Part III - The Death of The Immortal Ones

  One hero’s journey may have ended, his tournaments won (mostly), all further reasons for toiling in Saana complete. But the adventures of this far distant 2050 still—it seemed, at least by the resumption of this narrative for a final part—remained. There must still have been some treasure to be undug, some strange biome to be explored, or some insidious villain to be lynched, and whatever of these agendas still lingered must’ve been calling for another brave-hearted bozo, a.k.a. a hero, to accept the challenging task. If the one hero has gone truant, another willing substitute would have to be found, a fresher, cooler, smarter, more promising hero. He, she, they (plural), they (ambiguous), or it—adventure doesn't discriminate—would most likely be different from their predecessor in many qualities but would at least share that same universal and immortal soul of the hero, one that never, ever, never, EVER gives up – unless, well, it does give up, forcing an awkward scramble for a replacement.

  The hunt for a new hero was to begin near where the last one had departed, in a section of a videogame slum north of some stadiums and some festivities of fading relevance.

  This area, from a vulture's eye flyover, looked as if it had been devastated by a tornado. Broken buildings were strewn about, as were their former contents – tattered rugs, family portraits, wooden serving bowls, children’s dolls, etc. About this rubbish roamed the shadows of nocturnal creatures, digging under the litter for things decayed beyond identifiability. Barks and howls from their disputes over the pickings joined a persistent hiss of insects, also feasting. There were people, too - for mysterious reasons. A few bands had camped at an intentional distance from each other as they’d paused whatever had been happening prior in order to watch streams of the tourney’s end. Most of these were a frightening mess, their faces soot-smeared and haggard like the survivors of an apocalyptic gang rape. But one small team, a team of six, stood out uniquely clean, groomed crisp after a soapy scrub down, their moods similarly bubbly, fresh, and prepped for the next fun adventure – the next, it might be asked, heroic adventure?

  The searching vulture, before confirming, landed discreetly behind them for a better inspection.

  The new candidates had gathered by a bonfire of scavenged refuse. Around their feet was a maze of empty bottles from which they'd been pre-gaming before the tourney’s wild afterparties, where they’d hoped to flirt with the birds and bloody their noses in fun brawls. To prepare, they’d decked out in the trendiest ‘stumes: their mullets were contoured, their perfumes spritzed, their parachute pants slid into, their eyebrows halved in solidarity with the latest dead Swedish rapper, and their handsomest possum-fur croptops deloused.

  Scanned each of them in turn, they were as mismatched as their wardrobe.

  One, an emaciated Pole in his 50s, squatted by the bonfire, swatting flies away from a simmering cauldron of sour rye potato soup.

  Opposite him on a crate, a Coloured youth from Johannesburg, South Africa with an acoustic plucked a tremolo in a style of blackmetal popular in his hometown.

  A duo shuffled about the guitarist while giving him a makeover. Shaving off one of his eyebrows with a cutlass was an elderly Vietnamese woman, while his mullet was being pomaded by a big-toothed Californian 20-something with cheeks flushed red as if he’d moments earlier been disrupted from a quick romp, which he had.

  Another American, of Coloradan pastiness, was using a dagger as a mirror and giggling as he waxed a bald spot on the crown of his head into a reflective gloss.

  The last of them, a Frenchie with a red and orange flame mullet—positioned in their rough centre in his self-elected role of leadership—had been closed-eyed as he’d coordinated an evening party itinerary with other groups.

  These six new heroes, although they’d earned no fame nor fans—so far—had performed honourably in the tourney that weekend. They’d only narrowly missed the bracket stages of the rookie category by a single, heart-splintering loss. This feat had an extra asterisk of impressiveness because, unlike most competitors, they’d only played together for one week. Signing up as ‘The Seventh Wheels’, they’d been the extraneous rejects of other friendship circles, ousted and forced to build a team with total strangers. After many initial birth pains and feuding and replaced members, they’d discovered an unusual chemistry with each other, rising quickly through the ranks despite their handicapped beginning. By the end, they had surpassed any of their rejecting friends, and a chance match yesterday with the best of them had seen the sweetest stomp of retribution.

  Theirs had been a tale oddly inverting the by-2050-trite lesson of chosen family. It suggested that the goodest people were sometimes those forced upon us by pure circumstance, that a profound human connection might be a possibility with anyone and everyone.

  With the rough anatomies of the new heroes sized up, we arrive in the present, ready for the start of the latest adventure that would see them rocket further into greatness. It was to begin like all the best adventures with an abrupt upheaval of the status quo.

  The group winced in unison as the zone-wide message from Suchi’s Pope bleared in their skulls with orders to evacuate. A follow-up sounded after from The Company. Tourists like themselves were advised to either transfer zone by self-deletion or to log out by the shore, from which those who registered could swim into the bay over the coming days when later ships arrived. All berths in the present fleet were to be commandeered for The Company and VIPs.

  Thus, The Seventh Wheels' evening party plans were tanked.

  The Vietnamese woman, Dung by name, withdrew her cutlass from the guitarist’s half-shaved eyebrow. “Ai! What happens now?”

  What happens now, indeed. An adventure perhaps? A heroic adventure?

  The big-toothed Californian shaping the guitarist’s mullet blinked at her cluelessly. “Make out?”

  The pair happened to be a romantic item. The Californian, 'Mole' by title and proclivity, was also on a related tangent responsible for their unsightly outfits. He’d kept a studious eye on the ever-shifting fashions of 2050 as part of his sexpat pick-up repertoire. (A sexpat, not to be confused by the modern term, had for the Roboboomers of 2050 evolved a slightly different meaning. It described a movement of astute but nihilistic male Anglophones who sought economic advancement by impregnating a foreign Technocommunist, to in other words expatriate through sex rather than for it.) Their sleek ‘stumes, the sexpat Mole had guaranteed, would’ve made each of them as lucky that night as himself, landing him a gorgeous babe from Asia. That promise had, in turn, elicited no confidence from the others. Dung—in an odd fact seemingly unrecognised by her boyfriend—happened to be a post-menopausal woman somewhere between her 50s and her 80s, and she’d actually been first recruited by the gang as a substitute in a comical attempt to make a romantic connection for their elderly Polish member. The 20-something Mole, however, had stolen the old lady first, and he'd thus been re-annointed 'Mole' from an original 'Sexpat Steve', celebrating his final metamorphosis into a blind, groping creature. 'Dung'—lest false conclusions be drawn from the pattern of nicknaming for the other new heroes—was just a cross-linguistically-unlucky birthname.

  “No, you stupid, horny boy!” Dung swatted at Mole, although, as soon as she said this, she started to entertain it, everything else seeming to be over.

  A hot, sensual look passed between them, traversing the barriers of nation, economic rationalisation, and age.

  Ferno, the gang’s flame-muletted, flame-tempered leader, had taken during the announcements to staring maliciously at the bonfire. His face as if absorbing some of the heat had flushed a lobster red.

  “Nothing…” he answered angrily. “Nothing’s what happens now, Dung…nothing…” In a sudden outburst, he punched a nearby stack of wood, knocking it over and sending two rats inside scuttling, one afterwards dodging a series of chasing stomps from his boot. “These good-for-shit-nothing, blood-drinking-fucking ghouls! ENCULéS! ENCULéS! ENCULéS! ENCULéééééééééS!”

  The extended French cursing travelled out over the surrounding wasteland, attracting the curiosity of some in earshot.

  “Guess you won’t be flipping that dime,” commiserated the member with the dagger and bald spot, not so coincidentally nicknamed ‘Baldspot.’

  By ‘dime’, Baldspot meant a hottie in a group they were supposed to be linking up with for the afterparties. There was an extra jest in this because the group had been their rivals in training, and the dime was continuously bickering with flame-mullet. Every solid adventure needed a romantic subplot, and it could only be hoped this one would be less cringe and pointless.

  “I don’t give a dick about some chatte!” Ferno swore. “The insult here is more substantial!”

  Hmm...maybe not.

  “More substantial?” Baldspot mimed, scratching his skull-shiner with exaggerated cluelessness, although he in fact understood the outrage better than Ferno himself.

  Spud—the old, soup-cooking Pole, named after a potato farm confiscated in the revolution that'd remained a resentful idee fixe—shrugged fatalistically. “The poor will always have the gale in their eyes…”

  The wise knew that bad things came and good things went, but a man could always be content. He just needed to preserve the ownership of his inseparable assets: his wits, his heart, his religion, and his potato.

  The guitarist, Vivaldi, switched to a comic-hearted flamenco and admonished the others for their overreactions. After the earthquakes, he said, and after the demoness of blowflies, this cancellation seemed perfectly in order. He might’ve made the same call in the shoes of the locals. This festival had been haunted by a curse of multiple calamities, and it was only judicious to shut things down before the next one.

  “Let’s polish off these drinks,” he said, “park our characters, and reconnect when everything’s concluded.”

  “But how long will that conclusion be?” asked Ferno.

  Vivaldi shrugged. “A few days…it’s not that long.”

  “No, this conclusion will be much, much longer…”

  Something in their exchange made the mood turn funereal. The group began speeding through their booze supply. Dung and Mole slurped more of each other, kissing and fondling in a corner as if a doomsday clock now ticked down on their relationship.

  Ferno, however, could not accept this. Concocting an alternative, he suggested that they try for the nearest Public Zone. Three-hundred kilometres to the north, it could make for an adventurous trek, the group taking detours along the way to grind the levels needed to survive it. It wasn’t too far if they paced themselves. Vivaldi—ever the group’s kill-joy voice of reason—responded that the monsters would not be trackable during their migrations. What’s more, the territory between Suchi and the Public Zone was currently hosting a very different kind of party, one to which they were not invited.

  That news deflated the flame-mulletted leader, who joined the rest in the commiserations of the cup.

  The few-days wait caused by The Cleansing was not the real issue but rather a subtler function it would play in a crossroad that'd been facing Team Seventh Wheels.

  Since they’d been strangers before the tournament, its conclusion had brought to an end all ostensible reason for their partnership. Soon, their original friends would be calling them back, and that summons, if they followed, would separate them to the distant corners of this virtual planet from which they’d come. That was not a happy prospect for any of them as extraneous rejects. This new group, which they could choose instead, felt much closer, yet that also wasn’t definite. This friendship could’ve been a conflation of the event’s temporary thrills, and by trusting it too much they risked that common fate of strangers who cheat on their spouses and get married during a Vegas holiday only to realise once the excitement and cocaine have passed that they'd been retarded.

  What the group had needed was just one last proof that this new thing was genuine, one last shove to escape the gravity of their unhappy pasts. Today’s finale, the chance of battling the retired hero himself, could've been that opportunity. Alas, they'd failed to qualify, and that moment was gone.

  Ferno—whose angry mood concealed a sensitivity that had already perceived the beginning dissolutions of their bond—had been praying for a second chance somewhere in this final night of debauchery. It was somewhere out there, he’d been sure, somewhere in the confessional mania of the alcohol and the women and the fistfights and the tears. Despite the mere week of acquaintanceship, he loved these weirdos, much more than the so-called brothers of his childhood. He was almost certain the others felt the same – almost. But, if The Seventh Wheels separated now, he would never learn. By the time they might return in a few days, they would have sobered up from this improbable camaraderie.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Baldspot, to lift the group out of their disenchantment, assured them of the inviolability of their friendship wherever they might wander. The week of struggling had made them ‘tighter than a constipated butthole’, tighter even than the infamous Blurm Squad. But, despite his sincerity, nobody took him seriously. Baldspot was cursed with a high-pitched, cartoony yabber that made each statement sound like mockery, which it often was. The dated cultural references also didn’t help, buttholes and Blurm having long fallen out of vogue or ‘gone twice suthy’ as it was said in 2050’s hippest parlance.

  “We have gone to suthy twice,” summarised the elderly Spud, picking up the trendy and cool phrase from sexpat Mole but not quite mastering its usage yet.

  Ferno, after further brooding, presented one last-ditch solution to get them back to first suthy or maybe out of suthy entirely.

  “There is,” he said in a clandestine whisper, turning to face the group’s guitarist, whom he knew would disagree, “that other party that you mentioned to the north. We gentlemen could crash it. Blend in with the mob. Test the sharpness of our spears against the teacher.”

  What party? What teacher? The references lacked clarity, but they did contain an undertone of danger and potentially—through the confrontation with that danger—an initiation into heroic destiny.

  Vivaldi shook his head definitely. “I’m not getting blacklisted.”

  He alluded thus to some issue with this party, which may have involved activities illegal and somehow ‘blacklistable’. Generally, a hero did adhere to the laws, but there were many times of justified rebellion, and this may have been one of those.

  Ferno persisted. “These characters have no time in them. We’ll have our fun, we’ll dump them, and we’ll restart with a clean slate on a distant shore. How about Basindi, boys and gal? Let’s flex this new kungu in the God-Emperor’s promotion!”

  In the God-Emperor’s domains, riches and government positions could be gained by simply challenging their owners to a public fight. The result was a land of intensive wuxia-style combat, where might lorded over lesser might, a cultivator-eats-cultivator world. To test their impertinence against the heavens - now that, after this introduction by some party, could also be an adventure, a heroic adventure.

  Vivaldi and Ferno continued to butt skulls. The former made an impenetrable argument about confiscated banks and penalties. The latter in turn ranted about the material insignificance of digital goods relative to a vague regret. This then devolved into namecalling and accusations by the guitarist of overdrinking.

  “Far from it!” Ferno strolled to a bottle on the ground and refilled a mug that he’d been cradling, his eyes sparkling with a glint of Dionysian adventure-lust. “Our issue, mon boulet, is that we haven’t drunk enough!”

  He swayed in a slow circle, looking for just one ally to mirror his toast and continue their debauch.

  Baldspot, always keen for hijinks, was the first to enlist, raising his cup complicitly. “Onto the next party. We’ll get zanier than Zeek!”

  This was a reference to the character Ezekiel Buster of 2039’s smash-hit bromedy ‘Fun Times in Nairobi’.

  As they drank, the two were joined by Spud. The old farmer, swigging from a vodka handle, mumbled obscurely about ‘the good land’ and the potential to triple the girth of his tubers - what any of that meant would have to be revealed in the course of their heroic journey. Mole and Dung then each flailed a thumbs up of assent from their entangled groping.

  The party, it seemed, was not yet in the grave.

  In their enthusiasm, none of the party had yet noticed their new company, joining them after hearing Ferno's earlier swearing. This stranger stooped behind one of them, hiding in their shadow from the obstructed bonfire, listening, examining, and judging.

  The last holdout, Vivaldi, whose spirit was perhaps the least heroic—and therefore most ironically in need of a transformative adventure—continued to try persuading the gang out of their decision. He cited what he called ‘the objective facts’ of hopelessness. Farmer Spud, for example, would not be getting one square millimetre of dirt due to the supposed presence of that dirt’s owner, who must’ve had inalienable property rights over said dirt. (Again, the link between partying and agriculture was unclear.)

  Ferno cut this defeatist drivel short by calling Vivaldi a gay bitch in French. Proceeding then to shout over the guitarist, he gave a garbled, manic speech about risk and danger being life's supreme philosophical teachers. It was only by aiming straight at these that the human limit was discovered, that one could be educated out of their infirmities and emerge stronger, more agile, and less of a gay bitch in French. With these still unclear but true and heroic proclamations, their leader then tossed his mug into the flames of the bonfire, announcing that he desired no more of these weaker intoxicants.

  The guitarist said a last few words of protest, but they lacked conviction.

  Flame-mullet, despite the rudeness, had won their debate. This—this obscure party—would be the missing climax for their friendship. Its momentum would propel them onwards, onwards to the next adventure, onwards and together.

  Baldspot sniffed the air. “You friend-os whiffing that?”

  Spud at his pot gave a prideful nod. “Perfect soup.”

  Baldspot, not referring to the soup—which did admittedly smell perfect—inhaled deeply. “I think that’s fresh blood.”

  Fresh needed emphasis – the wasteland they’d been camping in had an omnipresent reek of many morbid scents. The earlier battles with the corpsefly demon had littered bodies everywhere, and these, for some reason, had persisted even after her demise, along with the swarms, which continued to bite people and turn them into cadavers on death. A rumour from this anomaly said the demon was not dead but only waiting to reconstitute herself from out of their decay. There was no need for concern, however, for such a threat, assuming it existed, would no doubt be solved by this new team of heroes.

  Baldspot—the odour seeming to originate behind him—snapped around.

  He found nothing.

  There were only the shadows of the night, encroaching quietly into the flickering radiance of their campfire.

  But the scent of blood still lingered unmistakably. It was like the cloying perfume of a passer-by in the street, the iron-y odour of murder.

  “Oh fuck,” said Vivaldi, whose strumming had halted seconds earlier. “Oh fuck…oh fuck…oh fuck…”

  As he repeated this catastrophising mantra, alarm bells rang for the others. The guitarist had never sworn in their hearing before, having inherited a puritanical streak from his minister grandpapa. When they encouraged him to explain his panic, he pointed to the same place that Baldspot had been sniffing.

  “He was standing right there…” Vivaldi whispered, “listening to us…”

  “Who?!” Ferno span excitedly, a spear condensing in his eager grip.

  Vivaldi gulped in dread. “Listening to us…the whole time…He was…”

  The others, after a moment to decode the emphasis—how many Hes could there possibly be in Saana?—broke into one laugh.

  Whatever tension had been hanging in the air melted like a snowstorm cancelled by an anomalous tropical gust. Him? The retired hero? This was categorically Impossible. Their group were encamped many kilometres away from the stadium, where they had only minutes earlier observed his presence on the live broadcast. What’s more, why would He be eavesdropping on random conversations when much more stimulating post-career quests awaited, such as compiling a twelve-volume genealogy of historical fannypacks?

  Banter from the others hailed upon the guitarist, whose cautious nature seemed to have manifested in paranoid hallucinations.

  Vivaldi didn’t seem to register these insults, though. He sat in panicky deliberation, his mind racing through questions of how much exactly had been heard, whether they were still being observed, and which authority he should contact later for a petition of amnesty.

  When his chums started prodding and jostling him, he flicked out a projection from his hand.

  The others collected around it to study, and they winced as one.

  Shown, through their amigo’s eyes, had indeed been a person standing right behind Baldspot. This stranger, in an odd contrast to the gore splattering his face, appeared to be giving an amused study of their friend’s titular defect.

  Bald spots were, of ecological note, a rare encounter in Saana where appearances could be customised and one would thus only have a bald spot out of personal choice, perhaps due to a dogmatic hatred of roleplayers that obliged a commitment to real-life aesthetic integrity or due to avant-garde non-hairstyle taste. For Baldspot’s bald spot, nobody else in Team Seventh Wheels had yet to hear an explanation, their friend just giggling mysteriously when asked.

  The perplexed eyes of the stranger in the footage drifted up to meet those of the spectator. Then, wagging back and forth ludicrously between the bald spot and the group’s shaved eyebrows, they seemed to pose a query: is this the state of fashion in 2050? Have I fallen so far out of touch with the Roboboomer youth, or is it you who’ve fallen, plummeting into an abyss of style that only one ex-heroic polymath duellist-turned-designer could redeem?

  That, at least, provided one interpretation for the look. The blood-covered stranger suffered, unfortunately, from a muted, flat expression, which made him impossible to read. His darting eyes could have easily conveyed a different point, e.g. a zany taunting from some meta-awareness of their incandidacy to succeed him - heroes are always bold, he may have been hinting, but rarely are they bald. He could as another alternative have been signalling the order of their execution.

  On this note of ambiguity, the stranger had vanished.

  Baldspot, raising himself from a squat over the footage, grinned ironically. “Oh boy-o, we are in BIG trouble!”

  Things had just gone thrice suthy.

  The others soon followed in this confusing reaction, not interpreting the cameo of the retired hero as the lucky omen that one should expect, a sign of a new heroism on their own horizon. Mole and Dung sat dejectedly on a barrel. Old farmer Spud—concluding he had no power over this situation, just like most of life’s misfortunes—returned to nurturing the one constant of his potato soup.

  Ferno, in his gear, stampeded in a circle, shouting to the dark with provocative glee. “Armour up, bitches! This is the moment. This is our fucking moment! Come test us, you over-hyped connard!”

  “Yeah, come get it, you arsehole!” aped a giggling Baldspot.

  The latter, spinning the dagger used earlier for a mirror, activated a Cutthroat stealth and began scouting their perimeter in search of the opponent, although this framing—of an ‘opponent’’—remained inexplicable, it seeming contextually much more appropriate to describe the hero as their predecessor, well-wisher, or observant but absent guardian angel winking as he left for the leisurely sunset of retirement.

  Vivaldi leapt to his feet hurriedly. “It’s been a blast, guys, but I’ll catch you on the road. Same name as always. Ping a howzit when you’re back.”

  The South African walked off at a brisk pace with his arms raised like a bankrobber surrendering to the cops. As he disappeared into the night, his voice returned to them at regular intervals, shouting to any would-be listeners that he was heading in orderly fashion to the designated log-out zone. The volume of this refrain soon declined into a silence that seemed all the quieter in the cessation of his guitar playing.

  Team Seventh Wheels, already one friend down, waited nervously, twiddling thumbs and stirring soup.

  Baldspot scouting from on top of a pile of rubble reported nothing. Not much was visible due to a rare half-moon night. Some of the other groups scattered around the wasteland had begun marching in Vivaldi’s direction, their weekends complete as well. Not far from Team Seventh Wheels, the hunched silhouettes of a hyena mob crept towards the plains, avoiding any living humans while they dragged off a harvest of corpses. One of these corpses, still breathing, waved at Baldspot on his perch, but when she tried to call for assistance, the dragging beast mauled out her throat.

  Watching her expire, Baldspot giggled, recalling how even the retired hero had been mesmerised by Glissinda – Glissinda was the petname of his glistening chromer.

  Several more minutes passed without incident. The passion of Mole and Dung’s fears flowed back into a desperate lovemaking, teeth sucked and wrinkles slurped. Spud, the soup finished, poured it into bowls and served it with a herbal vodka and some cold cuts of giraffe. While the group ate, a man gave a death shriek in the distance, but Vivaldi over message confirmed it wasn’t him. It must’ve just been one of the region’s more boring anonymous killings.

  Ferno tossed his head in triumph, his flame-mullet swinging like a mighty phoenix tail as he—perhaps through his willingness to accept even the most impossible, most invincible challenge—was reborn into the role of hero. “It seems the teacher PUSSIED out!”

  “Yeah, he PUSSIED out!” repeated Baldspot, bouncing back down the rubble like a mountain goat.

  None of the others shared the confidence. They believed that their lives had been spared for some other reason, such as perhaps the retired hero’s unassailable humanitarian commitment to turning the other cheek or him having better priorities like an ongoing search for a million-year-old cosmic starsilk to stitch the threads of his Legendary fannypack.

  And so began the ambush.

  From behind Spud—who’d been frowning constipatedly at the mess of his cooking gear, realising, as no one moved to clean it up, that it’d only ever been Vivaldi amongst these youngsters who’d shown the basics of gratitude—a camouflaged pantheress destealthed. Its mouth yawned, its fangs glowing as they clamped around his distracted noggin. The top two-thirds, including Spud’s helmet, were sheared cleanly through with no more resistance than an over-boiled potato, leaving only the jaw and the base of the nose. His body, absent a brain, collapsed in a rigid posture as if zapped by electricity. He would’ve landed face down if he’d still had one. Through the back of his missing skull, the molars shone grimly in a gurgling fountain of blood.

  Baldspot—his scout’s eyes the first to identify the attack, his scout’s wits concluding they were already zippoed—responded with a dramatic, belly-full giggle. At that exact moment, a second assailant landed through teleportation next to him. They cast a spell, and the laughing figure was engulfed in a cone of sun-hot flame. His torso and his balding head disintegrated into ash. His arms, which had escaped the damage as they were being raised upwards in applause, met each other in mid-air for a disembodied clap, smoke tendrilling from their cauterised stumps.

  Mole and Dung, the two entangled lovers, were shot next by Cupid’s arrow plunging from the dark. The Vietnamese woman, straddling on top, gave a shudder of anguish before falling limp in an odd imitation of post-orgasmic exhaustion. From out of a fist-sized cavity in her chest, a slurry of cardiac meat and rib fragments gushed forth into a matching wound in the young man. Their mouths, once locked in a kiss, separated as the couple fell from their seat and their bodies rolled with a thump in the dirt, their eyes a frenzy of ecstasy and bewilderment before the dimming.

  Ferno, observing the demise of his friends in horror, was flung spinning into a whirlpool of questions.

  Who were these assailants? Why were there multiple? Did they have any connection to the previous talk of parties and teachers or was this just a random ambush? And what was the fate of their friendship on the other side of this?

  And beyond him as one locus of confusion were other, deeper, higher, more perplexing questions around the hunt for a replacement hero. Did this ambush—or Team Seventh Wheels’ failure to respond to it with appropriate heroic skill and heroic talent—in any way disqualify them from the role of successorship? Was this group, in fact, ever supposed to be the replacement heroes? And, if they weren’t, what exactly was the purpose of this introductory episode?

  No answers seemed forthcoming for flame-mullet, who—in a delayed reaction, revealing the priorities innermost his heart—raised his hand to the attackers, wishing to signal himself out and defend the innocence of his friends. The idea—and the responsibility—exclusively belonged to himself.

  Once again, though, he was too slow to speak what needed to be spoken. He was already falling, a javelin bowling him over as it punched through one shoulder and avulsed from out the other.

  Any further vision of his comrades was lost as he tipped face-first into the orange dancing of the bonfire. The workings of the heat singed away his ugly haircut and the flesh from his skull. It stripped also the first tears of his regrets at failing to confess his love in the right moment of opportunity, which only now struck him as having been every single moment.

  Alas, these rejects may not have been the replacement heroes. The search for one might only be beginning...