Chapter Text
Bullets were expensive.
In a world where you could find pistols lined up across the aisle from cheap convenience store bentos, you'd think they'd be easy to get ahold of. Supply and demand, inflation, some other complex economy buzz term, and all that. Bullets were the toilet paper of this world. To the residents of Kivotos, having a fully loaded firearm was more vital than their panties, so why wouldn't bullets be dirt cheap?
Unfortunately, there's one thing you don't realize until you actually arrive in this godforsaken city: Most of the economy is run by fucking rust-brains.
Somehow, those fucking stiff-jointed screen-faced ass bitches had perfectly priced the cost of a magazine so that buying one pack wouldn't set you back too much. Buy ten, and suddenly all of your savings are gone. If you lived in the borders of a nice school, ten mags could get you through the month. In the dogshit zones though, good luck getting through the week. The whole thing was a fucking trap, and most of my fellow students were too busy being dumbass teenagers to realize what was going on until they were already well into the red with nothing left but an empty mag.
Food was expensive.
This was about as true on Earth as it was in Kivotos, magnified by a hundred. Cheap snacks and candy were easy as pie to get ahold of, but actual groceries? Full blown meals? Right next to the goddamn desert? Go fuck yourself, lmao. You better get used to barely being able to afford cheap ramen. The only reason I hadn't developed some form of medical problem had to be because of the halo over my head.
Rent was expensive.
Mazlov's hierarchy of needs could go fuck itself since having a house was the least of anyone's worries here. Even if you were dead broke, there were plenty of abandoned houses if you knew where to look! Just as long as you were okay with giving up electricity, proper plumbing, any form of heating system, fucking INSURANCE… Oh? You weren't willing to give up the comforts of civilization? Then start fessing up cash bucko. Rent's due tomorrow, and the bills are on the table.
Most students didn't have to worry about this. Your school basically covered the costs of living, and all you had to care about was paying the tuition fee. Bullets were supplied for free, cafeterias served delicious meals, dorms provided stable housing… Must be nice. Meanwhile, for everyone else, there was only one thing on their mind.
"Expenses. Expenses. Expenses. Ever since I got to this city, it's been nothing but fucking expenses!" I growled. "This is Kivotos we're talking about! The city of youth and dreams! A paradise where overworked salarymen can pretend they're responsible adults while lusting over their underage students! So why the fuck am I spending so much time dealing with the goddamn bills?!"
Naturally, the unconscious body I was shouting at did nothing but groan, leaving me once again with no answers. Jerk.
"There she is!" A group of delinquents stormed into the alleyway, their guns already at the ready. Probably because I had already left several of their friends in a pile on the ground. "Don't think you're getting away with this!"
"Tch." My hand shifted towards the handle of my blade. "You Hyakkiyako delinquents are so goddamn slow! If this was the Black Market, I would've saved twenty minutes! I'm on a schedule here, you know?!"
"S-Shut up!" Their leader stuttered out. "Do you even know who we are?! We're-"
"Some dumbass mobs who got too big for their britches after one deal with the Mouryo. Yada yada."
"We're not mobs!" Said the wannabe delinquent.
"Yeah, look, the sooner I kick your ass, the sooner I get paid. So let's make this quick." With a flick of my wrist, I unsheathed my trusty blade from its scabbard. The cold steel glinted in the light of the sun, and in its reflection, I could spot my opponent's fear. "Drop your guns, and I won't have to pummel you first."
Too dumb to recognize a good bargain, they tried to drown me under a storm of bullets.
Twenty minutes later, I walked out of the alley of beaten-up teenagers. Perhaps if I was still back on Earth, I'd have felt sorry about brutalizing them, but this was Kivotos. They'd walk it off in a day or two. What was more important was the fact I had sent a message.
From my client, anyway. All I really cared about was getting paid. "I sent the proof. You want to send the payment tomorrow? Did you even read the contract? Get it to me by the end of the day, or else your bill is going to jump sky high, you furry bastard."
With a grunt of disgust, I hung up the phone. I hate the adults in this fucking city. Most of the students here were nothing more than kids. Aka way too naive, making deals without written proof or not reading the terms and conditions. As a result, practically every adult who dabbled in the underworld thought they could get away with scamming and grifting their way out of paying the cost. I suppose that was true on Earth as well, but like everything else, Kivotos was much more blatant about it.
As a former Sensei, I couldn't deny that I had once dreamed of being whisked away to paradise one day. Who wouldn't, after all? But I always thought I'd keep my position as Sensei, or at the very least, my own goddamn gender. Then I would've gotten that bonus having a dick inherently gives you in Anime Girl City. But nope. Instead, I became a broke-ass girl without a penny to her name, indistinguishable from all the other mobs in this city. Hell, most of the actual dropouts were better than I was. At least they had a middle school on file. I might as well not have existed until I arrived, which made living any kind of decent life basically impossible.
At the very least, I was a short flatty. Being cute and funny intrinsically came with a power boost in Kivotos, or so I told myself.
For the past year or so, I had basically grinded myself to dust, trying to live day by day. Rolling around in the Back Streets doing as many odd jobs as I could, throwing away the cheap ass pistol I started with in favor of a sword no matter how silly it made me feel (It was an economic decision, I swear. No more bullet cost!), dealing with the fucking clankers… And generally having to go to extreme lengths to do more than survive each day.
Somehow I had managed to claw my way out of that shit hole and managed to get a decent place in the school of festivals itself, Hyakkiyako.
…Hm? If I knew the plot of Blue Archive why didn't I go to Abydos? Wasn't it cheaper?
As much as I loved the girls from the foreclosure task force, there were two reasons.
Firstly I had stepped one foot there, realized the desert was fucking hot, and instantly turned around without ever looking back.
Secondly… Tax benefits, man.
Abydos might be a shell of its former self, but like 99.9% of it was owned by the numb-ers at Kaiser. I was NOT going to set up shop in a district run by adults who were trying to suck the lifeblood out of it, no matter how much I wished Abydos the best. Hyakkiyako, meanwhile, didn't even have a student council. It was the equivalent of a bunch of clubs gathered under one banner, which meant taxes were low, especially if you were planning to do what I was going to.
"I'm back!" I cried, throwing up the door to the studio open. "You girls didn't burn down anything while I was gone, did you?"
The cries of "Aneki!" rang through my ears as a bunch of school girls ran to my side, their JP accents thick as always. If this was Earth, then I'm sure it'd have sounded like mispronouncing words, but in Kivotos, all it meant was that they talked like freaking weebs. "Keep it down, or else the landlord's going to scold us again."
"How was the job?! Daijobu?!" Someone asked. "Did you hurt yourself?!"
"Of course not? Who do you think I am?" With a roll of my eyes, I plopped myself down on the couch. "What about everything on your end? Are we good for launch?"
"Yes!" Another exclaimed, handing me a smartphone. "We've got permission from Millennium! All we've got to do is upload the build to the app store!"
"Heh. Is that so…" The app opened, and soon, familiar music started flowing into my ears. "We're finally here, huh?"
I didn't think that when I first got this crazy idea in my head that I'd be able to pull it off but with nothing else to do with my life chasing after an impossible dream didn't seem to be all that bad.
Here's the thing.
You would think that a city run by kids would have god-tier entertainment, but no. What wasn't a watered-down parody of things back on Earth was about as deep as a puddle on a sunny day. Except for the masterpiece that was Tales Chronicle Saga (lololol), everything else here was basically shit. To my taste, it was like I had gone from the spiciest Indian restaurant around to spending a week in England. You know that shit was dire when the best anime on TV was fucking Momo Friends. As the only one who had seen Peak, all I could do was pitifully look down on these poor children who had to make do with this copyright-safe hellscape.
But like I said, things from back home already existed here in a crappy version, and it wasn't like my own writing was quality enough to change the entire landscape. With a desperate need for money, I decided to throw my morals away and bring to life a certain game that also took place in Kivotos.
It took running myself ragged trying to complete jobs, hunting down recruiting dropouts from the various different arts academies, and spending countless nights going without sleep. But if it worked… I'd never have to worry about another bill again.
I'd be rolling in that gacha money for years to come! Wahoo!
How my ragtag team of dropouts and delinquents managed to remake the game nearly identical to the one on Earth I have no idea. Probably Kivotos bullshit. I don't really care. Did you know that Hyakkiyako gave you tax breaks if your company 'contributed to the culture'?! The benefits were just too good for me to pass up, even if it meant having to move my entire base of operations!
"But um, Aneki…." My head marketing manager (Chosen at random) nervously glanced at a tablet in her hands. "Did we have to go with that title? It feels-"
"Yes."
"But-"
"Trust me. It's going to work." And I wasn't just doing this because it was funny. "When have I ever led you guys wrong?"
The entire operation came to a halt as my entire studio turned to stare at me. I coughed. "When have I ever led you guys wrong on a business decision?"
There was some soft grumbling but no one could argue against that. In the land of the blind, the girl who knew basic accounting was king.
Really the only problem with this plan was that it used real people. Or that, since I had confirmed that the GSC president hadn't disappeared yet, it was basically spoiling the future for the entire world. Or- I'm going to stop myself there before I psych myself out.
Sunk cost fallacy be damned! Get ready Kivotos! Here comes--!!!
"Blue Archive: Epic Anime RPG." Hayase Yuuka read the title out with all the trepidation that it deserved. "What the heck kind of name is that?"
Despite the fact that her school's own Game Development Club was a bunch of trouble making goof offs, Millennium Science School was still known as the bastion of gaming throughout all of Kivotos. At first, simply due to their high-tech consoles, things had really taken off when they launched their various gaming platforms, such as the Millennium App Store or Vent. It was one of the many consistent sources of revenue that the school had, even though all of the profits seemed to disappear into the mouths of the budget-hungry student body.
Since it was such an essential piece of revenue, it was only natural that Seminar's Treasurer kept a close eye on everything that went through it. This was absolutely not because she was a veteran gamer suffering through the age-old principle that the more you love something, the less of it there is.
"Don't tell me it's another gacha game." The blue-haired girl muttered as she read through the description. Youth x Military x Academy RPG? What kind of selling point was that? Every academy had some form of military training, even Millenium. "You play as a teacher in Kivotos? I've never seen that before…."
On a normal day, Yuuka would've probably passed at the game and let it fade back into the sea of titles. Unfortunately, it was on this day that she once again had to deal with the crushing disappointment that a certain club brought with them as they did nothing but waste the school's very limited budget on buying stacks of games on sale. Thus, all Yuuka wanted to do was forget about them during one of the few bits of free time that she got. Even if that meant downloading a sketchy new game.
"It's free, after all." She consoled herself as it finished downloading. "Might as well give it a shot."
She could always just delete it if there were too many microtransactions, after all.
With that in mind, Yuuka opened up the app.
Twenty minutes later a shout could be heard throughout all of Millennium.
"WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?!"