Chapter 10: Three Rules

Did you know? Witness protection has a 100% success rate against assassins and hit squads. Craft would know; he used to work for them.

One time, their client was the governor of CAZ Area 3. The guy had it all: drugs, connections, women, a private army — and a grocery list of enemies. That list turned into a backlog, and on the condition of selling out his friends in the arms trade, he got into the CAZ’s witness protection program.

Assassins came and went in body bags. Things had been looking up for the governor, and from that sniveling low-tier villain Craft had first met, the man had soon gotten back to being disgustingly arrogant again.

Karma was a flawless assassin. Despite every precaution, the poor bastard had somehow slipped on a banana peel and hit his head on the edge of his jacuzzi — that’s what the report concluded. Having instructed the guards to give him some alone time for fifteen minutes, they found him drowned in the water fifteen minutes later.

Sensors and cameras confirmed that he’d been alone, and the banana peel had been from a basket he’d brought inside himself. They called it an accident, wrapped up the case, and witness protection’s 100% success rate wasn’t technically wrong. Needless to say, the suggestive placement of that banana peel beside the champagne was Craft’s dumbest and proudest work.

That was why, as he and Nightshade went through a massacre of spilled shoe boxes — she’d tripped and fallen over — even a loosened shoelace was suspicious to him. Having authored some of the tricks in the CAZ’s black books, there just wasn’t escaping the paranoia of a shoelace having been dipped in nitro and turned into high-explosive detonation cord. He’d written that one too.

All things considered, it wasn’t so bad. Sure, his encounter with the impostor pulled him left and right between “here we go again” and “nothing will happen because I have Nickname Rights,” but he wasn’t as bothered as he thought he’d be. Maybe he was just too used to things not going according to plan. Maybe he leaned towards the “here we go again” side after all.

He glanced Nightshade’s way every now and then, checking if she was fine. Her face went from annoyance, to hope, to further annoyance as she went through boxes with missing pairs and others with sizes higher or lower, but never exactly the one they wanted — blissfully unaware that she might be in danger.

That he was looking her way at all was a tad unusual. Concern for others wasn’t a totally alien emotion to him, but what was alien was how much breathing room he had to do so now. He could actually think of ways to shield her — keep her out of this — compared to before when he had to mentally apologize to passers-by seconds before they became collateral damage.

He really had to keep her out of his newfound mess. For him to truly achieve the life he wanted, the people around him ought to stay as they are; if everyone were embroiled in trouble, then how could he, himself, remain untroubled?

Normalcy was something to be preserved. In his former organization, that was just his work, but now, it was his motto. He’d fix any issue before anyone even knew it existed.

But how much danger were they actually in? It was a new world with new rules, and with every story that came out of Nightshade’s mouth, the more he knew that he knew nothing — except that he’d make Enty cry if he fell back to his old rules. He’d made her a promise, after all, and he hadn’t forgotten about it.

To get to the bottom of the impostor’s gripe with him, he couldn’t just do what he used to. He had to diligently lay down the prepwork, and learning more about Enthusia’s world would be the first step.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

He peeked around the shoe box pyramid. It was so wide, he only saw the brim of Nightshade’s hat. “Hey, I gotta ask,” he said.

Nightshade peeked around as well. Now they could see each other’s eyes. “Yeppers?”

“You mentioned something about a ‘Rule One’ before,” he began. “… Implying there’s more than one rule, isn’t there?”

“Oh, that’s right, that’s right.” She put down the shoe box she’d been holding. Having one’s hands freed to make air gestures was of utmost importance to her job after all.

“Actually,” she continued, “that’s ‘One Law, Three Rules, and a Grocery List of Guidelines.’ ”

“A grocery list?” He shook his head, not knowing whether he should be impressed or disappointed. The two emotions collided, co-annihilating and leaving behind a residue of mild amusement. He chuckled. “Really?”

“Yeah! It’s a lot better than” — she paused. He didn’t expect her to look away and, for a fleeting moment, for her face to twist in despair. Had it been from resurfaced memories of the tedium of bureaucracy from her previous life? Whatever tedium she remembered soon disappeared, however; she loosened up as if having encountered an angel — a guiding star — while traversing the petrified jungles of all-too-human institutions.

What did you go through? He leaned left and right, but her eyes didn’t follow him. “H-hey, are you okay?”

Her gaze snapped towards him with stars in her eyes and she pumped her arms. “You won’t believe how easy this setup has been on everyone!”

‘Buy now at 20% less retail price!’ He imagined she’d make a good salesperson.

She started speaking faster. “Small town? Just show your face around and it’ll be fine — or be a NEET! That’s fine, too! Living in a big city? Get yourself registered to be eligible for insurance … or live on the edge and be an undocumented NEET!”

There…there seemed to be a theme here. “Is there something about NEETs” —

“You don’t need to work to live, duh. All we have are gigs and contracts, so it turns out that most permanent residents just end up being NEETs, technically.”

Holy shit, she’s right.

“When it comes to stuff like misdemeanors, felonies, and tax evasion, how screwed you are depends on who you screwed with.”

“Seems about right.” He cupped his chin with one hand — and waved it away as a concern intruded on him. “That doesn’t sound like it’d turn out well. It’s ‘law and order,’ not ‘guidelines and order.’ ”

If there were so much free reign, this world shouldn’t even turn out peaceful at all.

Nightshade smirked and raised a finger. “Naive, o Crafty one.”

Huh? How? It seemed about straightforward that just guidelines were no basis for a magical civilization, but it wasn’t? What about enforcement? Dispute resolution? Who’s the top dog with the nuclear codes? No, he had to stop his thoughts right there. His common sense had stopped applying the moment he’d faced Enthusia. Lacking correct sense, he had to face this one with genuine curiosity.

“You might be thinking, ‘Oh no! Warlords!’ ” she continued. “Anyway — nope! Not it. Amatoria has a simple constitution of sorts that all the guidelines lay down a velvet carpet for, and that’s the Three Rules.

“Rule One: Don’t get in the way of someone’s Hobby;

“Rule Two: Help out anyone who can’t do their Hobbies;

“Rule Three: Ask for help when you can’t do your Hobbies!”

She had raised three fingers. Her cadence was practiced; could she maybe recite the Rules in her sleep?

“Three Rules, huh,” he muttered. They were easy to remember, and it all came down to what people should do with each other and their Hobbies.

Ah, but he had a thought. If the guidelines all swerved around the Rules, then, conceptually… No, that can’t be right. He faced Nightshade with a stilted expression. “Hey, if someone became a warlord ‘as a Hobby,’ ” he paused, “and if a kid asked them to help finish a crochet project” —

“Yep,” Nightshade replied without even letting him finish.

He eyed her. “No way.”

She maintained a polite smile. “I said: yep.”

He pictured a gang of skeleton riders leaving death and destruction in a flame-licked night, only to be stopped by a small child who was finding it hard to sew his teddy bear’s torn head back to its body — and all the skeletons dismounting to help piece the thing together again.

He shook his head. The Rules were that strong, but what made laws strong was not the words that defined them, but the enforcers behind them, quietly hovering over everyone’s shoulders — the guillotines who’d chase you until the ends of the world.

“What happens if you break a Rule?” he asked. This time, a look of genuine terror flashed across Nightshade’s face. What’s wrong? — he wanted to ask her, but she spoke before he could.

She gulped. “Then you’ll have to deal with the Law.”