Roy was enjoying himself when they rode out east of West Town. There were just as many sights to see here as on the road they’d galloped back along the previous night, but while the Western highway had been lined with highly themed gift shops, this side was more of a fast food district.

  That meant a lot of mimetic architecture. Buildings shaped like the things they sold: a giant ice cream with a hatch in the waffle cone for handing out smaller ones, a slice of cake with a gap in its layers for the same purpose, and three connected buildings, a burger flanked by fries and a soda. It had to be the biggest Burger Quest in the world.

  “We’ve gotta try the food in there sometime,” said Tex.

  “It’s still stocked?” asked Bastion.

  “I don’t know. It’s too close to the Raiders’ base to risk it. Plus, any good loot’ll be locked away in those treasure machines you need the little plastic keys for.”

  “Can’t magic break open the machines?” asked Roy. The Hero Meal toys he’d had as a kid all came from landfills, discolored, with missing limbs and wheels. New ones fresh from the plastic wrap would be something else entirely.

  “Not from what I’ve heard,” said Tex. “The machines’ own magic trumps anything most themes can throw at them.”

  “We could swing by on the way back at least,” said Roy. “Test out some of the new weapons we buy.”

  It would be exciting, if he wasn’t already overloaded with excitement at the thought of picking out arcade prizes.

  “We’d better go over the plan before we get to the arcade,” said Bastion.

  “Look tough, right?” Roy said. The Raiders were already an afterthought. In his mind he was already past them, swapping tokens for new magical gear.

  “Yep,” said Bastion. “And whenever you do speak, talk up how good this batch of Krazee-8 is. Hopefully, they’ll be so distracted by it they won’t even notice that half the arsenal we’re carrying out of there is meant for them.”

  The arcade was a tall box building with stone facades and a central sign displaying its mascot. A raccoon’s face peeked over a marquee ringed with flashing bulbs.

  Raider Racoon’s Loot Stash.

  The second word was crossed out with black spray paint.

  As they approached, a group of about a dozen men came out to confront them.

  Roy studied their gear.

  Most wore football armor and helmets, while a few of them mixed in hockey and baseball padding. All had the crossed swords logo sprayed on, but there wasn’t any paintwork beyond that. Nothing on the level of Roy’s own costume, even though they’d started with the same materials.

  One wore no armor at all. A man with dark, greasy hair and a sinewy, tattooed body exposed by a sleeveless leather jacket. He wielded a pair of knives covered in rust-colored dried blood. Whether that was because he understood theming or because he didn’t care to clean them, Roy didn’t know.

  Kyle froze.

  This guy, who couldn’t sit still for five seconds, suddenly couldn’t move. Couldn’t look anywhere else.

  “That’s him,” he said. “That’s Skeeter.”

  Roy still didn’t think much of the Raiders. More than anything he was annoyed that they were blocking the entrance to the arcade.

  When they approached, the Raiders brandished their weapons.

  “What the fuck is this?” Skeeter glowered at Kyle. “I see one traitor here, but where’s the rest of Walter’s band of limp-dick sparkly boys?”

  “We’re not wizards,” said Roy.

  “Yeah. That’s fucking obvious. You’re like a knight in shining armor, right? You here to rescue maidens or something?”

  A few of the men behind him guffawed at that. Forced, performative chuckles from a bunch of suck-ups. This was getting irritating already. It was surprising how quickly something could ruin his great mood.

  Skeeter appraised the rest of their group. “A fat-ass in soda-armor, a gunslinger without a gun, and is that a bitch back there in that skeleton suit? What, you couldn’t even scrape together five fighting men?”

  Roy was thinking he’d show him exactly what one fighting man could do when Bastion cut in.

  “We're not here to fight,” he said. “We’re here to trade.”

  “Trade what. We got plenty of loot here already. You got some wizard scalps in that bag of yours? Because that’s about all we’re interested in.”

  “Wish I’d known,” said Bastion. “We’ve got five just sitting there, but it’s Krazee-8 we’re brought with us.”

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  The reaction was immediate. The need in their eyes. Some took a step forward, hands grasping automatically. Others twisted their hands around their bats.

  Ten steps between us. Roy could have his sword out before they closed the distance; there wouldn’t be time to charge the maul with resonance. His fingers twitched at his side.

  No, this plan could still work.

  Skeeter’s eyes narrowed, calculating, coming to the same decision as Roy. “Not yet, boys. How much have you got?”

  “Sixty cans,” said Bastion.

  Skeeter whistled. “You know, back west, nobody used to move more Eight than me. I was a fucking celebrity in Star City. Makes the stuff this crew’s been up to around here look like kid stuff.”

  He spun his knives. “Know something else? My crew used to fill those cans with anything, and it still worked half the time. It was that thing, like when something works ‘cause you think it’ll work.”

  “Theme magic?” asked Roy.

  “Nah. Like, the thing with medicine.”

  “The placebo effect,” said Bastion.

  “That’s the same thing,” said Roy.

  “It’s not the same thing. They had this before the Warp.”

  “OK. How did it work exactly?” Roy asked.

  “Most of the time, we just mixed booze and elixir, nothing special. Refilling it yourself wouldn’t work. They needed the gangs to do it for them. That’s what made it the perfect score, over and over.”

  “Yeah. Placebo,” said Bastion.

  “It’s theme magic too though,” Roy pointed out. “Since you still needed the cans to make it work.”

  “We made sure to mix a few of the real cans in,” Skeeter continued. “Which meant any one of them might’ve been real. That was the trick, get it? And it’s why we’ve got a problem here. See, I know how it works. The placebo shit won’t do nothing for me. It needs to be the real thing, and I don’t think your stuff’s real enough to be worth trading for.”

  “This batch has wormwood in it,” said Bastion. “Casey said that was the main ingredient in original recipe, pre-Warp Krazee-8.”

  “Wormwood. I ain't heard of that.”

  “Have you heard of absinthe? Because it's the main ingredient in that. It’s hallucinogenic,” Bastion noted Skeeter’s confused expression. ‘It makes you see things.”

  “Now we’re talking. What do you want for it? Tokens?”

  If Bastion had said yes, they probably would have been attacked on the spot. They didn’t have any. Skeeter’s tokens had gone to the wizards and were now in Bastion’s backpack.

  “That’s the best part. You don’t need to pay anything. There are some things we want to buy in there.” Bastion pointed through the doors, into the arcade.

  “You got Casey in West Town to brew these? Who’re you guys with anyway?”

  Good thing they didn’t recognise Tex or Samantha.

  “We’re just treasure hunters,” said Bastion. “We had a good haul and traded for it. Once we’ve bought what we need here, we’ll be heading back into the swamps for more loot.”

  “You guys’ve got a fucking death wish then. You’d never get me back in that shit-hole when there’s so much for the taking right here.”

  ‘So do we have a deal?”

  Skeeter paused. Staring at them in turn, then pointed his knives in the air.

  “One last thing. Don’t buy the RC car.”

  “The RC car?” asked Roy.

  “Yep. That thing’s mine. We’ve been saving up tokens for weeks.”

  Roy relaxed. “Sure.” He almost laughed.

  Looking hungrily at the crates they unloaded, the raiders stepped aside so they could enter.

  Inside, the foyer opened up into a dining area. It was messier than the wizard's improvised one. Every table was covered in trash, and every booth had torn upholstery. There were signs that it hadn’t been looking too good before the Warp either, since dried-out chewing gum was stuck to every surface.

  The tables in front were surrounded by those cheap metal chairs Roy hated, and centered on a large stage for a show that had once used a variety of approaches to bring the Raider Raccoon story to life: puppets, actors in suits, and automatons. All were different versions of the same raccoon. One in a space suit, another in a pirate outfit. Vampires and mobsters and one dressed as a giant hotdog.

  It would have been a good source of costumes if only they weren’t too large for any human to wear.

  “That’s uh, eclectic,” said Bastion. “Kind of wild, having all these different things together without there being any practical reason for it.”

  “They’re meant to be from different universes,” said Roy.

  “That’s kinda cool,” said Samantha. “So they’re all the different Raider Raccoons who work together to…steal stuff, I guess.” She paused, puzzled. “So wait. There’s a whole universe for each theme. How does that work? Like one universe is space explorers and another is vampires?”

  “Uh,” said Kyle. “So in the pirate world, is everyone a pirate? “

  “I mean, they’d have to be,” said Roy. “Or it wouldn’t be a pirate world.”

  “So nobody obeys the law? Nobody lives on land? Who are they stealing from?” Samantha was clearly enjoying this.

  Roy was glad of the distraction after the tension of getting past the Raiders. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any inside right now. He let himself relax further, taking a deep breath before speaking.

  “What about the hotdog one?” he asked. “That means there’s a world where people are food.”

  Kyle jumped in. “What would they eat there?”

  “People,” said Roy and Samantha in unison.

  “This place was for kids,” said Bastion. “I don’t think the people who designed it put anywhere near as much thought into it as you all have just now.

  “Let’s get to the prizes,” said Tex impatiently, ushering the group on to the arcade.

  It had the type of jazzy, colorful carpet that Roy had once played jumping games on, trying not to step on the squiggles. Most of this one was covered up by the dazzling array of games on offer.

  There were lots of video game cabinets, retro titles with 8-bit graphics and big screens with light-guns in front. Pinball machines designed around maps from pulp adventure stories. Whack-a-mole with monsters instead of moles. A basketball-throwing game shaped like a high-top sneaker. A bowling alley with blocky displays that hung like swords of Damocles over the lanes, showing cartoon pins brawling.

  Every game beeped and booped and flashed with enticing lights, themed enough to stay powered on even after all this time. Maybe when West Town had cleared out the Raiders, they could come back and play them.

  “Over there,” said Bastion. “The prize wall.”

  Roy stopped, stunned. He wanted to look everywhere at once. There was so much sensory overload that he needed to slow his brain down before he could start to take it all in.

  Bastion whistled. “Looks like we came to exactly the right place.”