They took positions on either side of the broken window. Bastion unslung his crossbow and Roy drew his sword, wishing he hadn’t left the Castle Maul in the middle of the street.

  Roy raised a finger to the dusty glass, planning to draw eyeholes the way he would when sketching a smiley face in the shower.

  Bastion grabbed his wrist and silently mouthed the word “No.”

  Instead of giving himself away, Roy pressed his face to the glass and peered at the shapes outside. Two silhouettes.

  One had the outlines of a top hat and cape. The other was clearly a woman, with long, flowing hair and clothes that clung closely to her body.

  Costumes. But which?

  A top hat had associations with an old-fashioned type of businessman, but that was an odd theme to use out here. Combined with the cape, it could be a stage magician or a circus ringleader.

  The woman’s form-fitting outfit could mean spy, superhero, or cat burglar.

  “Phew,” a male voice said. “That’s a very big, very dead Gator-man.”

  “Combat themes did this,” the woman replied. “And it looks like they left something behind.” Her shadow crouched.

  “A hammer shaped like a castle?” said the man, his voice rising in amusement. “Someone fun, then.”

  “Someone with serious costuming,” she countered. “A knight.”

  “Like I said, fun. Do you think they’re still around here somewhere?”

  Bastion took aim at the window, trying to pinpoint centre mass. Roy grabbed his arm in protest. Shooting strangers on sight felt wrong. His guts twisted up at the thought of it.

  “They could’ve dropped this weapon and bolted,” she replied. “Chased off by more Gator-men. But that’s a serious piece of equipment to just abandon.” She gestured at the shadowy mass surrounding the Castle Maul’s outline. “These kills took serious power, and this giant one’s pretty much ripped in half. Whoever did that doesn’t seem like the type to give up. Let’s take a look around.”

  Their shadows shifted. The top-hat man stooped then strained as he failed to lift the Castle Maul, and the woman walked out of view.

  “We can take them,” Bastion whispered. “I’ll shoot first, then you charge in with your sword. We don’t know what they can do, but if we’re lucky, we’ll never have to find out.”

  “We don’t even know if they're hostile yet,” said Roy.

  “We can take them.” Bastion insisted. “Right now.”

  “Right now, we’d be murderers ambushing people for no reason.”

  “Hey!” shouted the woman. “I heard something over there.” The silhouette loomed against the window, pointing straight at Roy. Bastion, in turn, pointed his crossbow straight at her shadowy head.

  “Anyone in there?” called the man in the top hat. “It’d be fun to talk to some other treasure hunters, after so long on the road. We can compare notes. Have you seen any of those slimes yet? We ran into some, but there was also this really cool vending machine.” He paused. “Not feeling chatty? If you don’t say something soon, I’ll start to get worried.” He was staring right at them now.

  Roy waved his hands at Bastion in exasperation, gesturing toward the glass. They obviously knew someone was standing there, and at this point, they were just making themselves look more suspicious.

  Bastion shook his head, aimed his crossbow, and refused to move.

  Roy had made up his mind. He put his sword back on his belt, dropped his backpack, and stepped outside, trying to affect a look of nonchalance he absolutely didn’t feel.

  “Hi. I’m Roy. I wasn’t trying to be rude back there. I could only just hear you from the back of the store.”

  He took in their costumes as fast as he could, looking for anything that might be helpful if this went badly.

  The man wore oversized white-framed sunglasses beneath his top hat, and a tuxedo-print T-shirt with gold buttons glued down the center. His coat was gold too, and he’d draped it over his shoulders, which was why Roy had mistaken it for a cape. It looked far too hot for the swamps; it had to be part of a costume. White gloves and basketball shoes completed the look. It all suggested something, but Roy couldn’t quite place it.

  The woman’s look was just as impractical for base reality: all leather. A form-fitting suit covered her from neck to ankle, with matching gloves and boots, the latter sporting extremely high heels.

  She looked implausibly good. Her hair was perfectly layered and voluminous, with not a single strand out of place, and her makeup was some kind of contouring job, with extra focus around the eyes, making her look magnetic, mesmerizing.

  When Roy looked at her, he struggled to analyze what her theme might be, or even to hold a coherent thought in his head beyond “Whoa. This girl.”

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  He couldn’t stop staring at her. His mind was consumed with taking in everything about her. Those curves, the way her chest moved when she breathed. Those lips. Those eyes.

  To look this good in the swamp’s humidity, it was either a magical effect or she’d just gone through an elaborate cosmetics routine a few minutes ago. From the powerful effect it was having on him, Roy had to guess magic.

  The top-hat man had a genuine-looking smile and swayed on the spot, making theatrical hand gestures while her face was pulled into a tight-lipped grimace, while she stood rigidly still. An enthusiast and a pragmatist. Maybe that was a common trend among treasure-hunting duos.

  “Mr Knight.” The man tipped his top hat, leaving it jauntily off to the side. “Are you OK? Your ear looks pretty messed up.”

  “Gator-men,” Roy said. He found himself irrationally resenting this man for speaking and making him look away from her. “And it’s not hurt too bad. Nothing worth drinking an Elixir for anyway.”

  “You killed two of them by yourself?” asked the woman. Roy found it hard to avoid staring into her eyes.

  “Yes.” Not the two she was thinking of, but this way, he didn’t have to lie.

  She pressed him. “What did you find in the video store?”

  “Some Ultra-Discs.” Again, not a lie.

  He hated that Bastion had put him in this position. Being so cautious meant he had to get off to an extremely awkward start with these people at a time when he wasn’t thinking clearly. This woman was being cautious too, though not to the point of hiding behind a wall of glass, holding a crossbow.

  “Hey,” said the top-hat man. “No need to interrogate him. We don’t want to be rude. This is Tori, and you can call me Tops. Part of my theme and all, I’ve really been getting into it lately.”

  “What theme is that anyway? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

  Tops shrugged apologetically. “The mystery is part of what makes it work, so I can’t tell you, just in case more Gator-men are lurking around here somewhere.”

  “How does that work?” asked Roy, trying to latch onto something that could refocus his attention. “You look like some kind of magician. Is the way you describe yourself part of the act? Do you get a resonance boost just by talking to people? That would be really cool. I mostly only feel it in fights.”

  “All of us theme users are kind of magicians, aren’t we? For you, it's an act of escalation, right? Charging in on a tide of rising action and riding that resonance wave higher and higher.”

  “Yeah,” said Roy. “It’s pretty much exactly like that.”

  “Tori’s the same. She’s told me a lot about what it’s like for close combat themes.”

  What was Tori exactly? He’d feel rude asking her now, while she was glaring at him. With those amazing eyes. Close combat and a leather suit. Some kind of movie spy that inevitably fails at spying and gets into brawls instead? And looks incredible while doing it.

  “What I do is different,” said Tops. “It takes lots of planning, thinking about the show I’m going to put on. I present something ordinary, that’s the setup. Then I turn it into something extraordinary, that’s the twist. But really, both of those first two steps are set up work, towards the ultimate payoff.”

  “Three stages,” asked Roy, struggling to keep his attention away from Tori. “Three Acts?”

  Tops nodded knowingly. “Stories within stories. You get it.”

  Roy was starting to like this guy.

  “You could say I’m at the midpoint of my own story right now,” said Tops.

  “You’ve entered an extraordinary world and had some fun there, then?” Roy asked.

  Tops laughed. “We were all born in an extraordinary world, and most people still find a way to make it boring. I did, before I started using my theme and came here. I worked in a costume shop in Star City, and for years I never tried one of them on.”

  “Star City? I have a friend from there.”

  “We came here the long way round. Star City, Galveston, Key West. Great place to sell stuff, by the way. Treasure hunting’s great, isn’t it? I’ve really been loving it the last few months.” He smiled and danced a little on the spot. “This magical world actually feels magical now, you know? Now that I’m following my destiny.”

  Roy felt his gaze drifting away from Tops even as he spoke. He knew he should have been paying more attention to what he was saying, but how could he, when Tori was standing right there, making his heart race and his palms sweat while butterflies fluttered in his stomach. Making him incapable of thinking of anything except how much he needed to be with her, right now.

  Far off in the background, in another part of his mind, alarm bells started ringing.

  Why was he thinking like this? She wasn’t Roy’s usual type at all. He liked people who liked him back, and so far she’d given him an extremely frosty reception. Even physically, she wasn’t what normally appealed to him the most. It was as though his thoughts weren’t his own.

  “I’ve been doing something similar,” said Roy, forcing himself to focus.

  “I know,” said Tops. “My mascot showed me.”

  “Mascot?” Roy exclaimed. That got his mind back on track.

  “The little man who appears in old machines and comic books. One time he showed up on a slice of toast. Here, let me show you. I’ve always liked drawing.”

  Roy’s mind raced. Someone else had experienced the same thing as him. They had to be meeting now for a reason. This was fate, a pivot point where everything changed.

  Tops held out a rectangular card. Tori looked tense as Roy took it, but he was so intent on finding out if someone else was seeing Sir Protagonist that he focused only on that.

  It wasn’t the miniature knight he saw there, but a well-inked, sharply dressed man. He looked a lot like Tops, except he wore a small mask instead of sunglasses, a cape instead of a coat, and a suit instead of a t-shirt printed to look like one. It was the ideal form of Tops’ costume, just as Sir Protagonist’s armor was to Roy’s.

  There were more of these things out there, guiding people, telling them where to go. For what purpose, though? Roy had found the Virtua World Championship disc here, but what was Tops supposed to find?

  Was he just here to join Roy? To let him know there were others like him?

  Glowing sword, thunderous words, sparking signs. He barely knew what he could do, and had no idea what abilities Tops might have. He had so many questions. He needed to learn everything he could about this.

  He was so caught up with the image of the mascot, he’d forgotten that he still didn’t know what its theme was. There was some text beneath it, and Tops and Tori waited patiently while he read.

  To the Bold and Brave Mr Knight, Archetype of Heroism.

  You and I both must follow the paths laid out before us. That’s why I’m about to steal your shiny gold MacGuffin, right now.

  Regards.

  Tops the Phantom Thief.

  The card exploded into blue sparks, and Roy looked up just in time to see Tori’s boot flying toward his face.