Natsuko crept along the splintered wood of the junk’s smashed hull, easing around driftwood and refuse. She was gunning for the opening at mid-ship where the junk had split in two and spilled its wooden guts across the plains. The only sound was a torn, Tianzhounese merchant flag flapping in the wind which was slightly louder than the squishing of their footsteps.

  “First Hero we see is going to be our killer, so we’ve gotta go in shock and awe style,” Natsuko whispered.

  Pechorin quietly grunted in response.

  Turning the first corner of the broken ship, Natsuko was met with a cross-section of the triple-decked junk. The bottom deck—both halves of it—were strewn with crates and barrels containing maybe two tomatoes and a head of cabbage if smashed. No one put good loot in barrels or crates. It had to be in a chest. Not that she was here for loot, of course, but old habits died hard. Her eyes were still trained to look for money and equipment. And she wouldn't have said no to a little extra pocket change.

  On the stern side of the broken deck there was a ladder leading upwards. Natsuko trudged towards it before she felt a hand yank her back. Natsuko was moments from swinging her bottle in a blind haymaker before realizing it was Pechorin.

  “What did I say!? Stop randomly grabbing me!” she whispered.

  He pointed at a handful of boards in front of her that were colored ever-so-slightly differently than their surroundings. It came back to her: The memory of Pechorin stepping here and falling through the floor into the mud where a bunch of pop-up enemies spawned.

  “Just point it out to me ahead of time, alright?” she said.

  He gave a curt nod and they continued up to the second deck. To her eyes it just looked empty, but Pechorin noted that the crates were in different places. Natsuko squinted. They just looked like crates to her. They weren’t even the kind that could be broken open for some small amount of food. It was hard to believe Pechorin actually remembered the position of decorative crates years later.

  “Stop,” Nastsuko whispered.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop trying to turn this into another dark and mysterious edgelord mystery. The stones are weird, sure, but the crates have nothing to do with our killer.”

  “There were monsters in the ship too,” he said.

  Natsuko couldn’t argue with that. The last time they’d come the entire ship had been crawling with enemies attracted to the power of the artifact they were sent to retrieve.

  “They’re probably not hard to kill if you’re an older Hero,” she said as they crossed a plank between the broken halves of the ship.

  “Wouldn’t you get tired of clearing them?”

  “I’m tired of a lot of things, Pech. Like this conversation.”

  Natsuko looked up through the gap between ship halves to see if anyone was watching them. The ship seemed as abandoned as before. On the other side of the gap there was another ladder to the top deck. A clear blue sky met Natsuko at the top. Sitting with their back against a mast on the other end of the ship was a figure facing away from her wrapped up in a wool blanket. It could be an act, she reasoned, but to her eye, they looked asleep.

  Natsuko whispered, “Pechorin, on my mark you’ll—”

  “Excuse me! You have an appointment with judgment,” Pechorin said at the top of his voice.

  The figure jolted at the noise.

  Natsuko slapped her face. “Why, dude?”

  “Justice is only meted out when the guilty party is aware of their transgressions. Were I to find my clan’s killers in their beds, I would wake them so that they may know why their lives have been made forfeit,” Pechorin replied.

  The figure chuckled. “Pechorin, is that you? You haven’t changed a bit!”

  Natsuko’s heart dropped. “Oh no…”

  The woolen blanket dropped away from the figure as he stood up, revealing a Hero with shaggy brown hair wearing a gleaming white-and-gold lancer’s uniform. His golden lance gleamed in the sun. At the end of its haft billowed the banner of the Knights of Innocentus: Three, green spruce leaves against a field of white. On his face was an easy smile.

  “And Natsu too! How've you two been?” Frederick asked with a soft smile.

  His hospitality caught them both off-guard. For once, Natsuko found herself unable to immediately launch into a fight.

  “As well as one can be, given my traumatic past,” Pechorin said.

  “Good, good. That’s good to hear,” Frederick said, tapping the butt of his lance against the deck. Between them lay the gap in the deck, bridged by the length of a collapsed mast. After the pleasantries there was a brief silence.

  “This is about the Non-Heroes, isn’t it?” Frederick asked.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Yeah,” Natsuko said, her voice hoarse.

  “I thought that might be the case.”

  “We’re here to make you stop.”

  Frederick laughed, hard enough it sent him into a cough. When he regained his composure he asked, “Oh yeah? And how do you plan to do that?”

  “Killing you,” Natsuko said.

  “Oh, Natsu, I wish you could. I really do. That’s the puzzle I’m trying to solve. I want to die and I don’t know how.”

  His words froze Natsuko. Pechorin was also disturbed but begrudgingly admitted that the macabre drama of it all was delightful.

  “You’re… trying to die? You mean—”

  “Permanently. Yes,” Frederick said, walking up to the edge of his broken half of the ship. “I’ve been researching how to do it. You’ve seen the stones?”

  “They stop monsters from being re-summoned in the morning,” Pechorin said.

  Frederick chuckled and pointed at Pechorin. “You got it! Straight out the gate. You know, Pech, you lay on the archetype so thickly, I don’t think anyone understands how good your intuition is. I mean you…” Frederick’s hands balled into fists and shook for a moment as he figured out his next words. “You get it! Sort of. You're just shy of the full picture. But you’re so, so close.”

  “After the death of my clan, I was forced to—”

  Frederick waved his hand. “And you lost it. Please stop. We’re years past all that, my friend. Years past it. Maybe I can’t blame you though. Maybe that whole 'traumatic past' and 'hurt little sad boy' shit is your last little sliver of psychological protection from the abyss. Gods know I want my own delusions back.”

  Natsuko’s knuckles curled around the neck of her bottle. “What the fuck are you on about Frederick?”

  His wide, amber eyes shot to her with uncomfortable speed. There was something wild and scary in them. But what worried her most of all was how much clarity she saw in them.

  “Do you remember why you left me, Natsu? It seems so long ago by the measure of our short existences, but it was a blink of the eye compared to the mundane eternity we’re now staring into. Tell me, do you remember?”

  She glared at him. “You were annoying and kept guilting me about adventuring without you? I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Because I was the first Hero to be left behind!” Frederick said, stabbing his lance into the snapped mast. The entire ship trembled and creaked. “You dropped me because my Use-Number plummeted. Because the Celestials decided I was worthless trash! All the other Heroes, especially you, Natsu, you up there at your glorious #1 spot, refused to help. Helping me would've cut into the time you wanted to spend leveling or doing quests. Isn’t that right?”

  Natsuko winced at the outburst. Memories she had put out of her mind years ago surfaced and corroborated his story.

  “You’re right,” Natsuko said, her voice suddenly calm. She set her bottle down on the deck of the ship. “I’m sorry, Freddie. I was a piece of shit. I was the asshole, not you. But we’re in the same spot now. I’ve got an even worse Use-Ranking than you do.”

  Frederick sighed. “I don’t blame you, Natsu. We were all deluded back then. If our positions had been reversed, I probably would've done the same thing to you.”

  This earned a small chuckle from Natsuko.

  “But that’s why I want to die,” he said.

  A rush of wind whistled through the crevices of the shipwreck, making it howl and groan.

  “Freddie, you don’t want that,” Natsuko said, as tenderly as she could muster. “Like I said, I’m in an even tougher spot than you, but I still find the courage to get on with it, even if I maybe drink too much. You just have to find something else to do with yourself. Take Shuixing, right? You remember—”

  “Stop!” Frederick said. His nostrils flared, his hands squeezing the haft of his golden lance. “I’ve been fighting this fight for longer than you have. I’ve had time to think about things. About the way they are. The Yishang need us, but not for any of this shit about the Entropic Axis. They’re whoring out our emanations, copies of our soul, to the Celestials. They’re selling us, Natsu. We’re commodities. And then, when the Celestials no longer want us, when they want someone new, they cast us out. And even that I could bear except out of some special cruelty they refuse to let us die. I’ve tried, Natsuko. So. Many. Times. And they always bring me back."

  Natsuko knew of a way. But she couldn’t bring herself to offer it to someone she once had feelings for.

  “What is killing Non-Heroes supposed to accomplish?” Pechorin asked.

  Frederick’s wild eyes flicked to Pechorin. “I’ve figured out how to prevent monsters from spawning. They spawn in a fixed position whenever they’re killed."

  Fredereck stepped onto the broken mast, walking towards their half of the ship. Pechorin’s right hand thrust into his coat and curled around the grip of his gun.

  “If you know where they’ll be resummoned, you can block it with something and then poof! They don’t come back the next morning," Frederick continued, something like admiration creeping into his voice.

  “Except it doesn’t work for Heroes…” Natsuko said quietly, connecting the dots.

  “Or for Non-Heroes."

  Natsuko snarled. “You sick piece of shit. They’re human too!”

  Frederick hopped off the mast on their side of the broken ship, the butt of his lance thumping loudly. “Who cares? Sure they die, but they come back the next day, so what does it matter? Once I learn how to prevent myself from coming back I can die in peace and the world can finally forget about me. The Non-Heroes will forget about everything too."

  As Frederick neared them, Pechorin drew his guns and moved behind Natsuko. She glared at him for being a coward and hoisted her bottle over her shoulder, ready to swing.

  He walked right up to Natsuko, staring down at her with the same shaggy brown hair and cocky smirk she had fallen for. The only thing different were his dark, hunted eyes. “Even if you kill me I’ll go right back to doing what I was doing. You can't stop me from conducting my research unless you intend to hunt me down every single day of our little eternity. Are you ready to do that, Natsu?”

  “I've killed that fucking wyvern in Verm?genburgh every week for the past three years just to keep it from slaughtering the Non-Heroes there. I'm not fucking around," she said.

  “I’m not either, Natsu…”

  Pechorin coughed and inched closer to Natsuko’s back. “Natsu… His Desperation Art…”

  “There’s nothing more to say then,” Natsuko said.

  “No,” Frederick said, standing straight up. “No there is not.”

  With a flash, Frederick teleported behind Natsuko’s and thrust his lance at the base of her spine. She’d forgotten his Desperation Art let him do that, and that it was scaled for boss monsters with giant, damage-soaking health pools and not washed-up, forgotten Heroes with tiny ones. The one strike would've been a one-shot kill except that Pechorin, standing behind her, tackled Natsuko to the deck.

  Statistics: