Sigma, a skull mage trapped in his own underwear.

This is the story of one of the most important items ever. It is an item so important that its existence would shape the future of the netherworld in which it resides. An item that would be instrumental in preventing a great and terrible tragedy and quelling an entire rebellion.

A pair of purple boxer briefs.

Granted, it is not the briefs themselves that are important, rather it is what they contain. At some point or another, an overlord found this set of underwear in a closet that she rarely used. A tag on the garment had the name “Sigma” written on it, and as far as the overlord knew, this name wasn’t one she’d ever heard of, especially not a former overlord of her netherworld. What she did notice, however, was that this garment contained two unique innocents called “Matroska” and “Traitor”. No matter what method the overlord used to determine what these innocents did, she couldn’t figure it out.

So, who is Sigma, you might rightfully ask, and where are they now?

The answer is quite simple, Sigma is not only the rightful owner of the mysterious underpants, he is inside them. He has spent the last one thousand years or so living on a small, flat rock about twenty feet wide drifting through the vast emptiness of the item world inside his underwear. Lucky for him, the curiosity of the overlord who found his underwear had been piqued enough to drive her to send someone into the item world to explore it, and they were just about to find the bored skull mage who had already counted all of the stars and galaxies around him seven-hundred and twenty-eight times over.

Also lucky for him, he was not alone on this rock. It had a single other resident, a red female prinny named Traitor. In spite of her ominous-sounding name, she was very pleasant to be around, and the two bonded very quickly, primarily because they were otherwise completely alone, but also because they had a unique similarity. Neither of them remembered much about their past. Or at the very least, they both claimed they couldn’t remember how they ended up in this item world together.

As it happened, these two were the “Traitor” and “Matroska” innocents mentioned earlier, and both were appropriately titled. And as fate would have it, Traitor knew exactly who Sigma was, but in the entire millennium they had been trapped together, she never told him this. The fact of the matter was both of these individuals were much less interested in the past as they were the future. They were both intent on taking this opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start fresh.

So, both of these residents, while being close friends and companions, believed the other to not know their own origins, and neither of them pried about it. Sigma whole-heartedly believed that Traitor could not remember, as the odds of both of them lying about amnesia at the same time was even more unlikely, in his opinion, than both of them having it. Meanwhile, Traitor was pretty sure Sigma was lying, but did not want herself to be exposed in the process of trying to expose him. Besides, she more or less was happy he didn’t know.

The point was, the two had built a steady and strong friendship during the many years they spent isolated from the world at large. They frequently sparred together to keep themselves from getting rusty, spent hours gazing out to the distant stars and galaxies discussing what kind of stuff might be out there, and meditated frequently to distract themselves from their own hunger. Occasionally snacks would float to them from the distant cosmos, and that was the only thing that managed to sustain them. But they both missed real cooked food. Even demons eventually grew tired of chips, candy, and gum that may or may not have already been chewed.

It was on one of these long stints of boredom, where the two were just peacefully looking out to the stars, that Traitor’s guilt for lying to Sigma all this time had finally reached a boiling point. She was about to confess everything to her friend as she had decided that today would be the day. Meanwhile, Sigma was none the wiser.

“Do you think we’ll ever get out of here?” Traitor asked.

“Probably at some point,” Sigma replied, “in theory, demons can live forever, and given infinite time any possibility will inevitably occur.” He pushed up his small spectacles as he said this.

“But how long?” Traitor asked.

“Hmm, that is the question, isn’t it? It’s already been one-thousand years, if my impeccable internal clock is to be believed.”

This was a conversation the two had before, at least three times, in fact. But neither minded the rehashing of it, they were mostly just happy to not be stranded on this floating rock alone, they both earnestly believed they would likely have gone truly mad if that were the case.

“You know,” Sigma began, “it’s a shame I was asleep when those pirates arrived to drop you off. If I were awake, I might have tried to steal their ship. At least then we could have gone somewhere else.”

“That would have been pretty cool,” Traitor nodded in agreement, “but I suppose this is okay too.”

That would have marked the end of their conversation, but this was the moment that Traitor had decided she should come clean to Sigma, so she didn’t stop there.

“Hey, Sigma, I—”

Before she could continue, a bright pillar of light surrounded by glyphs suddenly appeared in front of them. It took them both a moment to realize what it was, as it had been centuries since either of them had seen one. It was a base panel; an outsider had finally arrived!