“Cub, now that we both find ourselves trapped in the hinterlands, I find I have a question for you,” Scar asks. He’s sharpening arrow tips against a grindstone. Technically, this does nothing useful (except for the fact that every time he does it, Cub gets twitchier and twitchier and gets closer and closer to another fletching table rant). It’s not about effectiveness, though; it’s about the fact that Scar is pretty sure Joe is somewhere out in the bush and he wants to threaten the man obliquely.

“Shoot,” Cub says. “Actually, wait, do not shoot.”

“Aww,” Scar says.

“I’m not giving you permission to kill me,” Cub says. “You can go kill Joe a few more times.”

“Yeah, but that’s… well, not boring, it’s actually really fun, but still!”

“Tough luck then, man,” Cub says.

Scar huffs. “Look, it’s just… I liked shooting people a whole bunch, Cub. Chasing them down, everyone being scared of me, I could do whatever I wanted! It was like, super fun, right,” Scar starts.

“You know, this shows the inherent problem with the state creating an enforcement class!” Joe shouts somewhere from the trees, giving away his position. “There’s a tendency for that class to be just kind of terrible! Scar, that’s terrible!”

“Yeah, but like, murder isn’t real,” Scar says.

“It’s true, murder isn’t real,” Cub says.

“I feel like I should have a rebuke for that but I don’t!” Joe says, and then there’s a rustling noise like he’s changing hiding places now to continue spying on them. Scar shakes his head fondly. What a tricky little puppet. It’s too bad they’re both in exile now; the inherent threat of exile is part of what made hunting people down fun!

“An-y-way,” Scar says. “Anyway! It’s just that now that I’m here, I’m kind of wondering, like, what was the goal? I mean, I would have hunted people down to kill them regardless of goal, right. But if everyone is in exile, they can’t really… give their permits back? Or get back into compliance with their permits? Since they’re, uh, in exile, and don’t have access to them?”

“Yeah,” Cub says, nodding.

“So, uh, is the goal just to exile everyone?”

Cub shrugs. “Gonna be honest Scar, did not think that far ahead. Did not think that far ahead.”

“Oh, okay. Fair enough! I guess we’re all just stuck here now, so that’s neat.” Scar says cheerfully, loading his arrows back into his inventory.

“That’s not neat! I just wanted to play Permitmaster! I was willing to put up with your authoritarian incompetence and cruelty, but only if I got to play Permitmaster! And then I got murdered about it!” Joe shouts from a secondary hiding place.

“That sounds rough, buddy,” Cub says.

“It’s your fault!” Joe says.

“Oooh, you want to know what else can be our fault?” Scar says, ignoring the problem altogether.

“Noooooo,” Joe says, voice pitching several octaves higher, and then Scar lunges in the direction of his voice. “Noooo! I haven’t even been doing anything again! I’m like, already punished! Scar!”

Scar laughs. “Yeah, but we just talked about how this doesn’t matter and isn’t actually about punishment! So I want to kill you now!”

“I still don’t understand how anyone thought you were ever the good guy,” Joe wails.

“Yeah, that’s on them,” Cub says idly, and then Scar lunges, bow in hand, to chase the panicking puppet across exile. If this had all been pointless to begin with, that’s perfect; it means he has the perfect excuse to keep on doing the part that’s fun! It’s not like he ever cared about the permits in the first place, and he’d just been given permission.

“You know, why did we do exile?” mumbles Cub behind him as he leaves. That, to Scar, sounds like a someone else problem now, so he leaves that behind.