Bob had never left Kingdom 1507 before. He stood at the edge of the teleport zone, map in hand, muttering coordinates to himself like a spell. "Kingdom 1463… 2TC… Amelia…" He'd heard she moved kingdoms after leaving TTK, and when word reached him on Discord that she still liked hearing about his exploits, Bob decided this required an official diplomatic visit. He had not been invited to make it official. He made it official anyway.
The teleport dropped him in the middle of unfamiliar territory, and Bob immediately got lost inside his own loading screen. Twenty minutes, one wrong alliance chat, and a very confused 2TC guard later, he found her city — bright banners, a suspiciously chaotic layout, and a name that lived up to itself. TwiceTheChaos, indeed. Bob felt instantly at home.
Amelia spotted him first. "BOB!" she shouted, sprinting out from her keep, Spanish and English tangled together in pure delight. "You actually came! ¡No lo puedo creer!" She scooped him into a hug before he could even wave, and Bob — a full head and then some shorter than her — momentarily vanished into the hug entirely.
"I told the Discord I'd visit," Bob said proudly, straightening his little cape. "Bob keeps his promises. Mostly."
Amelia grinned, already pulling him toward the courtyard. "Good. Because you owe me a dance."
Bob froze. "A what."
"A DANCE. You said in the stories you'd dance with me one day! I read that one, Bob. I remember." She struck a pose, hands out, ready.
"That was — that was a bit! A story bit! Bob doesn't actually—"
"Too late!" Amelia grabbed both his hands and pulled him into position, and it was immediately, catastrophically clear that this was a mismatch of legendary proportions. Amelia towered over him — she had to bend nearly in half just to hold his hands at a reasonable height — and Bob, who had never danced a day in his in-game life, responded to "just follow my lead" by stepping directly onto her foot.
"Ow — okay — other foot, Bob—"
"Bob IS using the other foot!"
"That's the SAME foot, mijo!"
It got worse before it got better. Amelia tried spinning him, and Bob overcorrected so hard he stumbled into a decorative crate, bounced off, and somehow ended up facing the wrong direction entirely, still holding one of her hands behind his own back like he'd been arrested mid-waltz. A small crowd of 2TC members gathered to watch, none of them entirely sure what they were witnessing, all of them recording it. Amelia tried to dip him — a reasonable move, given the height difference — and Bob shrieked so loudly that a nearby scout dropped their spyglass.
By the third attempted twirl, which ended with Bob flat on his back staring at the sky, Amelia finally gave up trying to salvage the choreography. She looked down at him, hands on her hips, trying very hard to look stern and failing completely.
"You are," she said, "the worst dancer I have ever met."
"Bob prefers 'creatively uncoordinated.'"
She laughed — the big, warm kind of laugh — and hauled him up off the ground, then pulled him into a hug instead, the same kind she'd given him at the gate, except this one lasted longer and neither of them seemed in a hurry to end it. "Thank you for coming all this way, Bob. Really."
"Bob promised," he said into her shoulder, muffled. "And also Bob got extremely lost, so this was a whole ordeal."
"I believe that completely."
Eventually Bob pulled back, straightened his cape again for dignity he had not earned, and gave a small, formal bow that immediately undercut itself when he nearly toppled over doing it. Amelia walked him back to the teleport zone, still laughing every time she remembered the dip.
"Come back sometime," she said. "Bring better shoes."
"Bob's shoes are not the problem."
"Bob's shoes are exactly the problem."
He teleported home still smiling, already composing how he'd tell the story on Discord — heroically, of course, with the falling over reframed as an advanced defensive maneuver. Kingdom 1507 would never know the full truth. Kingdom 1463 absolutely had it on video.