Chapter 1: The Bad Review
The scent of burnt paper was the first thing she noticed, acrid and stubborn, clinging to the air of the apartment long after the spark had died. Ari Anderson stared at the blackened corner of her latest storyboard, the crisp edges curled into brittle ash. It was a stupid accident—a frantic gesture that had sent a sleeve through the flame of her drafting lamp. Now, the carefully inked panels of her heroine, mid-transformation, were scarred by a void.
She leaned back in her chair, the leather creaking. The city of Austin glittered beyond her window, a silent symphony of distant taillights and neon signs, but inside, the only glow was the warm amber pool from her desk lamp. It lit the battlefield: strewn pens, half-empty coffee cups gone cold, and the sprawling, intricate pages of Chrono-Knights. Her hands, stained with India ink and nervous energy, lay flat on the desk as if to steady a world that had just tilted.
Her phone buzzed, a persistent, aggressive vibration against the wood. She didn’t want to look. She already knew.
With a slow exhale, she flipped it over. The screen blazed to life, dominated by a YouTube thumbnail. Mark Phillips’s grinning, charismatic face filled the frame, his eyebrow arched in that trademark look of playful judgment. The title screamed: “CHRONO-KNIGHTS VOL. 8: A MASTERCLASS IN WASTED POTENTIAL?”
Her stomach dropped. Eight million followers. Eight million people might hear this.
She tapped play. His voice, smooth and laced with that effortless, humorous cadence she usually enjoyed, filled her quiet apartment. “Alright, alright, let’s get into it. So, Ari Anderson—incredible artist, no debate. The panels in this volume? Visually, a ten-out-of-ten. But the plot…” He made a fart noise with his mouth, a sound effect millions found endearing. “It’s like she got so obsessed with drawing the coolest spectral armor, she forgot the person wearing it has to actually do something.”
A cold knot tightened in her chest. He was good. He was funny. Every criticism was wrapped in a joke, delivered with a charming smile that made the medicine go down easy for everyone except the person who’d spent eleven months bleeding onto these pages.
Her thumb scrolled down. The comments section was a live wire.
“Mark spitting facts as usual. Last volume felt so rushed.”
“She’s coasting on her art style. Story’s been weak since Vol. 5.”
“Y’all are brutal! She’s a genius!”
“Nah, Mark’s right. It’s getting repetitive. Hate to say it.”
Each one was a tiny puncture. The anger came first, hot and defensive. What do you know? You just talk into a camera. You don’t build worlds from nothing. Then the hurt, colder and quieter, seeped in. Because some of it… stung with the ring of truth. She’d been struggling with the third-act twist. She’d stayed up nights, the plot threads snarling in her head like tangled kite string.
Her phone rang, shocking her. Leland’s name flashed. Mark’s best friend, the editor of their group’s sketches. She almost sent it to voiceless.
She swiped accept. “Hey, Lee.”
“Ari. You watched it.” His voice held no question, just a soft, grim certainty.
“It’s trending. Hard to miss.”
“He doesn’t mean it personal. You know his bit. He’s the ‘critical anime guy.’ It’s his whole brand.”
“It’s my whole life,” she said, the words slipping out sharper than intended. She heard him sigh.
“I know. Listen, the con tomorrow… it’s gonna be fine. We’ve got the joint panel at three. ‘The Creator’s Perspective.’ Just… talk shop. Don’t bite his head off.”
“I don’t bite,” she mumbled, tracing the charred edge of her paper. The fragile carbon smudged under her fingertip.
“I’ve seen you when someone mispronounces ‘Akira.’ It’s not pretty.” She could hear the grin in his voice, trying to lift the mood. “Seriously, he respects you. He just watched like, seven hours of Naruto filler to gear up for this review. That’s a form of torture. He takes it seriously.”
“Great. My life’s work, judged by a man who voluntarily subjects himself to the Great Sea Monster arc.”
Leland laughed. “That’s the spirit. Look, it’s business. A little controversy is good for clicks. For both of you.”
After they hung up, the apartment felt louder. The hum of the refrigerator, the distant wail of a siren, the frantic rhythm of her own heart. Business. Clicks. It reduced the quiet agony of creation, the passion that kept her up until 4 a.m., to metrics. To a bit.
She pushed away from the desk and walked to the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. Tomorrow, the anime convention. Thousands of fans. A shared stage with Mark Phillips, whose RDCWorld house was a fortress of collaborative bro-energy and viral content, while her kingdom was this quiet, ink-stained room.
She would have to stand there, smile, and discuss craft with the person who had just, very publicly, diagnosed her story with a terminal illness. He’d be all easy smiles and practiced handshakes. Would he even remember the specific cuts he’d made? To him, just Tuesday’s content. To her, a scar on her season.
Ari turned away from the city lights. She looked at the ruined storyboard, then at her open laptop, where the first innocent, excited tweets about the convention were already popping up. The tension wasn’t just in her chest; it was in the room, in the future waiting for her tomorrow.
She didn’t clean the desk. She left the burnt page right where it was, a testament to the fragility of it all. Then she went to bed, where she stared at the ceiling, replaying his voice in her head, scripting a hundred different things she could say, and knowing with a sinking certainty that when she saw him, she’d probably just say “hey,” and her voice would be terribly, vulnerably small.
The last thing she did was silence her phone, plunging the room into a silence that felt both suffocating and like the only safe space left. Tomorrow was coming. The screen was off, but the words were still there, burning behind her eyes.
The screen was off, but the words were still there, burning behind her eyes.
Sunlight through the window felt like an accusation the next morning. The convention center, a sprawling glass-and-steel beast on the south shore of the river, thrummed with a palpable energy that vibrated up through the concrete and into Ari’s bones. Inside, it was a sensory overload she usually loved. Today, it felt like walking into a tribunal.
The air was thick with the smell of popcorn, polyester costumes, and anticipation. A thousand conversations blurred into a white-noise roar, punctuated by the shrieks of laughter and the tinny blast of anime themes from distant booths. She moved through the crowd, a curated smile on her face, her shoulders tight. Her tote bag, heavy with sharpies and a few pieces of exclusive art, bumped against her hip with every step.
“Ari! Oh my god, I love your work!”
“Can I get a picture?”
“Your art saved my life, seriously!”
She fulfilled each request, her smile becoming more natural, more real, with every genuine fan interaction. This was why she did it. This connection. Not the comments, not the metrics. This handshake, this shared, breathless love for a story.
She found her designated artist alley table, a small island of order in the chaos. She set up her prints, aligning them just so. The booth across the aisle was a riot of RDCWorld merch—hoodies, phone cases, laughing caricatures of Mark, Desmond, Ben, and the rest. It was already mobbed.
She kept her head down, organizing pens. She heard his laugh before she saw him. It was a distinct sound, full and unreserved, cutting through the din. She didn’t look up. She focused on a detailed print of her main character, Kairo, her fingers tracing the lines of his spectral armor. The very armor Mark had said was a distraction.
The crowd around the RDCWorld booth seemed to pulse and part. She sensed a shift in the atmosphere, a redirecting of attention like a gravitational pull. Her skin prickled. She pretended to be deeply engrossed in her phone.
A shadow fell across her table of prints.
She looked up.
He was taller in person. The easygoing grin from the video was softer now, less performative, but his eyes were just as keen. He wore a simple vintage Dragon Ball Z shirt, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. He wasn't alone, but the others—Leland, Desmond—hung back a few steps, a respectful buffer of amused observers.
HE APPROACHES HER.
For a long second, they just looked at each other. The noise of the convention seemed to drop away, muffled by the sheer, awkward weight of the unspoken video hanging between them. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
He broke the silence first. “Ari Anderson.” He said her name like he was testing it out.
“Mark Phillips.” Her voice held, thank god. It was neutral. Professional.
He nodded toward her prints, his gaze lingering on the intricate battle scene that was her display’s centerpiece. “These are insane. The texturing on this armor…” He shook his head, a low whistle escaping his lips. It wasn’t patronizing. It sounded like genuine awe.
The sincerity disarmed her, throwing her prepared script of chilly professionalism into disarray. “Thanks,” she said, the word coming out quieter than she intended.
He rocked back on his heels slightly, his smile turning a touch wry, as if he could read the entire storm in her head. “Look, about that video…”
Leland coughed pointedly from behind him. Mark didn’t turn.
Ari crossed her arms, not defensively, she hoped, but just to have somewhere to put her hands. “The ‘masterclass in wasted potential’ one? Yeah, I caught it.”
He had the decency to wince. Just a flicker. “It’s the bit. You know that, right? The character. ‘Critical Anime Guy’ needs to be critical.” He leaned a little closer, his voice dropping, meant just for her. “But you’re… you’re really good. The stuff you do with panel flow? The way you direct the reader’s eye without them even knowing? That’s next level. I should’ve led with that.”
It was an apology. Wrapped in analysis, delivered with a startling lack of ego. She didn’t know what to do with it. The anger, which had been a solid, dependable thing all night, began to soften at the edges, morphing into something more confusing.
“You weren’t wrong,” she heard herself say. She shocked herself by saying it. “About the third-act pacing. It’s… giving me trouble.”
His eyebrows lifted. He hadn’t expected that. A beat passed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
A grin spread across his face, different from the on-camera one. This was slower, more real. It lit up his whole expression. “Well. Maybe we can talk about it. Before the panel. Warp stuff. Off the record.”
From behind him, Desmond stage-whispered, “Careful, Mark. She’s gonna put you in a manga as a pompous villain who gets disintegrated.”
“I’d consider it an honor,” Mark said, his eyes still locked on Ari’s. He was offering a truce. More than that, he was offering a conversation.
The noise of the convention rushed back in—a cosplayer’s shriek, a blaring trailer, the rustle of a hundred bags. The looming dread of the shared panel shifted, just a fraction. It wasn’t a ceasefire. It was a reconnaissance mission. And she was inexplicably, terribly curious.
She finally uncrossed her arms, letting her hands rest on the table beside the print of Kairo. “Okay,” she said.