“What… is this?”, Phoebe slowly stepped towards the husk of a city. Artificially grown trees swayed over the broken glass like nothing was amiss. The surviving robots were content to patrol the remains. No bodies were left behind to tell the story.

  Denial. It was like the city was living in a dream itself, one it never wanted to wake up from. Mechadream would never speak of the tragedy that happened here.

  Phoebe wandered through the streets as if she had no destination in mind. But when she found herself in front of Lucina’s house, she collapsed. And finally, she allowed herself to cry.

  “I… I just want this to be over…”, Phoebe choked up with regret. “I don’t even want to be an adventurer anymore… I should’ve just spent more time with you, Lucy… Why… why did I try so hard to make you proud…? Was that all I cared about?”.

  Maybe on an unconscious level, Phoebe had been pretending things were normal all this time- that we were just out adventuring, and Lucina was waiting for her back home in Mechadream like always. Now she had decided to face the truth, only to see this.

  It felt like something within me was tightening, a sort of raw, twisting discomfort. As a ghost I couldn’t cry, and looking at Phoebe go through this was just… painful. I was certain it was just a fraction of the pain she was in, though.

  “Um, I’m sure Lucina’s proud of you”, the uncertain words tumbled out of my mouth. I felt as if I was looking at Phoebe through a window; there was a degree of separation between us that couldn’t be crossed. What should I say? Should I say anything? I had no clue. “She wanted to protect you, but she also trusted in your strength… she really did love you”, I babbled.

  Phoebe tried to collect herself, wiping away her tears. “Right… we need to figure out what happened here. That’s what Lucina would do”.

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  “We can take as long as you need”, I tried to reassure her.

  She turned to me. “You said Lucina trusted in my strength. Well, I want you to trust in me too, Count Boogula”. The slight shake in her voice was overshadowed by its warmth. There was no feigned bravado, just the courage to speak sincerely.

  “Oh… w-well, of course”, I promptly shattered the moment. She gave me a smile regardless, before we turned right to business.

  “There really aren’t too many possible culprits”, Hex glanced around anxiously. “The only reasonable conclusion I can think of… is that the bees did it”.

  “Pollentown?”, I asked. “But why? It’s strange that they would go out of their way to suddenly attack a human city like this”.

  “They’re supposed to be peaceful”, Hex confirmed. “But no one else could do this”.

  “Peaceful except for that White Bee incident a while ago”, Phoebe chewed her lip. “Come to think of it, that whole episode was rather strange. A bee just snapping all of a sudden…”.

  “I’ve never heard of anything like it”, Hex said. “Bees are just drones. They live little lives hoarding too much food and looking down on everyone else. I doubt they have the capacity for more than that”.

  “Is that why you tried to possess their queen?”, a bit of anger crept into my voice. “I thought you wanted to end that kind of bias. You sound like Jingle Jack”.

  “I needed much more labor to construct my rockets. It was all for the greater good”, Hex replied. “Besides, bees aren’t like us. They don’t have true free will like the other species do”.

  Our faces wrinkled in disgust. We would’ve expected to hear that from anyone else, but certainly not from the champion of non-human races. And yet I got the uncomfortable sense that far from being incongruent, it meshed with his fundamental hypocrisy… his desire to save one species at the expense of another.

  “…Either way, Pollentown is our biggest lead”, Phoebe concluded. “Let’s head out”.