Cross stepped out of his match against the guardian feeling vaguely confused.

  It had been a challenging game, the guardians Recycler cards constantly feeding cards from the discard back to the deck or field, with the ‘Cardian’ a notable example (even if the second never made it into play for some reason).

  And then, when he'd finally managed to turn things around (his first Harbinger hadn't shown up until late in the match, and he hadn't had the cards long enough to memorise its name for a special draw), the guardian had just surrendered.

  Looking around, he was the last to finish the match, going by Rusty, Blanc and Aurora all standing nearby.

  “Let me guess,” Blanc was the first to speak up, “she surrendered to you too.”

  “Indeed,” the guardian spoke from behind him, cueing him to turn and stand next to his friends. “My role as a guardian is to ensure that those who challenge me have the skills, luck or cards to have a chance at a life beyond the borders. Once that has been demonstrated, I accept my defeat. As has happened for each of you. You have earned your passes.”

  Four glowing rectangles formed before them, floating towards them until they could be grasped.

  They looked almost like cards, but instead of a name, image and statline merely identified it as a ‘Rank S pass’.

  “With these,” the guardian continued, “you may freely cross these and many other borders. The border behind me can lead to the city zone known as ‘Zedon’, the forest zone known as ‘Beefhive’ or the wasteland zone knowm as ‘Yufor’.”

  “Wait, you mean to say a zone isn't just connected to the six other zones next to it?”

  “That is correct,” the guardian answered Aurora. “There can be between twenty four and thirteen zones connected to any given zone.”

  That complicated matters.

  “This Zedon, is that the city Crash lives in? He stole-”

  The guardian interrupted Cross, speaking as though it hadn't registered his speech beyond the question.

  “It is outside the parameters of my existence to answer questions anout other travellers between zones,” it rebuked gently.

  “Then, are there any other city zones connected to this one?”

  “There are not,” the guardian answered Rusty, Cross immediately getting what that meant.

  “Then please open the border to Zedone,” he requested.

  “As you wish.”

  A shimmer ran down the wall of white behind the guardian, before a doorway opened before them, showing a narrow passage between solid walls.

  Cross turned briefly to face his friends and Trebor.

  “Let's go.”

  []

  This city was entirely unlike their previous experiences.

  The ground was level, instead of built from countless fragments of abandoned junk, solid walls standing at ninety degrees to define buildings, buildings that reached higher than most of the scrap stacks in the heap.

  Even some taller than the tallest stacks!

  And beyond that was the number of people.

  In mere minutes, after they'd stepped from the initial passage to a much wider one, they'd seen more people than they had in their entire lives so far.

  And suddenly their plan to corner Crash and somehow get Rustys other cards (maybe the rest of the deck he'd used when he was cheating against Rusty too, but those didn't really matter) showed its flaws.

  Most of the people ignored their attempts to ask for help (quite unlike the other heapers they'd run into, who'd at least be willing to hear you out in case you might trade them a card they needed), and the few that did stop had no idea who Crash was, where they needed to look for him.

  To a group of kids and out of place bot, who'd mostly assumed the city to be like the Heap with more people and less trash, it came as a massive cultural shock.

  And just wandering around the place wasn't helping.

  Finally Cross called a stop.

  “We need to come up with some sort of plan,” he decided. “Think this through like we're back in the Heaps and looking for something specific.”

  “You mean we should split up?”

  He considered quickly.

  “Sure, it should be safer here,” he decided. “I think… Rusty and Blanc, starting that way, while me, Aurora and Trebor start looking this way. Meet back here once the sun starts setting, alright? It won't be too long, but it will give us a way to know if this will work.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The plan agreed, they split up to look for clues.

  []

  It wasn't too long before Cross found himself distracted.

  In fairness, it was the sort of place he'd imagine Crash spent a lot of time after each of his defeats in the Heaps, but that wasn't what drew his attention.

  No, it was simply the first time he'd seen a card shop, somewhere to quickly and easily update your deck without needing to track down the person who had the card, the card they wanted in exchange and…

  These request chains often lasted for days, one particularly memorable case seeing him spend over a year trying to get a specific card, only to find that someone else had started an ‘Outlaw’ deck and had more claim to the card.

  At least he'd got his Water Sprite out of it, a card whose healing effect had turned several imminent defeats into wins (and one match against Rusty into a draw, as his Super Counterblow activated on his last fighters destruction to destroy Cross’s last fighters in turn).

  But this card shop had all the available cards just there on the shelves, cards that would never end up in the Heaps for him to find.

  Cards like ‘Destroyer Goose’, a powerful fighter with the only drawback being that it prevented the use of other fighters with it.

  Or ‘Battlechip Potato’, a war machine of some kind made out of what looked like food.

  But it was a different card that caught his eye for the longest, one that started to answer a question he'd long held about his deck.

  Thunder Caller Dragon

  Atk: 20 Def: 20 Life: 33 Level: 8

  Activation cost: pay 1 level at the start of your opponents turn

  Activated effect: for the rest of this turn, your opponents ‘Tyrant’ fighters cannot attack

  “So, Bloodstone Tyrant is part of an archetype,” he muttered to himself.

  “Good evening sir,” an unfamiliar and upbeat voice surprised him, Cross stumbling away and putting himself on guard, only to try and relax upon recognising the stranger as one of the salespeople manning the shop.

  “First time here I see,” the salesman continued, deliberately ignoring Crosses excessive response, “and interested in the Thunder Caller Dragon. You're in luck there, another customer recently showed interest in the Thunder Caller archetype, buying out the entire inventory of Thunder Caller cards across the city. We ordered in the dragon specially, the strongest card in the archetype, other than any possible level X of course,” he added in something of an undertone before returning to his overly friendly manner of speech, “and as such a vital part of any such deck, but the customer appears to have lost interest by the time it arrived from Seato. As such, the card is going for much less than such a powerful card, and special ordered no less, would usually require. A real steal at fifty bigons.”

  “Uh, sorry, I wasn't actually interested in the card, it just references the archetype of a card in my collection,” Cross apologised automatically, not wanting to upset someone so intent on making a sale (not to mention he didn't have a single bigon, the city currency much higher denomination than was needed in the Heaps). “Actually, I-”

  He stopped before admitting that they probably wouldn't have any cards that would be good for his deck, when he spotted a card on a lower shelf, almost out of view.

  “How much for that one,” he asked, just catching the expression of a salesperson who blamed the customer for their sudden loss of commission and the associated wasted effort before he could put his customer relations face back on. “A friend needs it for their deck,” he hastily added.

  “Magical Girl Tactics: Guardian Angels,” the salesman read. “Been here a long time, nobodies really been that interested. If it wasn't for our dedication to making as many cards available for our loyal customers as possible, it would probably be in the Scrap Heap by now. Let me see, taking the rarity, adjust for low interest and time on shelf… I can sell it for one bigon.”

  Cross felt his heart fall.

  He'd heard from Blanc about Trebors missing cards, when he was playing Rusty, and having the chance to start repairing the decks of the bot who'd joined them had felt almost like fate, like the mysterious CPU had been looking out from them.

  But…

  “I don't suppose you buy cards too, I'm slightly short.”

  The salesman shrugged.

  “In theory, but most people keep trying to sell us commons that our inventories are already overflowing with. Right now, I'm only allowed to buy rares or other cards that we keep running out of. Like ‘Commander Shih Tzu’. Really in fashion right now, for some reason.”

  “You mean, like this?”

  At this point, most Heapers had a lot of copies of the card.

  A few years ago, they had all but rained down over the Heaps, and while they were worthless for trading a persons pocket had seemingly limitless space for cards and picking them up stopped you from mistaking the card for something worth climbing yet another stack for.

  The cards weren't terrible, their effect even useful in theory.

  The problem was they were ‘face down cards’, fighters who were meant to be played face down and undeclared (like Shurikens), gaining charges for each turn they remained face down, before activating an effect strengthened by those charges when revealed by being attacked or declared.

  And the effect (targeting the owners fighters) was only really good when used on the players turn.

  As such, even Blanc didn't use what could have been a good fit for her deck, not having enough fighters to benefit.

  But from the salesmans response to seeing the card, you might almost believe Cross had offered to sell him a level X.

  “Exactly like that! Let me see, take expected selling value, modify for new customer, and… one hundred bigons. And you wanted this one, so that comes to a profit for you of ninety nine bigons… and hell, I'll throw in a loyalty card, valid at any Game King store. Are we agreed?”

  “Uh, sure,” Cross managed, not quite having time to ask if he would be willing to buy any more of the Commanders from his collection before he found himself holding the Magical Girl Tactics, a bag of ninety nine coins and a loyalty card, while the salesman was running off to a managers office.

  “... What just happened?”

  []

  “So first up, let me say that I didn't hear anything about Crash, but did find something else useful,” Cross began, once the five of them were together again, rather later than he'd expected as the sun had seemingly been refusing to set.

  He'd wasted no time in giving the Tactics card to Trebor, receiving a zone card in trade (despite his insistence he didn't need a reward for helping a companion) that he had quickly swapped into his deck.

  “Apparently ‘Commander Shih Tzu’ is really popular right now, and they're willing to pay a fortune for a copy of the card.”

  “You're making that up,” Rusty stated flatly. “No way anyone would pay anything for one of them.”

  “These ninety nine bigons say otherwise,” Cross responded, jangling the bag.

  “Why would they pay ninety nine?”

  “It was part exchange, not just a sale. So, did you get anything good?”

  “Maybe,” Blanc answered for Rusty, as he appeared to be trying to tear his hair out over someone paying that much for such a useless card. “Apparently some important guy with a son named Crash is hosting some event tonight, an anyone can show up kind of thing. His whole family should be there, so unless there are two Crashes running around the place, he should be there.”

  “You know where it is? Then we know where to look.”