Phil's first order of business as the sound of starving amphibians rending slobbering mouthfuls of human flesh from bone intensified behind him, was to find the employee breakroom. It was, as he described to Rebecca, the piece de resistance (as Jean would have put it), the big ‘fuck you’ (as Phil liked to put it), and the crowning part of his hastily improvised plan, 'frog deck trial by fire'.

  This was something he refused to elaborate further upon when questioned by the small child riding on his shoulder, other than to mysteriously smile and hold up the cans of spray paint he’d ‘liberated’ from the ‘prison’ of the ‘janitor’s’ ‘closet’.

  It was not until ten minutes later that his search through the cold storage facility yielded fruit – the employee breakroom.

  “I saw this done in a TV show once,” Phil explained as Rebecca hopped off his shoulder with an intrigued expression, hardly appearing to be even the slightest bit bothered by the distant screams of a man being eaten alive. That alone was most likely a serious problem, but it was certainly one Phil neither had the time nor an actual answer for.

  “What show?”

  Phil approached the microwave in the breakroom. He set the cans of spray paint on the counter, along with a roll of duct tape he’d found in a side room along the way.

  “Burn Notice. It’s a pretty neat low-budget spy show.”

  Rebecca tilted her head sideways. “Hmm… nope, never heard of it.”

  Oh, right, this was the 90s. Burn Notice was what… an early 2000s release?

  Phil waved his hand through the air in a 'never mind' gesture and set to work on the microwave. The way it had been explained in the show was simple, though one could assume the steps showcased weren't 100% accurate to what would be needed in real life, so as to prevent liability issues if any kid tried that stunt at home. Still…

  This wasn't the first time he'd done this. A memory flooded to the front of his brain of a happier time back in the dorms of Duelist Academy with the lads. It had been a boring Fall Saturday afternoon. Phil, Bastion, Chazz, and Jaden had been looking for trouble all day – and found nothing! The cruelty! The inhumanity! No crazy duels to be seen, no wacky shenanigans to be found. No monsters hiding under rocks, no maniacal shadow duelists lurking in the well, an absence of spooky shit in the abandoned dorm, not even a suspicious new teacher for them to investigate, only to find out he’s merely a normal adult with a moderate-to-severe cocaine addiction! Lazy weekend days were meant for trouble! For shenanigans! For youthful spirit to shine bright!

  Thus, through the power of four bored teenage boys with no Alexis around to keep them in line (as she was spending time with Atticus after he’d finally been released from the hospital), they’d set about making their own trouble by following the time-honored tradition of dumpster-diving for cool stuff out back behind the campus motor pool, where all the vehicles and maintenance equipment was kept. Sadly, they couldn’t actually get inside the motor pool building itself, as after Phil had hotwired a golf cart (for a very good reason), campus security had changed the damned locks to something electronic that Bastion couldn’t just pick in a matter of minutes.

  Still, dumpsters were dumpsters – a veritable treasure trove if one knew where to look. The first big score was an old microwave. It had a frayed cord, which was most likely the reason for it being tossed, but Phil knew how to replace that if they could find a non-frayed power cord, which was swiftly located on the bottom of a lamp that was broken in half. The second score was some pressurized chemicals, then some duct tape, a few pieces of metal scrap, and a place to plug the microwave in where no one would immediately notice them.

  And that was the gist of how four boys found themselves in a month’s worth of detention in Ms. Hibiki’s office for creating and detonating a bomb made out of a microwave behind the motor pool out of sheer boredom. It was, as Ms. Hibiki, the Headmaster of Slifer Red, put it, completely unbelievable, utterly irresponsible, extremely dangerous, and something that would have caused her to question their very sanity if not for the fact that this was completely on brand for the four of them. Phil had managed to earn an extra month’s worth of detention immediately afterward as a consequence of thanking her for the compliment.

  "First, you've got to jimmy open the side of the microwave to find a bit called the 'surge inhibitor' or whatever it's called. Yank it out. We don’t need no surges being inhibited.”

  Rebecca leaned in close, a look of pure curiosity on her face.

  "Then," Phil popped open the microwave's door. "We put the volatile chemicals inside the microwave. Such as spray paint. Why don't you look under the sink, see if we can find anything else fun? Anything that has flammable or volatile labels on it works. Oh, and check the drawers for silverware! We'll need some!"

  Rebecca dashed around the break room kitchen, yanking open every cabinet and door until she returned to him with a few more bottles of chemicals cradled in the nook of her unbroken arm and a handful of silverware.

  “Perfect.” Phil took the goodies away from her and stuffed them inside the microwave next to the spray paint. Then he duct-taped the microwave shut.

  Phil stood and brushed his hands together to get rid of imaginary dirt. Rebecca proudly mimicked his action with one hand.

  "If we set it to go for long enough, the metal should spark, which will then ignite the fun little volatile chemicals inside. After that? A little boom to start a nice, healthy blaze."

  Now it was time for the second-to-final-step. Walking over to the thermostat in the wall, Phil moved it from the cold side all the way to the hottest it could go. The effect was immediate. Every A/C unit in the building began to power off one after another.

  “Wanna do the honors?”

  Rebecca gave a firm nod. She ran forward, inputted ten minutes into the microwave, and then dashed back to hop back onto Phil’s shoulder.

  “What about the bad guy’s deck? It had Blue-Eyes.” Rebecca offhandedly questioned.

  Phil took on a look of contemplation as he left the breakroom at a swift powerwalk. Then he shook his head and began to tick off the reasons on his fingers one by one.

  "Naw. The Blue-Eyes, at least, were definitely counterfeit. Can't use them in official duels, ain't legal. The rest of his deck is probably the same, if I know the Rare Hunters. Even in unofficial duels, Blue-Eyes White Dragon sucks donkey balls as a card, and anyone who thinks the deck is good is either delusional, coping, or has a dragon mommy fetish like Kaiba. I'm good on staples after all the 'generous' 'donations' made by everyone else who has tried to fuck with me over the past few days, and you can also add onto the fact that I really don’t want to spend the energy dealing with Kaiba the nanosecond after he finds out I have a fistful of counterfeit Blue-Eyes.”

  Rebecca nodded and then tilted her head in thought.

  “What does ‘fetish’ mean?”

  Phil’s face paled. He groaned, bit out a coarse swear, and shook his head. “I really, really don’t want to explain that right now or ever. I’m sorry for my poor word choice. Please don’t use that word. Ever.”

  “Only~ if you buy me ice cream~!” Rebecca cheerfully replied as they passed the bloody scraps that were the only remnant of the man who was called Hajime. Soon even those were gone, once the trio of Des Frogs finished daintily licking them off the ground and disappeared back into the shadows. Neither Rebecca nor Phil paid the sight even a second glance.

  "Yeah, okay. I could go for a scoop or two myself." Phil shrugged and gave up instantly.

  "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream~!" Rebecca sang. Her legs bounced against his chest in tune with the beat of her off-key song. The lyrics were accentuated by a loud ‘BAM’ in the background, coming from the direction of the break room they’d left behind.

  “Pretty cool song, got a scoop on where you first heard it?”

  Lumina leaned against the wall and mimed the act of vomiting.

  “Dunno, but I heard it on my favorite day of the week!”

  Phil looked up to catch Rebecca's gaze. "What day is that?"

  “Sundae!”

  Neither duelist could help themselves. As they departed the cold storage facility to step back onto the streets of Domino City, they both began to howl with laughter toward the utterly horrendous puns they were sharing.

  “Great… now there’s two of them…” Lumina groaned, though a smile was growing on her face.

  And behind them, a wisp of smoke floated out from the closing door. Soon that wisp was joined by more as the inside of the building began to be consumed by crackling flames.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  The crisp sound of a newspaper settling against the countertop briefly interrupted the sizzle of potatoes and kielbasa in Phil’s frying pan. He paused for just long enough to turn and glance at Tilla, the culprit. A faint sweetness still lingered in his mouth, the aftermath of eating an ice cream sundae that was nearly as large as his head.

  “Arson on 34th street. Nothing remains other than charred bricks and cinders. The police have no comment on the motive of the attack or the state of the building other than the extent of the damage, which is obvious to anyone with functioning eyes.”

  Hanging unspoken in the air around her quote were the words, ‘was this you?’

  Phil gently nodded to confirm her suspicions. It wasn’t like Tilla was angry, merely curious. He turned to the third occupant of the cramped kitchen in the Kitamori household.

  “Are the onions almost done?”

  Rebecca was right next to him, awkwardly manipulating a frying pan full of onions to caramelize in her right hand. Clutched to her chest was her left arm, the cast of which was now covered in a scrawl of signatures (from the kids around the house) and rough drawings of frogs carrying guns (from Phil, who was of the opinion that every good cast needed a group of amphibians brandishing lethal weapons).

  “No… you sliced them too thick. Shithead. Dunderbrain.” Rebecca pouted. Phil shrugged to concede the point. He was a pretty decent cook, but he’d never been particularly good at the fine points of thinly slicing onions. Tilla blinked in surprise upon hearing the foul language from Rebecca, and then her eyes narrowed to lock onto the obvious suspect in the room.

  “I thought you were only going to pick up a deck from Solomon?”

  Phil let out a sigh of exhaustion and ran a hand through his still-damp hair. A two-hour-long shower and a complete change of clothes right after he'd returned, and Phil still felt like he could smell a little bit of sewer on his skin. Maybe his nose was fried? He hoped not. No one liked fried noses.

  “It… snowballed.” He handed the frying pan of potatoes and kielbasa off to Rebecca’s careful watch to take Tilla aside, where he explained the situation in a whisper.

  “The kid was at Kame Game with Arthur. She’s his grandkid. Solomon had me duel her for the deck I needed. Then she and Arthur got jumped at the airport by our favorite motherfuckers. Rebecca got away with a broken arm, we took her to the hospital to get it set, and then on the way back, I chanced on the building you saw in the newspaper. I noticed a shady dude going into it, turned out to be a cold-storage facility for the Sons. Shady guy was a Rare Hunter. Got some potentially decent info from him. Still needs more verification.”

  Tilla’s eyebrows crept up a notch. She crossed her arms, looking very unamused.

  “You let a kid accompany you to a murder. For Heaven's sake, Phil, tell me you made her wait outside.”

  Phil shrugged, and Tilla's expression turned volcanic. Then, as soon as the rage had built in her face, it drained away until there was nothing but ashes. She let out a long, exhausted sigh and massaged the bridge of her nose with her hand.

  “I suppose she threatened to move on her own?”

  Phil leaned against the wall, feeling just as exhausted as Tilla looked. “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  Phil blinked in surprise as the uncharacteristic curse dropped from Tilla’s lips. At least she seemed to understand his predicament. For a moment, he'd halfway expected to be pressed against the wall with her hands clutched tightly around his throat.

  Tilla’s eyes softened as she looked at Rebecca, who was dutifully minding both pans with one hand.

  "I would have done the same in her position, even at her age. Only it would have been with a gun instead of with cards.” Tilla muttered. A small smile crossed her lips.

  The smell of spices continued to fill the room, causing Phil’s stomach to rumble in protest. The stairs from the floors above trembled as the rest of the Kitamori family smelled it as well and headed downstairs to investigate.

  “I want to check out the cops tomorrow. What was it Ishizu said? They’re ‘compromised at the highest level’? Might need to figure out how deep it goes before they get the chance to become a problem in Battle City. Strike while the iron is hot, too. While they're still hopefully on the back foot after losing a whole shitload of spare bodies.”

  Tilla snorted and jerked her head toward the other highlight of the newspaper – a wanted poster. It did not contain Phil’s name, but there was a sketched image of Phil that, while being a rough image from a forensic artist, still had a decent enough description of Phil’s appearance that it would not be difficult to pick him out of a police lineup.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Not the best idea for you to go right now.”

  Phil scratched his chin in thought, once more ruing the lack of a beard for him to stroke wisely.

  “Even with a surgical mask and a hat?”

  Tilla raised another eyebrow. That was all she needed to get the message across. With a sigh of defeat, Phil abandoned his post along the wall to rejoin Rebecca at the stove, where she wordlessly handed back the pan of meat and potatoes.

  "Lookin' good!" Phil bit out in surprise. The food was nicely browned, and even the thickly cut onions were beginning to caramelize nicely.

  “Gramps is terrible at cooking, so I started doing it a while ago!”

  Phil hummed in appreciation. The two went silent, while Tilla continued to lean against the wall, absentmindedly chewing her lip as she thought.

  “Do you think we’ll find anything on Gramps tomorrow?” Rebecca quietly asked.

  Phil flipped the potatoes in his pan.

  “I don’t know, kiddo. I hope so.”

  He looked over to Rebecca. It was… was it similar? The way she was seesawing back and forth between being desperately worried about her Grandpa and being a tough, rambunctious person… was it similar to how he’d felt now that Jean was dead?

  “I don’t have anyone else.” Rebecca continued.

  “No friends? Family?”

  A despondent shake of her head was the answer. Phil switched off the heat to his burner and ruffled her hair, causing her melancholy to abruptly vanish as she jumped back, clutched the top of her head, and hissed at him like a disgruntled alley cat.

  “Naw mate, don’t give me that! We’re friends, right? We committed arson together! That’s gotta’ count for something! Plus, homies always help their friends hide the bodies and burn the evidence. We did that, so we’re comrades. If you want to be, that is.”

  Rebecca gave him a toothy grin and a ‘V’ for victory sign with her fingers in response. “Yeah!”

  Tilla stepped up as a horde of kids, accompanied by Reiko, stormed into the room to surround the stove.

  “I have an idea!” She shouted over the noise.

  Phil shot her a thumbs-up. "Me too!"

  In mutual agreement, Phil, Tilla, and Rebecca quickly portioned out some food onto their plates and squeezed out of the kitchen as the vultures in human flesh descended.

  “You first.” Tilla gestured to Phil as they entered his room and sat on the floor to chow down on the simple meal he’d prepared with Rebecca. Phil began to speak, only to halt as the door creaked open. Only when the intruder was revealed to be Reiko, walking in with an apologetic look and a plate of her own food, did Phil continue.

  “Solomon told me that the recent murder of a cop was pinned on my head. Right outside the city park. The poor guy was torn to shreds while he was handcuffed to a pole. Now, this fits the description of the guy Lu-“ Phil caught himself, “the guy I clocked on my way out of the park. I handcuffed him to the pole so he wouldn’t get back up to keep chasing me. The key point was that the last time I saw him, he was alive. Hurting? Yes, most definitely. But he was alive."

  A firm light filled Tilla’s eyes. “I thought the same. Because it was officially announced, there should be a police report on the matter somewhere in the station. Either a records room, a closet, a desk, or anything in between.”

  Phil clicked his tongue. They were on the same wavelength. It always felt nice when that happened. “Exactly. If there isn’t a report, we know whoever first announced the death might be in league with those fuckers.”

  Reiko winced. “Language! There’s a child here!”

  “Those fuckers!” Rebecca cheerfully parroted between mouthfuls of fried potatoes.

  “From what I understand,” Phil said, bowling over Reiko’s squawked objections of Rebecca’s steadily growing vocabulary, “Reports are mandatory paperwork for officers to fill out. They all have to do it. Every time I’ve gone to a station myself, that’s what gets done first. Even if I’m just getting thrown into the drunk tank.”

  “You’ve been in the drunk tank?!?” Rebecca exclaimed. Then she visibly pondered it for a moment, and by the look on her face, came to the conclusion that she wasn't surprised at all.

  "Several times, but that's not the point. The point is that no report means whoever first announced the death was up to something no good to skip a standard step like that, and was first on the scene so that a regular police officer would assume the first responder would fill one out. Or, it means someone higher up tampered with it to remove the report, because it would be pretty fucking obvious to anyone with a brain that I couldn’t go for such a messy kill like that. The cops were hot on my ass at that point. A kill like that takes time. Preperation.”

  “If there is a report,” Tilla picked up where Phil left off, “We can see the name of the officer who found the body, plus any of their evidence or witness statements. Then we can find that officer and check if he’s possessed or if he knows something.”

  Reiko’s face perked up as she finally understood. "Oh! And if he does know something, maybe he interviewed people who were in the vicinity of the dead man between when you left, the murder was committed, and the cops arrived! They could have seen something! If we can get a face or any other description..."

  “Bingo.” Phil pointed right at Reiko and grinned. “Because we know for sure whoever killed the cop was with the Sons of Kul Elna. That kind of mutilation is their calling card. That’s our best chance, at least. No telling how far up this goes. I’d have sent someone to possess the police chief ASAP if I were in cahoots with those bastards.”

  Reiko smiled at Phil’s praise. It was at that point Phil himself was struck with a note of surprise as he realized the elephant in the room.

  "You don't seem bothered by having an alleged murderer in your house?" He questioned.

  Reiko waved her hand through the air in a nonchalant, almost scarily laid-back gesture.

  "Alleged, as you say. You're a good guy, Phil. I don't think you did it. Even if you did, well, my Uncle Taki has been framed for 57 homicides that he has an alibi for and accused of three more murders that he actually did do, but those guys deserved it, so I don’t care. My brother is with a Yakuza family in Tokyo, and he's always the first to volunteer when we need help around the house.”

  Reiko held her palm up in the air as she reminisced with her eyes closed, Tilla nodding along seriously with her words. Meanwhile, Phil's eyebrows were rising so steadily that they threatened to escape his forehead.

  “My father passed away a few years ago after the culmination of a decade-long dispute with our neighbors, which started over the specific placement of a potted plant in our third-floor side bedroom windowsill and ended with a remarkably large block-wide shootout with illegally modified firearms that made the national headlines on an otherwise slow new day, right below the disgrace of an obscure politician no one cares about and above some local kids getting arrested for making a functioning yet extremely basic nuclear reactor in their mother’s backyard. My point is, who really knows in this crazy world of ours?”

  Reiko shrugged.

  “All I know is that you're a good guy who has never shown even the slightest bit of desire to harm my family, Tilla included, because she's practically my sister in all but blood. You help out around the house whenever asked, you gave us half of the gold you… somehow… got from Pegasus’s island, of which I really do not want to know any more details about so I can’t be charged as an accomplice, and you like to make really stupid puns. No one who likes to make really stupid puns is the type to kill innocent people.”

  The final point struck home, sending Phil deep into thought and Lumina deep into crippling despair upon her noticing that he was most affected by the ‘pun’ example. Phil pounded his fist into his palm.

  “Right! Now that’s out of the way, Mission Impossible time!”

  But right as Phil got up to surge toward the door, Tilla’s hand snaked out in a flash to grip his collar and pull him back to a seated position.

  “It’s late. I want to sleep. Tomorrow.” She said in simple words.

  Phil shrugged. "Tomorrow it is. Just be aware that my plan is for you to walk in like a concerned citizen, go into the restroom, and open a window for me to sneak into. Then we wait until nightfall. Probably around two or three in the morning. That’s when the graveyard shift gets the worst, take it from someone who knows. Late enough in the night to where you’re tired, but too far away from the shift’s end for you to get excited. We’ll Mission Impossible it through the station for the reports and see what we can see. Then I’ll get out before my ass becomes grass while you can walk out like you own the place. Rad enough for you?”

  “That’s rad enough for me!” Rebecca cheered with her hand held high.

  “Oh, no.” Reiko’s voice became stern, “You’re staying here with me.”

  “Nope!” Rebecca replied, crossing her arms like a big X. As she launched into a rant, her face became wholly determined, and she spoke with such anger and passion that Reiko’s eyes widened in surprise. “I already told old man baldie Uncle Phil this! I’m going with you, no matter what you say! If you try to tie me up, I’ll wait ‘till you’re gone and bite the ropes off! If you trap me in a room, I'll gnaw the fucking doorknob off, chew it up, and spit it out because I can't eat doorknobs! I'm in this whether you like it or not, because I need to make those stupidheads eat shit and die!"

  “Sure, sure.” Tilla sighed and got up. “You can come with us. But now it’s time for bed. Up and at ‘em.”

  “Okay~! Thanks for the food, Uncle Phil!”

  The pair left the room, leaving Phil and Reiko seated with the empty plates.

  “You really did a number on the kid’s vocabulary, huh? I suppose it’s better than her being a broken, sobbing mess. I know that’s what I’d be in her place.” Reiko eventually spoke.

  Phil massaged his glabella in a vain attempt to dissipate his growing headache.

  “Arthur’s gonna have a hell of a time deprogramming her, that’s for sure. One slip-up on my end and suddenly she’s got my sailor’s mouth in full, except she doesn’t know what the words mean, only that they’re bad.”

  “Poor kid’s like an alley cat in human form,” Reiko observed. She leaned to gather the dishes. “I saw how she hissed at you for ruffling her hair. Oh, and tomorrow? I’ll come with you guys. I have a legitimate noise complaint to bring up about our neighbors. With luck, that extra distraction might make your job a bit easier. I guess you’ll have the hardest part. All those cops want to shoot you for allegedly killing one of their own. Don’t get caught, you hear me?”

  Phil let out a snort of laughter as Reiko left the room. A sudden silence filled the air now that it was just him and Lumina; the vibrancy that the others had brought had left with them. He flopped back in the futon on the floor, Lumina settling cross-legged beside him after turning off the main light. Now the room was filled with a different glow, the glow of her strange television screen that flickered as the channels changed.

  “Another fight tonight?” Phil absentmindedly asked. Only half his attention was on the TV, the other half being reserved for sending an empty gaze up to the ceiling.

  "Hm, no, not tonight. Lyla sent me mail about a new soap that's premiering tonight. She has bad taste in those sorts of things, but I figured I might as well see how it is. Maybe this one will be a diamond in the trash heap.”

  “Soap operas? Didn’t take you for the type.”

  She laughed, taking out a bag of popcorn and her usual thermos of tea to set on the ground beside her. "Hey, you try existing for hundreds of thousands of years. Eventually, you start looking for anything that could mean even the slightest bit of entertainment. Suddenly the most boring person in the world is worth watching on stage if they just say something you haven’t heard before.”

  “That’s kinda sad, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Phil's eyes began to feel heavy. Perhaps it was a miracle in its own that he'd been going as long as this. When had he last slept? Must've been before Jean's death. Had he been running full steam for what… two days now? Or was it three? Or just one? It was getting hard to keep track. Things kept blurring together without the chance to rest. And when he did have that chance, he still couldn't rest.

  Lumina continued to talk about the show as the opening theme for the soap opera began to play. Her voice was like a comforting murmur in his ears, even as she explained various character backgrounds and unfamiliar settings one by one. A strange character vaulted onto the screen – a monkey who opened its skin to reveal another monkey inside, which that monkey also opened its skin to reveal not a monkey inside, but an elephant with the characteristic liveliness of a duel spirit. How that made sense or was even mildly entertaining, Phil didn’t know.

  His eyes closed, and Phil slept for the first time in well over 48 hours.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Aaannnddd Phil was out like a light. It was enough to make a smirk grow across Lumina’s face. The futon rustled and the room filled with soft, melodic croaks as numerous frogs of all different sizes, colors, and levels of bloodthirst slipped out of the shadows to cluster around the TV, their eyes fixed with rapt attention on the dramatic troubles of the wooden star-crossed lovers, Karakuri Komachi mdl 224 “Ninishi” and Karakuri Soldier mdl 236 “Nisamu”. But wait! No! The frogs all gasped as one as the camera panned to reveal the villainous Karakuri Ninja mdl 339 “Sazank” watching through its spyglass from the bushes, ready to report the forbidden love to its master, Karakuri Shogun mdl 00 “Burei”! No! The Shogun would undoubtedly fly into a rage upon hearing the news! How would Nisamu escape with his head intact? Would Ninishi be imprisoned in that cruel Shogun's tower once more?

  Two Swap Frogs in the audience gasped dramatically, while a Dupe Frog began to nervously bite its nails. Three Des Frogs in the back row pulled out Ziploc bags full of fresh human skin scraps to settle their roiling stomachs. Labeled neatly in black permanent marker on the side of the sacks was the vintage of the skin, this time going by the name of ‘Hajime’. A fine year for a fine vintage, as the Des Frogs liked to put it. Food snobs. That's what they were.

  The show cut to a commercial break, and Lumina wasted no time before pulling out the newest letter from the girls at work. This time, it was from Ehren, Lightsworn Monk. A rarity. Lyla was usually the one who preferred to pen the letters, seeing it as a chance to work on her calligraphy that she’d been honing as a hobby for the past… what was it by now, ten thousand years? That sounded about right. Whereas for Ehren… well, she was a good friend, but Ehren was always more at home at the bar starting bare-knuckle fistfights with spirits from the Battlin’ Boxer LLC.

  Lumina’s eyes widened. It was the shortest letter she’d received so far, consisting of only a greeting, three words, and a farewell.

  Dear Lumina,

  Don’t come back.

  Your good friend,

  Ehren

  With furrowed brows, Lumina read through the short letter five more times before she was forced to admit there were no additional meanings to it, nor any secret messages or even a hidden joke. But there was no cruel intent leaking from those words either. It… looked to be an honest plea.

  The crowd of frog duel spirits softly went ‘oooooooohhhhhh’ all at once as the commercial break ended to reveal the vile Sazank reporting the news to his jealous Shogun, causing Burei to fly into such a temper that he immediately transformed into his enraged form of Karakuri Steel Shogun mdl 00X “Bureido”! Such was his fury that the Steel Shogun swore beneath the swords of his father that he would have Nisamu’s head for this! There was no other way a great machine such as the Shogun could restore his honor!

  “No!” A Substitoad screamed as quietly as possible to avoid waking Phil. A Treeborn Frog closed his eyes; he couldn’t watch anymore! It was much too difficult to bear after his own terrible divorce, where his Treeborn Frog wife took the house and the kids!

  What could Ehren have meant? Lumina placed her chin on her palm as she thought.

  Don’t come back.

  Ehren was a tough woman. The toughest of them all, Lumina would say. The toughest of all the girls at work, the ladies who’d known each other for longer than any of them cared to count. They’d been in the same squad and in the same trench even for each of the various corporate wars. Through mergers, acquisitions, crappy work parties that were just excuses for the higher-ups to get drunk, do drugs, and harass their employees, and much more. They weren’t exactly the best of friends, but they were work buddies! Work buddies looked out for each other.

  It was then that a realization dawned in Lumina’s mind. She pulled out an older letter, this time being one from Jain, Lightsworn Paladin.

  Dear Lumina,

  Everyone on our floor is a little jealous of you. Sometimes I wish I had the guts to spit in Ryko’s face and leave the office on an unplanned sabbatical in the mortal world to accompany an interesting human. Work’s been difficult lately. Gragonith’s been hitting the ketamine harder than usual after his merger with the Blackwing Corporation fell through. Judgement Dragon took him out back and beat him with jumper cables for failing. I'd almost feel sorry for the dragon if he weren't such an abusive piece of shit to poor Minerva. I'd also almost feel sorry for Minerva if she didn't have a habit of beating the tar out of poor Aurkus to make herself feel better.

  I think Ryko is planning something. He’s been spending more and more time up in Judgement Dragon’s office. Lyla’s been called up there a few times to bring more kegs from the cellar. She says all they’ve been doing up there is drinking and plotting. But drinking and plotting about what? No one really knows, but the amount of alcohol they’ve been going through is getting us all worried. You can probably remember what happened last time they did this.

  Your good friend,

  Jain

  Lumina pursed her lips as she re-read the contents of Jain’s letter. She could remember it well. Last time…

  Last time those two had drank and plotted this much, it had ended with the assassination and permanent death of Brron, Mad King of Dark World, and the beginning of the second corporate war in response to the power vacuum left by his demise.

  “Those power-hungry drug-addicted bastards… just what are they going to do now?” Lumina muttered.

  The sound of explosives detonating grabbed her attention away from the letter. Her eyes settled on the TV just in time to see the confrontation between Nisamu and another of the Shogun's evil henchmen, Karakuri Ninja mdl 7749 "Nanashick"! But wait! The explosives detonated again, revealing a sneak attack on Nanashick by Nisamu's good friend, Karakuri Merchant mdl 177 "Inashichi", who had used the plutonium-tipped missiles hidden inside a crate with a 50% off price tag to deal massive sneak-attack damage, allowing the good-hearted soldier Nisamu to escape with its wooden head still attached to its shoulders!

  The frogs let out hushed cheers, and even Lumina couldn’t help but pump her fist through the air. As hokey as the show Lyla recommended to her was, Lumina couldn't deny that she was hooked. The letter in her hand was folded away for later inspection. Ehren's worries may have substance to them, but the truth was that even if she wanted to go back to the office, she couldn't yet. Lumina lacked the magic to do so and… she cast a fond look at Phil, who was sleeping soundly for the first time in days. If she went back to the office, who would look after her entertaining idiot and clock him in the head with a flip-flop whenever he was about to do something particularly stupid?

  https://discord.gg/jfRn8j5GaE!