[Arc 2!] Episode 5.1 - Big Imp, Little Imp, Copyright Box - Part 1/2

The world post-apocalypse has turned out to be more peaceful than you might imagine. Sure, look out from the tower's ceiling and you're greeted with all the horrors of a nuclear wasteland, but you can also just, not look.
    Closer to home, everything is normal. We train daily, the tower is protected by its shields and besides, the winds have yet to blow south, so there's still a fair amount of green fields and pastures surrounding us. Consistency feels all over the place: from an isekai, to a one-night world-war, to an apocalypse, and now this - it's all over the place genre-wise, yet when I said as such out loud, the others seemed wholly unbothered. At this point, I’ve been rather cowed into adopting their blasé attitudes to this world for my sanity.

Lila was quick to jump into phase two of her plan. She deployed the Estolpfo to begin mining and lumber operations. Apparently, buying everything from the game menu is quite expensive; instead, you can provide it with some or all of the raw materials and significantly reduce spending. It's a bit of an enigma as to where exactly we get our currency from. In most games, your base generating funds is simply a mechanic. You headcanon that stuff is being traded with the nearest towns and whatnot - except in our case, all those towns have been reduced to rubble - so I guess the money comes from nowhere via video game logic.
Lila is pretty eco-friendly, it turns out, ordering the Estolpfo to plant two saplings for every tree they knock over. Knowing this world, those will probably regrow in a matter of days, haha...

Magic training is going… Exactly how you would probably expect. The girls both picked up how to use a basic demon fire spell in no time, while I'm still floundering. Magic is another of those things Escape didn't have. In quests, you'd sometimes be given it as appropriate, but in the main world, sword skills were about the peak of mechanics. Just another new addition. I wonder how much of this is the developer’s doing: the walls collapsing, the worlds of their other game IPs invading and so on. Is it intentional, an experiment we signed up for without reading the T&Cs properly, or did it just bug out big time, and those back on earth are simply happy to watch it unfold and see what comes of it?

"Ah, hey, careful," I call out, stepping forward to help a group of the little skeleton guys trying to lift a beam of wood into the air. They are rather industrious fellows, mining and processing resources the old-fashioned way. They size up the wood with big crosscut saws, looking almost cartoonish given their small statues but highly effective at it. Then they prop it up to create a sort of scaffold, inside which they continue to stack the stones they quarry into towers.
I grab the beam that's way to falling and... I fumble it. My leg slips from under me and its nearly me who falls over. Just in time, two more Estolpfo rush up, aiding their allies in getting the thing fully upright.

Just about catching myself from tripping completely, I sigh, my shoulders slumped. What a fail. One of the little guys reaches up on tip-toe to pat me on the shoulder with a little gurpling noise - I think that's its way of showing me sympathy, how utterly humiliating.
    Despite apparently being alive, laying eggs and eating, the Estolpfo are fundamentally a type of undead; thus, they're as good as immune to radiation, making them a rather useful workforce to send out gathering resources in our new world. Lila set the three of us up a rota to be supervisors, claiming a little leadership training wouldn't hurt. Honestly, though, it's not achieving much. I just kind of stand and watch them work. I don't speak their language and whenever I try to help, my clumsy body leads to outcomes like this.

"Hey, hey! Lookin’ good," a brisley, sly voice shouts, floating towards us.
    The Estolpfo, to a skeleton, jump to attention, within moments forming little lines and saluting. They look like happy dogs.

 Lila smiles warmly, "Good work, you guys, keep it up."

"Grak, Grak!" they cheer as one before rushing enthusiastically back to it. Their loyalty and work ethic are truly remarkable. Then again, how many bosses would hear their country is about to be destroyed, and respond by moving and finding new accommodation for every one of their workers in a new safer place. I guess their feelings towards Lila might well be warranted. Even I’ve had to admit her plans and diligence in surviving the end of the world have paid off.
    "How's it going, big guy?" she says, nudging me in the shoulder.

"You saw that then?"

"Oh yes. Heh, I came over expecting to have to heal some concussions," she cackles, beginning to float back towards the fortress. I follow dejectedly, nothing better to be doing. Ko and Eshu are busy setting up some sort of herb garden, but that seemed a tad too feminine, so I'd rather not disturb them.
   "Sooooooo," she coos, "what was that exactly?"

"Pft, don't pretend that's the first time you've seen how clumsy I am."

"Well, ya alright," a firm nod, "I was starting to think you were maybe the thinking type, but after magic practice..."

I sigh, "Ya ya, I get it; I'm a useless bag of bones. You don't have to rub it in."

"Hey now, I didn't say that, kid."

I shake a hand as though to brush the conversation off. We stop at one edge of the fortress and look down the slope at all the other Estolpfo crews, building roughly the same thing each: a sort of windmill. "It really does look like the ones in Nauzi--"

"In what?" Lila gives me one of her funny looks.

"Na-- Ah bollocks."

"Sorry, err, what's happening here?"

"Na-- Naus-- Nisica? Yup, thought so."

"No, seriously, what the heck is this? Are you like? Are you having a stroke?! Can I even heal those?!!"

"What, this hasn't come up yet?" I laugh. Her expression is pretty funny at this point, arms flailing around in panic. "There are certain brand names Escape couldn't get permission for, and so we can't say them."

Lila blinks, "You're shitting me?"

"Nope. It’s no big deal. If the name is also a common word it's fine. I can say ‘star’, for example, and I can say ‘wars’. Although if I try to say Star Wa-- See?"

"Holy crap. You guys seriously gave up the right to free speech along with your bodies and everything else?"

"Ah come on, don't be so dramatic, it's just a few brand names with power. Look give me some paper and a pencil, a 4H and a 2B will do."
    Lila looks utterly lost but complies, fetching what I asked for from the menu. I take a few moments to sketch one of the windmills and then do some adjustments from memory before writing the name of the famous movie and manga down along the bottom of the page. Absently, I start shading the sketch, although it's quite thrashy workmanship. I have never been able to draw. Any teacher I had always discouraged anime style, and my family were never shy with their opinions on my skills.
    "See now?"

"No, not really, those words mean nothing to me - I know what ‘Valley' and ‘Wind’ are but not the other words. That said, you're like, really good at that. It looks just like the menu icon for the windmills we’re building. Why didn't you ask for some paper sooner?"

"Pft, ya I've heard that one before. I don't need the pity, thanks," I snort.

    The odd, rare person has said platitudes like that to me over the years. I appreciate being kind, but honestly, telling someone who's awful at something that they're actually good, is rather patronising, I feel.

"No really--"

"Enough, sheesh," I crumble the sketch up and toss it down the hill, absently pocketing the pencils. "Eshu has access to this special server thing someone made to let people view films and stuff that Escape doesn't have the legal rights to. We can watch it with you sometime. It's a good movie, if a bit lacking in our flavour of escapism."

Lila fixes me with a sterner look, "Why are you so clumsy exactly? You don't seem like some natural airhead."

My mouth feels dry at that. It's not something I greatly desire to talk about, I didn’t volunteer to be isekie’d just so I could do amateur therapy with a nosey demon girl. Maybe it's different for the girls, but that ain’t my jam.
     That said, I get the impression, if not today, she'll keep asking - gently and without pressure - on occasion forever, and I don't think I can handle that kindness repeatedly. Ergo, a little rant ought to get her off my back. Folding my arms sternly as we continue our little stroll, I choose my words.

 "These aren't our real bodies. When you enter Escape, you get presented with something very similar to your old shape and then make whatever changes you like. The, ummm, 'mirror' I was presented with was not to my liking. That's an understatement. It was horrific, flabby and obese as all hell; sweaty and greasy and grotesque."

"It can't have been that bad," Lila pats me lightly on the shoulder.

"Oh no, it sure was. You demons must have races that even the other demons look at and recoil, right? Big, ugly, hulking monsters."

"I suppose..."

"That was me, my mirror that is, ahah..." I fear my attempt at abstraction may have died at birth. "So I made sure to change it. Change it quite a lot. But I don't have the muscle memory of this body; it's taller and leaner, it has a mass and vitality I don't have practice with. It makes it a tad unwieldy, that's all there is to it."
     That should do the trick, I imagine. She’ll offer some hollow sympathies. Inside, she’ll gag a bit at her new mental image of me, and then move on, leaving the topic alone from now on, with any luck.

"You might not believe me, but thats one of the less obscene things you guys have told me," Lila says, and smiles shyly of all things.

"Huh?" That… That isn’t the mature, politely adult reaction I was hoping for.

"Listen, I told you guys before, to get to Grand Demon you have to go through alot. Tier 1, 2 and 3, not to mention point five tiers. But more than that, although every evolution brings you back to level zero, your stats and skills carry over. Most demons would laugh if you asked if they are worried about maximising that, but I always knew I wanted to be a Grand Demon, so I’ve always been careful about it."
     Ah, so it's that kind of levelling system they, and I suppose we too now, are subject to - I've certainly seen ones like that in plenty of role-playing games before.

Lila sighs, "One of my great shames, however, was the Imp-Ogre class. It's just about the only time the two species directly intersect, and I hated it, rushed right through it, nowhere near made the full use of it."
     Wait a minute, is Lila a friggin 'min-maxer'?

“I've been all sorts of sizes in the past, a fully grown Half-Imp is only about half my current form's size. It has varied a lot, but never so much as that class. I was, oh, it was just terrible!" She visibly shivers before kicking her legs and hands around in something of a floating tantrum.

 "Sometimes people are born into the wrong body, I got nothing against that personally, but I've always been an Imp, it's what feels right to me. I have a sort of pride in it - so unlike most of my species, I never took opportunities to race change to Lich or Succubus or the like. But Imp-Ogre... I was massive! I'd make you look short. I had bazongas as big as those girls in your weird anime, but they didn't bounce or jiggle, they were stone cold, like the friggin eight pack beneath! And my poor ears," she gently touches her elf-like ears fondly, "they became round and squishy! Like, like, Like!"

"Human ears?"

"Exactly! But greeny-grey and even grosser!"

"Thanks..."

"And my cute little old fang," she taps what we weebs would call her moe-fang, "It quadrupled into four razor sharp tusks! They were hideous, framed inside two rows of square blocky munchers. To say I was uncomfortable in that body would be a gross understatement. When I finally transitioned to Imp-Elder, the first thing I did was master levitation. Most Imp Elders don't even bother, it's a decent class, but well, it's the resting place of hobbling, wrinkled, old--"

"Elders?"

"Quite. Not that I was mind you, I was a rather stylish Imp-Elder indeed. By the time I reached Grand Imp, its ability to float passively didn't even take any getting used to. Grand Demon classes also have a fair amount of control. I can change how I look to some degree and did so until I found the body I feel most comfortable with, this one that is. So obviously I can't claim to wholly understand how you must have felt, but I'd like to think I can emphasise a bit."

"No, no, you needn't be so shy about it. I appreciate you sharing all that," I admit, genuinely.         Who would have guessed she'd have experienced such feelings? Not that I’m claiming talking to someone who relates magically makes me feel any better about it, that sort of rubbish has never worked for me - but I can still appreciate her being so open with me, especially when I was just trying to fob her off. Heck, I kind of feel bad now…

"That said," Lila continues, shattering my moment of reverie and newfound appreciation for her kindness, "You got past that first body, but who's to say this one is the right fit?"

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