Susanne mumbled incoherently as she rolled over in the bed. After a few more minutes, the sun's rays came through the window and fell directly on her face. With another mumble, she cracked open her eyes, then sat up. She was disoriented for a few minutes, starting with the fact that it had literally been years since she had slept in like this, lighting on the fact that she was in an unfamiliar bed, and finishing with the knowledge that she hadn't been in this city -- or even this time zone -- for years.

She stood and pulled on a pair of jeans and a blouse, brushed her hair and tied it back, brushed her teeth, and padded downstairs in her bare feet.

As she neared the bottom of the stairs, she heard Roger's voice in the TV room, so she headed that direction. Then she heard another voice, this one female.

Walking through the doorway into the room, she saw Roger sitting on the couch, looking at her. apparently he'd been talking to the woman, who had probably stopped her pacing when she felt Susanne come near.

*That's right,* Susanne thought to herself. *She's another immortal.* She'd felt the buzz without giving it a second thought, or even really recognizing it, which was probably due to the fact that she was still working on waking up.

Stepping into the room, Susanne once again mumbled incoherently.

"There's a pot of coffee sitting ready for you," Roger answered. "Get a cup, then come and join us! I think you'll find this news quite interesting."

Susanne heard the first sentence, and saved the last part until she had downed a cup before processing them. Finally, she went back into the TV room.

"Awake?" Roger said with a grin.

"Getting there. What's the news?"

"Well," the other woman started to say, then backed up. "Oh, I'm Amanda," she said, and Susanne rose to shake her hand. "Okay, I'm on the Guardian Council."

"You're WHAT?" Susanne spat out. Though she couldn't believe it, her first suspicion was that they were going to try to replace Roger again.

"Relax, they don't know I'm here. But what I came to say is that even if they found out, there's not much they could do. The Council has severed ties with your Game, so to speak. They decided that being responsible for the eight of you -- not to mention the Guardians and all the others who have popped up -- was too much of a liability. So they're pretty much forgetting you guys ever existed."

After a moment of taking this in, Susanne finally said, "Sort of a government cover-up sort of thing?"

"Pretty much. They've said something about beginning a new Game before long."

"Oh great. Yet another fiasco."

"Not necessarily. Yours was the most ambitious project to date, really. Personally, I just don't think they did all their homework."

"How so?"

"Well, they didn't know that you or Nyx were immortal, they didn't know what Anaera really was. That's just the beginning, of course. It's almost like they chose girls at random, and expected them to pick certain Bishounen. The Council always has a certain influence over Games," she added thoughtfully. "They don't dictate everyone's actions, of course, but what they can do is to create some aspects, some events, that would lead the Otaku to think this or that, and so the probability of the Otaku doing what the Council wants is greater."

"And we all did what we wanted."

"Right. Like, they had no idea that Celly could do a Reality Rip like that, no idea that you could travel through time, no idea about this or that."

"They got lazy. And we got out of control."

Amanda nodded. "I just wanted to let you two know, since you technically weren't back in the Game anyway. You're no longer in a Game. Now, it's for real. You'll do whatever you want, and so will Celly, Nyx... everyone."

"I thought we did anyway."

"At one point, the Council had the ability to stop it all, to end the Game. They lost that ability somewhere around the time Celly called her Bishounen. Truly, we've actually tried a few times to end it. But when we realized we couldn't, we sort of let everything go. Anyone who had any latent powers is probably going to discover them real fast."

Susanne seemed to consider this for a minute.

"It's one big free-for-all," Roger said contemplatively, to which Amanda nodded.

"This changes something for you," Susanne said to Amanda as she stood up. "For you, our actions are no longer a Game. But for us, for the Otaku and their Guardians, it was never a Game. It was always our reality," she finished as she left the room.