The Armband Conscription

"Pashtura, it would appear you are in need of a period of repentance."

"Eugyaaat…"

"My apologies, Savior. I shall remove Pashtura at once."

"Mm."

Despite being lower-leveled than her, and despite technically outranking her as a senior on the base, our very own Pashtura the Hentai found herself seized by the scruff of the neck and dragged off by Partia — her senior by lore, if nothing else.

Watching her get hauled away like that, I dropped heavily into my personal command seat. And as if it had been waiting for exactly that moment, a fresh message from the operators bloomed right in front of my eyes.

There was plenty more after that, too.

Staring at the message as it unspooled like an insurance policy's fine print, I couldn't quite hide the bitter taste of finally being press-ganged into wearing the armband.

Yeah… this is less fun than I expected.

Still. Privileges received.

Back in my previous life — no, before I got dragged here — I'd always wondered why the people who hung around galleries would throw absolute fits trying to get themselves an armband. And while the operators had never given a straight answer about things like update delays, every time the subject of gallery management came up they'd reply in that corpse-flat tone of theirs. Factor in what users had already guessed — that the whole operation looked to be run by maybe ten or twenty people at most — and it was pretty clear that the overload from community management was a major share of the update delays and every other problem. Handing admin rights to users was their transparent attempt to bleed off that overload however they could.

So, partly to try the admin tools for myself and partly just to see what there was to do, I opened the gallery.

And the moment I did, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sight that greeted me was…

Oh, for the love of—

Maybe it was because a whole wave of so-called "Padaks" — the armband-wearing mods — had just been mass-conscripted. Or maybe it was pure retaliation. Either way, our self-proclaimed anarchists, those freedom-worshipping true believers, had set the entire gallery on fire.

And right in the middle of that inferno, one particularly unhinged detail stood out…

A post had gone up arguing that the reason the gallery was currently burning was the Loki Clan — that famous congregation of trolls — and the pink-haired Betelgeuse who led them.

Is that actually true?

I didn't spend much time in the community myself, and my prior encounters with Betelgeuse hadn't exactly been pleasant, so the claim had my ears pricking and my eyes drifting that way almost on their own. My gaze found the "Admin Menu" sitting off to one side of my field of view, and I clicked it.

The thought crossed my mind that if I just blocked Betelgeuse — fellow armband and all — maybe the whole mess would end right there.

That thought lasted about three seconds.

Almost immediately, a declaration went up under the name of none other than the Loki Clan's vice leader, stating for the record that this particular mess was not their fault — and at the same time, the real factions torching the gallery found themselves on the receiving end of a full-court press of public opinion inside the community.