The five of them stepped through the gates of Void City together, and for a long moment none of them said anything at all, because there was, briefly, nothing adequate to say.
Beyond the entry square, the darkness stretched outward in every direction without ever truly feeling empty.
Whole galaxies hung suspended in it, spiraled arms of pale light turning with the unhurried patience of things that had been turning since long before any of them had been born, and scattered among them drifted nebulae in colors none of the five had proper names for — soft violets bleeding into gold, clouds of light that looked, from this distance, close enough to reach out and cup in two hands.
Stars beyond counting scattered the space between, some close enough to feel warm, others so distant they barely registered as more than a suggestion of light, and somewhere far above or below or simply around them — direction itself seemed to mean less here than it ever had before — entire clusters of stars wheeled slowly past like something enormous breathing in its sleep.
It should have been terrifying, standing somewhere so plainly beyond the edge of anything a normal life prepared a person for.
Instead, it settled over all of them the way awe settles over people who have accidentally wandered somewhere sacred — quiet, humbling, and strangely peaceful all at once.
Harry, who had grown up being told the universe ended at the edge of Privet Drive and expanded no further than what Uncle Vernon allowed him to imagine, found he couldn’t stop staring upward, his mouth slightly open, some small childhood part of him quietly insisting that nothing this vast could possibly be real and yet here it plainly was.
Naruto’s reaction came out louder, the way most of his reactions did — a long, low whistle followed by an outright, delighted “whoa,” his head tipping so far back to take it all in that he nearly stumbled over his own feet, one hand rising instinctively as though he might catch a piece of it if he only reached high enough.
Sheldon’s mind, for once, seemed to genuinely stall rather than race ahead of itself.
He stood very still, eyes tracking the slow wheel of a distant galaxy with the stunned, reverent focus of a man watching every physics paper he’d ever written quietly fail to account for what was directly in front of him.
Sakamoto tilted his head back to take in the same impossible sky, and though his expression didn’t change in any way the others could name, something behind his eyes went very still, very briefly, before he continued walking with his usual unbothered calm — as though he’d simply decided, on principle, that even a view like this one didn’t deserve to rattle him outwardly.
Cinderella pressed both hands to her chest, turning in a slow circle to take in as much of it as she possibly could, and felt something loosen in her that had been wound tight for years — the sense, small and stubborn and often disappointed, that somewhere out there existed a world bigger and kinder than the one she’d been given.
She had never truly believed it before this moment.
Standing beneath galaxies she had no names for, she found she believed it completely.
Eventually it was Cinderella who broke the quiet, turning to the others with the easy warmth of someone who couldn’t stand a silence going unfilled for too long.
“I don’t believe we’ve properly introduced ourselves, given everything.” She pressed a hand lightly to her own chest.
“Cinderella.” “Sheldon Cooper,” Sheldon said immediately, still half-distracted by the sky.
“Theoretical physicist.
I’d normally list my credentials in full, but given present circumstances, I suspect they’d sound somewhat less impressive than usual.” “Sakamoto,” Sakamoto said simply, with a small, composed nod that somehow managed to convey an entire introduction in a single syllable.
The two boys glanced at each other, and Naruto grinned first.
“Naruto Uzumaki.” “Harry Potter,” Harry offered, with a slight, awkward wave.
“Well,” Cinderella said, smiling around at all of them in turn, “it’s a pleasure to be lost somewhere so extraordinary in such good company.” • • Harry and Naruto found each other properly within the first few minutes of walking through the gate, and once they had, neither of them wandered far from the other’s side again.
It wasn’t anything either of them said outright, not at first.
It was smaller than that — the way Naruto’s shoulders had come up defensively when Harry first glanced his way, bracing for the same wariness he got from every adult in his village, and the way Harry, instead of flinching or staring, had simply looked back with the flat, unimpressed calm of someone who’d spent a decade being looked at like that himself and had long since stopped taking it personally.
“You’re staring,” Naruto said, more challenge than complaint.
“So are you,” Harry pointed out.
“Harry,” Naruto muttered, testing the shape of it.
“Weird name.
No offense.” “Naruto’s not exactly normal either,” Harry said, though there was no real bite in it.
Naruto opened his mouth to argue and then, for reasons he couldn’t quite name, closed it again.
There was something in the other boy’s face he recognized — not quite friendliness, but not the usual careful distance either.
Something closer to understanding.
“You got parents?” Naruto asked instead, blunt in the particular way only a child can be.
“No,” Harry said.
“You?” “Nope.” Naruto scuffed one sandal against the smooth stone path, considering this new piece of information with the seriousness of a much older person.
“Live with your relatives, then?
Bet they’re awful.” “They’re horrible,” Harry agreed, with a small, surprised huff that was almost a laugh.
“Make me sleep in a cupboard.” Naruto’s eyes went wide with something that wasn’t quite delight but came close.
“People treat me like I don’t exist half the time.
Other half, like I’m something they scraped off their shoe.” He said it lightly, the way a person says something they’ve repeated to themselves so often it’s stopped hurting on the surface, even if it clearly still hurt somewhere underneath.
“Guess we’re kind of the same, huh.” “Guess we are,” Harry said, and something in his chest loosened slightly at the words, in a way he hadn’t expected and didn’t entirely know what to do with.
From that point on, the two of them walked together, trading small pieces of two very different lives that turned out, in the ways that actually mattered, to be far less different than either of them would have guessed an hour ago.
• • The rest of the group scattered across the wide entry square in their own directions.
Sheldon Cooper had abandoned all pretense of following anyone anywhere and was instead crouched beside one of the pale stone walls lining the path, running his fingers over the surface with the focused intensity of a man conducting a peer-reviewed investigation.
“This is not possible,” he announced to no one in particular, tapping the wall twice more as though it might reconsider its own composition.
“This material has the tensile properties of something structurally reinforced, but there’s no visible seam, no aggregate, no — ” He tapped again, harder.
“I need a sample.
I need a lab.
Does this civilization have a materials science department, or is that too much to ask of a city that apparently offers immortality but can’t be bothered to label its own building materials.” No one answered him, mostly because no one else was paying attention, which Sheldon found personally offensive but not, in the end, surprising.
Sakamoto, meanwhile, was simply walking — the same unhurried, effortless stride.
He paused once to adjust his collar, which did not need adjusting, and continued on without a single wasted motion.
Cinderella, for her part, had already found the children.
She drifted toward Harry and Naruto within minutes of stepping through the gate, drawn by something in the two of them she recognized instinctively, and by the time the group started moving properly toward the city’s center, she’d folded herself naturally into their orbit, humming some soft, half-formed tune under her breath as she walked between them like she’d appointed herself their guardian on sight.
“You two must be famished,” she said warmly, brushing a stray bit of dust from Naruto’s shoulder with the same automatic tenderness she gave the birds and mice back home.
“And exhausted, I should think, from wherever you’ve come from.
Come along — we’ll find something proper to eat, and you can tell me everything.” She said it the way some people spoke prose and others sang — every sentence carrying just enough lift at the edges that it seemed only a matter of time before she simply broke into song outright.
Naruto eyed her sideways, clearly unused to this particular flavor of attention, but didn’t pull away from it either.
• • The only building standing open across the whole of the square was the Exchange Center, its clean lines and soft light a clear invitation compared to the towering, silent presence of the mansion beyond it.
Nobody in the group needed to be told twice which building they were meant to enter.
Mary and Ai were waiting just inside the doors, both dressed properly now, both carrying themselves with a poise that would have been unrecognizable to anyone who’d known either of them a week ago.
Mary stepped forward first, hands folded neatly in front of her.
“Welcome to the Void City Exchange Center,” she said, warm but composed, every syllable landing exactly where she meant it to.
“If you have anything you’d like to trade — items, skills, or otherwise — you’re welcome to do so here.” Ai gestured toward a tall crystal standing at the center of the room, faintly luminous, pulsing with a slow, patient light.
“All you need to do is stand in front of it.
It’ll read what you have to offer and show you a fair price.
Simple as that.” Sheldon was, predictably, the first to have questions.
“Define reads.
Is this some form of biometric scan, or—” “It reads everything,” Mary said pleasantly, in the tone of someone who had clearly been briefed on exactly this sort of question and had decided the simplest answer was also the kindest one.
“Please, go ahead.” Sheldon approached the crystal with visible skepticism, which lasted right up until a soft shimmer of light traced down over him and a small panel appeared, listing, with clinical precision, the sum total of what Void City considered valuable about Sheldon Cooper.
[Guest: Sheldon Cooper — Assessed Value: Intellect & Specialized Knowledge — 2,000 Void Points.] Sheldon stared at the number for a long moment.
“Two thousand,” he repeated.
“That’s it?
My entire intellectual output, condensed into a single transaction, and the number is two thousand?” “It’s a very respectable number for a Level One world, sir,” Mary offered, diplomatically.
“I have a doctorate.
Two doctorates, if you count the honorary one, which I do.” “It’s still two thousand,” Ai said, not unkindly, and Sheldon huffed but didn’t argue further, mostly because there was, in fact, nothing to argue with.
Harry went next, more out of curiosity than confidence, and the crystal’s light lingered over him a moment longer than it had for Sheldon.
[Guest: Harry Potter — Assessed Value: Wizard Bloodline — 10,000 Void Points.] Harry stared at the number, and then at the word sitting just above it, and felt something in his chest go strange and unsteady.
“Wizard,” he repeated slowly, like the word might rearrange itself into something that made more sense if he said it again.
“I’m — sorry, I think there’s some mistake.
I- I can’t do magic.
I’m just — ” He gestured vaguely at himself, at his too-large hand-me-down jumper, at the whole unremarkable shape of a boy who’d spent ten years being told, in every possible way, that he was nothing at all out of the ordinary.
“I’m just Harry.” “The crystal doesn’t make mistakes,” Mary said gently, watching him with a flicker of surprise of her own — she’d assumed, given the assessment, that he’d have known already.
“You truly didn’t know?” “Know what?” Harry’s voice climbed, caught somewhere between disbelief and the first uncertain edge of something that might, given time, turn into hope.
“That I can do — magic?
Actual magic?” He thought, unbidden, of hair that grew back overnight no matter how short his aunt cut it, of a jumper that had shrunk itself down to nothing the one time he’d desperately wanted it to, of a dozen small impossible things he’d spent years explaining away or getting blamed for.
His stomach did something complicated.
“Nobody’s ever told me anything.
My aunt and uncle don’t — they’d never —” “Well,” Mary said, recovering her composure with practiced grace, “it appears you’re about to learn rather a lot today.” Sheldon, who had been quietly nursing his own two thousand like a personal grievance, rounded on the number with open indignation.
“I’m sorry, an undiagnosed magical ability is worth five times what a verified genius-level intellect is worth?
That’s not an assessment, that’s a value system with a fundamental flaw in it.” “It’s not really comparable, Sheldon,” Harry said, still too dazed by his own number to fully engage with the argument.
“Everything is comparable if you assign it a number, that is the entire point of assigning it a number—” Cinderella, for her part, looked at Harry with open wonder rather than envy, tilting her head as though trying to picture what magic even meant outside the fairy tales she’d grown up hearing whispered about godmothers and pumpkins.
“You truly didn’t know?
All this time, and no one ever told you what you were?” “Apparently not,” Harry said, still turning the number over in his head like it might make more sense the fifth time than it had the first.
“I mean — things have happened.
Odd things.
I just never thought—” He shook his head, a small, disbelieving laugh escaping him despite himself.
“I didn’t think there was a word for it.” “How extraordinary,” Cinderella breathed, and meant it completely.
Naruto stepped up next, practically vibrating with impatience to see his own number, and the crystal took considerably longer with him than it had with anyone else, light gathering and shifting as though working through a genuinely complicated equation.
[Guest: Naruto Uzumaki] [Latent Chakra Seed — 10,000 Void Points.] [Uzumaki Bloodline — 15,000 Void Points.] [Faint Ōtsutsuki Bloodline— 20,000 Void Points.] [Consumable: Nine-Tails Chakra (100 Units) — 5,000 Void Points.] [Total Assessed Value — 50,000 Void Points.] The room went quiet.
“WHAT.” Naruto’s voice cracked with pure delight.
“Fifty thousand?!
That’s more than everyone else combined!” Deep inside him, in the space he rarely thought about and understood even less, something enormous and ancient stirred with considerably less delight.
“Oi.
OI.
Did that infernal crystal just list me as a *consumable?” Naruto did not hear this, or rather, heard it the way he usually heard the fox’s grumbling — as a low, irritated pressure at the back of his skull that he’d long since learned to mostly ignore.
“Brat.
BRAT.
I am not a beverage.
I refuse to be sipped on like some sort of—” “Congratulations,” Ai said warmly, entirely unaware of the indignant fox currently having a private crisis inside her newest customer.
“That’s an exceptional result.” Sheldon’s mouth had fallen open somewhere around the word fifty thousand, and it took him a genuine three seconds to recover his voice.
“That number is absurd.
That is not an assessed value, that is a rounding error compared to the rest of us.” He leaned in to study the itemized breakdown more closely.
“And this — this Ōtsutsuki trace alone outvalues my entire doctorate by a factor of ten.
What precisely is an Ōtsutsuki, and why does a faint trace of one outweigh a verified genius-level intellect?” Cinderella, pressed both hands together and beamed at the boy with unguarded delight, entirely unbothered by the disparity.
“How wonderful,” she said warmly.
“To be worth so very much, and never even know it until today.” Sakamoto approached the crystal next with his usual unbothered calm, and the assessment came back almost instantly, as though even the crystal understood there was no point overthinking it.
[Guest: Sakamoto — Assessed Value: Immaculate Cool Aura — 1,500 Void Points.] He regarded the number without a flicker of surprise, adjusted his collar once more, and said nothing at all, which somehow felt like exactly the response the moment called for.
Cinderella stepped up last, hands clasped nervously in front of her despite the warmth she’d shown everyone else all afternoon, and the crystal’s light wrapped around her gently, almost fondly, before settling on its result.
[Guest: Cinderella — Assessed Value: Fairy Tale Protagonist’s Halo — 5,000 Void Points.] “Five thousand,” she repeated softly, pressing a hand to her chest.
“For that?
I hadn’t even realized I had such a thing.” Once the five of them had each seen their numbers, Mary folded her hands again and addressed the group properly.
“A few things worth explaining,” she said.
“Consumables — like the chakra the crystal listed for Naruto — can be sold again and again, a little at a time, as long as there’s more to draw from.
It replenishes on its own.” Naruto perked up considerably at that, already doing quiet math in his head.
“Oh, absolutely not,” the fox growled, entirely unheard.
“Bloodlines, skills, auras, halos, even knowledge like Sheldon’s — those work differently,” Ai added.
“The crystal only needs to copy it from you once.
If another guest walks in with the exact same thing to offer, there’s nothing left for the crystal to buy from them — it’s already on the shelf.” Sheldon’s expression shifted from indignation to interest so fast it was almost visible.
“So the supply is infinite once it exists, but the right to sell it is finite.
First seller takes the entire payout, and every guest after that with the same asset is locked out of the market entirely.” Harry’s shoulders eased slightly at that anyway, some quiet worry he hadn’t voiced settling at once.
“If it only copies, then I’m not — giving anything up, at least.” “Not a thing,” Mary confirmed.
“Just your one chance to be paid for it.” Sheldon considered this with visible reluctance to let the subject drop.
“So if some other wizard walked in tomorrow with the exact same bloodline—” “They’d find it already listed,” Mary said.
“And nothing owed to them for it.
The shop doesn’t need a second copy to keep selling — one is more than enough to supply every guest who wants it.” “That’s still a fascinating economic model,” Sheldon admitted, “even if it is, frankly, brutally unfair to whoever shows up second.” “That’s not the point,” he added, mostly to himself, a moment later.
“The point is the economics are fascinating.” Behind the counter, Ari watched the whole exchange unfold through her private feed with a drink balanced against her knee, thoroughly entertained, and privately delighted that her first real day of business had already produced, among other things, a sulking genius, two bonded orphans, and one extremely unhappy fox.