The fight against Holt was like something out of a movie. Just a bunch of titans coming together to combat evil together, forgetting old grudges and drama and uniting into one force. Well, mostly one force. Maybe half the people on the server had actually participated, a lot of people too afraid to make a move, or too slow to join in on the action.

  Even so, Chinchil had watched it all from the dubious safety of the arena, bouncing on her feet and cheering where cheering needed to be done. Even her little booboo sugar bear, Svomir, had joined in on the fight, probably to defend her honour. He was always doing stuff like that, flying off the handle and leaping to her defense, whether she needed it or not. It was kind of sweet, in a patronizing kind of way, but it made him feel manly, and she was kinda into it, so she let him do his thing.

  And then Holt had to go ahead and do the annoying thing of actually getting away, which honestly seemed kind of rude. It really would’ve been in everyone’s best interests if he’d just rolled over and died, even if it would’ve been as anti-climactic as announcing to your audience the only way to leave your game would be by clearing a hundred floors and then finishing at seventy-five.

  Chinchil giggled to herself, and then looked over at Paul Howlett across the way, and giggled harder.

  He was sweating. Probably because he’d thought Holt actually was going to die this early into things, and now since that hadn’t happened, it meant back to the death game. Mortality was reaching for them both, and it wasn’t sitting well.

  It wasn’t like everything was going bad for him. He had both his hands again. Apparently they got healed to full before the big fight. Maybe Holt liked the illusion of fair fights.

  “What’re you ughing at?” Paul said.

  “Oh, nothing much. I just know something you don’t know.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “It’s a secret. I can’t just tell you. Then it wouldn’t be much of a secret, would it?”

  He shifted, taking a step back. It was like part of his body was trying to tell him something, but his mind hadn’t caught up yet. That stupid smile of his fshed on his face. Cocky, daring. The kind of thing that made people think he was some kind of alpha male garbage.

  “No hard feelings, all right?”

  She answered his smile with one of her own. “What would I have hard feelings for?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not my fault things ended up this way. That you got set to fight me. I’d never hurt you normally. So, it’s not personal.”

  She pced her hands over her heart. “Oh. Oh, you poor thing.”

  “I’m trying not to be a dick about this, okay? I don’t like the idea of, y’know, hurting girls–”

  “Didn’t you literally attack SamiRai at the st one of these?”

  “I was just trying to see her sword. None of us got one. Not fair she started with weapons, and the rest of us got dick. I didn’t think it was fair.”

  “You… you think SamiRai started the game with those swords?”

  “Well, yeah. Everyone knows it. How else would she have gotten them?”

  She wanted to point out the obvious. That she’d either found or stolen them, or more likely, killed someone for them. That SamiRai was famous in the Virtual MMO scene for a reason. That she was always pced at the top of the Galnt Stand leaderboards, and it had little to do with who she was sleeping with, despite what some people cimed.

  But there was no reasoning with people like Paul Howlett. They had their own limited world views, and refused to believe anything outside of them.

  Instead, she looked up into the crowd. Svomir, her Mirko, was sitting on a bench not far from where the fight had happened. He looked defeated, but his eyes were only for her.

  She waved at him, and after a moment of hesitation, he waved back. Good for him. Still holding onto hope. He hadn’t given up yet.

  “I bet you I’m going to win!” she yelled.

  He probably couldn’t hear her. There was a lot of distance, and there were too many people bumbling about him. It didn’t matter. He’d figure it out.

  Holt started talking through that giant screen of his. She barely paid attention. Honestly, did he ever have anything important to say? There was always too much self-aggrandisement. Honestly, the sign of a weak-willed person, too desperate for attention than to achieve real greatness. Not that greatness really meant anything. The whole point was to have fun. Who cared what other people thought?

  She ughed to herself again, and Paul took another step back. Maybe not as stupid as he looked.

  “Good effort,” Holt said. “I mean, you didn’t even come close to breaking my Tenacity, but–”

  She groaned, absently digging at the dirt with her toes. Was he honestly going to give a condescending speech about how he was so powerful, and how everyone had to respect him? Again? What a little man-baby.

  “--but now that you know the futility in your attempts, we must now move on to the main event.”

  Chinchil did a quick series of stretches, and watching her, Paul started doing the same. He didn’t look as serious about it. He had a lot of bulk, and was known for his wrestling and boxing skills outside of his media personality. He was going to come in with fists swinging, expecting to disable her quickly. She just had to stay ahead of him.

  Adrenaline hummed in her veins, and she couldn’t help feeling a little giddy. There was a kind of rush to PVP in all games, where you put everything on the line in a single moment. Do or die. Or do and die. It was part of what attracted her to Svomir, a man who was always willing to risk it all, to go in on any hand of cards and let RNG win him the day. More often than not, he lost, but winning was never the point. Only he got that.

  “Did you know soul crystals can get pretty big?” Chinchil asked.

  Paul gave her a confused look.

  She held up her thumb and forefinger, and spaced them an inch apart. “Biggest one I ate. Took it from this farmer NPC I ran into. Would you believe that’s how I died? Choking on a stupid level up token. Wild, right?”

  He took another step back. This time, he seemed to realize he’d done so.

  “Get ready!” Holt called.

  “Suppose I should tell you that secret now,” she said with a crooked smile.

  “Set!”

  “I found out about the soul crystals way before Holt told us.”

  Paul’s gaze flicked down to the pair of knives embedded in the sand between them.

  “Fight!”

  He took a lone step towards the knives, but it didn’t matter. In that moment of time, she’d already closed the distance between them and was on top of him. It was kind of a cheat, really. She pushed off the ground with one foot, focusing all her Strength to send herself hurtling forward like a missile. Then, just as she was about to hit him, her Agility let her catch one of his shoulders and twist herself over and behind him in a stunning dispy of acrobatics. She was on his back like an adorable little koa before he’d even registered what was happening.

  If, you know, a koa had a desire for murder and mayhem.

  It was all too easy from there. One arm looped around his neck, squeezing down in a messy chokehold. His Tenacity wasn’t too great, not that she had anything to really judge it on. Random peasants didn’t seem to have anything invested into their stats, and she hadn’t run into any who’d been able to fight back yet.

  Still, his shield broke just from her giving a series of quick rabbit punches to the back of his skull.

  “Poor little podcaster,” Chinchil said. “Thinking you’re still a big man just because your subscriber count is huge. But this is a video game, idiot. And I’m a fucking gaming VTuber.”

  And then she snapped his neck. She’d gotten used to that sickly sound after the third time she’d done it. Now she was even beginning to enjoy it.

  “Burn all the babies!” she shouted as a victory cry.

  She let Paul’s corpse fall to the ground, and was greeted with a stunned silence from the crowd. Even Holt looked a little perturbed.

  She waved at Svomir again. He waved back, a smile on his face. She blew him a kiss, and then went to go pick up one of the knives on the ground. She didn’t actually need it. She had a couple back in her camp, as well as a vicious wood axe that was also pretty good at splitting skulls.

  She gave Paul’s corpse a kick to turn him over. This part made her a little squeamish. Harvesting soul crystals from NPCs was one thing, but this was a real person. Still, life or death, win or lose. No in between.

  Carving out his crystal was pretty easy. She’d gotten good at the impromptu surgery called for to get your stat bonuses. She wiped it clean on his shirt, and then held it up. Not too big, this one. No way she was going to choke on it. Man, she really needed to get to Svomir in the game so he could do a Heimlech if that happened again. What a stupid way to go.

  And if Chinchil was going to go out in this game, it wouldn’t be like a bitch.

  When she was satisfied with the general cleanliness of the crystal – she really wished she’d be able to boil the thing, like she’d begun doing normally – she popped it into her mouth like candy and swallowed. The prompt came up for stats, and she settled for Fortune. Paul’s luck hadn’t saved him, but maybe it’d help her.

  She looked back to Svomir to give him another of her smiles, and screamed instead.

  Her warning came too te.

  STI, that wretched little stain that followed Paul in all his endeavours, stood behind Svomir, a rock in his hand, and struck downwards. It bounced off Svomir’s shield, which shattered instantly. Her boo bear had invested everything into Fortune. His defenses were almost non-existent.

  Apparently no one had seen the attack coming. All eyes had been on her, so when it happened, everything came to a crashing end before anyone could react.

  STI smashed down with his rock a second time, and it was done. Simple as that. Win or lose, all in. And just like that, Svomir had lost.

  “Well, I did not see that one coming,” Holt’s taunting voice called. “Guess we’re going to have that Chinchil versus Risk Sve fight after all.”

  Chinchil screamed again, but not because of what Holt had said. She stared directly at STI, murder in her eyes. Beast Infection was already pulling him away, and a few of his cronies were jumping between him and others who’d been nearby but not close enough to do anything. GrandTheftOtter was swinging around one of those golden wires of hers, and Sami had a sword out, and just as things looked like they were going to descend into the bloodshed Chinchil so desperately wanted, there was a blurring to the air, and suddenly everyone was separated, pced into different parts of the arena.

  Holt’s interference. She stared at his face on the screen and howled her rage.

  “Hey, c’mon, babe, look at me.”

  Chinchil stopped dead at the sound of Svomir’s voice. Her Mirko. Her honey boo sugar candy bear.

  She turned, and there he was, standing in the arena. He looked a little sheepish.

  “Should’ve been watching my back,” he said. “Didn’t think they’d go for me as retaliation.”

  “I’ll kill them.” She said, and then stopped, and shook her head. “No. You’ll kill them.”

  He gave her a small smile. “I’m a card pyer, babe. I’m no good at these MMO things. Not enough ways to manipute the odds. It’s gotta be you.”

  “No,” she mumbled. “No.”

  “All in, babe. I knew I was all in with you the moment I met you.”

  Something in her gut sunk. Or maybe it was threatening to rise. She didn’t know whether to cry or throw up. She settled on rage.

  “I’m going to kill Holt.”

  “Good. Get a goal, babe. Figure out how to get him. Figure out where this pce is, get to it while he’s not here. Maybe you can set a trap, or burn it down.”

  “I can’t do it without you.”

  He sighed, and walked up to her, holding out his arms. She settled into his embrace.

  “You have to kill me,” he said. “If you don’t do it, I’ll kill myself just to make sure you make it out. And then you won’t get my stats.”

  “Noble idiot.”

  “Don’t know about noble. But definitely an idiot. Always an idiot.”

  They stood there for a minute. She could feel his heart through his chest. For the first time, she was gd for how real the game was. Gd to feel this st bit of warmth from him.

  “Get on with it!” Holt yelled.

  Svomir held her more tightly, and he made a sad noise somewhere in the back of his throat. He was putting up such a brave face, but she knew him. He didn’t want to die.

  “I’m not going to burn his colosseum,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No. I’m going to burn his whole fucking game. When I’m done, this world will be your pyre. I will give it all to you to follow into the afterlife.”

  “A funeral fit for a viking,” he said.

  “I love you.”

  “Ditto.”

  She shook, and she wasn’t sure if it was from ughter or tears. He joined her, both of them making the same strangled noise.

  Her knife work had gotten better in the st week. The bde slid up under his ribs and into his heart in one soft push. Svomir went stiff in her arms, but managed to stay holding onto her until the very end. And she vowed in that moment, just as he did not let her go, she would not let him go.