a hurry sometime.”

“Seriously, Jazz, are you alright??” She tended to her closely, looking into her eyes.

“Well... yeah like, I won, obviously. Other than the cracked leg or whatever, what do you mean??”

Widget seemed exasperated. “I mean the monster headache, the omnicidal rage, the feeling of your humanity falling away while you slip a gear in your head?? The universal consequences of clocking???”

Jasmine stared at her. “Uh... no?” She shrugged. “I didn’t have any of that.”

Widget blinked. “No, that’s impossible. Doc, did you modify her–”

“Did I modify a sandbox???” Doctor Grayswift laughed out loud. “A technology I barely understand, did I try to tweak it? I’m gonna go with no.”

Widget looked completely lost as she gazed at Jasmine. “I don’t understand. How could you–... that doesn’t make any sense. Are you sure you haven’t felt strange?? Bad??”

“Not even a little. If I’m honest, at the time it... kind of felt good?” At this, the beetle bot just squinted, confused.

Lorna tilted her head and peered at Jasmine, as if trying to pry some secret from her. After a few moments, she looked to Widget, raising her eyebrow with mild concern. “Ooh. You don’t think her Synchro Rate is falling, do you?”

Widget seemed baffled by the idea. “I mean it’s such a comprehensive frame, how could it? That’s crazy.”

“Dunno, but it’s possible. Would explain why there’s no consequences.”

Jazz waved her hands. “Hellooo, anybody gonna explain what that means??”

“Um. Hm. Okay.” Lorna thought about it a moment. “So, you can’t just hook a human brain up to wires and download the person inside it, it doesn’t... work that way.” She held up her hands like she was holding a box. “You need to emulate what a brain’s structure is like, 1-to-1. All the neural pathways and synapses and all that, you have to make a working model of the physical object.”

Jazz didn’t look like she understood a lot of the bigger words, but she comprehended the gist. “Yeah, okay, like the food bucket is a mouth.”

“But that’s only half the problem. You have to emulate the body, too. Because so much of the brain is dedicated to, say, feeling your skin, keeping your balance, or detecting when your stomach is upset. When I play a full-dive Virtual Reality game, I’m not being uploaded into my player character, I’m having a bunch of simulated senses– sight, smell, touch– sent to my body to interpret, making me feel like I’m in a different place instead of in my bed. If the game stopped updating any of those inputs, I’d feel really disoriented.”

“I think I get it,” Jazz nodded. “Like your groin stickers and stuff, but for everything.”

“Right. So, if you somehow hot-swapped a human consciousness into a regular computer of some kind, you’d experience a really massive, debilitating kind of dysphoria– a disorientation strong enough to drive you crazy. You take away the feeling of your muscles, your heartbeat, your breathing, you start to freak out, it doesn’t feel right, because the human brain is really sensitive to those kinds of changes. It has to be, there are so many in-built alarm systems to show something’s wrong.”

“Sure, okay.”

“So, for that reason, a sandbox, is really just a machine made to emulate a human brain, 1-to-1. To send you all the right signals to convince you that you’re not a bunch of data grains, you’re a person, with a body that walks and talks and breathes. It’s kind of... tricking you into thinking you’re still flesh and blood. So you can think of your Synchro Rate as how convinced your mind is that your body is yours.”

“Ohhhhhh.” She nodded.

“Pretty much everyone had a low Synchro Rate to start with,” Widget supplied. “Those Nhiloid frames... they weren’t great at maintaining the illusion. The upper limit of their SR was pretty low. But! It did get higher. The longer you’re in a frame, the higher your SR goes, the more natural it feels to move around in.”

Jasmine looked like she was trying to absorb a lot of information. “So, with the Sync Thingy, the higher the better.”

“Exactly. And that’s why clocking is so destructive, it just totally destroys the simulation. Lets you move, think, work in ways that a human brain was never designed to, at a rate that you can’t fully comprehend. That disconnect, it really grinds away at your sanity fast.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I... didn’t get anything like that. It felt good. Like I was in The Zone, you know?”

Widget frowned with concern. “Well, don’t do it again, okay?”

“Tch, what are you, my mom? Anyway, can I get outta here, doc?”

Having finished filling the girl’s legs with shaping gel, she detached the hose from the valve and waved her off. “Yeah, go ahead, I’m gonna start fabricating new casings, in case you break anything else cheap. Seriously though, be careful alright?”

“Sure thing, Doc! See ya! C’mon, Widge, I wanna show you my new skateboard trick.”

-
- -
-

Erwin had never looked more miserable to be surrounded by books. His chin and cheek rested in one hand, which pulled at his bottom eyelid as he regarded the contents of his current tome with some mixture of dread and apathy. The front cover read: Secrets To Success: A Journey, by Clayton Manfield.

“Learned anything?”

“Yeah, how to write a dozen books without saying anything.” He put the thing down on the table in front of him, rubbing his temple. “When he sent you to the hospital, I disliked him. Now that I know what he thinks and talks like? I hate him. How could Cedric read this trash, much less get anything out of it??”

“Manfield targets people who’re down and out, who need something to believe in– namely, him.”

He finished a radioactive-green beverage in a tall, thin glass. “This guy really sucks. I need another concentration booster if I’m gonna make it through another one of these.”

Natalie put a hand on his chair back. “Wow, downing boosters? You’re the study champ, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you need one.”

“Everything about this guy’s philosophy is revolting. He talks about how ‘self-made’ he is every other chapter, acting like he built his city brick-by-brick by himself. I checked, he didn’t; Rockpoint was a small mountain town that he brought a bunch of immigrants to from domes all over the world, and they did all the work on his behalf.”

She folded her arms thoughtfully. “It’d almost be inspiring if he wasn’t such a megalomaniac. So, any cracks in the armor? Psychological weaknesses?”

“No. Or, well, yeah, plenty– but none you could exploit. He’s a jackass, and that would theoretically hurt his making friends... but he’s managed to find a way to make people not just like him, but practically worship him: finding people down on their luck and recruiting them. He indulges their insecurities, they reinforce his god complex.”

She looked down at her feet, staring intensely. “..... Do you think I’m like that?”

“What?? No,” he said without hesitation. “I mean, yeah, I see the similarity, a little, but it’s superficial. You pull people close to you to help them. He does it to help himself. You make friends, he makes servants.”

“I did just kind of assume you’d help me with all of this end-of-the-world stuff, and it took me a while to ask.”

He knit his brows, incredulous. “We were helping each other survive. Saving the world saved us too. And when things finally calmed down for five minutes, you did do the right thing. Okay? You’re not even on the same planet as Clayton Manfield.”

She sighed. “I guess you’re right. You always did know how to beat me in a debate,” she chuckled.

He shoved a pile of books aside the way someone would separate part of a meal they didn’t like, got up, laid down on a chaise lounge, and let out a relieved sigh. He opened one eye and gave her a wry smile. “... But if you still feel like you don’t do enough, I’m in desperate need of good brain chemicals and you haven’t sat on my face in months.”

Natalie let out a weary groan. “God I want to, but I have a date with Carrie later... aw what the hell, one little quickie couldn’t hurt,” she said excitedly.

“Aw yiss!” The ferret grinned, put his hands beside his head as if surrendering, and straightened his neck. “Hit me with it, I’m so ready!”

“You picked the wrong girl to mess with, villain!” Natalie struck a pose at the foot of the lounge, pointing at him. “I’m sending you to hell! COMET CRUSH!” She send herself flying at him, landing on his head with a muffled pillow-like ~THUMP!~

The next several minutes were an excited flurry of muffled moans and giggles. Erwin squeezed her enormous backside around his head and huffed her sweat-pungent bubblegum sticker scent, while Natalie yipped, laughed and squirmed, drooling a little bit at the corners of her mouth at the much-needed relief. This was her favorite position, and Erwin was good at showing the bright side of keeping a pervert for a friend: experience and enthusiasm. She saw him rise up in front of her, and hid it with her hoodie– a cute habit he really enjoyed for some reason. She squeezed her thighs around what of it couldn’t reach her shirt and abs. Minutes upon minutes melted away as she slid back and forth, squeezing his face and shivering. She couldn’t even tell how long it had been when she finally bit her knuckle and let out a sigh of shuddering relief. He’d finished already out of sheer excitement. “Ohhhh god I really needed that...” She rose slowly.

“Urrfhhh, me too...” Erwin slurred, trails of saliva bridging between his mouth and her rump. His eyes lazily gazed at the hateful mound of books. “Wish we could go again.”

“If I didn’t need my stamina for Carrie, I’d pogo on that thing, believe me; I miss it. Actually, we haven’t done OC stuff as a pack in a while, that’d be really fun,” Nat said, pulling up her shorts. “Ooh, especially now that Jacent’s gotten past it. I wonder if we could convince him or if it’s still too soon. Max is always a coin flip, but he is older now, maybe that makes a difference? Shelly’d probably want to bring her boys in; I wouldn’t fight her on it, they’re cute. Oh! We haven’t given Kei the ab-grater yet, he needs to experience that!” She looked back. “... Erwin?”

The ferret stared again at the books, his gaze intense. He got up and started rearranging them in a frenzy. “Improving Your Chances... Competition... ‘Us’ not ‘Me’...”

“What’s going on?” Natalie looked down at the desk.

He stacked books on top of each other until they spelled out: “Impetus.” He looked back at her. 

She stared at it, clear as day. “What... what the hell does that mean?? Didn’t he get his inkling during the invasion? And what’s with the way the picture lines up? That’s weird, it kind of looks like something...”

“I don’t know,” he said soberly. “But now I know there’s more to this than shitty advice.” He groaned. “Which means I have to keep looking...”

“Oh geez, and I have to get to my date! Good luck, Erwin!” She stood up, hip-bumped his cheek encouragingly and bounded off.

 -
- -
-

Chronic Comics wasn’t trying to compete with other stores for prime real estate facing the beach, nor was it looking to muscle in on some center or corner piece where it could blast people’s eyeballs and say “I’M HERE!” No, it was tucked into what counted as the mall equivalent of a dark, quiet corner, with little foot traffic and less noise. Lemmy Katimbwe, a sixty-something emu who looked 30 years older than he should have, had founded the place in his youth after a boarding accident had left him with nothing to do in his recovery but read, and he fell in love with ancient pulp comics– a story he’d tell anyone who would listen. He wasn’t just the owner, he was there every day, at the counter, reading some new arrival he’d been greedily waiting to get his paws on. In that sense, today was just like any other day.

The sound of grav-skiff sneakers landing with a skid, then the telltale digital greeting bell heralded the arrival of Carrie Oakenfield. She was dressed down for the occasion: a sports jersey and short shorts. Not that any modern clothing could contend with her various bulging dimensions, bouncing in the door curls and breasts alike as she did. “Heya Lemmy!” she waved in her familiar way.

“I wondered when one of you real life superheroes was gonna come back here!” he said, his voice about as gentle as a rusty pipe dragged through gravel. “Well welcome back, your highness!” he gestured with sarcastic honor.

Carrie threw her head back and her chest rocked with laughter. “What are you, my grandpa? I didn’t visit you enough in the retirement bullet? I was busy!”

He craned his considerable neck and peered with a cantankerous, wild-eyed stare. “Hey, I remember when you were a knee-high little shit coming in here, wrecking my store, starting up fights with that girl you smooch with now.”

“She started it,” Carrie dismissed. “Anyway, she’s coming here too, soon. We’ve got a date.”

“And you’re spending it here??” he asked, incredulous, eyes bugging from the magnification of his thick rhomboid glasses. “I can’t play the fuckin’ violin, you know; I don’t serve one long spaghetti noodle you can suck face with,” he riffed, absentmindedly scratching his gobble neck.

“Don’t worry,” Carrie purred, shooting him a sidelong glance. “All I’m eating tonight is ass.”

He frowned, eyebrows furrowed as he looked around in disbelief. “I’ll call a mortician when you start choking; there’s no Heimlich Maneuver strong enough to dislodge that thing.”

She wheezed. “Ohmigod, I’ve gotta hit her with that one. Hey, quit making me laugh! My eyes are up here,” she teased.

The emu looked incredulous. “Stop laughing then! It’s not my fault they eclipse your face with every malicious guffaw, you goofy sadistic bimbo.”

Carrie choked on laughter, eyes squinted shut. “Ahhh, god, I can never catch you flat-footed. The student will become the master one day, just you wait!! ... It’s good to see you again, Lemmy.”

“Yeah,” he managed, sharp persona softening a moment. “Glad you’re alive. Both of you.”

Skid, squeak, “Bing bong!” Natalie announced, skipping into the store. Her arms reached toward Carrie as if she hadn’t seen her in days, and they hugged. 

“Oh look, it’s the other punk that wrecked my place! Come to knock over my standees every time you turn around again?”

“Hey! Those standees had bad foundations!”

“They were made of plywood!” he shot back. “Should I bolt them down?? Or are you gonna hit another dozen donuts and rip those off the foundation??”

Natalie giggled. “So grumpy.”

“What was that?? ‘Oh Lemmy, of course I’d love to do publicity for your business, of course I’d repay your kindness over all these years with a little promotion considering I’m a huge star now.’ ‘Oh thank you, kids, that’s really nice of you!’”

“Oh my god,” Carrie rolled her eyes with a grin. “Yes, fine, we’ll do a spot for you or something, send us a message, you cantankerous long-necked bowling bag.” Lemmy broke kayfabe for a second, wheezing and pointing at her in acknowledgment. She preened at her mentor’s approval.

“Who’s yelling in here??” Jacent asked as he pushed the door open. “Oh. Hi, friends!”

“Jacent!” Natalie gestured. “This is Lemmy! He owns our favorite comic shop. He acts mean but he’s actually really nice.”

“Oh. Hello, sir. Good to meet you.” He waved in that disarmingly friendly way he did.

Lemmy’s face fell and he couldn’t pick it back up. “He’s real...” he muttered. “I saw you on the forums but you’re real. Down to the scars. Hell.”

“Oh. You know who I am. I had almost gotten used to that not being the case.”

“Of course I know who you are, I read every single issue that came into my shop. It was gripping. It didn’t follow most genre conventions, stories just dropped and came back up organically. It was the weirdest cape comic I ever read. Now I find out it’s real! And the genuine article is standing right here.”

“It was weirder to live it, I assure you,” he joked. “Actually, I was hoping you could help me. I haven’t been able to find some issues in Natalie’s collection, and–”

“C’mon,” Natalie motioned to Carrie. “They look like they’ve got a million things to talk about.” She left the middle-aged store owner and the ancient teenage boy to talk shop as she pulled Carrie over to the shelves. “Hey, when did Squidcat get a comic??”

“Looks like Sealand is trying to get new visitors,” Cat reasoned. “Aren has a crush on her. One of a hundred, but still. Oh, shit, new Metrocaster issue!”

“I thought that was on hiatus!”

“Me too! Oh man I hope they pick up the Deus Multes storyline again.”

“You think? The writer really seemed like she wanted to get away from that one.”

“Nah, nah, it was just because of that earthquake that happened, remember?“

“Ohhhh yeeeah, that’s right! God that feels like a million years ago...”

“Everything feels like a million years ago.”

“Right? ...Ooh, Twisty Tower 48 Page Special!”

“You love that kiddy stuff.”

“And you love brooding guys with chainsaws.”

“Heheheh...” Carrie looked down at the comics in her hands. “... I missed this.”

“... Yeah.” Natalie smiled. 

“Hey!” Lemmy called distantly. “Handle ‘em carefully with those big fat murder paws you got now!”

Natalie held her mechanical hands up and gently tickled Carrie’s face with them, getting a little giggle out of her. “It’s all good, Lemmy! ... I’m still the same Natalie.”

He hmphed with a smile. It did actually comfort him.

“Nah,” Carrie whispered, pulling her face close. “You’re better.” And with that, they kissed, drinking in the smell of freshly minted comic book pulp and ink. In that moment, they were ten again. Then eleven. All the years of enjoying this one place began playing through their minds, the familiar cool air, the even lighting... a paradise, all for them.

“God I love you so much,” Natalie confessed as she had again and again, sitting on her legs on the floor with her, surrounded by 24-page windows into so many worlds. Worlds that might actually exist, she knew now, having seen the power of Pathos. So much had changed, and yet, the important things hadn’t. It was a recalibrating moment; this was what she’d needed.

Carrie responded by putting her head on the wolf’s shoulder after buying a comic each. They read theirs, then each other’s, commenting on each as they went. It was an intimate, collaborative kind of reading, a shared experience unique just to them. They pointed at things and cracked jokes and remarked on the art and the writing. Carrie made wry comments about the childish adventure, and Natalie laughed at the absurdity of the gore in the gritty horror book. When they were done, Natalie got up to buy-scan two more comics for them to read. Another two comics, another couple of fun short stories for them to dig into; the convenience of this hobby explained why they’d needed to put those grav-skiff sneakers on layaway.

Feeling renewed in a big way, Natalie stood up. “I’m getting a soda, you want one?”

“Yeah, get me a Lime Squeezy. I’ll look for some Dr. Chainslaw.”

“Doctor Chainslaw?” Jazz said, entering the building. “Yo, that sounds bad!”

Carrie nodded as if it were obvious. “It’s the baddest. You wanna check it out?”

“Ah, well, I came here to check on Jie Xian. He never answers his fucking phone.”

“Probably put it on silent by accident again. He’s here though!” Natalie piped up. He’s looking for something with the owner.”

“Oh, cool, forget his dork ass then,” she laughed. 

Widget, who had followed her in, shoved her hands in her hoodie. “You enjoy, I’m just gonna look around.”

-
- -
-

“And now my creation is complete!” Max said, putting the finishing touches on a robot sculpture he’d made out of straws and a milkshake cup. He’d drawn a lopsided, cutely monstrous face on it in marker. “What do you think, Gropey?”

The slime examined his creation momentarily before touching it, then letting out a curious slurm.

“Yeah, I agree, it needs more eyes!” He was distracted, however, upon sighting a tall, lanky, neon-colored TV-headed automa wearing basketball shorts, tank top and sneakers. “Broooooo...” he marveled breathlessly. He crawled out of his Burger Dictator booth on all fours before popping up onto two legs and coming right up to them. “Hey! Yo! Dude, you look awesome!”

The thin robot, whose body and limbs were simple metal rods like ones made to display clothing, turned around. “Oh, what’s good lil’ cuz? You like my style?”

“Yeah, man, that rules! Where’d you get the idea??”

“I watched a lotta TV,” he said smoothly, changing channels several times with a congenial shrug. “I like your ‘fit. You make that lil’ monster over there?”

“Oh! Yeah!” He scrambled over and presented it to him proudly. “I make stuff like this all the time, usually it’s way cooler because I have stuff at home.”

“Yeah? Tight.” The automa examined the thing in his hands, careful not to upset its delicate construction. “That’s pretty cool man. I don’t see stuff like this very much, it’s unique.” He stopped, and his channel changed to a cowboy movie that delivered his next line: “Hey. Haven’t I seen you around somewhere?”

“Oh! Yeah, I save the world all the time.” He cradled Gropey before putting him on his head. “It’s no big deal.”

“Ohhhhh, I thought I recognized you. Hey, you don’t happen to hang out with... Jasmine Long, do you?”

“Oh yeah! She’s our newest packmate. She’s pretty funny! A little mean though.”

“Really. Well do you think you could give her somethin’ for me? I got this thing that belongs to her.”

“Oh, sure, man, what is it??”

TV Head produced an old-looking spiral notebook, yellowed with age. “This is hers. Make sure she gets it, okay? I owe her a lot.”

Max looked at it as he grasped it with both hands, unsure of its significance. “Yeah dude, no problem! I’ll make sure she–” he looked up and realized he was gone. “... Dude.”

-
- -
-

“Well,” Lemmy said with a tone of defeat. “I don’t think I have it.”

Jacent nodded. “I see. No issues including that incident, then.”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of. The place it would’ve happened, there’s two issues back to back and they’re successive numbers, so if it was something it’d have to be a special issue, like a bonus or a side story or... something. I’ve never seen anything like that. If you like I can ask my peers in other domes if they’ve–”

“– Don’t bother. God these backgrounds are shit,” muttered Widget as she thumbed through the issue. “It’s like a Calvin & Hobbes strip, half this stuff is like it got attacked by white paint.”

“W–... What!” Natalie exclaimed. “That’s like one of my favorite runs for the style!”

“Ugh, the inks for the later ones suck ass, too. Like a spider-web, the weighting is so random.”

She blinked. “That’s such a weird criticism, I didn’t even notice that. Wh–... who cares though??”

Widget shook her head. “Nothing beats the washed out watercolors for the Kid Comet flashbacks though. Incompetent beginner shit, just, even a little bit of practice would’ve made it decent at least.”

Natalie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Hey! Quit dumping on my favorite comic book!”

“Oh my god,” the robot beetle picked up another one. “UGH! I can’t stand looking at this one. I was going through a short torso phase and it just compressed everything. So fucking embarrassing, dude.”

Natalie was angry now. “I said– wait, w–... did... what did you just say?” The others had gathered by this point.

She gestured at the page. “There was this gritty 90s style comic look I wanted to try out for a laugh, but the more I did it the more my torso proportions started getting fucked up so I got lost in the sauce and the anatomy suffered but I just couldn’t bear to redo all those issues so I said forget about it and I regret it so much, ugh.”

Natalie’s eyes widened. “Widget... did you... draw some of these runs...?”

Widget stood amidst piles and piles of Cap’n Comet comic books, on the floor and the shelves and scattered and smattered around her– a massive volume of work. “Natalie, I made all of these runs.”

Natalie stared at her, speechless. 

Jacent edged forward. “What?? I thought you might have something to do with it, but all of it??”

“That’s impossible!” Lemmy exclaimed. “The style changes every hundred issues! Comic books are a collaborative medium, you have sketchers, inkers, letterers, writers, editors– this would take teams of people decades! To do it yourself would take–”

“– Hundreds of years,” Widget finished, her expression unreadable. “Literal, actual lifetimes of effort. Draw one series about a year in your life. Never finish it. Raked. Start over. Go back to drawing that same series after going over your notes about why the first time failed. Almost finish it. Raked. Start over.” She took a comic from the beginning, then from the middle, hundreds and hundreds of issues later. “Change art styles. Change narrative styles. Go crazy arguing with yourself as to how it should look, read, everything. Try different things just so you don’t get bored and stop out of despair. Raked. Start over. Abandon the whole thing on the advice of your past life, to free yourself from this obligation nobody gave you but yourself. Try to live a normal life. But every year it nags at you more and more. Every year you want to go back to it. Finally, you break, and make some of the best work you’ve ever made. Almost finish a run.” She dropped an omnibus on the table with a heavy ~THUD~. “Raked. Start over.”

The heavy silence went on for a long time. Finally, Jazz was the one to break it. “Geez. Why??”

“Because I loved you, you fool!” She threw another omnibus into Jasmine’s gut, which she oof’ed and caught.

“Hey!” Lemmy protested. “Easy with my stuff!”

“It is categorically MY stuff,” Widget corrected before opening a comic to a page with Grendel on it. “I loved you so much I tried having a relationship with this thing. And believe me when I say I could make a whole other comic series on what a fucking disastrous idea that was.”

“... Oh. I get it,” Natalie realized. “You couldn’t have her. So you had to tell the story. People had to understand.”

“Exactly! And maybe it was really traumatic and stressful! And maybe I’m not totally over it yet! And... maybe I’m... being kind of a bitch about it...”

Jazz walked over and hugged the beetlebot to her chesty chassis with a surprising amount of warmth and comfort. “Hey. It’s okay. You made it.” 

Widget made an unsure sound, her small hands grasping Jasmine’s dress. “It just doesn’t feel real yet, you know? I feel like it’s going to get taken from me again. Like if I actually believe it, something will happen and you’ll be gone again...”

“Whoa, whoa, I’m not going anyw–”

“You did though! You left, and then it took you so long to come back, and you were immediately ready to go away forever again! And now you’re clocking!! How can I feel like it’s safe to love you when you’re so volatile??”

Jasmine looked at her for a long time. “... Yeah. I mean. You did choose a really hard person to fall in love with.”

“I didn’t choose it. It just happened.”

“Well? I mean... which part of me did you fall in love with?”

“What?”

Jasmine gestured to herself. “Was it the... weirdo joker that likes musicals?” She clenched her fists. “Or was it the unwanted little psycho that broke a kid’s arm, the one that can’t ever get enough action?” She shrugged. “Because I’m both of those things.”

Widget looked like she wanted to say something several times. “....... I–... I just...”

“Look, I don’t know what happened between you and... her. But I’m not... I’m not Grendel. I’m not gonna hurt you. Or at least, like... I’m gonna try not to. I don’t know, I wasn’t ready for this, maybe. I’m trying my best??”

“Ugh, I look like such a jackass...”

Jacent crouched down and put an arm around Widget’s shoulders. “Come on, Boss. You do the talking,” he gestured to the comics she’d made, “She does the fighting,” he gestured at Jasmine, trying her best for her despite her nature, “And I watch out for trouble.” He pointed to her heart in her chest. “Those are the rules, remember? The rules of Bug Club.”

She looked at him with a sense of nostalgia, and chewed on the realization. “... You’re right. I did forget the rules of Bug Club. I thought I lost it...”

“No way,” Jazz refused, putting an arm around Widget and Jacent. “We’re all still here! Bug Club forever.”

Jacent nodded, a twinkle in his eyes. “Forever.”

Widget felt a swell in her chest. She sniffed and clenched a fist in the middle of their circle. “Forever!”

“There’s our boss back,” Jazz grinned. “Nicely done, Jie Xian.”

He smiled wryly. “All in a day’s work, for the Unbelievable Cap’n Comet.”

Widget laughed. “Superheroes need adjectives, okay! Give me a break.”

Natalie was grinning and wagging, her big glassy eyes wide. “You guys are such good friends.”

Lemmy edged in carefully. “Sooo if that’s all taken care of, let me get this straight: You’re Cap’n Comet, you’re the psychic ghost girl sharing his mind who got put into a robot body, you’re one of the original nhiloids AND the author of this comic book, and you were all in a gang together as kids? And you’re friends with the Hero of Locksmouth??”

Carrie shot them a look. “Uh-oh, he’s about to try to swindle you into doing a signing or something.”

“You’re damn right I am, how could I not?? Listen, I can get you a percentage of the proceeds, it’d be huge, I can handle all the arrangements! Wait, stop, don’t leave!”

Carrie laughed, stopping him bodily. “Hurry! I’ll hold him back! Save yourselves, before he arranges ‘Comet-Con’ or something!”

Lemmy looked off into space for a moment. “Comet-Con...”

-
- -
-

“Oh my god you guys the skate park froze over!” Natalie declared with excitement, an inch-thick layer of ice over the concrete.

“Aww, I wanted to do some skating...” Jacent said, disappointed.

“No no, this is the best time to go!” Nat insisted. “The ice makes it slippery!”

Widget furrowed a brow. “Okay, I’m not being a weenie here, that sounds, like, absurdly dangerous.”

Even Jazz was surprised. “Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a blast, until you break everything. Doc Grayswift would be livid at me, hahaha...”

Carrie put up her hands in exasperation. “What are you cavemen babbling about, the Crash Field is still on. It slows you down before you hit anything. It’s been there since the last time we went.”

“Oh!” Jacent blinked. “Really? I guess I didn’t notice. I... never fell.”

Carrie rolled her eyes. “Oh my god the humble brag, get on the ice.” She shoved him toward the bowl and he slid on it comically, trying to catch himself several times before losing all footing and hitting the ground surprisingly gently.

“AAAH! I... oh. That... didn’t hurt.”

“Yooo!” Widget cried. “That’s so cool!”

Jazz pulled out her hoverboard. “Well it’s a little less exciting that I can’t die doing it but fuck it let’s go!!” She half-rode half-slalomed down a half-pipe and within moments all of them were riding the ice, slipping and sliding and screaming and laughing. Jacent, Jasmine and Widget were all pushing and shoving and bullying each other inside of a few moments, laughing at each other and getting circular revenge. Meanwhile, Carrie and Natalie were holding each other’s hands, spinning in circles as they looked in each other’s eyes, crying out in joy and love. This went on for a while. The unstructured rambunctious play eventually gave way to Jacent and Jasmine competitively doing tricks on the half-pipe, vying for the biggest reaction from their friends. Something about their social dynamic had clicked in a way it hadn’t since they were kids; Widget was more confident, Jasmine felt less unmoored, and Jacent was surprisingly willing to tussle with his sister again. Natalie felt an old bond heal between them, and reveled in it. It might have been a little self-centered, but she allowed herself a little pride in the fact that she’d helped re-unite them.

“Oh, is this where you’ve been?” Samantha asked.

“Oh! Sam! Hey, I was just hanging out with everyone, and, uh... I... y-you have that look on your face like I did something.”

“You didn’t do something. Namely, answer your PET.”

He looked at his wrist-mounted computer and grimaced at the number of notifications on it. “Ooh, uh, mmh, I keep mixing up the ‘snooze’ and the ‘mute’ buttons...”

“Oh no you don’t, you’re not gee-golly-I’m-so-archaic-ing your way out of this one.” She grabbed his winter undersuit and climbed him in seconds, slapping a dog collar around his neck. “Come.” She yanked the leash for effect.

“S-Sam, it really was just a- UH!” He lurched forward, embarrassed and many other feelings. He flushed. “N-Not in front of everyone!” he eyed Nat & Cat, who were giggling.

“Oh, they’re not spectators,” Sam said with increasing malevolence. “I’ve done everything I can to teach you better behavior, so I think the pack alphas need to intervene, and come teach you a lesson instead. With my supervision, of course.”

Jacent’s face blanched. “Y-You can’t be serious– oh no oh god of course she’s serious.” He turned to Natalie with an expression that said “I know you have every incentive to take her side, but please take mine?? Please???”

Natalie took a deep breath, unable to stop from smiling. “Well. Technically, Carrie and I are on a date, so we’re probably going to go home with each other instead,” she said, throwing him the mother of all bones, to his massive relief.

Carrie smiled at Natalie. And then she grinned, her sharp feline teeth like a bear trap to poor Jacent’s eyes. “If you thought, for even one second, that I wouldn’t consider this the perfect end to this date, you’re delusional.”

Natalie’s smile grew to a great big grin as well, her tail wagging so hard it thumped her butt. She shrugged apologetically. “Sorryyyyyy, I gotta do what she says, can’t do anything about it, my hands are tied– oops, sorry, that’s you, ehehehe~”

Jacent grimaced as even a small victory was stolen from him. “Here, boy,” Samantha commanded, and his wrists thumped together.

Widget watched this unfold, barely stifling her laughter. She looked back and saw Jasmine with a deep frown, looking disgusted. “Oh. Right, he’s your brother. Sorry you had to–”

“– How does that clueless dweeb get so much ass...???”

“It’s dweeb ass,” Max answered matter-of-factly, holding a spiral notebook out toward her. 

“Ugh that means I can’t even get– wait what’s this? Also where’d you come from???”

Max slowly tilted his head as Gropey slurmed along it so that the blob would always be on top. “There was this guy with a TV head! He was cool! Said he knew you, and that this was yours. Then he disappeared like Batman.”

Jazz made a confused face. “... Alright. Guess I’ll check this out...”

“Yeah, might as well,” Widget sighed wistfully. “... We need our own place.”

“Yeeeah.” She looked down at her. “... Wanna break into someone’s house and make out in it?”

“Hell yeah.”

 -
- -
-