I looked the Captain of Team Ninja squarely in her dark eyes. “I wouldn’t have to kill all of you, only the ones who have tokens. And that would be you, Ai. A Player gets all the tokens possessed by a Player they kill, and you’ve got all six of your team’s current tokens on you.”

  Her expression blanched. “How do you...”

  “If I am forced to kill you, you’ll have a three in four chance to come back, maybe better if I improve your luck. I think those are decent enough odds to risk it.”

  “Improve my luck? Come on, how is that even possible?”

  “I’ll tell you what. Agree to share first place with the other teams and I’ll answer your questions. How I am here when my time to come is still almost half an hour from now. How I know what has happened to every team so far. How I knew where to find you and how Achmed and I appeared here. And how I know that you’re keeping all the team’s tokens.”

  “So a threat and a bribe?” Ai said. “You guys play dirty.”

  “I simply play by the rules,” I said. “And if you recall, killing you is only one way to get your tokens.”

  “So you want me to just hand them over then?”

  “That would be preferable, but there’s always the third option. All we have to do is spend two hours in the rooms you captured to take the tokens from you.”

  “You say that like we’ll let you,” Ai said, but a lot of the bluster she had at the start had faded and I could tell she was getting worried.

  “The fact remains that you have a choice: join us and you still get the first place award, or...” I let the unfinished sentence hang in the air.

  Ai put her hand on her hip and glared at me. “Say I did hand over my tokens and join your alliance. How do I know you won’t sneak one extra token and take first place all by yourself?”

  “Because Team Player won’t be sharing first place with you,” I said. “We’re taking second place.”

  Now she looked really confused. “Say what? You don’t want the chance to control the Citadel at the end?”

  “I control three dungeons already. I’d rather see another team get it, hopefully one that doesn’t have a dungeon yet.”

  Ai looked at me with a puzzled expression. “I don’t get you.”

  “Join the club,” Achmed said. “But if my opinion means anything to you, Ai, I trust Daniel implicitly. He’s a good guy who’s been nothing but helpful to Team Legion, and we’ll follow his lead because it’s always brought good results so far.”

  Ai turned her gaze to Achmed. “It’s a big ask, you know.”

  “I do know. But you have to look at this rationally. Daniel didn’t have to do this, you know. If he wanted to, he and his scary new teammate could’ve taken it all if they wanted to. And I don’t just mean your tokens, I mean all of them.”

  “Come on, that’s a bit much,” Ai said. “You’re saying he and that new girl could single-handedly beat ten other teams and collect all forty tokens?”

  “They’d only need to beat seven now,” Achmed said. “Overgeared took care of one, and Team Player pretty much captured two other teams at the same time all by themselves.”

  “Hey now, that was a group effort,” I said.

  Achmed gave me a crooked smile. “If you say so. Come to think of it, you’d probably only have to beat six other teams, because my Legion wouldn’t lift a finger to stop you if that’s what you wanted to do. I’d wager Tiff and Kiki wouldn’t either. And probably Maple Leaf too. There’d be no point.”

  Ai laughed. “Oh please. Now I’m questioning how much I can trust you, Achmed. How could they possibly do it all with just two Players?”

  I sighed, then turned to look at the other four members of Team Ninja who were there watching us with great interest. “I apologize for this. Please don’t take it personally and I promise I’ll make it up to you later.”

  “What are you talking about?” one of them said, a tall, lanky guy named David who mostly used Ice-based powers; his frozen shuriken power was pretty neat if I do say so myself.

  “This,” I said, and triggered superspeed. I drew both my pistols and fired one stun round into each of them, then holstered the guns and turned off the superspeed. To Ai and Achmed’s eyes, all they saw were four Ninjas simultaneously fall to the floor unconscious.

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  “What the fuck?” Ai blurted.

  “Don’t worry, they’re not dead,” I said. “Just unconscious.”

  “See what I mean?” Achmed said.

  “How’d he do that?”

  Achmed shrugged. “I know better than to ask.”

  “Tell you what, agree to join us and I’ll tell you that too,” I said.

  She went over to her fallen teammates and felt for a pulse on one of their necks. She’d get along well with Lianna, they both took nothing at face value and trusted no one.

  Ai looked back at us. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  Achmed shrugged. I looked down at the floor. I felt terrible. I’d backed myself into a corner where I’d have to take action if she declined to join us, and I really didn’t want to have to do that. She was right, I wasn’t about to kill her; the 75% chance that she’s respawn wasn’t so bad, it was the 25% chance that she wouldn’t that made it a non-option. I could share a luck power with her, but I was only guessing it might make a difference. If Ai resisted I’d have no choice but to stun them all and throw them into the Labyrinth with Overgeared and Karma then go spend a few hours to recapture their rooms, and I’d hate to do that.

  It would be best if she just handed over her tokens and agreed to join us. I could always use one of my powers to make her give them to me, I had several that could do that including the Voice I’d put onto Jane’s choker, but that wasn’t something I’d feel good about doing either.

  “Do you want to ask your teammates what they want to do?” I said. “I can bring them here if you want.”

  Ai sighed, then stood up and brushed her hands on her legs. “No. Team Ninja isn’t a democracy, they trust me to make the decisions. But you can bring them here if you want.”

  I nodded and opened a portal to where one of the groups was waiting out the hour to get the room’s token. We could see them on the other side, staring at us through the portal.

  “Come on through, guys,” Ai said.

  “But we haven’t finished taking the token yet,” one of her teammates said.

  “It’s fine. There’s been a change of plans.”

  The Ninjas on the other side glanced at each other, then one of them came through the portal. Once that happened, the others followed. We did the same thing to the other group, and now Achmed and I were surrounded by the sixteen members of Team Ninja. Well, twelve. It wouldn’t be right to count the four laying unconscious on the floor.

  “What happened here?” one of the Ninjas asked, and Ai gave them a quick recap.

  The Ninjas got very tense and I thought for a moment they might decide to attack me and Achmed en masse, but thankfully they didn’t. I wasn’t worried about myself or Achmed — I’d been training with Akari on how to fight groups much bigger than theirs — but I didn’t want to put the Ninjas through that humiliation. I quite liked Ai and her team and would much rather have them on my side. It would probably sour our relations if I was forced to take them all out.

  Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

  “Okay, fine. We’ll join your alliance. Here,” Ai said, reaching into a pouch on her side and pulling out six small, golden balls about the size of tangerines. She was about to hand them to me before I stopped her.

  “Give them to Achmed,” I said. “I know you don’t trust me yet but you two worked together to get out of the dome so I think you know Achmed’s a straight shooter.”

  “I really really do not get you,” she said, and gave her tokens to him. “Okay, now what?”

  “Now let’s go see what the Droogs have been up to. It’s about time for Team Invictus to show up.”

  I’d been checking in on my bee spies every once in a while so I knew that nothing had changed inside the dome, the Droogs were still waiting for Invictus. They seemed unconcerned with the fact that they couldn’t open the one door leading out, presumably that was something they figured they could fix with Invictus’ help when it was time to leave.

  I opened a portal and followed the Ninjas back to the dome area. There were now five teams gathered there, which was a lot of people. Apart from the Legion and Spice, who had a pre-existing relationship, generally the teams stuck to themselves. I was happy to see a few people mingling with members of other teams, though. Team Ninja, newly arrived and clearly uncomfortable with the abnormal situation, followed Ai like ducklings. Ai came with me when I went over to Lianna, ducklings in tow.

  “Took you long enough,” Kiki said, storming up to us before I even had a chance to say a word to my teammate.

  “Gosh, Kiki, I didn’t know you’d miss me so much,” I said.

  “Like I’d care where you are,” she said, tilting her head up regally. “You just missed the demons showing up so we had to take care of them without you.”

  “You didn’t have any trouble with them, did you?”

  Kiki huffed. “Hardly.”

  The way Ai was looking at Kiki told me there was no love lost between them. Then I noticed how the original team builder for the Ninjas, Marc Shaw, was cowering as he stared at Kiki. I may have forgiven Kiki for what she did to me that first day, but he clearly hadn’t.

  Kiki must have noticed too, because she sighed and asked us to give her a sec, then marched over to Marc. He looked like a frightened squirrel about to bolt.

  “So listen,” Kiki said, “I’m sorry about what happened back then. This whole thing was new and I didn’t think it was actually real and I kind of went into raw villainess mode and, well, I’m sorry for what we did. Okay?” He stared at her with saucer eyes. “Okay?” she repeated a bit louder. He nodded mutely and she turned on her heel and marched back to join us.

  None of us said anything when she returned, but I did give her what I hoped was a supportive smile. It really looked like she was trying to turn over a new leaf, and going over to apologize like that showed a side of her character that, well, let’s just say she’d been keeping it hidden most of the time. She deserved some support.

  “Invictus just arrived,” Lianna said, breaking the awkward silence.

  “This should be interesting,” I said.

  “Oh to be a fly on the wall in there,” Kiki said.

  I grinned at her. “Will a bee do?”

  Up next: I've got some 'splaining to do