In the middle of a Bolivar torn apart by three warring governments, there's one city that has never known war. Its name is Dusollese β an artificial sea, casinos, liquor, and endless entertainment, all of it Mayor Candela Sanchez's private kingdom.
Every year the city sends Lungmen an invitation, and every year neither the Ratking nor Wei Yenwu bothers to go. This time, though, Wei Yenwu's wife Humizuki secretly pulls some strings, pushing the Ratking's daughter Lin Weisha and Ch'en β currently stationed at Rhodes Island β off to Dusollese separately.
Neither of them has any idea the other is coming. The moment they run into each other at the mayor's residence, they blurt out the exact same line, in perfect unison: 'What are you doing here?!'
1. Came to Sightsee, Left as Tournament Champions
Candela is all warmth from the first meeting. She hands them a credit card with no limit, tells them not to feel awkward standing in for the Lungmen governor, and casually mentions the recent uptick in weapon smuggling β feel free to poke around and investigate if they get bored, she says.
Trouble starts the moment Ernesto takes over as their guide. Lin Weisha, hunting for a low-risk casino to look into, cleans out a card-cheating dealer and beats back the thugs sent after her, and somehow ends up in the middle of the day's qualifier finale, 'Total Smash Splash.' Ch'en, arriving late after getting the call, gets swept up too β and before either of them realizes it, they're both qualified for the finals.
They only really come to at the qualifier's award ceremony. Judge Pancho hands them a solid gold trophy, and the team name they're forced to slap together on the spot β 'Dragon Rat Brawl,' Ch'en's improvised pun on a dragon-woman and a rat's daughter fighting it out β draws a look from Lin Weisha that says everything.
The night before the finals, every kind of team takes the stage at the introduction ceremony β the lovey-dovey couple 'Honey Holiday,' big-eater Mizuki's team 'Pac-Man,' the local team 'Grey Feather.' When the MC solemnly announces 'Dragon Rat Brawl,' Ch'en and Lin Weisha can only sigh in unison.
What are you doing here?!
β Ch'en & Lin Weisha
2. Twenty Gold Bars, Zero Friendship
Right up until game day, Ch'en can't warm up to this city β nothing here seems to exist but casinos, bars, and restaurants. Then the TV announces a special guest: the masked pop idol D.D.D. will serve as the tournament's special MC.
Round one of the finals is a scavenger hunt for twenty gold bars hidden across an empty residential district. After a quick discussion, Ch'en and Lin Weisha decide to split up β the one point they agree on perfectly is that neither wants to work with the other.
Ch'en, moving alone, saves a cornered competitor named Mizuki and ends up surrounded by more than a dozen hostile rivals in the middle of an alley. Just as they close in from rooftops and walls on every side, Lin Weisha arrives late, drops silently from a rooftop, and clears out the rest.
What Lin Weisha never tells Ch'en is what she actually found that day: she caught Raphaela of Team Grey Feather planting a mass of explosives throughout the residential district. Ch'en, none the wiser, only watches the broadcast confirm that favorites 'Dragon Rat Brawl' have advanced to round two in first place.
3. Two Lungmen Ladies Dissect a City on the Sly
While Ch'en and Lin Weisha are buried in the tournament, Swire and Hoshiguma, arriving late to Dusollese, are conducting an investigation of their own. Swire may have come here to sneak in a vacation, but she can't help being curious about what's really going on beneath the surface of this city.
If every city has a heart, Swire concludes, Lungmen's beats healthily on fresh blood, while Dusollese's beats even harder on tainted blood. There's no way entertainment and gambling alone could keep a city like this running.
This place feels even more alive than Lungmen β and that's despite sitting inside a Bolivar torn apart by chaos.
β Swire
What catches her eye most is the factory district on the city's outskirts. These factories, which supply liquor, coffee, and sugar to all of Bolivar, reveal that Dusollese isn't running on entertainment alone.
After surveying the suburban factories, the endless flow of liquor, coffee, and sugar, and the heavily armed guards, the two women reach a conclusion: whoever built this city must be a ruler both powerful and more than a little obsessive.
4. The Big Sister Who Offered a Drink β It Was Actually an Interrogation
Lin Weisha immediately pulls Ch'en aside and brings up the bombs. Their prime suspect is Ernesto, their own guide β but what to do about it becomes the real problem. Ch'en wants to tell Mayor Candela; Lin Weisha flatly says there's no point.
Lin Weisha cuts things off, saying she only came here to save Wei Yenwu face and couldn't care less what happens to this city β and adds, pointedly, that Ch'en's sense of justice worries her more than anything else. For a moment Ch'en's fist stops just short of Lin Weisha's face, and Lin Weisha grabs it mid-air.
It nearly turns into fists instead of teacups, but in the end both of them pull back. True to their long rivalry, there's no reconciliation, no resolution β they simply go their separate ways.
One day I'll bring you to justice. / I'd rather hear that than 'righteousness,' honestly. If that day ever comes, I'll be waiting with a clean neck.
β Ch'en / Lin Weisha
5. One Bicycle, Two Riders, and a Podium Made of Rivals' Heads
Round two is a triathlon β marathon, cycling, swimming. This time the other teams change tactics, herding the two of them toward a 'shortcut' instead of fighting them directly. That alley leads straight to Ernesto's weapons shop, and the moment the two dodge inside, the whole shop explodes.
Even this chaos is just entertainment to Candela. Watching it unfold on the broadcast, she laughs it off β if there's no way to stop those two, then this makes for pretty good television too.
Ernesto said he'd stay behind to buy them time, but it's his own shop that ends up in ashes. Walking out of the wreckage, the two of them are left with exactly one bicycle. Lin Weisha says it in two words.
Get on. / Seriously?
β Lin Weisha / Ch'en
Two people fighting off attackers on one bicycle is a ridiculous sight, but it works. Reaching the beach, Lin Weisha turns sand to glass to build herself a platform, steps neatly across the heads of the competitors ahead of her, and crosses the finish line in first.
6. That Guy Was Bait From the Start
Ch'en never stops wondering why the weapons shop happened to explode right under their feet. Meeting Ernesto again, she calmly lays it out: trapping her, making himself look like the mastermind β it was all a move to hide the real one.
Ernesto doesn't deny it. In fact, he admits it outright β his own father Pancho, the Grand Prix's veteran judge, was once part of the Bolivarian independence movement, and has spent years quietly preparing to seize all of Dusollese.
He adds, bitterly, that his father chases only the phantom of a nation, with no idea what Bolivar should actually become β while Candela, whatever else she is, found one path and built a reason to exist within it. He knows it's twisted logic, he tells Ch'en, but he can't stop thinking it anyway.
He asks Ch'en not to get involved, promising the two of them won't be harmed. Ch'en refuses.
I've been falling into your traps quite nicely so far, haven't I, Ernesto?
β Ch'en
7. The Grand Prix Finale Was a Coup All Along
The night before round three, Pancho hijacks the city's broadcast network. He declares war β invoking the three thousand comrades lost in a failed war of independence that changed nothing, and the paradise called Dusollese built right on top of them.
If no one else will save this country, I will.
β Pancho
Explosions rock the city, and aboard the cruise ship Pancho's men take dignitaries from every nation hostage. But Mayor Candela, instead of fleeing, sits calmly in her VIP seat and orders the broadcast to keep rolling β this, she insists, is the Grand Prix's 'real climax.'
Facing a rattled public, Candela calmly opens a citywide broadcast of her own. She thanks Pancho, of all people, for making the Grand Prix so much more thrilling β and promises a fitting reward to anyone who puts a stop to the troublemakers.
As unidentified attackers run wild on the beach too, Sideroca and Hoshiguma, who happened to be there on vacation, step up without hesitation. Even Hoshiguma, who'd insisted a tourist had no business getting involved, ends up leading the charge against the attackers.
If anything really happens to those two, every VIP on that ship gets buried right alongside poor Pancho.
β Candela
Trapped aboard the ship, Ch'en and Lin Weisha split the job over comms: Lin Weisha extracts the hostages while Ch'en keeps Pancho's attention locked on herself.
8. Hostages Rescued, Ship Detonated
The moment the hostages are clear, Lin Weisha's comms go silent. Meanwhile, up on deck, Ch'en finds herself face to face with Pancho. He raises the ship's anchor, vowing to wipe out everyone who cares for nothing but money and pleasure.
Ch'en can't quite bring herself to argue back β she doesn't really understand Bolivar, or its war, well enough to claim she has a better answer.
But that doesn't mean she's backing down here. Quietly, she raises the only thing she brought instead of a sword β a water gun.
If I walked away from something like this, I wouldn't be Ch'en Huizhe.
β Ch'en
Just as Pancho brings the anchor down, Lin Weisha's voice cuts back through the dead comms line. 'Jump.' Without a moment's hesitation, Ch'en throws herself off the deck.
The finishing blow is Lin Weisha's. She scoops Ch'en up in a small boat and, as they pull away, detonates the explosives she'd already planted, blowing the cruise ship apart.
Afterward, Dusollese
Pancho surrenders without a fight, but Candela doesn't punish him. She simply sits him down for coffee and quietly reminds him that in this city, with no room for words like justice or independence, people are still better protected than in one built on them.
Pancho seethes β years of careful planning, undone by two outsiders who happened to get invited here by chance.
Candela brushes it off, unbothered. He was never up against her to begin with, she says, so it isn't really a loss.
The real threat is people no longer having desires β no longer chasing pleasure at all.
β Candela
Ernesto and Raphaela are exiled from the city. Before leaving, Ernesto opens up to Ch'en: even knowing exactly how this city was built, he can't help feeling, when he looks at the gleaming towers and the blue sea, that somehow it's still right.
If you two hadn't shown up, I'd have kept working under Mayor Candela without a second thought.
β Ernesto
Even so, he decides to leave β because of one offhand line Ch'en dropped, that other countries might have other ways of doing things. Lin Weisha leaves him with a parting line of her own.
'A bit of a waste to leave him as he is.'
Meanwhile D.D.D., who'd worked so hard as special MC, insists the fear and thrill of that night are still fresh, and vows to write a song about it β never knowing the actual heroes of that night have no idea such a song is even coming.
Hoshiguma and Swire finally show up to reunite with the other two, and the four of them take a single photo together. That photo eventually passes through Humizuki's hands and ends up sitting beside a coffee cup on Wei Yenwu's desk.
Will Ch'en come back? / She will.
β Humizuki / Wei Yenwu
A forced vacation that started with a single invitation ends with two old rivals quietly saving an entire city. Neither of them will ever call it making peace. Next time they run into each other, they'll probably just yell 'What are you doing here?!' all over again.