It's late when I head topdecks for the last bit of daylight I'll get before laying down a blanket; it's cramped and full of barrels down below, so most of the adventurers and a good deal of the crew will be sleeping topside.  I want to find my place early. 

My head is buzzing from even the watered rum and juice that they serve to stop scurvy, and from telling and hearing the story of the raid on the pirate fort and Shadi's rescue a dozen times while the crew tried to top my competitive bragging.

I'm not alone.  Alesha came up with me - and to our surprise, I see the tiger-striped alky-catte, Franky Bacon, from before. 

It's not terribly surprising that she's on the ship, I figure with a bit more thought - the Leon picked up all the adventurers. It's more that Alesha and I expected solitude.

I whistle to her, Alesha waves at her. She, a little startled, waves back, and we approach.

"I feel like I should apologize," she says, fidgeting with a potion bottle. "For not going with your group that night."

"Huh?" I look up at her, wondering why she's apologizing.

So that's what it's like for my team, my brain unhelpfully comments.

"I don't - I mean, we all had a lot going on," I say. 

Eloquent as ever, Deedee.

"That's understatement," Alesha says, sighing.  "This world is a lot less fun on this side of the screen." 

I shake my head. "You were in a fight. You were tired. I was tired."

I fucked up.

"It wasn't that I was tired," Franky says, with a sigh. "It was that I was busy freaking out. I barely even registered what Sekhmet was asking."

"You and me both," I mutter.

Alesha puts a hand on my shoulder that I didn't realize I needed.

Franky's quiet for a moment, looking out over the sea. "Did you know," she says, "that when we're playing AWO we're more or less amphibious?"

That came out of nowhere, and I try to think of what she could meant by that. For all I've recovered and rested up, thinking that hard isn't easy for me after passing out in Hikaru's arms.

"Uh?" my eloquence strikes again. "I'm pretty sure you need Meredar boons for that?"

"Not air and water amphibious," she says. "Earth and Mundus amphibious." 

Alesha snaps to immediate attention, grimacing.  "Please elaborate," she asks, in a way that's not really a request.

"Usually when we're playing our minds are enough in the 'real world' that we can do things like register basic needs or hear emergency sirens and so on," Frankie says.  "But mostly our minds are here. On the server. Piloting around our player characters."

"And now we've been swept under," Alesha says, her hand reflexively curling around the comfort of her sword's pommel.

"That sounds bad," I mumble.

"Maybe," the tiger-catte says. "Kind of. Sort of. That's what I thought at first. I mean, there's a reason there's those warning stickers on the neurohelms about what not to do if the user goes unresponsive." 

"I've read it a thousand times or more," Alesha says.

In case her daughter got pulled out to sea as well.  I look out on the waves of Mundus and shudder.

"Hell of a lot of neurohelms freaking out at once," I say.  "This many crapping out at once is unprecedented." 

Frankie waves her hands, nodding. "They used to be milspec, they don't crap out like that without kicking you out first," she says, words building speed.  "It didn't make sense. And once I finally got that long stretch of downtime after the fight, I finally realized what did."

She looks back out over the water and says, "If our minds are here and on Earth, what happens if our bodies aren't there anymore?"

We don't answer for a long, long time.

Alesha says, "That just makes it imperative that we get back as soon as possible."

I don't want to think about this. I have to think about this. I have to ask Hikaru what he thinks about this.

Fuck.

"Fuck," I say.

Frankie shakes her head "It's not like they store the servers on Earth, right? It's all satellites. So if World War Three did happen..."

"Do you have any proof that's what this is?" I snap.

The tiger-catte flinches. "No," she says. "Not yet. I'd have to be able to leave Mundus to get it. Which I can't. None of us can." 

"None of us know how," Alesha says, drumming her fingers against her sword hilt.

"But we don't have proof that it's not a war, either," Frankie says.

"Stop borrowing trouble," Alesha growls.  "We already have enough."

Frankie smooths down her fur. "I'm sorry," she says. "I— I shouldn't have said anything. It's just been eating me up since then. Feeling shitty I didn't help and feeling shitty because we might be all that's left here. I shouldn't have put that on you too. It was a real asshole move."

I reach out for her. To her. Wincing.

"It's possible," I say. "It's - not the kind of thing we should have to think about and it's not the kind of thought you should deal with alone." 

"Christ," Alesha says, deflating.

"And, honestly, doing what I did was extremely stupid even if it worked," I say, babbling.  "We don't... we can't begrudge you time to deal with everything continuing to happen, okay? You don't - you don't have to finish the job, you just have to keep working on it," 

That's something Mom likes to say, you don't have to finish the job, but you can't quit.  Father agreed. 

That's why he converted.  That's why they married.

A small part of me points out that this is advice I should listen to more often and I sigh. "Fixing the world is too big for one life, let alone two days."

After a long moment, the tiger-catte nods. "You're right," she says. "I just... have to do my part. And if we are the only ones left, if we are stuck here... then we're going to have to plan for the long term. Which is definitely more than one catte can handle. Even in anime, it takes a village to speedrun the industrial revolution."

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Alesha murmurs.

I exhaled all of a breath I didn't realize I was holding. "If it does, well, I have a friend you should talk to."

She smiles. "I've met Hikaru. He's not what I expected 'Administrator Bluesky' to be like."

I stop myself from gushing about his accomplishments, barely, by noticing the coastline.

"Hey, look!" I say, pointing. "I think we're pulling into Viacruz!"

Leesh and Frankie turn to look too - before the catte's face falls.

"Uh?" I say, again. "Look, Frankie - what do you see that I don't?"

She points at the city as a beam from the Great Lighthouse of Viacruz sweeps over us all, and I hear the crew and adventurers come up behind me just in time to hear what she says next.

"Why are there lights outside of the city walls?"

I shake my head, and look - and see them flickering out to the north. 

"I don't - I can't see why," I say.

Hikaru is there in an instant, handing me a spyglass.

I raise it, look to the city as night falls.

Outside of Viacruz proper, at the main gate to the north, is a sea of tents and shacks - a shantytown.

A refugee camp.

And it's huge.

I wordlessly pass the spyglass to Alesha.

"Oh, fuck," I whisper.