“That is correct,” Evo said. “And her career is hotter than ever. Her latest single is currently ranked 8th in the entire universe.”
The next chair held a stuffy-looking, middle-aged human named Tucker. A stand-up comedian. I disliked him already, based solely on the stupid grin on his holographic, punchable face.
Evo revealed the last participant, and I immediately recognized the crawler sitting there. Donut gasped.
It was Hekla, the blond-haired Icelandic woman who was now an Amazonian Shieldmaiden. She ran the team Brynhild’s Daughters. I’d last seen her just a few nights earlier on the recap episode. Her people had been scattered upon entering the third floor, but she’d mostly regrouped, and they’d taken out an owlbear borough boss. I remembered she had an automatic, magical crossbow that tore everything up. The weapon was like a ranged chainsaw. I couldn’t tell what her stats were now, but two days ago she’d hit level 25, the second crawler to do so, just hours after Lucia Mar. Hekla’s muscles bulged as she leaned forward in her chair and I realized this wasn’t a static hologram, but actually her.
“Hi, Hekla!” Donut called across the table. She looked at me. “Carl, look. It’s Hekla!”
“I can see, Donut,” I said.
“Hello, Donut,” she said. She looked at me and nodded.
“Is your team holding up okay?” I asked.
“We are surviving,” she said. The woman held very little emotion in her voice. Her eyes were the color of sapphire. “One of the Daughters is near you. She recognized the circus from the episode and knows you’re in the vicinity. She wants to come back to the team, but I believe we are too far away. She needs some help leveling. Will you assist her? I will take it as a personal favor.”
“Of course!” Donut said before I could respond. “We’d love to help your friend!”
Goddamnit Donut. I paused. “Tell her to come to the One-eyed Narwhal tonight,” I said. “In the medium skyfowl settlement. But just an FYI, we’re in the middle of something dangerous right now, and we won’t be able to slow down to help her. We’ll do what we can.”
“Very well,” Hekla said. A slight smile curled her lip. “Just don’t blow her up.”
“As much as I dislike the Mudskippers,” Tucker, the pompous asshat, was saying, “I can’t help but feel that the Valtay have overstepped in their push to take over the season. The courts have long upheld the rights of those seeking bankruptcy protection, and I don’t see why that should change.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a comedian?” Donut asked. “When are you going to say something funny?” The audience roared. “See, it’s not that hard.”
To my left, Princess D’nadia trumpeted with her tentacles, a sound that apparently meant amused agreement. She kept attempting to grasp my hand, though her webbed claws just pushed through my own fingers. Manasa, the cobra-headed pop singer, also laughed, her forked tongue flipping in and out.
Tucker sneered. “Well then, what is your opinion on the matter, Princess Donut?”
Donut scoffed. “How the heck should I know? I’m a cat!” More laughter. “But I do know this, Butler. One, I know that I don’t know enough about this subject to voice a proper opinion on it, unlike you, who is obviously talking out of your behind. And two, I know my partner here has a very poor opinion of you. Isn’t that right, Carl?”
“Yup,” I said. “You’re a dipshit.”
Hekla laughed for the first time since this started. Even Ripper, who was attempting to maintain some impartial façade throughout the program, put his head down and pounded on the table, trying not to let the emotion boil over.
I had no idea if this Tucker guy’s opinion was valid or not, but one of the first things he’d done when the roundtable had started was make a snotty comment about the show lowering their standards by letting a pet sit on the panel. I’d thought he was going to turn it into a light-hearted joke, maybe even turn it around on the host, but the dude was dead serious. The crowd had booed, and he got this self-righteous smirk on his face. Donut did not like that, and she immediately started tearing into the guy. She was in rare form. They’d been going back and forth like this for a half hour now. At first I was worried about her taking on a comedian, but she had the guy against the ropes almost immediately, and he was too dumb to realize he’d already lost
“You know my name isn’t Butler. You’re just trying to make me angry.”
Donut looked up at me, her eyes sparkling. “Carl, you told me his name was Butler.”
“It’s Tucker,” I said.
“Tucker? Are you sure?”
Next to me, I thought Princess D’nadia was having a stroke, she was laughing so hard. It was clear she also disliked this Tucker guy.
Tucker threw his hands up in the air. “Can we move on, please? I came on this show because we’re supposed to be talking about important matters.”
“Oh, darling,” Donut said, shaking her head. “Bless your heart.”
After the audience’s laughter died down, there was a short segment regarding multiple intergalactic affairs that neither I, Donut, nor Hekla had much input on. For most of it, I had no idea what they were talking about. Some solar system had been invaded by another system. A race of people had applied for council membership in the Syndicate. It was mostly stuff like that. Even the audience seemed bored with the piece.
The issue Tucker had been opining about regarded the Valtay Corporation and their attempt to collect their debt from the Borant System. All three of us crawlers were smart enough not to say anything stupid about either Borant or the Valtay, in case they did end up taking over the Crawl, which appeared to be highly unlikely. Manasa—for obvious reasons—was on the side of the Valtay. Ripper and Princess D’nadia seemed to think both sides were dicks, but also sided with the Valtay. Tucker was mostly on the side of the Kua-tin.
Ripper moved the discussion to the Skull Empire. There was unrest in a few of their home systems, partially because of the whole embarrassment with the Pork Boy Snick. People were comparing the Skull Empire to the hedonistic Orcish Supremacy of the Tuskling, and new calls for democratic reform were popping up in their systems. People took issue with the royal family spending so much time and money playing around with the crawl and the Faction War Games, while neglecting their duties back home. King Rust had responded by disowning the Maestro and telling his people to shut the hell up. Ripper looked directly at me and asked me what I thought about it.
I took a moment to formulate my response. I’d been anticipating a question about this subject, and I’d been mentally preparing my answer. All it takes is a little seed. I reached over and put my hand on Donut.
“I don’t have all the details, of course. All I really know is what you’ve presented today and how that ass, Prince Maestro…”
“Former Prince Maestro,” Donut corrected.
“How former Prince Maestro acted. If his dad, this King Rust guy, treats his people like his son treats guests on his show, then they should rebel. On Earth, we had this fable. Basically, the story goes if you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, he’ll jump right out. But if you stick that same frog in the water when it’s at room temperature, he’ll just sit there. He won’t move because everything’s fine. Then you put the pot on the heat. The temperature goes up, and still the frog doesn’t jump because it’s only a degree hotter than before. Eventually, the frog dies, boiled alive. When the frog was thrown in the boiling water, he immediately knew he was in danger. But because of the incrementalism of the heat from room temperature, he didn’t realize he was in danger until it was too late.”
“That’s a really stupid metaphor,” Tucker began.
“Stop,” Ripper said, holding up a furry paw. “Let him finish.”