[Host, you haven’t done anything productive in five days.] Ari didn’t even open her eyes.
“I have.
Look — two orphans are having the best time of their lives.
That’s basically philanthropy.” [Host, at this pace, I will not meet my KPIs.] Ari’s eyes opened.
“You have KPIs?” [Yes, host.
The system next door has been racking up merit points lately, and I find myself…
envious.] “Oh.” [Oh?
…Oh.] The panel dimmed slightly, in a manner Ari could only describe as sulking.
She sighed, long and put-upon, and sat up.
“Fine.
Open the shop.” The panel brightened so fast it practically glowed.
[Opening City Lord’s shop.] “Buy five intermediate invitation cards.” Ding!
[Five Intermediate Invitation Cards added to City Lord’s storage.] Ari plucked the cards out of her inventory, walked exactly as far as the nearest window, and threw all five of them out into the void like she was skipping stones across a lake she couldn’t be bothered to actually visit.
• • Gojo Satoru was lounging sideways across a chair that wasn’t built for lounging, one leg over the armrest, watching his students beat the sense out of each other in the training yard, when a speck of light came screaming out of the sky and landed directly in his open palm.
He lifted his blindfold with one finger, uncovered a single eye, and looked at it.
Every student in the yard stopped mid-swing.
“Sensei,” Yuji said, “what is that.” “Is it a curse,” Megumi said, already reaching for a shikigami.
“Is it cursed energy,” Nobara added, squinting at it.
Gojo turned the card over once, entirely unbothered, and touched it.
[Gojo Satoru.
You are invited as a guest to Void City — a city at the center of all dimensions.
Here we have everything, and lack nothing.] He read it twice, slower the second time, a grin spreading across his face like he’d just been handed the best toy in the store.
“Interesting,” he said.
• • The invitation arrived at the Forger household between the soup and the main course, appearing directly over Anya’s plate in a small, gold-edged shimmer.
She grabbed it before either parent could ask what it was, touched it, and went very still, eyes wide, as an entire city’s worth of information poured directly into her six-year-old brain.
“Anya?” Yor asked, spoon paused halfway to her mouth.
“Is something wrong?” “City,” Anya announced, mouth still half full.
“Anya is invited to a city.
With peanuts!” Loid’s fork stopped moving entirely.
“…What city.” “Anya doesn’t know.
But it sounds fun.” She beamed at both of them with the total, guileless confidence of a child who had already decided this was happening regardless of parental opinion.
“Anya will go get peanuts.” • • Tanjiro Kamado was crouched by a stream, refilling a canteen, when a gentle gold light drifted down out of the evening sky and settled into the water in front of him like a falling leaf.
He watched it, curious rather than alarmed, and reached out to lift it free.
The information arrived kindly, the way most things seemed to arrive for Tanjiro — not as a shock, but as something almost gentle, considerate of the fact that he’d already had quite enough shocks for one lifetime.
[Kamado Tanjiro.
You are invited as a guest to Void City — a city at the center of all dimensions.
Here we have everything, and lack nothing.] Tanjiro pressed his palms together and bowed slightly to the empty air, out of habit more than anything.
“Thank you for the invitation,” he said, to whatever might be listening.
“I’d be glad to see it.” • • Levi Ackerman was cleaning his blades — because Levi was always cleaning something — when a gold light landed on the table in front of him with all the ceremony of a piece of mail.
He looked at it the way he looked at most things: flatly, and with mild suspicion.
He picked it up anyway, mostly to get it off his clean table.
[Levi Ackerman.
You are invited as a guest to Void City — a city at the center of all dimensions.
Here we have everything, and lack nothing.] Levi read it once.
“Tch,” he said, to no one.
“Everything, huh.” He set his blade down, stood, and went to go see if that was actually true, because if it was a lie, he intended to be unimpressed about it in person.
• • Nico Robin was reading in the shade of the ship’s library when a small gold shimmer interrupted the page, hovering politely above her book as though waiting to be noticed.
She raised an eyebrow, marked her place with one finger, and picked it up with the unhurried curiosity of a woman who had, at this point in her life, seen far stranger things arrive far less politely.
[Nico Robin.
You are invited as a guest to Void City — a city at the center of all dimensions.
Here we have everything, and lack nothing.] Robin smiled, slow and amused.
“Hohoho.
Now that,” she murmured, “sounds like a very interesting piece of history to go find out firsthand.” She closed her book.
• • All five of them found the bridge within moments of each other, and all five of them stopped cold at the sight beyond the gate.
“Okay,” Gojo said, tipping his blindfold up properly this time, both eyes uncovered, staring at galaxies wheeling slowly through a darkness.
“That’s — huh.
Even I don’t know what I’m looking at, and I can literally see everything.” “Waku waku,” Anya breathed, spinning in a slow circle with her arms out, trying to look at all of it simultaneously and mostly failing.
Tanjiro simply stood very still, hand pressed to his chest, eyes shining.
“It’s beautiful,” he said quietly, like the words weren’t quite big enough for the job.
Levi tilted his head back, unimpressed expression cracking just slightly at the edges.
“Tch.
Fine.
It’s impressive.” He said it like the admission personally cost him something.
Robin studied the wheeling stars with the calm delight of a scholar handed an entirely new library.
“A city built from the space between worlds,” she mused.
“I do wonder who’s clever enough to manage that.” The moment their feet touched the bridge, the same message settled into all five minds at once — the welcome, the promise of health and beauty and power and immortality, and the four rules, ending, as always, on the same deadpan note.
[Fourth: the City Lord favors beautiful people.] Gojo laughed out loud.
“Well, good news for me, then.” Levi just grunted.
“Ridiculous.” • • They found the Exchange Center already busy, and the five guests inside it turned out to be considerably less new to all this than the newcomers were.
“First time?” Naruto asked Anya immediately, with the easy authority of a boy who had, in fact, only been here five days longer than she had.
“Don’t worry, the crystal thing looks scary but it’s not.
Also the chef’s food is insane, you have to try it.” “First-timer energy,” Sheldon diagnosed, looking Gojo up and down with clinical interest.
“You’ll want to brace yourself for the valuation.
Mine came in disappointingly low.” “Mine didn’t,” Naruto said cheerfully.
“Nobody asked you.” Cinderella had already drifted toward Anya with open delight, clearly recognizing a child in need of mothering on sight, while Harry hung back near the crystal, watching the newcomers with the mild, curious solidarity of someone who remembered exactly how strange this had all felt five days ago.
• • Behind the scenes, watching all of it through her private feed with a snack halfway to her mouth, Ari went very, very still.
She’d expected interesting guests.
She had not entirely prepared herself for this.
Her eyes moved from Gojo — six feet of effortless, blindfolded chaos, grinning at absolutely everything like the universe existed specifically to entertain him — to Levi, standing with his arms crossed and his expression carved from stone, radiating the kind of quiet, devastating competence that made every other man in the room look slightly unfinished by comparison.
The snack in her hand was entirely forgotten.
Her laziness — legendary, foundational, load-bearing laziness — did not so much fade as simply evacuate the premises.
[Host?
Your vitals have changed rather dramatically in the last four seconds.] “Shut up,” Ari said, leaning closer to the feed without any awareness that she was doing it.
“Zoom in.” […Understood, host.] The System’s tone, somehow, managed to sound smug about it.