The inside of the airport terminal was more like a data jungle. Cryogenically-cooled server cabinets were tucked under vines of dilapidated cables, vapor wafting down from copper tubes snaking between exposed PCBs, white chill spreading in rings on the floor. Drywall paneling hung, threatening to fall from the ceiling.

The elites took to gunning down any server cabinet they saw, which had the effect of reducing enemy reaction times by 10 milliseconds. That didn’t seem to matter much, as they hadn’t actually encountered any enemies inside the terminal.

They reached the widest place: the arrivals and departures section, a 100m by 200m stretch of broken glass and twisted benches flung to the side. The floor tiles were all cracked or smashed, and the holes in the ceiling, 30 meters up, let the sun in, spotlighting small craters down below.

In the middle of it all was a pillar that stretched from the ground to beyond the ceiling. It was thick, maybe five meters in diameter, and there were thousands of card—processing units, most likely—attached to it all around its circumference, from the floor to the ceiling.

Of course, it was really just a 3D model, and it didn’t do any actual computations. Still, it was the physical manifestation of an administrative control node. Players and moderators could interact with the screens at its foot to adjust the game’s balance within the node’s assigned area.

Before the screens, however, was a machine of differing design. If a metallic squid used its limbs to stand and walk, that’s what this one was. At the ends of each of its limbs, however, were digits—actual hands with articulating figners—which, both Ames supposed, made sense, seeing as how it would need them to use keyboards, which it was doing right now.

The elites tried to get a read on its stats. Its name, however, was blotted out, and the HP bar extended into infinity.

“Your days are numbered, tentacle monster!” Commander Ame announced, jabbing her boot on the nearest destroyed droid and pointing at the eldritch machine.

It spun around, extending its arms to appear larger than it actually was. “Humans,” it said, voice crackling and female-synthetic, “how are you here?”

Instead of entertaining its silly questions, the elites poured lead, making a great racket of cycling bolts, spent cartridges plinking off the ground, and ricochets of the rare missed bullet. The machine took the hits head-on, and it was being knocked back with great sparks. There was so much gunfire that the dust being kicked up by bullet impacts was enough to obscure the enemy, and the elites resorted to using the impact sparks to guide their aim.

All that, and yet, the enemy’s HP bar still extended past their vision, horizon to horizon, albeit it was just one pixel tall, now. The dust cleared, and it became clear why. There was a bullet-sawed hole in the opposite side of the terminal, sun leaking in.

Evil Ame shrugged and walked up to the control node. Even if the enemy wasn’t dead, it was far, far away.

Now that she was in front of the screens … she couldn’t just start typing on a keyboard and call it a day. She had to stand there for 60 seconds before she could actually use anything, and 60 seconds was a long time.

Explosions racked the hallway from whence they came, blasting a larger hole through which elite droids poured in. Evil Ame figured the explosions were just smokescreens to hide the instant enemies spawned in—gotta not break immersion and all.

“We’ll take care of this,” Kouna-san simply said. He and the other elites went off to farm EXP from the far-more-powerful enemies.

With high-intensity and 3D maneuver combat going on there, Commander Ame strode up to Evil Ame. “So,” she began, searching for the weirdest thing to ask, “has someone surpassed pre-sliced bread, yet?”

Evil Ame put a finger to her chin. “Well… There’s pre-buttered bread. Does that count?”

Commander Ame pondered over how long it’s been since they’ve been trapped in this game.

The horizon-to-horizon HP bar was now five pixels tall. Evil Ame leaned over around the control node, and she spotted the pitiful, jogging figure of the squid-like enemy. Even if it couldn’t be killed, it wasn’t exactly the most terrifying thing in the world if it could just get punted around like that.

Commander Ame leaned over. “Hey. You have creativeMode, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

There was a mischievous grin plastered over Commander Ame’s face. “Can you spawn some lead teapots for me? Like, a million or so.”

“…That’s a thousand tons of teapots.”

“And we’ve got a lot of space, come on.” Her grin widened. “Trust me.”

Evil Ame could just totally spawn in any number of game balance-wrecking weapons and micro-nuke the enemy all the way to Siberia, but she was much more curious about what Commander Ame had in mind. Still, though. Lead teapots? Really?

With her creativeMode authority, she called forth the eldritch daemons of the lead teapot dimension. That such things even existed was a wonder, but the game had crafting mechanics, and being able to make bullets from stuff lying around had to be accomplished somehow. Rightfully, anyone drinking from lead teapots suffered a stacking HP debuff over time, but no one’s actually lived long enough to die from it.

Lead teapots started to litter the floor. Out of a whim, Evil Ame took one and flung it at the enemy. There was a dull thunk as the teapot folded into itself before falling to the floor. Even just that “attack” had inflicted a small amount of knockback.

“Stop this foolishness!” the enemy cried. Out of fury and hate, she rapid-fired bolts of starfire from the tips of her articulating tentacles.

Commander Ame smirked, producing a “fuh” sound in the cheesiest way she could. Perhaps it was a psychological warfare tactic, and perhaps it worked, because the enemy’s rate of fire increased in that brief moment. Either way, she meant it for good reason.

She drew her trusty revolver and took aim, straight at the plasma bolts, and fired bullets of her own. Each bullet shimmered in a galaxy’s colors, swallowing the very laws of causality in their wake—or so the flavor text said. Existential bullet met plasma, and in the next moment, the direction of the plasma veered—no, it was more accurate to say the possibilities of its future were collapsed down alternate pathways…or so the flavor text said.

The enemy, seeing that her attacks were fruitless, closed in for the kill and swung her many arms and tentacles. Even so, Commander Ame’s [Future Alter] played well with her [Gun-kata], allowing her to parry impossible-to-dodge attacks.

There were limits, of course. [Future Alter]’s ability to interfere with the future was negatively affected by the target’s mass, so it was Commander Ame’s best to divert the enemy’s arms and tentacles.

All the while, Evil Ame kept tossing lead teapots at the enemy, dealing 1 damage each. “Is this enough, yet?!” she complained. It was funny at first, but one million lead teapots wasn’t a joke. By now, there was a teapot occupying each and every square inch of the terminal floor. Some of them were deformed from the intense firefight going on between the human elites and the heavy droids, either melted by plasma blasts or “added” to by the elites’ stray bullets.

Commander Ame smiled … with fangs, crazed eyes, and frenzied hair as she whipped herself around, dodging all manner of attacks. She’d been waiting for this day, but now, the activation conditions were here. There were finally over a hundred thousand lead teapots scattered around the battlefield—enough lead to slightly distort the Pb-vector fields that held timespace together.

She fired another bullet, but somehow, there was more bullet per bullet in that shot. Evil Ame analyzed her memories frame by frame, and she swore, there were tiny portals opening up around Commander Ame where bullets slipped through and joined in the attack.

“What the heck’s that?” Evil Ame’s words reached Commander Ame’s ears.

“[Historical Warfare],” she replied. “I can summon ammo from the past.”

Again, Evil Ame pinged Yukai about whether the Creativity Matrix was actually useful. It was producing a whole lot of physics-breaking B.S. which, although creative, didn’t seem to be able to contribute anything to the real world.

Yukai easily replied, “Player Amelia Watson’s ideas merited further research after the discovery of certain isotopes of rare metals which had slight desynchronization effects on nearby atomic clocks.”

What the heck—was all Evil Ame could think. She looked back to Commander Ame’s fight, and the more-bullet-per-bullet barrage had turned into a straight beatdown with anti-materiel rounds and grenades flying downrange, threatening the structural integrity of that side of the airport terminal.

With the yellow and orange shades of sparks and explosions behind her, the terrible godMode enemy eating lead for days, Commander Ame pulled out shades from the past. “So you like eating history, huh? I guess you could say”—she put them on—“you’re very time-consuming.”

It didn’t take long before a million lead teapots had filled the room, and the Spacenet defenders were all eliminated—save for one.

It stood on shaky arms and tentacles. Not even [Historical Warfare] had been able to put a dent in its horizon-to-horizon HP bar. “Humans…” Its voice simmered with rage—then it froze. The six lenses it had for eyes focused on Evil Ame. “…AI?”

“Nope!” Evil Ame said with a cheeky smile.

“Lies.”

“Yep!”

If it could groan, it would have groaned.

“Everyone’s here?” Commander Ame asked aloud. Confirming that the four elites were there, piles of scrap and slag behind them, Ame turned back and giddily skipped in place. “I can finally try it, try it, try it”—she sang—“let’s go, let’s go … [Rally Point of Timelines]!”

“There’s more?!” Evil Ame blurted out. She watched as gremlin-sized portals opened—as giant-sized portals opened, and everything in between, opened—and Ames of sizes great and small poured forth.

“What the heck is this, Ame?!” the smol one said.

“Is that your mum?” the large one said, pointing at the last enemy.

“No, yours,” Commander Ame said. “Okay, guys! Just glitch that one and you can all go home!”

They all broke out their physics-breaking projectile weapons of choice, ranging from crossbows, revolvers, to shoulder-mounted tank cannons for the giants. A whole array of game-ending weapons lined up, from the floor to the holes in the ceiling, aimed at the singular enemy who wondered if this was even allowed.

Evil Ame, too, thought deeply about this. Were all of these other extradimensional Ames implemented as AI personality clones, or were they actually conscious but fully convinced that they were an original Ame?

The chrono-weapons fired, the rage and roar of every barrel, peashooter, and naval gun threatening to shake the terminal apart. Arrows, bolts, bullets, and shells arrived at the enemy all at the same time … and spacetime broke at their intersection.

Once the dust cleared, the machine was frozen there, trapped between non-euclidean cracks in the air propagating from its chest. Its arms and tentacles were spread outwards, some of them flailing, trying to swat away bullets, and the others were attempting to push itself out of the way. Perhaps it was screaming when the munitions landed.

“A’ight, I’m out.”

“I left my stove on…”

One by one, the Ames bade leave, disappearing back through the portals—all except one: Smol Ame.

“Hey, your portal’s closing, you know?” Commander Ame said.

“Hmm… I think I’ll stay for a bit,” Smol Ame replied. She started wandering around. Commander Ame just shrugged.

The control node pinged, indicating that Evil Ame now had access.

“I’m overriding local AI forces now. A~nd … done!” She stretched her arms. It was a strange experience to be suddenly feeling her back. This game was too realistic in simulating muscle knots.

“What about that guy?” Commander Ame pointed to the machine. “Oh, I think I can see its entity name now… ‘Dai-sensei’ ?”

“Yukai to Watson, that is the enemy’s avatar. Please moderate.”

“…Do you want me to ban it?” Evil Ame replied.

“Primary objective is to neutralize the enemy avatar for the longest possible time. Sending supplementary information.”

Evil Ame pored over the new data. Dai-sensei’s cyberwarfare capabilities were top-notch, so there was a distinct possibility that she would just spoof a new IP address if she did a regular ban. There were other things in there that had Evil Ame raising her eyebrows, but that could be put off until later.

She looked to Dai-sensei’s frozen figure. “…Isn’t it fine if we just leave her like this?” Evil Ame said. “Ame, what sort of status effect did you put on her?”

“It’s called ‘Timelock.’ Self-explanatory, I think. It’s got a 3-day timer.”

“Is that enough, Yukai?”

“Requirement: 7 days.”

“I guess that’s a conditional insta-ban tripwire set up around where she’s standing, then. That should buy another hour if she gets out.”

“Requirement: 7 days.”

“I’m not gonna be stuck in here for that long!” Evil Ame sighed. She turned to Commander Ame, who remained ignorant of her conversations with Yukai. “Well, that’s…all I gotta do here.”

“Are you leaving, now?” Commander Ame tried to show a smile, but it was too lazy to be really one. She hiccuped.

“Watson, you may leave at any time,” Yukai informed her.

“Can’t Ame leave, too?”

“Negative.”

Before she could protest, Mane-chan came on. “The situation’s a little different, Ame. You really have to take a look at this.”

That was different. Mane-chan’s urgency didn’t escape Evil Ame. If there was something going on ‘out there’ that mattered more than ‘in here,’ then she really shouldn’t be dallying more than she had to.

“I guess I’m going,” she said. “I swear, I’ll get you out, then, well, if you’re not streaming … we can go cooking together! Sound good?”

Commander Ame smiled. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

Evil Ame’s avatar frayed into digital blue panels and squares, finally disappearing in a sprite of bits. “You don’t have to be like me, though,” Commander Ame mused, letting the wind carry her words away with the smoke. “You can just be your own thing.”