Kiana was hunched over her desk, fiddling with something, while Mei sat quietly beside her, watching.
At the sound of footsteps, both looked up at the same time.
Kiana spotted Arthur first, then immediately caught sight of Bronya walking in right behind him. Her gaze swept back and forth between them.
"Captain! You're late!"
Kiana's voice jumped up a notch.
But her eyes stayed locked on Bronya, the meaning unmistakable.
Why did you come in with the Captain?
Mei's gaze drifted over as well, soft and unhurried, her violet eyes lingering on Arthur's face for a moment before shifting to Bronya.
A quiet, probing curiosity crept into her expression, along with something else, barely perceptible. A hint of wariness.
She said nothing. But the slight press of her lips and the subtle straightening of her posture sent the same signal as Kiana's stare: Bronya, whatever happened to our united front?
You actually slipped off on your own?
Bronya appeared completely oblivious to this silent barrage.
She walked to her corner with her usual composure, set down her helmet and her breakfast, and powered on her workstation.
Every movement was smooth and unhurried. She didn't spare so much as a sideways glance toward Kiana.
Arthur felt the back of his neck prickle under Kiana's scrutiny and quickly explained, "Ahem, I'm not late. The timing's fine. I ran into Bronya on the way and caught a ride." He held up the convenience store bag. "Picked up breakfast while I was at it."
"A ride?" Kiana pursed her lips, clearly less than satisfied with the explanation. She shot one more look at Bronya's back before turning her attention back to Arthur, her tone carrying a restless, barely concealed anxiety.
"Captain, do you want to take another look? Are there parts of the comic that still need adjusting? We keep feeling like... maybe a bit more tweaking would help?"
Mei gave a small nod and set aside the annotated script in her hands. "Captain, Kiana's right.
We've given it everything we have, but this is the first time we've tried to tell a story in this format. The art style, the panel composition, the pacing... should we polish it a little more? Maybe get some professional eyes on it?"
Their worry was not unfounded.
The studio had shipped projects before. A few small-scale games had actually made it to release.
Kiana and Mei had both been core contributors. When they played through the final products themselves, they could pick out flaws, but the overall feeling was "not bad" or "pretty fun."
Then reality hit them like a sledgehammer.
Each game launched and was quickly buried under an avalanche of negative reviews and coordinated low ratings.
They had looked into it afterward, through channels that were not exactly conventional, and found traces of competitors or certain financial interests behind it all.
A straightforward setup: hire an army of online trolls at rock-bottom cost, manufacture a narrative, and squeeze what little room the studio had left to breathe.
It was not as if they had not tried to fight back.
Kiana had even considered calling on the Kaslana family's resources to make the problem disappear.
Mei had attempted to apply pressure through Raiden's corporate connections. But either Arthur stubbornly refused their help, or they moved half a step too slow, or the opposition's tactics were too slippery, too shameless to pin down.
Every time, they felt like they had seen the crisis coming. They reached out to stop it. And every time, they still ended up watching helplessly as another project drowned in a flood of hostility and a trickle of genuine player feedback, dying fast, with nothing to show for the time and money poured into it.
Failure. More than once.
That feeling of pouring everything into something and having it dissolve into nothing, of being effortlessly crushed, had burned itself deep into them.
So when Arthur proposed the comic-first strategy, something that felt more indirect, more roundabout, they supported it. But underneath that support, the wire strung tight inside them, the one labeled failure PTSD, was wound tighter than ever.
They were afraid.
Afraid that this time, even with a different format, even with a story that might be stronger, the moment it went public it would play out the same way. Swallowed whole by hostility from some unknown corner, without so much as a ripple.
For a team already worn down to the edge, that could be the blow that finished them.
So instinctively, they wanted to stall a little longer, to polish just a bit more, as if that could tip the scales toward success, or at least push back the familiar shape of failure that might be coming.
Arthur heard everything they were not quite saying. He looked at the tight furrow between Kiana's brows and the carefully buried worry in Mei's eyes, and felt something loosen in his chest. But at the same time, his resolve only grew firmer.
No more waiting.
Hesitation was sometimes deadlier than any flaw in the content itself.
"Kiana, Mei, what you've drawn is already very good." Arthur walked to their table and looked carefully at the completed pages of the first issue.
The artwork had real tension. The characters' emotions landed. The panel flow was clean. "I believe this is the best opening chapter we can put out right now."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Dan Heng, who had already looked up, and Stelle and March 7th, who were pretending to focus on their own work while very obviously listening. And over Bronya in her corner, expression blank, but clearly tuned in to every word.
"Today is the day Under the Stellar Sky is reborn. We have a new direction and a new story." Arthur raised his voice, letting a conviction that left no room for argument settle into it.
"So we're not adjusting anything."
"What?" Kiana and Mei said at the same time.
"We go with this version." Arthur's tone was final. "Stelle, March, the platform you picked yesterday, the best one. Get the account ready and the materials organized. I want to see Chapter One of the Honkai Impact 3rd prologue go live before noon today."
"That soon?" Stelle looked surprised.
"No last-minute polish on the title or the story description?" March 7th hesitated.
"No." Arthur shook his head. "The content itself is compelling enough. What we need to do is get it out there as fast as possible. See whether this stone we're throwing makes any waves on the surface of this world."
He turned to Kiana and Mei, his gaze steady.
"I know what you're afraid of. The failures before weren't because our content was genuinely bad. It was because we were too small, too easy to bury. But this time is different." He pointed to the pages on screen.
"This time we're telling a story about girls fighting back against despair and protecting hope. That story carries resistance in its bones. If we're too scared of failing again to even take the swing, how are we supposed to make readers believe the characters in that story can fight with courage?"
"And," he added, his voice easing slightly, "we've taken a lighter approach this time. Comics cost far less than games, and the barrier to sharing them is much lower. Even if the response starts slow, even if we run into hostility, we can adapt faster and lose less. But we can't refuse to try at all."
Kiana opened her mouth to push back, then found she couldn't quite argue with what he said. She glanced at Mei, who had fallen quiet, turning it over in her mind.
"But what if it ends up just like before..." Kiana muttered, her voice losing some of its edge.
"Then we go again." Arthur said it simply. "But at least this time, we're going in straight, with our own story and our own art, landing the hit with our heads up. If we lose, we lose knowing exactly why."
The room went quiet for a few seconds.
Dan Heng adjusted his glasses. "I agree. Fast validation, iterative improvement. Given our current resources, it's the optimal approach. The web display framework I've been updating in parallel can support an embedded comic reader."
Bronya added, without inflection, "Visual standards have been synced across all output materials. The publishing workflow can be standardized."
Stelle and March 7th looked at each other and gave a firm nod together. "Understood, Captain! We're ready to move! The platform account is already registered. We just need to upload!"
Kiana looked at the certainty in Arthur's eyes, then back at the screen, at the pages she and Mei had ground through for an entire day.
That stubborn, competitive streak of hers surged right back up. She set her jaw. "Fine! If we're posting, we're posting! Anything I drew had better get readers. And if it doesn't, the platform's the problem!"
Mei let out a slow, quiet breath and smiled, soft and genuine. "All right. Then let's publish. We're counting on you, Captain."
"Let's go!"
Arthur gave a firm nod.
"Stelle, March, move now! Dan Heng, make sure the web embed is running clean! Bronya, check every piece of material against the visual standards! Kiana, Mei, be ready, we may need you for a short author Q&A to post underneath the release and drive some early engagement! I'll handle writing up a simple operations plan for what comes next!"
The directives landed clearly, and everyone was in motion before the words had finished settling.