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Five rounds into Wonderland and things were not looking too hot for the Reclaimers of the Bureau of Balance. The sacrifices hadn’t been too terrible so far—a finger, a few skills, one or two memories whose eventual fate at the hands of the voidfish Tenn was morbidly curious to learn, a spot of bad luck, which had stung, and the memory of the man who had killed Ryuu’s family, which had stung worse, though Tenn and Gaku had sworn already to get his revenge for him. They had also run into a temporary ally, a literal talking head by the name of Okazaki Rinto who had informed them that this place was an inescapable death trap run by a lich who enjoyed pitting his captives against each other. Okazaki had gotten out of this by sacrificing his entire body so that he could no longer play through the game and was stuck here as a head for eternity; he had declined the Reclaimers’ invitation to bring him along, saying that he’d rather be where he was, stuck alone watching others get tormented, than buy into the game like his party members had. They had all wished each other well, and the Reclaimers had vowed to use his information to keep their heads and take advantage of any opportunity they got to grab the Animus Bell and fully escape. This plan had seemed fine then, and despite everything, it still seemed fine now. The biggest issues with it, all things considered, came from three facts: one, that the sacrifices were getting worse; two, that they could not heal at all; and three, that they were five rounds into Wonderland and absolutely no closer to finding the Animus Bell than they had been when they started.
On the bright side, it turned out that the pair running this place ran off of ‘negativity’, so they literally could not complain about any of this. This wasn’t much of a problem for Tenn, who saved his complaining for when he was off the clock (and oh boy was he going to insist upon getting paid overtime for this, or else the Director would need to find a new Reclaimer), but he could see Gaku, who bitched like it was his full-time job, getting more and frustrated, and Ryuu had gone strangely silent after the latest round of sacrifices. Something had to change, if they were going to get anything done here; they needed to make some form of progress, at least, and Tenn was dead certain that they had made no more progress throughout the entire game than they had walking in through the door to Wonderland in the first place.
The day had started off fine, at least. The Director had finally stopped their ridiculous training regimen to send them after the sixth and final relic—strange, since originally they had been told that they were seven, but that was a question to be asked when they got back from the mission—and revealed that the location of this relic, at least, was a known factor. Upon founding the Bureau of Balance as a girl of eighteen, she had entered, lost ten years of her life, lost a founding member of the Bureau, lost a good deal of her martial prowess, and lost the memory of her father’s astral fate before finally escaping empty-handed; Gaku had asked her whether the last-minute training had been so that they would have more to lose, while Tenn had kept an eye on the portrait she’d used to reveal that she looked ten years older than she actually was. She had not actually dropped the illusion magic on it—she’d merely cast another, and he was curious despite himself as to what was underneath. Ryuu had asked some probing questions about the Red Robes and was informed that, despite the fact that every encounter they’d had with the lich they’d met had ended well for them, they were uniformly, completely evil and should be dealt with by running away as fast as possible, and then grabbed a few more supplies from his room before they headed off to the Felicity Wilds.
Once there, they had unfortunately had a bit of a fight with a chimera that ended up destroying the transport sphere they’d traveled in on, causing Ryuu to go completely pale and then vomit into a bush, but after that they’d met the leader of Neverwinter and his hired help, and things had gone a bit more smoothly. They’d had a bit of a rest and healed up, and then continued on and eventually entered Wonderland where Tenn had been honestly impressed. The elves running the show, who presented themselves as a glamorous couple named Re:vale, had put on an incredible show before introducing the sacrifice wheel, and Tenn had even managed to get a useful piece of information out of them: he had asked, half-serious, if they were hiring, and been informed that that was a possible reward you got if you got far enough in the games, and that they were even holding an open position for a third member of their team whom their employer had already approved, a person who had gone missing from the Astral Sea.
So Re:vale was using the Animus Bell—to search the Astral Sea, at least—which meant that this could be a hard fight when they got to it. The fight for the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet had killed an entire town as well as Izumi Iori, one of their party members; the fight for the Gaia Sash had killed its wielder and his lover and also Tenn’s innocence when he saw Gaku flirting with some actual plants; the fight for the Philosopher’s Stone was the only fight over a relic that hadn’t ended in somebody’s death, but that was only because most of the participants were ghosts. More relevant for their current situation, though, that whole debacle had also revealed that the main job of the detective the Director had hired as a personal assistant was neither assisting the Director nor doing detective work: Ogami Banri was a reaper of the Raven King who had somehow been trapped in a mortal body with his memories wiped ten years prior, and was currently chasing the bounty of whoever had done that to him, a trail that had been cold ten years ago and was icier now. Depending on how desperate Re:vale was to find whoever had vanished out of the Astral Sea, Tenn thought that they might be able to pimp out Ogami to them in exchange for the Animus Bell, which had clearly been of no help to them in their search.
For now, though, they were still trapped here, slowly giving up more and more of themselves, and, unless they managed to catch a break large enough to either start a fight or insert their bargaining chip up on the moon and apply leverage, they might actually be stuck here until they died.
That was not an incredibly happy concept for anyone except for perhaps their captors, who were almost certainly enjoying the pain the Reclaimers were going though: they eyed them hungrily through the sacrifices, and when Tenn was crushed under a heavy piece of machinery in their first horrific battle, he was fairly certain he’d caught them making out with tongue somewhere near the ceiling. If the pimping out went well, though, he was certain that everyone would be happier if the Reclaimers got what they wanted—other than, perhaps, every other idiot who walked into Wonderland, but that wasn’t Tenn’s problem. Tenn’s problem was the now-completed sacrifice wheel, and the door they were walking through to face whatever their next trial would be. He was beginning to even miss the stupid Prisoner’s Dilemma that Ryuu had thrown, back when they first entered into Wonderland. At least there they’d had some control, even if they’d only used it to throw themselves into an even worse situation—
“Welcome back!” said the shorter elf. “That last spin on the Sacrifice Wheel was pretty tough, wasn’t it? But don’t worry! This next challenge is going to be a breeze, we promise!”
Gaku folded his arm, raised his eyebrows, and then bit back whatever it was he was going to say; Tenn stepped on his foot to shut him up anyway. Ryuu, now ten years older, said, “We’re looking forward to it,” which was an egregious enough lie that Tenn started worrying about his friend having gotten a concussion, possibly.
The elf laughed. “Well—it’ll be a breeze if you make the right choice. That’s right—it’s time for another round of family favorite, Trust or Forsake! You know the deal—step up to the podium and you’ll be matched with an opponent, and then…well, you’ll just press the button that you feel is right. Simple, fresh, and fun!”
A familiar podium materialized, two large buttons on the top reading TRUST and FORSAKE respectively. Tenn’s heart lept—the Prisoner’s Dilemma! Hopefully their opponents would be as big chumps as his friends were—and before the buttons even lit up he had summoned his Mage Hand to press the button labeled FORSAKE as hard as he could.
The elf laughed; from behind the Reclaimers, the second elf said, “Aren’t you enthusiastic? The round hasn’t started yet, though…we haven’t decided who will be playing at all.”
Tenn raised his eyebrows, refusing to give the man the satisfaction of knowing that he’d successfully startled him. “Then decide,” he said cooly. “And you should choose me, you know. I’ve gotten a bit of a handle on how this thing works…you spin the wheel, you Trust or Forsake, you fight a battle, you might get a bonus round where you even out your health a little, you spin the wheel, you Trust or Forsake, et cetera and so on, over and over until you die…do I have that right?”
“Seems right to me,” said Gaku.
“Me too,” said Ryuu.
“Why, you wound us!” said the shorter elf. “We’ve put a lot of variety into Wonderland, you know. And calling it a ‘loop’…that makes it sound like there’s no winning, like there’s no getting your prize… would we really do something like that, darling?”
“No,” said the taller one, appearing next to his partner. “If you reach the finish line, you win your heart’s desire. It’s a fair game, with fair rules.”
“And how do you reach that finish line?” said Ryuu. “How many loops does it take?”
“How many roads lead to Rome?” said the shorter elf. “It’s subjective…it all depends on where you start. Did you know that Wonderland is coming up on its hundred and fiftieth anniversary? And we’ve had competitors playing it constantly for the past hundred and sixteen years. The important thing, the thing that separates the winners from the losers, is that the winners give up everything and everything they ever valued and never stop yearning for their hearts’ desire, and the losers succumb to the pain and torment and cycles and start wanting only things like survival, healing, safety, to get out of here. Really, all we do is test your mettle! It takes a lot to get your heart’s desire, after all.”
“Wait,” said Ryuu, “do you mean that you’ve consistently had competitors here for over a century, or that somebody’s been trapped here for nearly a hundred and fifteen years now?”
“Yes to both,” said the shorter elf.
“Not trapped,” said the taller elf. “There’s always the choice to stop.”
Tenn started to say something about the sunk cost fallacy and then closed his mouth and took a deep breath. “Well, putting the subjectivity of the concept of free will aside,” he said, “they’re still loops, and I’m sure even if they’re always some freshly visceral horror for us, things might get tedious for you…especially when people pick Trust too often. Statistically someone will have to fight a normal battle eventually, and I don’t think you want that. If you choose me for this challenge, you know that I’ll pick Forsake, which means that regardless of what our opponents choose you’ll have a more interesting time of it.”
“What an offer…” said the shorter elf. “Unfortunately, that choice is entirely random…”
“…Fully out of our hands…”
“…A role of the dice!”
Both elves grinned at the trio, seemingly having a great time, and on the podium, Tenn’s, Ryuu’s, and Gaku’s faces flashed up, spinning and spinning around and around until finally—thankfully—it landed on Tenn’s.
The shorter elf laughed and clapped his hands. “Excellent, excellent!” he said. “Now let’s see if you’re a man of your word…”
“Tenn, you cannot pick Forsake,” said Ryuu.
“I’m picking Forsake,” said Tenn, starting towards the podium.
“We’ll be screwing over the other people—”
“You mean like how we were screwed over last time?” snapped Tenn. “I almost died, Ryuu.”
“Not from the fight—from bad luck! We can take the fight, I promise. But hurting others to survive…that goes against everything that I believe in.”
“Not me,” said Tenn. “Didn’t you hear them? This is just an endless cycle of pain, pretty much. We’ve got to look out for ourselves here. It’s not like our job involves protecting anyone this time.”
“You know, there’s every chance that there isn’t actually an opponent and it’s just these guys,” said Gaku. “We might not be screwing anyone over by picking Forsake.”
“Oh, no, you poor sweet things,” said the shorter elf.
“In Wonderland,” said the taller, “you screw over others to survive. And you need to survive to win, so…”
“So, Forsake,” said Tenn. “I don’t care about our opponents, I care about us. And, more importantly, I care about not dying next round.” He slammed his hand down on the button. “Forsake.”
Gaku hissed in through his teeth, and black smoke floated up to the ceiling with his exhale. Ryuu’s lips outlined the words please, please, please as a glowing screen wrote out Tenn’s choice and then, not a moment later, the word TRUST popped up next to it.
“No,” Ryuu breathed.
“Thank fucking God,” said Gaku. “I mean, sucks shit for them, but you two are going to do whatever you can to keep squeezing the suffering out of whoever it was, right? So odds are this challenge won’t kill them.”
“Who can say?” said the taller elf. “But…congratulations, you don’t have to face the challenge.”
“Instead,” said the shorter elf, “a little break! Step right through this door, and face a dream come true.”
As he spoke, both elves waved their hands and another voidlike door appeared. Jaw set, Ryuu stepped through first, and Gaku and Tenn followed to find themselves standing on the first square of a colorful board game, above a sea of acid with a cloud of bats swooping overhead. This image lasted only for a minute, however: everything froze almost before they had registered their surroundings, and then dissolved into the same black smoke that escaped their mouths whenever they complained.
“Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” came the voice of the shorter elf. “I really don’t know why that happened! You three won Trust or Forsake, so…”
The black smoke swirled around them and the room reformed itself so that they were standing on a catwalk above a cheering crowd of wooden mannequins. The catwalk grew forward out of the mist and ended on a large stage not unlike the one they’d seen upon entering Wonderland. Both elves were posing on each side of the stage, and the mannequins screamed louder upon seeing them as they laughed and preened.
“Live from the inescapable depths of Wonderland, it’s time for another round of your favorite dating show, Heart Attack!” shouted the shorter elf. “Your hosts for today: myself, Momo, and my darling, oh-so-handsome partner, Yuki!”
The crowd cheered louder; Gaku frowned and muttered, “Swear to fuck I’ve heard those names before.”
“Oh, you’re in the habit of watching dating shows?” Tenn whispered back. “What, do you imagine that you’re on one with the director?”
“No, in the BOB’s personnel files,” said Gaku. “I was helping the director out with some sorting—”
Tenn and Ryuu both grinned at that, and Tenn wiggled his eyebrows.
“Oh, shut up, ” said Gaku. “I don’t remember the context…I was distracted—”
“Of course you were.”
“Not like that! The Director was busy, so she had Ogami going through the files with me, so I was a little disappointed. And I think those names came up…but I can’t remember why… Missing persons, maybe?”
“Missing—”
“—Persons?” Tenn and Ryuu met eyes, and Ryuu swallowed and continued, “They said that if we went through enough loops in Wonderland a minor reward was working for the place…how long had the Momo and Yuki the files mentioned been missing?”
“Uh…” Gaku frowned. “I don’t know. Over a century, I think. Long enough that Ogami thought that one of them had to be labeled as ‘deceased’ because he was a human…can’t remember which, though.”
“These are obviously both elves,” said Tenn. “So no connection to the Bureau.”
“The Bureau’s less than a decade old, so the fact that we have century-old missing persons cases is weird,” said Ryuu.
“The Director’s personal assistant is a part-time detective, Ryuu,” said Tenn. “The cases probably came with him, and that was a nice way of friendzoning Gaku, because, and let me remind you, you are in your early thirties and she is pushing fifty. ”
“Late thirties now,” Gaku said, “and we both got time stolen from us in Wonderland—”
“Would anyone really want to date someone sexually attracted to plants, though?”
“Shut up, shut the fuck up—”
“And our contestants today,” said the taller elf, Yuki, “three heroes on the hunt for magical items: Nanase Tenn, Tsunashi Ryuunosuke, and Yaotome Gaku.”
The crowd of mannequins cheered again; all three ‘contestants’ jumped and made their hurried way down the catwalk, giving quick waves to the unsettling crowd just in case it might decide to turn on them. Tenn ran an appraising eye over the ‘hosts’, the glamorous elves who had teamed up in putting the three Reclaimers through hell over and over again, and ran through their earlier conversation in his head. He had fixated on their searching the Astral Sea for somebody—he’d paid less attention to their mention of the potential for a Wonderland captive to become a Wonderland torturer, or the fact that they had a boss who apparently approved such things. The boss was probably the lich Okazaki had mentioned—a lich that, as far as Tenn knew, they hadn’t seen at all yet.
If they were lucky, Re:vale had the Animus Bell and their lich boss knew nothing about it. The possibility of them also being captives of Wonderland threw a bit of a wrench in the bargaining chip plan, but whatever else happened, fighting two mortals was infinitely preferable to fighting a lich. But if the lich boss had the Bell things were looking far more dire—and they had no way of knowing if that was the case, or anything about the lich boss at all, really.
Re:vale, finished stoking up the crowd of mannequins, turned on their heels in perfect unison, turning identically cheery grins on the trio.
“Welcome, welcome to Heart Attack!” said Momo. “Are you three brave heroes ready for your only chance at love?”
“I’ll pass,” said Ryuu.
“You know, there’s someone I like already—”
“Your mom’s hydrangea plant or your boss?” Tenn muttered.
Gaku stepped on his foot.
“Unfortunately, you can’t exactly pass on this,” said Momo. “You don’t have to face the deadly challenge, but we do still get to have a little bit of fun! Isn’t that great?”
“Sure,” said Tenn.
“I guess,” said Gaku.
“Really, I can’t stress enough how uninterested I am in this,” said Ryuu.
“Look,” said Gaku, “we’re not going to have a good time with it, but we’re also pretty much prisoners, here, we can’t exactly say no. Also—you did just say ‘inescapable’, right? Which means there’s no winning here.”
“Gosh, what a surprise,” said Tenn. “It’s just an endless spiral of torment with an unreachable goal at the end, who ever would have guessed? I never saw this coming. Did you guys?”
“Oh, never, ” said Gaku.
Ryuu cleared his throat and jerked his chin over at them; Tenn and Gaku watched clouds of black smoke drift from their mouths to the ceiling.
“Fuck,” said Gaku, and another trickle of smoke came out. They watched it rise, and then—strangely—a section of the smoke jerked away and vanished instead of collecting at the ceiling with the rest. Had something drawn it away?
“And to answer your question, Tenn,” said Ryuu quickly, before their tormentors could notice the strange behavior of the smoke, “I did actually expect this little revelation. We all did, remember? Okazaki Rinto warned us in the fight against the bears and slimes.”
Both members of Re:vale whipped around to stare directly at Ryuu, thrown off guard for the first time, and Tenn’s hand snaked its way to the handle of the Umbrastaff.
“That’s true,” said Tenn. “Though I was somewhat distracted by getting crushed by a laundry machine, which wasn’t exactly the most fun thing in the world.”
“Though it did help drive home the ‘inescapable’ bit, so that’s fun,” said Gaku. “Nothing like watching your dear friend and party member nearly die and then meeting a guy who is just a head and who was almost definitely abandoned by his dear friends and party members to really drive home the point that you just willingly walked into hell!”
The two elves continued staring at them. Above their heads, more black smoke jerked away and vanished. Tenn rolled his eyes.
“Yes, we know your tricks,” he said. “And we’re still playing along. We are on the clock, after all, and I always perform my job perfectly. We may not beat your unbeatable game, but we will be walking away from here with the Animus Bell.”
“Or maybe dragging ourselves away, if we sacrifice our legs,” said Gaku, and Tenn and Ryuu both laughed.
“…Right, well, good luck with that, ” said Yuki, and all three Reclaimers watched black smoke leave his mouth and float upwards, splitting in half as it went. “For now, though…let’s…introduce our love interest.”
“Ta-da!” Momo added, posing, as lights went up behind a nearby curtain, revealing a humanoid silhouette, sitting in a chair completely motionless. Its limbs were segmented, just like a mannequin, but it did appear to have human hair done up in a ponytail similar to the one Ogami wore, so hopefully when they fully saw it that would make the thing look less horrifying.
Then it moved its arm to wave flirtily at them, and its movements were jerky and mechanical, and Tenn decided that it was definitely going to be awful when they saw it fully and began to steel himself.
“Our love interests are very handsome,” said Yuki. “We designed both of them ourselves, you know.”
“Are there different love interests for people attracted to men and people attracted to women?” Ryuu asked.
“What? No,” said Yuki. “Everyone is attracted to men, right?”
“Okay, gayass,” Gaku muttered.
“Anyway! Back to the rules of our game,” Momo said, grinning brightly and flashing a peace sign at the audience.”We're going to ask a series of questions to measure your compatibility with our hot love interest. Whoever charts with the highest lovability quotient will get a hot date out of it! Are you three ready?”
“Sure, yeah, what the hell,” said Gaku. “Fuck us up.”
Behind the curtain, the love interest blew a kiss.
Ryuu paused for a moment, and then, black smoke billowing out of his mouth, he said, “You know what? No. I’m not ready.”
“Ryuu, what the hell are you thinking?” Tenn hissed. “It’s not like we’re going to heal or find the bell just standing around here.”
“Your dear friend and party member is right,” said Yuki. “You won’t move on if you don’t play. And if you don’t move on, my partner and I might get bored. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
Tenn turned to Ryuu, looking for his reaction, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He stood like he was—testing something, almost, like he was looking for a certain reaction, perhaps to see what was happening with the black smoke—
His hand tensed, and then moved into a shape Tenn knew signified something, and he left out a sigh and said, “Fine, I’ll do it.”
“Great!” said Momo. “Okay, first question. Ryuu! What is your ideal first date?”
There was a moment when Tenn worried he might balk again, but then Ryuu said, “Um…fireflies. I would pick them up in the evening, we would catch fireflies, I would take them home, and we’d never speak again, because I am really not interested in dating.”
“Ooh, playing hard to get!” said Momo, as the silhouette behind the curtain fanned itself. “It seems like our contestant likes that. Okay, next…Gaku. Ideal first date?”
Gaku’s lips curled into a wicked grin.
“You’ve thought this one out, haven’t you?” Tenn sighed.
“My boss calls me into her office for my annual performance review,” he said. “Now, listen—this could happen, the performance review hasn’t happened yet, there is a nonzero chance of this actually occurring. So she calls me in for my performance review, and I walk in, and it’s just me and her in there, and a vase of flowers on the desk.”
“And our love interest?” said Yuki.
“Oh, this is supposed to be a first date with—I didn’t realize, sorry. I was going to describe a first date with my boss. Huh. Okay, well, I pick them up and we drive to the best soba restaurant in Neverwinter, which just so happens to be owned by my grandfather. We park in the alleyway behind the building, right next to the dumpster, where there’s always a spot because nobody ever wants to park there since the smell is literally impossible to get out of your car. We go in through the kitchen door, and I let her know that this is my family’s restaurant and I like to pick up shifts here on my time off, so she’ll be working the floor while I do delivery. Neither of us are getting paid for this. At the end of my shift I learn that she called an Uber and left, and the Uber was driven by my boss’s personal assistant who works about fifty different jobs, and she complained to him about the date so much that it got back to my boss, who calls me back to her office, alone, where it’s just her and her assistant and this flowerpot on the table, and the conversation about my behavior on my date gets heated, and passionate, and then the four of us fuck right there on her desk.”
“Wait, four?” said Momo.
“Look, her assistant is hot too,” said Gaku. “He’s great. I’d totally bang him if I had the chance.”
“The fourth is clearly our love interest, honey,” said Yuki, and Tenn leaned forward, grinning in wicked anticipation.
“What? No,” said Gaku, “the love interest has me blocked on everything now and is advertising our restaurant by complaining about our date. The fourth member is the flowers, obviously.”
“That’s…bad,” said Momo. “That’s really, really bad. Uh, our audience seems to love it, but…”
“Honesty is an important quality in a romantic partner, my love,” Yuki pointed out. “Alright, and Tenn. A different question, with a different answer. Say you were on a date with our love interest, and one of your fans came up to you on the street. What would you do?”
“Well, my fans take priority, of course,” Tenn said. “I wouldn’t be anywhere without them. I would do whatever the fan wanted, and my date could choose to react to that how they will.”
The audience was dead silent at that one, which was fine; Tenn didn’t particularly care for romance. Momo winced and said, “Ooh, you whiffed with that one, I’m afraid. Well, better luck next time. Ryuu! You’re on a date and one of your fans comes up. What do you do?”
“I have fans?” said Ryuu.
“From your heroic adventuring,” said Yuki.
“Huh, okay,” said Ryuu. “I mean…I’d try to make them happy, but I guess my date would take priority?”
This answer, as it was the one that contained common human decency, got cheers from the crowd and “blown kisses” from the love interest; Tenn swept his eyes dispassionately around the room, trying to see if there was an exit anywhere, or any sign of a lich. He couldn’t see anything, which was unfortunate. They needed more information—but where to get it from?
“Gaku, it’s time for a new question!” said Momo. “Why should our love interest choose you instead of your other two contestants?”
“Oh, easy,” said Gaku. “I’m available. Ryuu’s a widower and doesn’t intend on dating again, and Tenn is married to his job to a frankly unhealthy degree. Unlike those two, I don’t really have anything else going on in my life. I’ve even lost track of the location of my family’s soba restaurant, if you’ll believe that.”
There was laughter from the crowd; the love interest wiped its brow in apparent relief.
“Tenn,” said Yuki, “the same question. Why should our love interest choose you over the other two contestants?”
Tenn pretended to consider this for a moment, and then raised his eyebrows. “You do know who I am,” he said. “I’m Tenn. From TV?”
The crowd lost their minds laughing at that, which Tenn considered a win; it seemed safer than the crowd being upset, anyway. The contestant didn’t seem too impressed, but that was fine; it was no matter to cast a quick Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on it, which would hopefully win Tenn the game and keep him and the others alive a little bit longer.
Behind the curtain, the silhouette collapsed with laughter; it fell out of its chair and its head popped off and bounced on the ground. The audience laughed harder at that; the silhouette writhed in ways that no humanoid could possibly writhe; more of its limbs came off. Momo and Yuki turned to it in horror as Tenn regretted every choice that had led him to this moment and he, Gaku, and Ryuu did their best to inch away from the thing, which was still laughing, each detached limb seemingly with a life of its own.
“No,” cried Yuki, rushing for the curtain, Momo hot on his heels, “no— Ban!”
“It’s okay, darling,” Momo said, “it’s okay—we can fix him—”
The laughter continued. The love interest finished falling to pieces, and slowly the pieces stopped moving as the two elves stood in front of the curtain in despair, black smoke roiling off them in waves. The stage grew darker and darker, and then suddenly both elves were standing in front of Ryuu, staring down at him, with furious, hungry smiles on their faces. In unison, they said, “Next question. What makes a good hero, Ryuu?”
Spell flashed through Tenn’s mind—if their tormentors were emotionally attached to the marionette that had just laughed itself to death, maybe they could use that to get to the bell, cast Mending, or have Ryuu rebuild it—or some form of teleportation, just to get the hell away from here—or a way to get answers, any sort of real answers at all—
That was what was important here. They had a job to do; it was high time they stopped fumbling around through this hell and did it. As the elves leered down at Ryuu, Tenn twitched his wrist and cast True Seeing on Ryuu, in hopes that it might give him some idea or other how to answer that question without incurring the wrath of the two in front of him, and as the spell was cast, Tenn watched in real time as the blood drained from Ryuu’s face and his eyes flickered from Momo, to Yuki, back to Momo, and then to a spot somewhat behind them that was, as far as Tenn could tell, completely empty.
“…A good hero…” Ryuu said slowly. “Well…when I was younger, I guess I thought a hero was a person who acts without hesitation, who always does the right thing. But now I’d say, um, a person who acts when the time is right, and they’re fully prepared to do what is right.”
“How quaint,” said Momo, smiling cruelly. Somewhere off to the side, a bell dinged; both elves cast nervous glances at the curtain, where the silhouette was still in slightly-trembling pieces. “Well! That’s the end of this episode of Heart Attack—it’s time to see who our lovely love interest has chosen! May the best man win.”
The curtain rose, revealing a terribly human-looking mannequin lying dismembered on the ground. Somebody had drawn a face on it, and the face wasn’t moving, but there was still a noise coming out of it like a door hinge’s best imitation of human laughter, and each piece shook individually. Its wig had come off, and disturbingly it was the same color as Ogami’s hair, and Tenn thought that he would probably never look at the Director’s personal assistant the same way again, because unfortunately for all three of them, the mannequin’s resemblance to the man was uncanny.
“I hate that, actually,” said Gaku. “Forget literally everything I said about disciplinary meeting foursomes. No way in hell. That’s fucked up.”
“You guys are seeing it too?” said Ryuu.
“The mannequin that looks concerningly like the Director’s assistant, yes,” said Tenn. Casting a quick Message cantrip, he added silently, I cast True Seeing on you when the elves were asking their final question.
Ryuu’s eyes widened, and he nodded as Re:vale cautiously approached the twitching, dismembered mannequin. He carefully leaned forward and whispered in Tenn’s ear, “Can I reply to the Message with an image of what I saw?”
“Yes, I think so,” Tenn breathed back.
Ryuu nodded, and closed his eyes. A second later, Tenn got his response: the moment before answering the final question, as seen through Ryuu’s eyes. Re:vale was standing too close, staring him down, but instead of the two glamorous elves Tenn and Gaku had seen, there was one elf—Yuki—and one human—Momo. They were too thin, with sunken eyes, and both were extremely injured, though the blood had dried long ago. Their clothes were in tatters and a century out of date, and a kind of desperate fury had written itself so deeply into the lines of their faces that it looked like there would be nothing else without it. There was something else behind them—a flash of red—but the image faded before Tenn could make more out. He sent another Message, this time to both Gaku and Ryuu.
Suddenly Gaku’s hundred-year missing persons case looks far more viable, he sent. Illusion—Momo’s a human.
Fuck, said Gaku. Fucked that Ogami’s looking into them while they have a mannequin that’s him. Connection?
Had a mannequin, said Ryuu, and Tenn bit his lip and Gaku pressed his mouth into his forearm to keep from bursting out laughing. Also we have an ally here. Will update.
“Well, this has…literally never happened before,” said Momo, finally tearing his eyes away from the fucked up mannequin. “Let’s call this competition a draw. And now! It’s time to see how your opponents in Trust of Forsake fared!”
The area above the crowd changed color, and an image of the people they’d met in the woods appeared, injured and aged and about as worn down as Tenn felt. He stared at them remorselessly as Ryuu mouthed Sorry and Gaku pointed at Tenn, and then the screen vanished once more, leaving all three of them feeling somewhat worse than they had before.
“Wasn’t that fun? Don’t you just love Wonderland?” said Momo. “I really can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to leave!”
“I’m sure he can’t,” muttered Gaku. “If they’re really trapped here too, wouldn’t leaving mean that whatever horrible things they’ve done here, they did for nothing?”
“Yes, that’s the sunk cost fallacy,” Tenn whispered back. Loud enough for the disguised elf and human to hear him, he said, “Well, I am getting paid to be here, so I don’t want to. I can’t really see why anyone who wasn’t would want to be here, though. I mean, at a certain point you lose far more than you stand to gain by winning, if winning is even possible.”
“And I’m sure there are other ways to get your heart’s desire,” Ryuu added. “I mean, we know that the Animus Bell is here, probably powering this place. But—”
“Actually Ryo’s mainly using it for advertising purposes,” Momo laughed. “It really is great! Our numbers never have been better. But you’re wrong! Winning in Wonderland is the only way to get your heart’s desire, for everyone in here.”
“You’re stuck here too, right?” Ryuu said, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “Whatever—whatever deal you mentioned to Tenn earlier, where you become a torturer in here while still trying to win. You guys took that deal, didn’t you? You don’t have to do this. You can quit, and find whatever you’re looking for somewhere else.”
“We could help, too,” Gaku added. “I mean, not to brag, but finding hidden shit is literally our job. And we’re great at it.”
“We also know a Grim Reaper who works part-time as a detective, too,” Tenn added. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to help you out.”
“Not least because I’m sure that Wonderland is inscribed so deeply on the Raven King’s shit list that it’s drowning,” Gaku said.
“Awww, you’re desperate,” said Momo. “How cute. No, there’s nothing you or your friends can do, even if we wanted to accept your help. We’re looking for a certain soul, and we’re going to resurrect him, and when we win these games Ryo will give him back to us. You three are just competitors…and weak ones at that.” He grinned at them, teeth bared like a wild dog’s, and then he threw his head back and laughed. “But you have been playing well, and we can’t exactly lose such enthusiastic guests so soon, right, darling?”
“Right,” said Yuki, as a door materialized in front of them. “Go on through, and good luck. It’s time for a bonus round.”