(3rd Person POV)
Soon after the Hellfire Pantheon was founded, Hellfire unveiled the "Hellboy" at the famed Anatolia Expo, held that year in the Morningstar Kingdom.
It seized the crowd's attention at once. A handheld console — and the video game industry had grown into a giant of its own by now, all of it built on the 3D technology Hellfire had pioneered. A portable machine from that same company was always going to draw a mob.
So no one was surprised when the Hellfire booth vanished behind a wall of bodies, everyone jostling for a look at the latest thing out of the world's most inventive company.
"Incredible. The graphics can't touch the HS2, sure — but it's a blast to play."
"And this one's Pokémon, right? One of Hellfire's own anime?"
"My boy's going to lose his mind over this."
"You can take it anywhere. Barely bigger than a Hellphone."
"Honestly, what can't Hellfire do at this point? Every year it's something new. They just keep outdoing themselves."
"Rich as they are now, powerful as they are — the three great religions couldn't lay a finger on Arthur Pendragon if they tried."
The chatter rolled on, bright and unguarded. A little apart from it, drifting along the edge of the booth as though idly browsing, stood Lucy. She listened. Every word told her the same thing: over the years, the people of Morningstar had utterly changed their minds about her younger brother.
"Ugh. If only Arthur had been made crown prince. Maybe we'd get the early releases too, the way they do over in the Horn Kingdom—"
"Shh. Idiot. Don't go dragging up old history."
Lucy caught that, and quietly nudged her glasses up her nose. They were disguise enough that no one ever placed her face — which was exactly why these two could stand there talking so freely, never dreaming the elder princess, the one most to blame for her brother's leaving, stood an arm's length away.
It stung. She let almost nothing show. 'Who'd have guessed that little brother of mine would climb this high. And here I've spent years quietly regretting it — throwing my weight around, piling taxes on every film that did well. If I hadn't, maybe he'd never have left at all.'
She let out a slow breath and turned to go. That regret was hers to carry, buried where she kept it, and there was no use turning it over again. Everyone had to keep living, one way or another.
She was crossing toward her limousine — long, dark, gleaming — when she caught the shape of someone already sitting inside it.
A pulse of high-level sensing magic told her who. "...Arthur?"
That gave her pause. The car was sealed under layers of first-rate security spells; no one should have been able to so much as touch the handle, let alone be sitting inside. And yet there he was.
'Some high-grade unlocking spell? The kind that costs a fortune?' she wondered.
She pulled the door open and slid in across from him.
Up close, the aura around him was wrong — no, changed. She knew her own brother's face, and yet the man wearing it felt like someone else entirely, as if a thousand faint, invisible lights hung in the air around him.
"You do realize breaking into a woman's car to arrange a meeting is unbelievably rude?" Lucy said, dry as bone. "If we didn't happen to share a little blood, I'd have you attacked and locked away for the rest of your days."
Arthur only smiled. "You're welcome to try."
She frowned, half-certain he was needling her. "I'm not joking. What are you actually doing here — in my car, of all places?"
"Straight to it. I always liked that about you, elder sister."
"...Elder sister." Lucy blinked. "You haven't called me that in a long while." She studied him. "What happened to you? Something's different."
"Nothing much," Arthur said.
But it was a half-truth, and he knew it. Since taking the head of the pantheon — since the System had laid the title of «Ruler of the World» on his shoulders — the old distance he'd kept from Lucy simply wasn't there anymore. There had been bad blood once, between him and her and most of his siblings, all but Apollonia and Azazel. Yet he had never wanted them brought low for it. He had risen past the point where small, sour feelings could steer him.
And once he'd become the «Ruler of the World», it was as though every stone and wave and cloud in it belonged to him.
"Anyway. Dear sister." He turned his palm up, and the handheld appeared in it. "How would you feel about partnering with me on this? The Hellboy."
"Y-you want to partner. With me." Lucy stared. This had never once happened.
They'd done business before, technically — she'd sold Joseph Jackson's contract to Hellfire, a deal she had rued ever since, because the man went on to become a world-shaking «Superstar». After that, she'd never touched another arrangement with her brother.
"I do." Arthur said it plainly. "Morningstar Electronics is the right company to move my products. In fact, I'm considering making you my exclusive distributor. Well?"
Lucy's eyes went wide. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the sentence she'd just heard. It had the weightless, slippery feel of a dream.
"Are you serious? Or is this some joke at my expense?" Her gaze sharpened. "Aren't you worried about the shares? That Hellfire might lose its grip on the country?"
Arthur shook his head. "Not in the slightest. I already have more than enough. It only seems right to share some of it."
She couldn't make the words add up.
What she didn't know — couldn't know — was that Arthur, in every way that mattered, already owned the world. Money held no pull on him now; neither did the petty back-and-forth of rival companies. That was a game best left to those who still cared for earthly things.
He stood above all of it. He could rewrite the systems that ran the world, reschedule its very weather if the mood took him. He could raise a kingdom out of nothing or wipe one off the map on a whim, with the power he held now.
"What are you scheming?" Lucy said, still wary. "This came out of nowhere. I can't help feeling there's a catch buried in it somewhere."
"There's nothing to worry about. We can put it in the contract — terms that bar me from ever doing harm to you or the company. You have my word." His smile turned gentle. "Though there is one thing you'll need to know about the product we're putting in front of the world."
"Something I should know?" Her brows rose.
"Mm." He turned up a Poké Ball in his hand. "Recognize this?"
"Hmm?" Lucy's eyes caught on it, interest sparking. "Wait — that's from that anime your company's been running, isn't it? What was it... Pokémon?"
"Right in one," Arthur said patiently.
"All right. And the point of showing me?"
"You know how the anime goes?"
"It's about taming magical beasts, isn't it? Sealing them into these little balls, then setting them against each other to fight." Lucy gave a small shrug.
"Exactly." Arthur smiled. "And this ball, right now, holds a magical beast that's the very likeness of the ones in it."
"What?" Lucy reared back. "What's that supposed to mean?"