The storm hadn't done much damage, all things considered. A few tents sagged, one supply crate had gone for an unplanned swim, and the alliance banner — the big one, the one that hung above the courtyard gate for every ceremony, every KvK send-off, every visiting dignitary who needed to know at a glance whose territory they'd wandered into — had torn loose from one corner and now hung at a slow, mournful diagonal, flapping like it had given up on the concept of dignity entirely.
Ryze saw it first. Ryze saw it, in fact, from roughly forty yards away, mid-stride, mid-conversation with someone about something that no longer mattered, because his entire body had stopped moving the second his eyes registered the angle of that banner.
"It's crooked," he said, in the voice of a man reporting a structure fire.
"It's a little crooked," Miranda offered, not looking up.
"It's eleven degrees off true," Ryze said. He had produced his compass — the same one from his messenger bag, the one gifted by an old friend, the one that channeled his spirit energy on ordinary days and today was simply being used as a protractor — and was holding it up against the banner's tilt with the grim focus of a man defusing something. "The KvK delegation arrives in six hours. Six hours, and RIP's banner looks like it's trying to leave."
88werdna was already walking over before anyone asked him to, sledgehammer resting on one shoulder, tool belt jingling. This was, as far as 88werdna was concerned, simply Tuesday. "Torn grommet, cracked pole," he said, giving it one look. "Stay calm. We fix it." He set the sledgehammer down, which for 88werdna was the equivalent of rolling up his sleeves.
"We don't just fix it," Ryze said. "We fix it symmetrically. The emblem needs to sit dead center. The fold lines need to match on both sides. If one tassel hangs lower than the other I will feel it in my soul, 88werdna."
"Understood," said 88werdna, who had built entire watchtowers under worse instructions and considered this a light Tuesday by comparison.
This was the exact moment Bob arrived, take note.
Bob had not been asked to help. Bob had, however, heard the word "banner" from a considerable distance and interpreted it as a personal summons. He arrived carrying an armful of what could generously be called "additional decorative elements" — a second, smaller banner of unclear provenance, several loose gold tassels, and one large sequined patch shaped, unmistakably, like Bob's own face.
"BOB IS HERE TO ASSIST WITH SYMMETRY," Bob announced, and before anyone could stop him, had already stapled the sequined self-portrait to the banner's lower-left corner. Slightly off-center. Noticeably so.
Ryze made a sound that no one present had heard a person make before.
"That's — Bob, that's not — the proportions are wrong, the weight distribution is wrong, now the whole thing pulls to the left, do you understand what you've done—"
"I HAVE ADDED CHARACTER," Bob said, already reaching for the second banner.
What followed was, by 88werdna's later private accounting, the longest ninety minutes of banner repair in RIP's recorded history. Every time 88werdna re-hung a grommet, Bob added an accessory. Every time Bob added an accessory, Ryze produced the compass and announced a new, worsening angle of deviation. At one point Bob affixed the extra tassels in a pattern he described as "asymmetrical on purpose, for flow," which sent Ryze into a full sit-down on the courtyard steps, head in his hands, quietly reciting compass degrees to himself like a mantra.
88werdna, for his part, simply kept working. He removed Bob's face patch without comment. He re-centered the emblem three separate times. He measured, hammered, re-measured, and did not once raise his voice, because raising his voice had never once fixed a banner faster.
With the delegation forty minutes out and the banner almost right — almost, but not quite, one fold line a half-inch shy of its twin, a tassel just slightly heavier on the right than the left — Ryze stood in front of it with his compass in hand, visibly vibrating with the effort of not fixing the last half-inch himself.
"It's not perfect," he said.
"No," 88werdna agreed, setting the sledgehammer down for good this time. "It's up, it's holding, and it'll survive the wind." He looked at Ryze, not unkindly. "Build it once. Build it right. But sometimes right just means it's standing when they get here."
Ryze looked at the banner. Looked at his compass. Looked, finally, at Bob, who was still hopefully holding the sequined face patch in case it was needed again.
"A single spark can light the way for many," Ryze said, mostly to himself, taking a slow breath. "It doesn't have to be a perfectly symmetrical spark."
"THAT'S THE SPIRIT," Bob said, and put the face patch away — in his pocket, not the trash, for later.
The delegation arrived on schedule, looked up at the banner, and said nothing about a half-inch discrepancy that only one man on the premises could see. Ryze stood beneath it anyway, arms crossed, watching it hold steady in the wind, and allowed himself, for the first time all day, to simply look at it instead of measuring it.
"Stronger together," 88werdna said, clapping him once on the shoulder, and went to go find out where Bob had put the sledgehammer.