Game 22: Instructions Unclear, Promises Unkept

Eileen Stewart was frantically writing something at her desk. The horror of what happened on the night of the Blue Moon was not lost on her. She needed to hurry before someone saw her.

“Eileen?” a man asked her. She had been caught. “What are you doing here?”

She turned to see Lazlo Cardona standing nearby. “Lazlo…” She shoved the papers into his face. “My resignation letter.”

“You're quitting?”

“I am not going to have my name be associated with this disaster anymore,” Eileen explained. “Sixty-five thousand people are now dead, and for what? So we could, as you put it, please the investors?! Absolutely sickening.”

“And the investors are pleased,” Lazlo told her. He then handed her a binder.

“What's this?”

“Registrations for The Game have gone up nearly 30000% since the incident,” Lazlo explained. “Turns out I was right. People will do anything for a wish.”

Eileen was horrified at what she heard. “You're sick! All of you!”

In a flash, she grabbed her bag and ran out the door.

•

It has been a week since the incident in the Emerald City. Takeshi Ishida and Proteus Rhade have not returned home. Rita, Makoto, the rest of the village of Innsbruck, and even Aisha, grew increasingly worried about them.

“The plan seems pretty obvious to me,” Rita told the others. “We have to go looking for them.”

“They could be defeated, for all we know,” Makoto told her. “That was a massive magical explosion. There's no telling how much damage happened, let alone who all got caught in the blast.”

“The only way to find out is to go look for them!” Rita responded. “I knew this was a mistake…”

“You had no way of knowing what was going to happen,” Aisha tried to comfort her. “Takeshi and Proteus wouldn't have gone to the Emerald City if they weren't absolutely confident in their returning home.”

“Even so, I shouldn't have let them go.”

Before she could continue, a man suddenly approached them on a speeder. They had never seen him or his associate before.

“Excuse me,” the man began to ask, “but can you help me find Takeshi Ishida and friends?”

•

Meanwhile, in the Emerald City, Lazlo Cardona was meeting with two other Game Masters. With one of them having passed away years ago, Mr. Set betraying them, Eileen resigning, and one away on other business, it was just him, Linda Hirono, and Shinji Mitsuda.

“It is unfortunate that it is just the three of us here today, but extraneous circumstances have forced my hand here,” Lazlo explained.

“Is this where you explain why you have four other people listed in The Game's credits ahead of me?” Shinji asked him.

“This again? I have already assured you several times that The Game's credits reflect the order that we each joined the project,” Lazlo answered. “You were the fifth to join, so you are listed fifth in the credits.”

“And I keep asking you to change it,” Shinji demanded. “I worked very hard on this project, maybe even more than T. C. Set himself, and definitely more than Miss Stewart or even Miss Hirono here. I think the credits should reflect that.”

“You're saying the credits should reflect who did the most work?”

“I'm saying the people have a right to know who really put this place together,” Shinji told him.

•

Back in Innsbruck, Rita explained the current situation. “Well, you have the friends, well… most of them,” Rita told him. “Takeshi is missing, however. We were just about to go looking for him.”

“Close enough,” the man said. “Toshiro, the money.” Toshiro, the man's associate, handed them a bag full of libras. “One thousand libras up front, plus another two thousand for each Game Master you take out.”

The gang couldn't believe their eyes or their ears.

“You're hiring us to defeat the Game Masters?” Rita asked him.

“Not just defeat,” he corrected her. He then got off the speeder and walked towards her. Once he got close enough, he whispered, “Kill.”

“Kill?”

“Oh, goodness me, where are my manners?” The man realized he hadn't even introduced himself to the people he was trying to hire. “Jun Kitaoka, I'm -”

“You're the sixth Game Master,” Rita interrupted him. “Automatically can't be trusted.”

“Was the sixth Game Master,” Jun corrected her. “I am no longer employed by this project.”

“How can we be sure?”

“I wouldn't have come all this way looking specifically for you if I didn't believe you could do the job. I was unfortunately made aware of the kill code that Mr. Set inserted into The Game. If I had known about it sooner, perhaps this recent incident would have never happened. The Game Masters have gone too far.”

“Kill code?” Makoto asked. “Do you mean…?”

“Unfortunately, yes. My former cohorts were, sadly, unwilling to do anything about it. So now, here we are. It's very unfortunate that this has happened. I just wanted this place to be somewhere that people could enjoy and not have to worry about the hardships of life.”

Rita thought about the offer for a bit. “We'll take your offer into consideration, and we will come to a decision as soon as we figure out what happened to Takeshi and Proteus. Come back here in, say, two weeks?”

“It's a date,” Jun answered.

•

In the real world, Eileen was quietly watching the news. It seemed as if the incident had broken through to the mainstream yet. Strange, she thought to herself, considering the sheer loss of life that had just happened. Surely, Lazlo and the other Game Masters wouldn't have been able to cover up so many deaths? Surely more people would care that such a disaster even happened? Or maybe, she might have been secretly hoping the others had been able to delete the malicious code that was causing people to die for real if they died in The Game.

“I see you've quit The Game,” a flat, cold voice called out behind her.

“Set…” Eileen immediately recognized the voice as that of Mr. Set.

“In the flesh, Miss Stewart. Did you miss me?”

“Hardly. Everything that's happened in The Game up to this point has been your fault. Sorry if I'm not pleased to see you.”

“Excuse me? My fault?”

“Yes!” Eileen raised her voice. “Your fault! You were the one who put that killing code into The Game. And now, sixty-five thousand people are gone… You and all the other Game Masters have blood on your hands.”

“And you don't?” Mr. Set asked her.

“I tried to stop it…”

“You clearly did not try hard enough.”

Eileen started throwing whatever she could get her hands on at Mr. Set.

“Get out.”

“Miss Stewart…”

“Get out!”

“You can't run away from your problems, Miss Stewart. To get what you want, you must fight for it.”

“You have absolutely no right to tell me what to do!”

“I'm not telling you what to do, Miss Stewart. I am reminding you of what you already know. One does not simply quit The Game.”

•

The next day, back in Innsbruck, Rita was busy packing her bags and leaving for the Emerald City. She had determined that she and she alone would look for Takeshi and Proteus.

“You're not thinking about traveling all that way by yourself, are you?” Makoto asked her.

“I seem to be the only one who was taking this seriously,” Rita told him.

“We're all taking this seriously,” Makoto countered. “I should apologize for suggesting that Takeshi and Proteus were gone.”

“It's not your fault,” Rita answered. “Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But I cannot take that chance either way.”

“Rita, I hope you haven't forgotten we are a team. Maybe Proteus was right and we should have all gone to this tournament. We can't change that now.”

Rita suddenly stopped packing. “I'm listening…”

“But what we can do now is look for Takeshi and Proteus together. Like it or not, Aisha and I are coming with you.”

“Thanks… We head out in the morning.”