Inquiry

The party settled down and made camp in the fey world. Even with the benefits of the fairy path, it was most of a day’s travel back to Culhwych’s castle, and Gil was taking the opportunity to top off his MP while healing up all the survivors. Echidna in particular needed a ton of White Magic poured into her to get fully back up to speed. Spinal damage was no joke, and tossing the Champion Belt onto her to give her a temporary Body Tune Up only went so far.

Of course, using materia wasn’t actually very hard. He just needed to sit around for five or ten minutes per cast, so he had plenty of time to start interrogation. He… wasn’t having that much luck there yet.

“Oh no, hun, I ain’t talkin.” Cindy said, arms folded. “I know y’all are just fightin to protect yourselves and we ain’t being very neighborly, but I can’t go blabbing secrets. It’s against the rules.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Gil said. “I mean, if you feel like giving me a full dossier on everyone in your master’s retinue that’d be great, but I’m not expecting much. I know how the standard loyalty package works. Love of your life, betrayal is unthinkable, death is an honor, that kind of thing?”

Gil didn’t fail to notice Cindy snort quietly at the description of Kusai as the love of her life, and filed away that much for his model of the situation. Probably Familiars only, or maybe No Loyalty. She didn’t seem to even like the guy, but she was doing a decent if amateur job at operational security. She’d have been served better by just shutting up, or maybe choosing one line to repeat over and over. “Fuck you” was popular for that sort of thing, as was “I want a lawyer.”

Of course, Gil was only an amateur at interrogation himself so he couldn’t judge her too harshly. Proper advanced techniques for getting someone to talk were considered “meaningful adventuring skills” so what Gil had to work off of was half remembered and academic. Just… talk to them and listen. Don’t try to angle back towards the conflict, get them talking about anything and they might let some stuff slip.

He’d only bothered with the feigned interrogation at all because Rose had spilled the beans, but now Cindy was on guard for magical shenanigans. He could work with that, and ironically that meant keeping the magical shenanigans to a minimum.

They didn’t have tents, but Gil had decided to have Echidna make a small enclosure with her body for the girls to sleep in. He didn’t want the last of the bandits to get any ideas. He also didn’t want to eat with those sketchy fuckers, so Gil and the ladies were all sitting around a fire eating a thrown together stew from dried meats and vegetables.

“So, where are you from?” Gil asked. “I can’t remember details about my own origins, personally, but I think it was heavily forested. I made beer.”

He didn’t actually aim his words at Cindy, but Hellawes. Just some light, casual small talk around the fire over dinner that the prisoner was allowed to sit in on for lack of better options.

“That you are not of gentle birth was already plain to see.” Hellawes said, “I was not expecting a trade, however. I myself am of Castle Nygurmous, and as I mentioned to your lady I am recently widowed.”

“How does a lady get into necromancy in this land, Hellawes?” Rose asked, “In my homeland it was frowned upon but not to the degree it is here. Who taught you, or are you self taught?”

Hellawes eyes took on a troubled cast, and she looked away. She took several long moments to decide how to respond.

“I… would not speak ill of the dead.” She said. “I have no interest in sullying the memory of someone in front of the lady enchantress.”

She hadn’t looked at Nimue once when considering her answer, though admittedly Nimue did seem interested. That was probably just a convenient excuse. Gil smiled.

“Ah, I understand.” He said. “You don’t remember either. Don’t worry, it’s not that uncommon. I’m fairly certain everyone here has some rather large holes in their memories if they think to look. Our creators leave large gaps if it’s not deemed important, and we hardly ever examine them. After all, who spends a ton of time dwelling on what they don’t know?”

“Oh yeah.” Rose said thoughtfully. “You mean like how I’m certain that I’ve lain with other women before I met you, but I have absolutely no idea who, when, or why?”

Nimue raised an eyebrow at that. It seemed like quite a revelation to make so casually. Then again, everyone else present seemed unfazed.

“Yeah, and I bet you don’t remember a single moment of your seventeenth year of life despite being eighteen.” Gil answered. “Finding the holes can be kinda fun in my experience. Like, someone can have an established relationship and only remember one or two things that ever happened.”

“What about…” Cindy started slow, then the rest of the words tumbled out, “What if I don’t remember a damn thing about my life before I met mah lord?”

“Oh, well if that’s something that only you experienced in Kusai’s retinue, that probably means you were purchased.” Gil said. “Direct from the Company store. Let me guess, you popped into existence with the inherent knowledge that you were made to serve him, and it’s basically impossible to question that premise?”

“Well… yeah, somethin’ like that.” She said, embarrassed. “I think I used to work in a machine shop or somethin, but…”

“Yeah, past integration and fake memories cost extra.” Gil said sympathetically. “A lot of people don’t bother.”

“What is… past integration?” Nimue asked, morbidly curious.

This was an entire topic she could barely wrap her head around, and that was the kind of thing that fascinated the Ladies of the Lake. The idea of creating as if with glamour an entire real, persistent person was just barely imaginable, and it sounded as if Gil claimed she shared a meal with such a conjured individual.

“Ok, so the Company shop can make copies of prominent people from any of tens of thousands of worlds.” Gil explained, “Perfect, flawless copies. Skills, knowledge, appearance, personality, the works. You with me?”

“For the sake of the conversation, yes.” Nimue said skeptically.

“Alright, so normally if you purchase someone for their normal price, they will show up with the personality overrides I mentioned already in place.” Gil explained, “With Past Integration, they don’t just show up. Their whole life shows up. So, the woman Cindy here was based on was a mechanic, that’s someone who fixes… ships like the one we saw earlier today, among other things. If Kusai had purchased her with past integration, she’d have shown up in his world with a machine shop and life built around her. Customers, titles, identification, friends, and memories. Costs a bit more, but for some people it’s basically mandatory to make them worth the trouble.”

“And I wasn’t worth the trouble.” Cindy said with a sigh. “That sounds about right. He only brings me along on these trips because he doesn’t wanna risk Winry or Miss Sato.”

“Hmm?” Gil said, “Why not? You seem pretty solid to me. A good mechanic is almost as good as a solid healer, if you’ve got the hardware.”

“Oh, I don’t like sleepin’ with him.” Cindy said simply. “I couldn’t really pretend very well, either.”

“I don’t blame you.” Rose said. “I saw him bare himself after that last battle and I have no desire to see it ever again.”

“Really?” Cindy asked. “You seemed like his type.”

“Rose here prefers the ladies.” Gil supplied. “Maybe that’s it?”

“Eh… sure. Probably that.” Cindy said, clamming up. She seemed to have finally noticed that she was letting things slip.

She shut up after that, keeping her responses monosyllabic more often than not. That was fine. Gil already had a few solid hints, enough to cobble together a reasonable theory on top of Rose’s report. They lay together that night, exchanging whispers and warmth alike.

“I think, with a moderately high degree of certainty, that we are dealing with something called a Fat Bastard build.” Gil explained. “From the description you gave, probably a True Bastard.”

“I know what each of those words mean, but all together they seem to elude me.” Rose said dryly. “Do you mean a build, like some video game? What the devil is a Fat Bastard.”

Lily hadn’t been a gamer, but she’d at least been familiar with the concept. Mostly second hand from her nerdier teammates. Rose alone would have been entirely lost.

“Short version? Testers and players can take drawbacks to make their lives harder.” Gil explained. “We testers tend to get a cash bonus for doing so, part of our actual pay. Players can instead do it to get their hands on more points or stretch their existing budget. The drawbacks that can make the player overweight and unattractive are some of the easier ones to compensate for, so they are surprisingly popular. A fat bastard build is one that takes the advanced form of both drawbacks explicitly to pay for other perks designed to compensate.”

“Such as by making one’s phallus irresistible?” Rose asked, screwing up her nose. “Despite being otherwise detestable?”

“Irresistible to certain people.” Gil clarified. “That’s the other thing about fat bastards. They almost always take a bunch of drawbacks to get discounts, which is lucky. It means you didn’t end up choking on his dick right along with the Queen.”

“That was a legitimate possibility?” Rose asked, affronted. “And you didn’t warn me?”

“There’s always a risk, but it was a small one.” Gil said. “I told you to bug out immediately if something sketchy happened for a reason. It didn’t seem likely, though, once we saw him throwing his weight around.”

“Why not?” Rose asked. “Obviously you were right, but how do those two things even connect?”

“I don’t know exactly what he turned himself into, but a freemium player, the kind hard up enough to think making himself irreversibly hideous and morbidly obese, doesn’t have a lot of options to turn himself into a T5.” Gil said, “And just looking at how he conducts himself? I really, really doubt he got to this power level by working hard and exploiting the Leveling tag, and he definitely doesn’t have the discipline for any of the other more… intellectually demanding options. Stuff like learning a power system properly, actually becoming a wizard. So he almost certainly just bought power directly.”

“All very fascinating, but would you kindly explain to me how any of this means that you knew I’d be immune to that ball of slime’s master power?” Rose asked again, this time grabbing his arm and digging her nails in.

“Sorry, sorry.” Gil said apologetically, “Freemium players, the guys who spent the minimum amount to get the basic starter package? They can only really afford cheap, mass produced tat with the credits they can get in-game. It’s this whole deliberately confusing stratified membership thing, half a dozen different currencies all called credits. T3 or lower, at best he’ll get the occasional competent bombshell like Cindy or something that he can invest in like a small monster with the leveling tag. However, they can trade away their binding to get a pile of premium credits. Specifically 20, exactly enough to get a power swap… er, basically a character card but it doesn’t have a physical form before use, for a T5 character. Probably a generic species package, if I had to guess.”

“Well he obviously got a new binding from somewhere.” Rose pointed out. “Iseult was ready to kill him, and then she was ready to bury her face in his crotch in the next breath.”

“That sounds more like the work of a Lure, actually.” Gil said. “They don’t directly capture someone or give generally applicable superpowers, but even freemium players can occasionally pick them up in banner promotions or during events or by buying them with their starting budget. To get the kind of reaction you’re describing though? I’d guess Love Spot, probably with Your Wings are Beautiful to give it extra impact when he whips it out. What makes it the True Bastard build, though, is that he almost certainly took Tsundere Service, with Zenryoku Zenkai as the prerequisite since Alluring Whisper is banned if you have the Hideous drawback.”

“What the hell does any of that mean?” Rose said with a roll of the eyes. “The quick version?”

“He can hypnotize people with his penis, and the longer he’s gone without anyone seeing it, the faster and more potent the initial onset.” Gil said, “On top of that, women will fall in love with him if he beats them in a fight or something. Finally, if someone is aggressive towards him and he finds them desirable, then the emotions behind that aggression will swing back around to lovey dovey affection, especially if he deliberately provoked them.”

“My word.” Rose said, “That is… quite the potent combination. Especially for someone as unpleasant as he is.”

“Yeah, but it’s also an 80 credit value.” Gil said with a shrug. “To realistically afford all that, he’d either need to be very, very old, or he’d need to take half a dozen filter drawbacks. Narrow down who all of that shit works on severely.”

“And then she clammed up, because she’s smart. Realized that knowing who is immune to his bullshit is valuable information.” Gil said with a smirk. “It’s very likely that she’s not his type either, incidentally. She mentioned that she doesn’t like sleeping with him, right? His type is probably very specific, though obviously broad enough to have that team of monsters he was dragging around.”

“Any clue what it is?” Rose said thoughtfully, “I assume nobility must be part of it, since all of the women Merlin warned us of him targeting were of the gentry, at minimum.”

Gil made a noncommittal grunt.

“Can’t be sure about that sort of thing.” He warned. “I haven’t met a single commoner since we got here who wasn’t pretty blatantly an NPC, unless you count the magic users. Even the bandits are mostly fallen knights. I’d say at least a few of his filters are probably that they need to be attractive women, and they need to be noteworthy. For a guy like this, those are practically free discounts. It’s just a guess, but I think they might also need to be in a formal relationship. That would be worth a pretty steep discount since it means every capture has a fight tied to it, and it would explain why Cindy wasn’t hit.”

It couldn’t be all humans, since that woman on the ship sounded like an elf. It couldn’t be all white girls either, since Opal and Hinata were both Asian. It was possible he’d managed to win enough premium credits from PvP to buy some higher ranked girls, but that would be… well frankly it would have to have been an idiotic impulse buy. Opal seemed perfectly competent, but nothing all that special. So… plausible but not the most likely.

“So, my husband, would you care to explain which restriction disqualifies me?” She said, giving him an arch look.

“No, I will not be walking into that particular trap.” Gil said with a smirk.

“It’s a terribly clever way to use his limited resources.” Rose said thoughtfully, “I’ll give him that much.”

“Don’t be too impressed. There’s a reason I can rebuild it from scratch this easily.” Gil said glumly, “Its been around as a build for eons, and the only time it got patched was when the Company made it so genuine free to play users lost access to the drawbacks system. He probably did the equivalent of looking it up on the internet. Found half a dozen builds and chose the one that matched the kind of life he wanted. I’m also pretty sure someone like Garri could come up with a build just as good in about fifteen minutes.”

“The fact he elected to grant himself powers that specifically encourages uncouth behavior does not speak well of him, I suppose.” Rose said, “So, what to do now? We still have some very clear holes in our knowledge.”

“I think you should have a go with Cindy once I’m asleep. You and I have an arrangement, but most girls like her assume their situation is pretty normal. You and Hellawes can probably commiserate about the woes of serving some horny idiot and she might be willing to talk more about her coworkers.”

“I do imagine she might be frustrated if she hasn’t had satisfactory sex since the moment of her creation.” Rose said with a wicked smile. “Perhaps I can relax her, first? Hellawes seemed to enjoy herself.”

“Go for it, but don’t forget what the actual objective is.” Gil said.