The Daily Grind - Chapter 365 (Patreon)

"That's one of the remarkable things about life.  It's never so bad that it can't get worse." -Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes-

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One of the things that was important to remember about being a delver of any type, was that you couldn’t just keep doing it forever.  Not without real, actual, honest breaks.

It wasn’t because of any weird magical thing, it was just that delving hurt.

This wasn’t metaphorical either.  Many people in the Order were progressing toward superhero levels of durability, but no one was actually there yet, and as a result, delves often dished out injuries.  Injuries that took time to heal.

Now, specifically because the Order of Endless Rooms was founded by people who knew exactly how easy it was to have a brush with death in a dungeon, their delver strategy was incredibly restrained.  You worked in a team, and if you didn’t get along with your team, you got a new team.  You guessed at how many more things you could handle in a night, and you stopped before you got to that number.  You wore armor, and bracers, and charms, and no one was allowed to do the classic RPG maneuver of saving potions for the final boss.  Delvers may not have the same unrestrained access to the replicator ritual that paladins did, but they did all get sets of purples for broken bones, blood restoration, and skin flexibility; though it was admittedly an issue sometimes finding ones for ratroaches that were acceptably similar.

And yet, injuries still happened.  Nothing lethal.  Not yet.  Hopefully not ever, but even James wasn’t stupid enough to believe that.  There was an omnipresent dread that never really went away, that some day, a delver team was just going to… not come back.  But so far, everyone had made it home, and usually in one piece.

No lost limbs, no brain damage, no permanent damage.  Only twice had a team needed to teleport out of a dungeon to get someone to a trauma team, and both times, the delver had pulled through and bounced back.  But that didn’t mean no one got hurt.  Everyone got hurt eventually.

Bruises, abrasions, lacerations.  Sprained ankles and dislocated shoulders.  Stapler punctures and assignment curses.  Frostbite and pseudoacid burns.  If someone was lucky, they got hurt in the Office or the Stacks, where things were generally clean and there was plenty of time to patch holes in a person between encounters.  If they were careless, they got hurt in the Climb, where tears in the layers of protection meant a wet cold digging into the flesh, or worse, in the Sewer, where infection is preferable to having the thin white worms that grew in clusters trying to eat a person from the inside out.

So there needed to be time between delves without action.  Even minor scrapes and bruises needed time to heal up, and purple orbs that prevented damage had their own inscrutable cooldowns to manage too.  That last one was extra hard, since a delver never really knew when they didn’t break a bone.

”My point,” James concluded as he helped Arrush clean the ratroach’s kitchen, “is that I would really like to go on another big delve.  I think that’s my point?  Anesh!  What was my point when I started this?”

Neither iteration of his boyfriend answered him with more than a blank look.  Both Anesh were currently curled up on the long scarred couch the pair of ratroaches had in their living room, with Keeka in between them.  The lithe little black and brown ratroach looking like he’d won some kind of cosmic lottery as both copies of his human gently showed him affection.

”I liked the point.”  Arrush said, his paws fumbling with a towel as he tried to mimic the deft motion he’d seen James use earlier, and didn’t really succeed.  “The point was… that you get hurt too much, right?”  He asked slowly, his repaired voice vibrating almost musically in a way that was either shy or teasing or both and James couldn’t tell which.

James looked up at his tall boyfriend, analyzing his angular face with as much skill as he could bring to bear in ratroach expressions.  “Nnnnno.”  James said, and got confirmation as Arrush’s glowing crescent of a smile broadened further, his muzzle splitting open in clear amusement.  “No, my point was that I want to be in a dungeon.”

”Oh.”  Arrush nodded, before arguing.  “But it’s cold outside.”

”Well we don’t have to go to a cold dungeon.”  James rolled his eyes as he passed Arrush a broom and traded him for the towel he was holding, starting to wipe an array of crumbs off their counters.  “Though I’m trying to think of if we have any warm dungeons.  The Venture is… kinda of clement?  I guess?”

”James I’m English and even I think you made that word up.”  Anesh called to him from the couch, where he and Keeka were currently being bathed in the cool sunlight streaming in bars through the porch window of the underground apartment.

Ignoring the peanut gallery, James ticked off dungeons while he and Arrush worked.  “Climb, obviously cold.”  He said, and got a rapid nod from Arrush.  “Horizon… could be a furnace, but it’s been night there lately?  So no.  Stacks…”

Arrush perked up, his barbed antenna flicking in the air as he twitched to attention.  “The Library is okay.”  He admitted.  “And… smells nice.”

”You smell nice.”  Keeka joined Anesh in the time-honored tradition of poking at their partners from outside the cleaning zone.  His voice more of a high pitched chitter, filled with a bright energy that told the story with every word of the distance he’d crossed between who he had been, and who he was now.  Which was, in short, someone who could tease his boyfriend without hesitation.

Arrush refocused on James.  “The Library and also me smell nice.”  He declared.

”Yeah you guys have better shampoo than I do.”  James admitted smoothly.  “Okay, what else.  Pylon, no.  Clutter is magical and great but not warm.  Wait do we not have any pleasantly tropical dungeons?”

”Maybe… the Office has a… a jungle?”  Arrush suggested.  “We could find a jungle.”

Flipping the towel over in his hands and smoothing it out in a totally unnecessary motion for a piece of cloth that was going into the laundry in thirty seconds, James nodded along.  “It does love its Indiana Jones style traps, and its ominous paper vines kind of vibe.  I bet it has a jungle.  But that… sounds… uh…”

”Bad?”  Arrush asked, smothering his grin.

”Well not bad, just… humid?  Damp?  Moist?”

”Please stop using words.”  An Anesh begged him.  James laughed and shook his head, looking around the mostly salvaged kitchen.

It had been… not horrible, but pretty bad.  There was something that had slipped through the cracks just a little bit, which was the fact that someone being capable of adult level decision making and maturity didn’t automatically mean they were… well… one hundred percent ready.  Arrush and Keeka were the oldest ratroaches living in the Order, but despite being pretty firmly in the adult camp, they hadn’t really had the benefit of growing up in a place where there were skills to casually pick up.

This, James was aware, happened all the time with human kids too.  He’d lived until his mid twenties not actually knowing how to clean a bathroom just because… well, someone else always did it, and no one ever told him how to do it in a way that made it simple and easy.  So he avoided it.  It was stupid, but even just knowing when to scrub down his shower had been a skill he hadn’t had the opportunity to acquire, because his own parents had assumed that their children would just magically manifest the ability to be perfect adults when they turned eighteen with no questions asked.

For the ratroaches, it was that same problem, but amplified.  A lot of them that had been brought out to Earth did live with humans.  Either as fosterlings or as peers, but either way, there was a continual source of learning to be casually picked up.  The ways of living a life, the methods of taking care of oneself, household skills that never really lost their use.  But for Arrush and Keeka, something that sounded simple, like ‘clean a kitchen’, became first an issue, and then a problem, and then a pit of anxiety.

When James noticed, he noticed two things at once.  One was that he was good at cleaning kitchens, and was happy to show Arrush and Keeka the specific methods that made the job easier.  That made it maintainable.  The mindset that could be applied to keep it from ever having piles of unwashed dishes and trash that needed to go out a week ago.  But the other thing he’d noticed, while he was showing Arrush the fastest way to load a dishwasher, was systemic.

Because these two were a pair of ratroaches that lived in their own place, but they weren’t the only ones.  There were others who had been rescued together, in dens or nests, who had wanted to stay close if only for familiarity.   And James suddenly realized they were going to run into similar problems.

He was talking to people from Recovery about it, in the problem solving channel that group used.  His replies were slow since he was doing it with his brain while he flirted with his boyfriends, but there was already a plan taking shape.  With outreach and education as the core, and a simple observation extrapolated to the fact that this was a problem that affected people of a lot of different species guiding them, it didn’t take long before the skeleton of a group that would be tackling the problem came together.

It amused James immensely to think that the first words from someone who would be sometimes helping out with those teaching visits would be from him, and would be himself talking to Arrush.  “Now,” James said with a smile, “speaking of damp things, and ignoring both Anesh, and dungeons for just a second,” he drew Arrush’s attention, “you actually do need to clean your sink.  I know, I know, it constantly has water in it, it should be clean automatically, it doesn’t work that way.  So…”

It was such a simple way to spend a morning.  Showing his boyfriend how to wipe down a sink.  It was also, he understood, kind of weird, because Arrush worked in the restaurant upstairs and was perfectly competent at doing this kind of thing on a commercial scale.  Which really did drive home that there was a sort of domestic mindset that was a skill, and could be practiced.

Arrush’s reward for that practice was a series of kisses on the more sensitive furred part of his neck.  “D-did you want to sneak into a dungeon?”  He practically squeaked out as he froze in place, motionless except for a small shiver as James gave him his own burst of affection.

”Oh, that sounds great!”  James said happily, pulling away to Arrush’s secret disappointment.  “And also actually a bad idea.  I mean, all those things about healing and cooldowns are true, after all.  Also I’m… ah, no, that’s not a fun thought, let’s skip that one.”  James turned away, looking for something else in the kitchen to fidget with instead of voicing an unpleasant thought.

From his position in the living room, Anesh’s voice caught James before anyone else did.  “Oi!  Alanna and I talked to you about this!”

James bit down on his lip in consternation.  Right, they had informed him that he wasn’t allowed to self-isolate when he was feeling broody.  Years into it and he was still getting used to being in a relationship with people who liked him and knew him so closely that they could do things like that.

”Alright, alright!”  He raised his hands in surrender.  “I’m worried something is gonna happen.”

”Something isn’t allowed to happen.”  The organic clicking in Arrush’s chest signaled his displeasure with that line of thought.  “Tomorrow is too important.”

Tomorrow was the Solstice.  The first actual thing that the Order was trying as a deliberate cultural event.  James was still so worried about it, but Sarah’s enthusiasm - and constant taunting about her ‘secret plans’ that he was pretty sure he’d already guessed most of anyway - along with the way that people both in the Lair and Townton seemed genuinely excited?  It made him want to give the disparate people, some of whom had never gotten a single holiday in their lives, others who had seen traditional human celebration days overlapped with crises and cataclysms, the best Order of Endless Rooms Solstice that he could.

The planning for that little celebration was also how James learned that there apparently were a minimum of four wiccans in the Order.  Apparently there was split between them for ‘doing our own thing but have fun’ and ‘the literal magic party sounds cool can I invite my coven’.  James felt like he appreciated them more than any other representatives of a religion he’d had call to interact with lately, partly because they didn’t try to kill him, but also mostly because it felt like they were generally just chill about the fact that events could share a date.  It was relaxing.

“Looking forward to it?”  James asked Arrush, a happy teasing note in his voice.

And he was a little surprised at how vigorously Arrush nodded.  “It… it’s special.”  Arrush said, twisting to look across the kitchen counter toward Keeka.  “It means we made it.”  He added, and Keeka gave a nod of his own into Anesh’s flank.  “We’re both changed now, nothing hurts anymore, we have… friends… we don’t have to fight anymore, I can speak.”  The looming ratroach ducked his angular head downward, giving a nervous chittering laugh.  “I talk so much now.”  He whispered, before continuing.  “So this means something special.  It means… it means it was worth it.”

”It also means,” Keeka called from the couch, “that we were right!  And you were right!  Being scared and trusting you worked and you did what you said and now there’s magic food and fancy music and stuff!”  He leaned forward excitedly, the blanket he and Anesh were under sloughing off to reveal Anesh scratching gently at the lines where Keeka’s fur and chitin met.  “It means everything can be okay.”  He said, his voice almost catching.  “It means everything.”

”And now we can show everyone else too.”  Arrush finished the unified thought as he circled the low counter that cut his Lair apartment in half, padding over on bare paws to look down at Keeka, setting a paw on his boyfriend’s chitinous cheek as he turned first to Anesh and then back to James.  “So it’s special.”  He concluded softly, his voice unbroken and perfect.

As Anesh leaned back to let Arrush and Keeka have some space to themselves, one of them looked over at his own partner.  “James,” Anesh stretched the word out, the soft emphasis of his accent coming through strong, “do you ever wonder if your habit of giving dramatic speeches is influencing everyone around you?”

”No but if it was that would be cool.”  James said, a pure smile on his face.

”It is.”  Arrush confirmed with a single bob of his head.  “You told me I wasn’t allowed to… to obsess over you, as a hero.  So I decided to do this instead.”

”…I am absolutely certain this is not what I had in mind.”

Arrush grinned back at James, the multiple small arms that emerged from odd angles of his body spreading out their paws in a generous shrug.  “But it’s happening!”  He told James gleefully.

”And I don’t want to worship anything.”  Keeka declared, before straightening his spine, bifurcated tail twisting behind him on the couch.  “Unless…” he said, curling himself around like a particularly flexible cat to peer at his closest Anesh.

Anesh, eyes widening, flicked his gaze to James.  “I feel like I’m about to be eaten by a panther.”  He said, blushing.  “Help?”

James just grinned back.  ”No can do, I need to get lunch, and then I’m helping with… uh… focus rank testing for a while.”  He stumbled over the lack of a dungeon name to apply to the new split orb effects.  “Anyone else want lunch that isn’t shaped like Anesh?”

”Oh!”  Keeka dropped his coy leer and sprung off the couch.  “Can we go get pizza?  I like the people at the pizza place!”

Part of James’s brain had a moment of wanting to say ‘we can just get pizza here’, but he crushed that down.  The entire point of the Order’s work to offer food security for anyone who was with them, or within range of the kitchens, was that it meant everyone could make a choice to eat at a restaurant and not feel like they were ruining their bank account to do it.  Also, he had an equally short moment of realizing he was about to say something on reflex that made him feel like he was replicating how his parents had always behaved, and that made him almost shudder.

”Sure, they’ve got weird stuff.  Arrush, Anesh, pizza?”

”Pizza.”  Arrush declared from where he was hugging Keeka close to himself from behind the shorter ratroach.

”Pizza unless they don’t have anything vegetarian.”  Anesh said.

James rolled his eyes.  “Anesh, the last time we were at the Midnight Pizza Zone, they had a cauliflower crust pizza with cauliflower puree sauce and both roasted and deep fried battered cauliflower as toppings.  They will have something vegetarian.”

”Ah, you’re right.  I remember having a slice of the Alchemical Delight.”  Anesh nodded.

Keeka made a confused chitter.  “Like with potions?”  He asked as both Anesh stood up, one trailing the other as the human made his way toward the apartment’s front door.  “No, you said it with the voice.  This is a pun isn’t it?”

It was hilarious to James that Keeka had developed a survival adaptation around them.  He might not know every historical reference or bit of wordplay, but he knew damn well when someone was making use of those things, and could practically sniff it out of a conversation whenever it came up.  It was more hilarious when James got to explain the concept of as above, so below, to the ratroach while Keeka got dressed, and the group left the basement in search of food.

For Arrush and Keeka, it was tomorrow that was the moment of crystallization.  The line to cross that proved their place in the changing world.  And that was amazing and powerful and James loved them both for it even more.  But for him, the special moments were the times when he got to explain what a tautology was, and see a ratroach roll all of his eyes at once as he got a joke for the first time.

It was the little things that kept James smiling, and moving forward.

_____

[+1 Focus Rank - Studying : Zoology - Amphibians - Asian]

“So.”  James said as he spun on one of the stools in the basement lab, alongside a few other people.  The fifteen minute timer had sounded, and it was time to compare results.  “I’m just gonna start with the obvious, the effects of this are dramatic.”

”No kidding!”  Momo said, tearing her eyes away from the colorful copy of an issue of Zoobooks she had somehow sourced for this.  “I feel… good?”

”Do you not normally feel good?”  Scent-Of-Rain asked her.  “I am concerned for you.”

Momo spun her stool to face away from the camraconda.  “I’m fine!”  She declared, unconvincingly.

”So, staying on track,” James felt weird being the one to say that, “I don’t feel any better or worse than normal, but I did notice that it was just a lot easier to keep myself mentally locked on task.  Less mental… stress?  Easier to keep reading, easier to sort of properly file away new information and move on without losing speed.  Does that sound about right?”

”Uh, yeah James, that’s what feels good.”  Momo said, voice coming back into focus as she finished her spinning.  “Trying to actually study stuff is always exhausting unless I have something to… you know, instantly do with it.  This is so obviously bullshit that I know it’s magic right away.”

Scent-Of-Rain hissed in a way that spiked sharply at the end, which seemed to just be a thing she did slightly differently than most camracondas.  “I have never had that active problem with research.”  She said, looking at Momo with a sympathetic lens.  “The effect of this is noticeable anyway.  The process feels soothing.  I could continue for hours.”

”Yeah, that’s where I’d put myself too.”  James nodded, and got a double thumbs up from Momo in agreement.  “It’s kind of great, honestly.  Especially for those of us with Sewer Lessons that we need to work on.”

”Which sort of brings us to our next question.”  Momo drew out some of the words, leaning back with her elbows propped on the clean white counter behind her, looking like the basement study lab was her kingdom and the stool her throne.  “Who wants to test frog planning?!”  She sounded almost comically delighted to fail at that particular juncture.

”I have many concerns as to how one plans a frog.”  Scent-Of-Rain said.  “Fortunately, this structured test was not designed by me.  However, I do have a new concern.”  She said with a hiss and a twist of her cable body.

James raised the eyebrow over his modified eye.  “Go on.”  He invited.

Scent-Of-Rain hissed sharply again.  “We know, abstractly, that a focus rank degrades the categories not focused on.”  She stated.  “Does this include meta-level interactions?  Are we, right now, worse at enacting our own test, because we began with a focus rank in studying?”

”…I… uh…” James paused, raising a finger to his lips.

”I simply wonder if we might have missed an important aspect of what the magic considers to be ‘enacting’.”

With a slow nod, James tried to think through that to its logical conclusion.  “If that’s the case, then… we’d have a much harder time actually… I guess ‘making use of’ these orbs in a sort of passive lifestyle way, huh?”  He said.  “Like, if scheduling frog research counts as planning, then it doesn’t matter if the research is easier if you falter to actually schedule it.  Much less whatever enacting counts as.  Though I guess it doesn’t count studying itself.”

”There is certainly a lack of overlap.”  Scent-Of-Rain said.  She’d been testing out more of these orbs than James had, and had found that the lines of what was what were not only ambiguous, but they didn’t cover everything.  

Instead, it seemed that the magic would prefer to be three separate circles in terms of area of influence, rather than be a single venn diagram.

Momo tried to kick her feet up onto the central island counter and failed, misjudging her own height, so it looked like she was just flailing around a bit.  “I mean, hey!”  She said with that same confident smile still on her face.  “We’re discussing whether or not we’ve lost the ability to focus on our testing, instead of doing the testing.  So that answers something.”

”Ah, but that literally could just be because it’s us.”  James reminded her with good humor.

”You mean me.”  Momo challenged.

James rolled his eyes at her.  “I absolutely do not, I mean us.  Well, the two of us.  Scent-Of-Rain is an actual adult.”

”Thank you, I appreciate the words of recognition.”  The camraconda bobbed her boxy head at him.

“I mean, you’re literally a foster parent.  That’s… I’m thirty-something and I don’t think I could be a parent.  You deserve to be called an adult more than my dumb ass.”  James told her.

Momo kicked her legs in the air in front of her with a more deliberate swinging motion.  “Hey, hang on!  El and me are kinda parents!  I mean, if you count assignments.  Barely.  But I could be responsible!”

”Okay, you can be a provisional adult.  That still leaves me out.”  James told her, and then blinked and cocked his head.  “Also… we just spent several minutes getting sidetracked from the next part of the test, where we do frog planning…”

”Oh that’s… insidious.”  Momo was not happy about how flawlessly the alteration from the orb - if that was what was happening - had reshaped her thoughts.

She’d spent a lot of her post-kidnapping life feeling like she wasn’t in control of her thoughts.  A lot of stuff helped with that; therapy gave her tools to cope, a hundred mostly accidentally cracked red orbs gave her masterful understanding of her own feelings, friends gave her people to express herself to, a girlfriend gave her… well, a different kind of expression.  But nothing changed the fact that Momo still remembered what it was like to have her mind used like play-doh.  And that memory made it a daily struggle to keep control, to keep her thoughts pointed where she wanted them and not where her trauma took her.

”Yeah fuck this.”  James said, echoing what Momo was thinking.

”I do not mind it.”  Scent-Of-Rain admitted.  “Though that is because I understand its limits and effect.  If this were an unseen force I would find it frustrating.”  She flicked the tip of her tail back and forth.  “For example, in this moment, I have an urge to discuss my feelings on the subject.  I know that I would have that feeling regardless, but something increases its priority, in a way that I can almost directly feel.”  The camraconda ducked her head, then looked back up.  “If I pushed, I could stop talking about this, and talk about frogs.  It would not be impossible.  But it feels more interesting than frog plans, even if I do not know what that means.”

Momo clicked her tongue, still swinging her feet, but with less tension now.  “Oh, so we’re just past the part where it’s magic, and on to the part where we’re being irresponsible?  Okay, I’m cool with that.”

”I still kind of want to make a frog plan.”  James said, with a shrug.  “But I do feel something making me want that less, I guess?  So… this is tricky.  Is this magic actually… like… magicking anything?  Or is it literally just shuffling around our internal priority charts?”

“Oh, like, if it’s just being a minor distraction on the downside, then is the upside actually making us smarter, or whatever?”  Momo inquired, mostly to the refined air of the room and not to anyone in particular.  “Hey, did we ever figure out if yellow orbs make people smarter?”

”Smart is not a statistic on your character sheet.”  Scent-Of-Rain said with the kind of kind hearted glint of her fangs she was used to using when she had to give this same explanation to children.  “A skill is a skill.  Its application is another facet.  Its deeper understanding another.  There are many kinds of smart.  No dungeon power yet raises your intelligence.”

”I am shocked the Sewer doesn’t have a Lesson reward that’s just ‘intelligence’.”  James admitted.

Momo curled herself forward, arms pinwheeling at her sides as she shoved off the counter. ”Yeah!  Hey!  What the fuck is up with that?  We’ve got brain-improving stats for Understanding, Studying, Memory… uh… fuckin’…”

”Arguably Empathy is a form of intelligence.”  James offered.  “And I would have said that Perspective was too except that I know that one actually just increases peripheral vision.  Judgment maybe?”  There were too many Lesson rewards for him to remember them all easily.  Someone should make a list or something.

”We are off topic again.”  Scent-Of-Rain informed them.

”Dammit!”  Momo exhaled the curse.  “Okay!  Frog plan!  Let’s go!”  She slid off her seat and slapped her palms into the center counter, the pens and paper there not even wiggling slightly at the impact.

James nodded.  “And let’s see if we can do it quickly.  I have to record a thing after this and then there’s terrible risky ideas to take care of today.”

”…What does that mean?”  Momo asked.  “Wait, is it the Wastes this time?  Because I’ve got a ton of ideas for using totems on demiplanes, and I haven’t had time to snap up a delve slot there and El’s busy with youth group stuff so I can’t drag her and Ami into my party.”

”Ami?”  James squinted, trying to remember if he’d met anyone by that name.  “Is that… the woman with the birthday magic?  I can’t remember.”

”No, it’s the Ochre’s name, because she lacks originality.”  Momo said, and then splayed her fingers defensively toward the camraconda that gave her a chastising hiss.  “I’m repeating what she said!  Don’t blame me!  She said, and I fail to properly quote, ‘Cam did it, so I can make use of the same tactic, I will use three letters with one letter offset’.”

”Good Camile impression.” James gave her a respectful nod.

Scent-Of-Rain hissed out a much more aggrieved sigh.  “Cam does not sound that way.”  She said.  “Though I suppose the other Camilles do.  Will the next one then be named Mil?”

”It would follow, yeah.”  James chuckled.  “I love all the naming schemes we have around here that last exactly a month before someone shatters them.”

Momo grinned widely.  “Like Thermoclese!  Or Moon-And-Stars!”

”I am not familiar with that camraconda.”  Scent-Of-Rain said with curiosity, shifting to arch her body and giving Momo a sideways look through her lens.  “Are they new?”

”They’re a chanter!”  Momo exclaimed happily.  “Which is exactly what James is talking about!  We come up with styles, and then someone goes ‘hey, that sounds great!’ and fucks up the convenient pattern that let me know if someone was a giant snake by reading their name!”

Scent-Of-Rain straightened up, irising her lens.  “If we are being fair, it should be noted that there are also camraconda named Misha, Myri, and Dance.”

”I know for a fact two of those have ‘full’ names.”  James pointed out.  “But also yes, good point.  Also, while I am having a great time hanging out with you two…”

Momo slammed her forehead down onto the counter.  ”Oh my fucking god we got sidetracked again.”

”Do you think that perhaps all three of us having the same focus impairment is creating a multiplicative effect?”  Scent-Of-Rain asked, aware that this was yet further not getting to the point of planning for frogs, but still an important question to tackle.

“I think that question is going to exacerbate the problem.”  James said flatly.  “Let’s just… make this happen, and we can figure out the rest later.”  He said, stepping past Momo to the corner of the counter, and motioning for Scent-Of-Rain to join them.

It was a noble attempt.  It almost worked.

It took another ten minutes of pleasant and honestly quite practical conversation before they got to the task.  When they did, it didn’t seem as if they were too impaired or less intelligent than they should have been.  Which supported evidence from other test groups that the focus effect was mostly targeted at their ability to actually focus.

Which was fascinating, because the perk from it had significant evidence supporting the idea that it was making them better.  Including the fact that the ranks, in every category, gave some Lesson progress.  So while the upside was an increase in performance, the downside was heavily tilted toward distraction or lack of interest.

That was… workable.  That was fine actually.  And since they could copy the orbs it was viable to just take them in sets of three anyway, though that obviously cost copy ritual space.

More viable was simply using them in a targeted fashion.  The way they worked was fuzzy but not impossible to figure out, and there were exploits waiting to be discovered.  Architecture was mostly learning and planning after all, unless you were the one putting the buildings together, in which case, your best asset was enacting.  Students that needed foundational knowledge in order to learn other things could almost always make use of studying for the basics.  Even something that was kind of holistic, like cooking, could have the downsides offset by cooperation; one person planning and the other doing.

It was certainly messier than a lot of other magic they had.  And it needed something like the copy ritual to make it more than just a mess with minimal upsides.  But James was pretty sure the Order was due for finding another way to duplicate orbs soon enough.  He had, he figured, cosmically earned it.

That wasn’t how anything worked at all, but it was a thought he shared when they were halfway through making a plan for adding a frog to the amphibian tank upstairs.

And this time, Scent-Of-Rain only took about fifteen seconds to get him back on track.

_____

“Hey, you got a minute?”  Bill and a guy James was pretty sure was named Rick ambushed James as he was preparing to leave the Lair.

Not that it was possible for the two men to know that.  James’ version of ‘leaving’ often looked like ‘loitering in the front lobby waiting for people to telepool with’.  And despite the fact that he was standing sandwiched between a pair of overloaded black duffel bags that made him look like he was planning a heist, it still wasn’t clear that James was going somewhere.  Looking like they were planning a heist was just sort of a thing that passively happened to people lingering in the Lair’s front room.

Knowing that the area was under Planner’s anxiety-removing influence, James was aware that the people he was sharing a telepad with would be arriving before a precise time, unless there was outside interference.  So he actually had a correct answer for Bill.

”I’ve got three.  What’s up?”

”Well, I wanna let you know the Lair is now self-powered.”  Bill said with more than a hint of pride.

James raised his eyebrows, leaning his calf against one of the loaded duffel bags at his side.  “No shit?  That’s cool!  Is this the Climb-based power solution in action?”

”Ayup.”  Bill gave a nod, making a show of picking at his fingernails.  “Late and over budget, but still in time to catch the rest of my kids’ winter break.  Gonna drive my wife up the wall for the next couple weeks.”

”Bill I’ve met your wife, that’s not… okay, sure.”  James shook his head at the big man’s satisfied smile, giving a grin back in turn.  “Alright.  So, we’re off the grid?”

A nervous burst of laughter escaped Bill. ”Oh hell no!  We’re on the grid because we don’t use all that juice, so we’re selling back to the main supplier.  Mark’s good, and since he’s good I’m good,” Bill tapped the back of his neck in what was becoming the semi-official Order hand sign for ‘I got a .mem from someone’, “but we’re commercial electricians, not infrastructure ones.  I don’t wanna blow up our basement.”

”I told him, we have spares.”  Rick interjected.  As he spoke, it clicked in James’ brain that he absolutely had met this man before; he’d hired him, a long time ago, and the man had been one of those people that didn’t know if he was going to stick around.

But here he was.  A year… years?… later.

”Please don’t blow up any of our basements.”  James said the words on mechanical reflex honed from dealing with Research on a regular basis.  “Every part of that is cool though.  Do we wanna do some kind of ribbon cutting thing, like we did for the apartments?”

Bill waved that off, and next to him, Rick gave an almost mischievous smirk at the slightly taller man next to him.  A kind of whimsical look that James just wasn’t used to seeing on humans over the age of forty.  “Nah, I’m allergic to the public.”  He said.  “But Rick isn’t, and he had a question for ya.”

The man in question smoothly slid into the conversation.  ”I want to start handing off the generator boxes.”  Rick said.  “They’re not free, but if we skip the actual expensive thermal bits and just use a mini-turbine, they’re cheap, and can be hand-maintained, and we can put them in places that need them.”

”Okay.”  James nodded before answering with information that felt like it came to him with casual ease.  “Is this not something that gets accomplished by leveraging economics to build much larger and more effective powerplants?  Especially because of the downside of that thing Mark just said about not having proper electrical flow causing I-know-it-isn’t-a-literal-explosion damage to hard to replace electronics?  Also we need a Climb delver for every one of those boxes.  Or a wand.  Either way, that’s a bottleneck or point of vulnerability.  Also you know the boxes don’t move, right?  They can’t once we start the Thermodynamic Tunnel, or it fucks the whole thing up.”

”Electrical infrastructure only benefits in places that already have it.”  Rick said with an annoyed curl of his mouth.  “I’m talking rural and undeveloped parts of the world.  Places where a six kilowatt generator could do a massive amount of good for medical facilities, refrigeration, schools, shit like that.  There’s no power grid to fuck up, half the time.”

”That… makes it sound like we’d be doing the wiring for the buildings then?”  James asked.  “I’m not saying no, I’m just trying to understand the scope here.”

”Probably.”  Rick said.  “Or get local contractors to do it.  Solving the feedback problem with the box generators works with good old manual switches.  Just pop the case and the heat diffuses.  People can just turn it off when it’s not in use.”

James nodded along as he mapped out the extent of this change.  Effectively free electricity was already a boon to anyone they could get it to.  Getting it specifically to places that needed to run stuff like medical equipment and only had a generator to do it…

Actually that kind of solved one problem; if they needed power, they already had at least some of the issue dealt with.  The more complicated bit would be deploying them to places that had no infrastructure at all.

”The lack of a safety shutoff feels like a bad idea.”  James said out loud, musing as two of the people he was waiting for showed up, lingering nearby.  “Put something into the blueprint that fixes that, that isn’t just ‘open the box up’, and then yeah. Go for it.  Draw your funding from the Special Projects pool for now, start small, maybe a thousand of the things.  You’ll need to find your own Climb caster volunteers though, and get a deployment plan drawn up too.”

”Not a problem, got that handled already.”  Rick thumped his chest.

James looked at Bill, and raised his eyebrows, before looking back to the other man.  “I… uh… yeah, okay.”  He said.

”Not how I thought being a wizard would take my career, but hell, if it’s happening, might as well put it to use for people, right?”  Rick asked with a shrug.

The look that Bill gave him mirrored what James was thinking.  A sympathetic shake of the head that communicated a simple idea between the two of them.

Rick doesn’t know how much Breath that is going to take, or how many of these he is going to be able to do in a day.

“Right.”  James agreed with that at least.  He saw the last of his teleport party showing up from the direction of the Lair’s elevator, so he cut the conversation there.  “Well, my ride’s here, I gotta take off.  Also, if this works out and you want to go for a larger deployment, make sure to start a general vote for it!  We’ve got that democracy thing for a reason!”

The reason was maybe a little different than for an actual government.  The Order kind of had a semi-official ideological check on what their operations were; there would never be a vote on redlining the umbral out of Townton, for example.  That just wasn’t acceptable, and if they ever got to a point where no one was stopping that before it ever made it to the table, then the Order had failed miserably in its core goal.  Instead, voting was used on stuff that had already passed the most basic vibe check, to determine where surplus effort went.  Surplus because, if something needed to get done, it got priority.  If there was a problem that had to be solved that the Order was already responsible for, that got priority, for example.

In a way it was the kind of thing that maybe someday someone would write a satirical dystopian novel about.  The Order wasn’t to the point that they had a Department Of Correct Ideology or anything, but James kind of wanted to start one just as a joke now.

But in a much more important way, their system of self-governance addressed one critical problem head on.  How do you deal with the fact that bigots get to vote?  The Order didn’t really have to deal with that problem, yet, but James was big fan of future proofing their evolving political systems.

And the simple answer they had was, hard exclude bigotry from the system.  Just do not put up with that shit.  At all.

It wasn’t perfect.  But James was determined to make it work for long enough to build up momentum.

As to the vote for this project…  ”I know the drill, I’ve done this before.”  Bill told him as the big man whacked James on the shoulder in a friendly thump that would have felled a small tree.  “Have fun camping, we’ll get out of your way.”

”Oh, I am not doing that.”  James laughed.

”…Do I even wanna know?”  Bill asked.

”I want to know.”  Rick said.  “Half the time when someone around here is acting suspicious we get a plague or a monster infestation or some crap.”  He said the word ‘crap’ with three syllables, enunciation popping off his lips as he narrowly eyed James.

James cleared his throat.  “I want to say you’re overreacting, but yeah, I’m off to do something stupidly dangerous.  It’ll be fine though.  Also you should know what I’m doing, we literally had one of those votes about it.”  He gave the stereotypical polite nod as the two guys headed off, awkwardly splitting apart to avoid Sarah who was rushing past.

”James!”  Sarah exclaimed.

”Sarah!”  James said with matched enthusiasm as several people in his teleport group snorted out laughs.  “I’m leaving, you have, like, twenty seconds!”

She skidded to a halt in front of him, her path smoothly dodging a camraconda that was heading for the allocation counter and the pair of people staffing it that were watching these antics unfold with the kind of relaxed expressions you got from working a job that was pretty calm most times, but sometimes gave you a great view of chaos in the Lair’s lobby.

Taking a deep breath, Sarah held a finger up to her lips in thought, and used half her seconds to put her thoughts together.

“This is the dumbest, craziest, most James idea you have ever had.”  She said rapidly, the people around James falling silent, before Sarah pulled out a candy bar and snapped it in half, tossing part of it to James.  “So when things go wrong, I’ll have the Attic book, and you can draw on everyone, alright?”

James smiled, remembering the relationstick connection with the vector of sharing food.  He pocketed his half of the candy next to his wallet, and gave his friend a thumbs up.  “I’ll be fine.”  He said.  “It’s not like I’m getting in a fight, I’m literally just cleaning someone’s apartment.”

”That’s the stupidest excuse I’ve ever heard!”  Sarah said as they ticked over the line where the party was supposed to have been scheduled to teleport out, risking Planner’s ire.  “Zhu!”

”Here!”  The navigator’s deep orange feathers flowed out of James, blooming into a steady glow across half his body.  More, as the navigator built a tail behind them.  “Sup?  Have things gone wrong already?”

”Keep him safe, okay?”  Sarah asked.

Zhu paused for a moment, and then, gave the human a salute with his taloned hand, his avian form landing on James’ own forehead, just over the modified eye that was an unintended symbolic link between the two of them.  “Obviously.”  He said, trying to make light of the situation.  “We can’t miss tomorrow’s thing.  I hear there’s gonna be some kind of race?  And if James gets us killed I can’t win that, so I’ve gotta make sure he doesn’t do that.”

”I am right here.”  James huffed.

”Yeah, good point, let’s go.”  Zhu said, flicking the telepad out of James’ hand and into his own.  “Everyone here ready?”  He asked the assembled crowd that weren’t actually participating in the same action James was.

The people that had their own bags and were nodding and linking hands or paws or camraconda cabling weren’t needed for what James had planned after all.  It was kind of less risky as a one-person project anyway.  But everyone else was still going to New York for one reason or another.

”Good luck!”  Sarah called, before they blipped away, James linking arms with a pair of people while hoisting the heavy duffel bags he needed.  She watched the empty space where her friend had been for a second, before shaking her head and taking a small bite of her candy.  Just in case.  “Good luck.”  Sarah whispered to the cool air of the Lair’s front room.

_____

Rhoda almost collapsed as she passed through the weird door.  Hell, who was she lying to?  She toppled forward, and her knees hit the quarry tile flooring that her brain would have recognized as the omnipresent back of house design if she’d been capable of thinking.

Except.  She was.  She was capable of thinking.

For the first time in what felt like forever, but she kind of vaguely knew must have only been a month or two this time, Rhoda could think, and not have to fight her nature to do it.

Struggling to not puke her guts out onto the surprisingly clean tile, she slapped one hand onto the wall to her side, and blinked frantically against the pain - real pain! - of the bright white light.  It looked like she was in a wide hallway, with a bunch of doors on either side and a right angle at the end.  There was A Door behind her, and she shoved herself forward in revulsion before she accidentally touched that one.

Shoving herself to her feet, and feeling like it wasn’t fucking fair that none of the exercise she did when she wasn’t herself ever seemed to count, Rhoda braced herself against the wall again.

And felt her hand hit something that wasn’t just painted drywall.

Looking down as her fingers closed on something papery, Rhoda stared with eyes that were still only just starting to dilate properly at what looked like an envelope that she was holding, taped securely to the wall right next to her.

”Read me?”  She muttered, pulling it out of its nest of tape and finding it waiting open for her.  The paper inside was simple, and just said, Third door on the right, first.  You’ve got time.

The reassurance almost made her weep.  But Rhoda had kept more than a few clues about this place, and she wasn’t completely ignorant as to what was going on right now.  So she was creeped out that whoever had written this, it sure wasn’t her.  That wasn’t her handwriting.  Too clean, too neat.

She still headed to the door that she was told to, glancing through the swinging kitchen doors on the left to see an out of service commercial setup that the club had probably used to use.  Or maybe just a copy of the real one.  On the other side, a walking storage area lacked a door entirely, while another room was closed off.  She’d check that later.

The door she’d been sent to was already open, and Rhoda stumbled over the threshold as she entered what looked like it had once been a cramped manager’s office.  Now, it just had the desk, chair, and a big flatscreen TV hanging on the wall.  A remote on the desk had a little notecard under it that just said ‘play me’.

”What the hell, why not.”  She said listlessly.  “Not like this isn’t weird enough already.”

Whatever Rhoda expected when she turned on the TV and hit play on the already loaded video, she would admit, it wasn’t some random white guy.  He was clearly on her side of reality though; weird eye, glowing feathers, ponytail, that vibe that he’d seen some shit, little things like that.  Kinda familiar.

“Hi Rhoda.”  The guy said on the recording.  He was sitting at a desk, but not this desk.  Somewhere else.  But this recording was here, so something fucky was going on and she knew it.  “I’m gonna start with a few quick things.  First, you’re safe here.  Second, you still can’t die here.  Please don’t hurt yourself.”

”Shit.”  She muttered.  That hadn’t been her first plan.  At least, not since she’d learned that she’d been in here before and so that probably hadn’t worked.  But it still sucked.

”Third, and this one might be less quick, hi.  You don’t know me, exactly.  My name is James Lyle.”

”Shit.”  Rhoda repeated.

The guy, James, apparently, and probably the one she’d fucked over, continued.  Because recordings couldn’t react to her nightmare situation.  ”I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really know what to do here.”  He said.

Rhoda snorted.  “Join the club.”  She said, legs shaking as she sat in the chair.  A surprisingly comfortable chair actually.

”So I’ll start with just the truth.”  He had a guilty look on his face.  “This is the second time someone from my group has snuck into your secret base.  Sorry about that.  Kind of an invasion of privacy.  The first time, we weren’t sure if you were… you know… a threat to life on Earth.”

“I am.”  Rhoda’s voice came out as a whisper.

The recording didn’t hear her.  ”So we were getting some intel on you, and your operation.  And we found… this.”  James waved a hand toward the camera.  “Where you are.  Where I’ll be leaving this for you, the second time I sneak in.  Because I need to tell you something.” He leaned forward on his own desk, the feathers on his side shifting almost naturally.  His face twisted into a frown, and Rhoda expected this to be the part where he gave her some speech about sabotaging her only safe haven.  “I am going to find a way to help you.”  He said.

Rhoda slumped, closing her eyes.  “Yeah… what?”  Thinking was too hard, she wasn’t used to having to do it herself.  She hadn’t heard him correctly.  Scrambling at the remote in her hand, she rewound through words she hadn’t listened to, and played that again.

”I am going to find a way to help you.”  James’ recorded image repeated.  “Your situation is beyond fucked up, and I get it.  You’ve probably done a lot of stuff you think you can’t come back from, right?”

”Right.”  Rhoda muttered, wishing she was drunk right now.

”Well, too bad, because you can, and in my experience that’s a lot harder.”  The recording told her, as if participating in the conversation.  “The catch is, I don’t know how to do that safely right now.  We know that dungeons can help, but I only have one dungeon that would trustably agree to, and, no offense, but the Chain Breaker isn’t safe to bring around anywhere that has civilians.”

She nodded in agreement, opening one of the desk drawers as she listened, and being surprised to find a half full bottle of bourbon in it.  Bad bourbon, but still.

The recording kept talking.  “Until then, well, we know what you’ve been doing.  You.  Rhoda.  Not your other self.  I know you’ve been trying to put information together and force yourself into decisions.  I know you’re trying to do what you can.  And I know that this place keeps you safe from being a pillar.”

She stared at the TV, bottle resting under her fingers on the desk, wondering where this was going but not sure she could find any words to say.

”So until we can fix your big problem, I’m fixing a few of your small ones.”  James said softly.  And the kindness of his voice almost made Rhoda start crying her fucking eyes out.  “I made this place a little nicer for ya, with some help…”

The feathers across the guy’s shoulder and arm rustled outward, an orange eye opening from what had looked like just more bird parts on the side of his arm as another glowing limb extended off James’ own and waved at her.  “Hi.  I’m some help.”

”…thanks.  Anyway.  Cleaned up a bit, made it a little more comfortable, put some food in the fridge, did your laundry.  You know, normal stuff.  Uh… that’s not even close to all of it, but you’ll find the rest while you’re here.  It’s not like anything is secret.”  He sighed.  “I don’t know if this is going to be a good idea.”  James said, looking up into the camera in a way that felt like he was meeting Rhoda’s eyes through the screen.  “I don’t know if you’ll appreciate this.  Hell, I don’t know if the Chain Breaker won’t try to murder me or someone I care about over it.  Please don’t, I guess?”

Rhoda had a standing policy in her life of not murdering people who did her chores for her.  So that was fine.  Pretty easy.  As long as she could get herself to agree.

”Anyway, that’s I guess all I have to say directly.  I’m gonna leave your original message to yourself intact after this one.”  James closed his eyes and took a breath that seemed like it was way too forceful for a casual sigh.  “Hang in there, Rhoda.”  He told her firmly.  “Happy Solstice.”  He added, and then, a small smile flickered over his face.  “Oh, and… even if you didn’t intend it, or know it would work out this way… all those little elephant bug guys?  They’re safe, and free, and they get to have a good solstice too.  A lot of them understand what you did, so… just remember that, okay?  When you need to know that you’re doing something right, remember that bit.”  He gave an awkward double wave with his bird thing.  “Maybe we can talk in person next time.  Good luck Rhoda.”

The recording ended, and Rhoda barely noticed, because everything was catching up to her, and she couldn’t see anything through the glistening wall of tears covering her eyes.

The next recording started after only a two second delay after James’ message ended.  “Hey me.”  The Rhoda on the screen said, looking like she had a gun to her head as she recorded the old message.  A pang of a cut away memory tugged at now-Rhoda’s thoughts; she’d been there, and she’d seen this before, but it was all… missing.  “How’s it going?  Little confused?  Yeah, don’t freak, but you might be a little fucked up.”  Both Rhoda’s started laughing, one of them most of the way down the path to frantic sobbing, the other already there.  “Welcome home you stupid bitch.” She added, waving with a hand.  “Have a seat.  I’ll leave you a drink.”

She only half-listened to herself talk.  Waited for the TV to go back to it’s home screen, and then eventually turn itself off.  She just sat in the chair for what felt like an hour, and let everything not be her problem for a while.

Eventually, though, Rhoda got up, and started listlessly walking through the hall that was outside of reality.

Actually taking the time to look into that little storage room, she found it neatly organized with shelves of preserved food and cases of canned drinks.  Mostly soda or juice, though.  Not much of a drinker, her mysterious benefactor, apparently.  There was some beer though.  Four pack cases of glass bottles, all of them from different pretentious Portland microbreweries, which meant they were probably irritatingly good or pretending they weren’t awful with no middle ground.

The kitchen was her next stop, and it was far from normal.  Walls covered in taped or tacked up pages, her own handwriting staring back at her from the endless list of notes and plans she’d made.  Some that had worked.  Some that couldn’t ever work anymore.

But the counters were cleaned off, stainless steel gleaming under the white lights.  The clutter she knew she left in her wake just wasn’t here.  There were a couple of those heavy duty plastic garbage bins against the opposite wall, with fucking labels on them for trash and recycling, and Rhoda knew for a fucking fact she hadn’t done that herself.

There was also a notebook on the counter by the big standing fridge, sitting out like it was waiting to be opened.  It wasn’t the only one, but since it was the closest new thing, Rhoda flipped to a random page, and saw a printed picture of some kind of food with instructions for how to reheat it.  The next page was the same, and the next.

Scrunching up her face, she turned to the fridge itself, and pulled one of the heavy doors open.  How this thing had electricity at all was a fucking mystery, since this place wasn’t connected to reality, but the inside was as cool as a normal mundane appliance.  It was also packed, every single wire rack shelf stacked with neatly portioned glass dishes full of prepared meals.

”…who does this?!”  Rhoda’s voice ached as she spoke to the empty non-dungeon.

The other notebooks and folders, sitting on the counter near her frantic conspiracy board of notes, were also definitely new.  And they contained… more notes.  Information.  Important places, people of interest, intel on governments, mercenary groups, dungeons, pillars.  Things Rhoda half-knew or that the Chain Breaker could barely sense, all just slapped down on paper for her, and left here.

One of those documents was a glossy instruction booklet for a tattoo gun, which was fucking out of place, until Rhoda’s thoughts rapidly retraced her old patterns and figured out that there was only one way she could have sent a message to herself if she was going to forget being in here.  Hands shaking, it only took going through four big kitchen drawers to find the storage space that held the tattoo gun and a cardboard container of ink vials.

She didn’t have anything to say to that.  She also didn’t think she could read any of this right now, so she left the kitchen, pausing only briefly to look at the list of upcoming disasters she had written down.  Nothing felt like it needed adding, so that was something at least.

Her bedroom was the last door she checked for now.  Or at least, it felt like a bedroom.  It had a bed.  That was good enough.

It also had an impossible shape overhead, which was probably what powered this place.  But that wasn’t the weirdest thing.  The weird part was the overlapping rugs covering the concrete floor.  The weird part was the bed that was made with clean sheets and had a pair of stuffed animals on it like they were standing guard.  The weird part is that one of the stuffed animals was some kind of snake made out of computer parts, except soft.  The weird part was the repurposed shelf for cabling and stage gear that now held a could dozen books, and twice as many magazines, along with an old model mp3 player that was plugged into a small speaker.

The weird part was that someone had come in here, and made this more comfortable.  For her.

Not just her Rhoda, and not just her Chain Breaker, but both of them.  And it was too much.

Rhoda didn’t know what to do.  She was still too dazed by this place at all to start to form a coherent thought, and it didn’t matter what she said or felt right now because no one was around to see her express herself, so who cared.

But she needed to do something.  She had to.  Or at least, it felt that way, until she dragged her feet to the end of the mattress and fell forward onto it, the stuffed snake thing bouncing from the impact and landing half over her head.

And every single ounce of effort she had to muster left her body.  For a minute, Rhoda was crying again.  But before she could do more than pull herself up onto the mattress and curl up on the blankets and pillows, she was fighting to not fall asleep.

Someone had done this for her.  Someone who thought they could help.

They were wrong, but… did that matter?  Maybe she wasn’t so alone as she’d thought.  Maybe she could hope for something better than the endless war with her own uncontrollable thoughts.

Maybe things would be better tomorrow.

Rhoda fell asleep two minutes after midnight, on the day of the winter solstice, surrounded by a communal gift that the Order had almost unanimously voted to risk giving her.

Her plan had worked.

And she had breathing room to figure out how to not ruin the good people who it had worked on.

Maybe things would be better tomorrow.