The Daily Grind - Chapter 371 (Book 6 Start) (Patreon)

Hello. We return.

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"I will not let history destroy me." -Yoshiaki Iba, G.I. Samurai-

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James Lyle had a touchy relationship with the concept of fate.

It was, he kind of figured, part of the human condition to not want to feel like there was some kind of impossibly huge force outside of your control that was pulling the strings.  Most people couldn’t even stomach thinking about their own mortality for more than two seconds.  The idea that someone, or something else, was in control of the most important parts of who you were was kind of an even worse nightmare in a lot of ways.

Within the Order of Endless Rooms, there were a lot of jokes about fate, and its general lack of hold over them.  But also, the jokes about never saying at least it can’t get any worse, or perhaps a sly nothing can stop us now, weren’t exactly jokes anymore.  Superstitions, maybe.  But they lived in a world where they had practically confirmed that operating in groups of three somehow gave people a form of magically applied edge against the trials of life.

As the old saying went, it wasn’t paranoia if they really were out to get you.

The dungeons that the Order delved, both the ones they had direct control over and the ones that were a little more of a grey area, were all really fond of giving them magic that seemed really cool.  And then, two AM, a knight would be lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, and realize that the really cool tiny quirk they’d gotten from a strange loot drop earlier that week actually implied some truly disturbing things about how the world itself worked.

The arcane organizations the Order met trended toward violent and often bigoted on top of that.  Their presence, their unopposed presence, spoke of a world that was hostile and brutal and had already decided to reject everything the Order of Endless Rooms stood for.  When they did meet groups that they clicked with, it was almost always just a little too late.  A little bit after when they could have done more.

And the shape of the world, that had seemed so stable just a year ago, looked a lot less sturdy than it had back then.  The magic that had seemed to be just tiny marks on the surface, turned out to be signs of much deeper cracks, that were only widening on a timeline of not months, but weeks.  Days.  Hours.

Whether it was some cosmic force arranging things, or just the sheer scale of the problem, to James it didn’t make much of a difference.  It felt like the scope of everything in motion was beyond anything that one person could divert.  Even the Order, their ranks grown and still growing, wasn’t enough.  Wasn’t going to be enough.  He couldn’t prove that, but he felt it, in the pit of dread that replaced his heart when he lay awake at night staring at the ceiling.  All their plans to revolutionize energy production and transportation and medicine with simple applications of the coolest magic they’d found, it was all going to get flattened by one spiteful demigod or one drone strike from an irate government.

A lot of his life lately had given James an appreciation for the Situation of Damocles.

Which was why, on the day that fate decided to just go all out for a change, it was actually just a refreshing change of pace.

_____

In real life, no one ever did the turn on the news, any channel thing.  That was a dramatic gesture reserved for zombie movies and period dramas about less fictional disasters.

But if it was going to happen, now would be a good time.

It was only twenty minutes after the Order’s planning council, the various members who had been discussing their future moving along with the in-person audience that had been both observing as well as adding their own questions and knowledge to the proceeding.  Filling through the doors of the briefing warehouse, a room that was increasingly used for things that were neither warehousing nor briefing, spilling out to move through the building’s ground floor, or perhaps off to one of its many basements.

The Lair had an atmosphere to it that James had always felt was distilled and enveloping home.  Even Status Quo blowing holes in their doors and walls and killing a dozen people he’d known hadn’t been enough to stop the Lair from being a place that invited in those who needed it, and gave them a place.

Sometimes that was as simple as having a meeting place for support groups, or free tables with comfy chairs where people could relax and chat or play board games or just watch the terrariums in the main room.  Sometimes it meant having food available, at any time, for anyone who was hungry.  Sometimes it was actually being home to people, especially the camracondas and ratroaches and an increasing number of other species too; cozy apartments in one of the basements folded in space to fit in there.

In the wake of the blunt acknowledgement that the general state of things was going to become turbulent, the mood was… tense.  Tense, but not despairing.  Tense, but not panicked.

Even for the people who lived elsewhere and just worked in or sometimes visited the Lair, this place felt safe, and comforting.  The Lair wasn’t where you went to fall into those dark thoughts, it was where you went to figure out a plan of attack against them.

And James kind of loved watching it in motion.  Moving to the side and letting people flow past him, watching as groups or individuals took off to go get lunch, or took the opportunity to join the line for the allocation counter to spend their points on their share of the magic the Order had to hand out.  A few of the people who’d been in attendance were foster parents, the species of their kids generally impossible to guess unless you knew them on an individual basis, and a few of them had made their way over to check in with some of those kids who were hanging out together in one of those loose clumps James semi-fondly remembered from his time in high school.

There were a lot of reasons to keep fighting, right here.  Everyone in the Order could just stop, right now, if they wanted to.  Cash out and live pretty well, as long as they stopped getting involved in things.  But that wasn’t who they were.  Maybe some of them had come in that way, maybe some of them still felt like it was an escape option, and yeah, maybe James sometimes wished someone else would handle the hard stuff.  But when he looked at this small sliver of a place, he got a similar feeling to walking through Townton.  And he knew he was only ever going to be getting into situations, often on behalf of people who didn’t even know he was coming but needed the help anyway.

Not that James needed a lot of motivation to start a fight with people who had too much power and too few morals.  But if he needed an extra push, knowing that he was doing it for real people helped.

It was into this already turbulent environment of the Lair that a stone was dropped.  Not turn on the news, not everyone stop, you all have to see this, but instead just a simple comment from someone checking their phone and seeing something out of the ordinary.

”Oh shit.  The king is dead.  Huh!”

The sentence, spoken by one of the humans from Research, was so idly innocuous that James didn’t really react to it at first.

His brain was already kind of half melted from the day he’d had, so it was understandable.  His thoughts moved languidly through a few steps, first touching on how he’d sort of defaulted to assuming they meant ‘the king of England’, which was a little biased of him, and then through wondering how old that guy had been, how he’d definitely been less palatable than the queen of England, and settling down on the thought that his boyfriend would probably have more personal feelings about this.  Anesh was British, after all.  Though he was also of Indian descent, which meant his thoughts about the monarchy might be tilted toward a resounding “fuck em”.

Then he had another thought.

”Cam.”  James caught the winged girl coming out of the rearranged warehouse space they’d been using as an auditorium.  His voice was that tone he used when he was about to ask a question that he didn’t want to know the answer to.

And she clearly knew it.  ”Paladin.”  Cam said with a polite incline of her head, falling into step with James and moving out of the way so they didn’t form a bottleneck.  “You look worried.  Was the turnaround time on the end of the world that rapid?”

”…Can I just say, I really like how every day, you get slightly snarkier?”

”Yes.  Thank you.  Now what did you need?”  Cam seemed like she was trying to forcefully will her way out of being complimented.

”Right.  You’re entwined with the rogue operations.  Where’s JP today?”

Cam tipped her head sideways, short blonde hair barely shifting at the small motion.  “London.”  She answered.  “Is there an issue?”

”Might be.”  James said, pulling out his own phone - a new one to replace the most recent casualty his personal electronic had suffered - and went through the motions to get to checking recent news.  “Cam, be honest with me.”  He said, staring down at his phone screen as the words sank in and not even the comforting vibe of the Lair could keep James from feeling like he was about to hear something horrible.  “What are the odds that JP would commit regicide?”

”Unprovoked?  Twenty percent.”  Cam’s answer did not reassure James.  The fact that she both had an answer ready to go, and that her answer implied a different number for whatever would count as provocation, made his teeth itch.  “It would also depend which monarch.”  She added, and then seemed to consider it seriously.  “The pope qualifies, but knowing JP, he would likely hesitate for cultural reasons.  The Saudi king is someone he would see as a much more approachable target, though again, without a direct reason for violence…”

”Yeah, JP isn’t really a ‘shoot first’ kind of guy.  Look, I ask because the king of England is apparently ‘confirmed dead’, and…”

”Ah.”

”Yeah, ah.”

The two of them lowered their heads in contemplation, both looking up at the same time, each about to say something about the odds that the untimely demise of a world leader was probably just a coincidence.  The fact that it happened while JP was in the same city was happenstance.  Hell, maybe the king hadn’t even been in London!  James had a lot of coping strategies coming online for this; like how the king only technically lived in London and was probably out for some kind of state luncheon or something.  It would have been impossible for this to be JP’s fault.  Clearly.

“We still need to organize our knights.”  James said quietly, voice a gentle certainty that was still clearly audible against the optimistic laughter and conversation surrounding them.  “And I’ve got a thing with a bunch of rats to go to.  I don’t have time to make sure JP isn’t causing incidents.”

Cam winced, clearly having had the same thought.  She looked sharply to the side, eyes scanning the group before landing on someone.  “Our rogues are mostly on training exercises.  You could send Byrne?”

James followed her look.  Alanna was currently in the process of holding one of her younger sisters upside down and shaking her, presumably to get something out of the teenager’s pockets.  “We saw combat hours ago.  Also today is supposed to be a whole day with her sisters for her.”  He muttered.  “Fuck, I don’t think either of us have eaten.  We need snacks for these long council meetings, I don’t care about decorum.”

”You weren’t eating during the meeting?”  Cam asked innocently.  “I was eating during the meeting.”

”I could ask Anesh.”  James ignored that, even if he was glad Cam was stealthily feeding herself.  “Or I could just put up a notice on our intentionally designed knight distribution app.  Why am I acting like there’s only four people?  We have a system for this.”

Cam gave her own slight pause before nodding.  “Also your partner seems equally engaged.”

It did look that way.  Anesh was currently having some kind of conversation with Arrush, the two of them talking about something that James’ enhanced hearing picked up the edges of.  It seemed like it had nothing to do with the Order’s work or the upcoming crisis, just two friends talking about… a movie, maybe?  His hearing wasn’t that enhanced.

There was a moment where James considered sending both of them.  But then he had to force himself to remember that England had seen exactly zero ratroaches in the hundreds of years of its existence, and maybe sending the biggest and spikiest one the Order had over as an opening was a recipe for trouble.  Well, second biggest.  But the Beautiful One didn’t count.  Yet.

“I could go…” he started to say.

He didn’t want to.  He really didn’t.  He’d just spent long enough in an Order-wide discussion and debate about their future that his plans for lunch had turned into plans for dinner.  He’d gotten in a fight with a bunch of living wooden mannequins earlier that day.  And no amount of magic was going to make him feel like he wanted to teleport across the world to a foreign country and check in on his friend, who probably didn’t need it.

”The knights.”  One of her glamorous blue wings dipped as Cam reminded him.  The traitor.

”It’s just… logistics.”  James tried to argue with a shrug.  “Revisiting our list of threats and long term assignments, evaluating our training budget like we just talked about, that kind of thing.”

”Yes.  The important part, which you are good at.”  She crossed her arms, seeming almost irate about it.  “In a better world, I think that would be your calling.”

”Schedules?”  James smiled a little.  “I’d go mad.  I like adventure too much.  Anyway.  I’ll just blip in and come back, and miss nothing.  Though I’m sure there’s gonna be some kind of global upheaval now that another British monarch is down.  I kinda vaguely remember hearing that the queen’s death cost something like two billion dollars?  So it’s probably bad they have to do that all over again, but-“

The nearby door to one of the basements - the Response basement, specifically - suddenly slammed open, cutting off James’ attempt at martyrdom on the altar of inconvenience.   Unfortunately, someone else bore the cost, the edge of the stairwell door slamming into Ash’s form, one of the few umbral that had been in attendance today taking a pretty heavy hit that was fortunately mitigated by his lack of overt weak points.

JP burst out of the stairs, face flushed and sweating, his infomorph companion somehow also looking out of breath behind him.  He took only a moment to gasp out an apology, before sucking down air and letting out a yell.  “James!  Where are you in this mess?!”

”Right fucking here, calm down.”  James announced himself, not moving off the wall as a good chunk of the crowd flinched.  “JP, what-“

”The king is dead.”  JP gasped out as he staggered up to them and leaned one hand on the smooth paint of the Lair’s wall.  His frayed state was clear, but he shoved it all aside for a moment as he gave Cam a shining smile.  “Hey there.”  He said smoothly.

Cam gave him a flat look, within which James saw evidence of a long running game between the two of them.  “As far as you are aware, I’m asexual.  Stop flirting.”  She ordered him.  Futilely.

”As far as… no, later.  JP, talk.  Did you commit regicide.”

”What?”  JP coughed roughly as his facade fell away.  “Who do you think I am?!  No!”  He took a long breath, Sartori settling in on his shoulder in a folded green and blue splash of color.  “I was just in the room.” He said with a grim frown.

The quick rundown JP gave them arrived only slightly before someone in the dining room read an updated news report on their phone and conversation started up.  The king of England wasn’t dead, the king of England was violently sacrificed on magically broadcast television.  The government officials, minor nobles, and various visitors at the event had been absolutely overwhelmed by whatever power the new Tyrannies had taken from the kill, and while JP and his rogues had bailed, fast, the actual normal news was starting to fill in a clear picture.

“Shit.”  James said as Thermoclese showed him her phone, the girl passing by and happening to have said something about it, only to have the clip she was watching hijacked by the paladin before she could escape.  “Okay.  That’s bad.”

”Damn right it is.”  JP said, having mostly recovered.  “Sartori and I swiped one of their gems, but without knowing…”

”We need to get that copied, fast.”  James said.  “Office delve tomorrow, go get that secured in the priority duplication box.”  He tried to put together a coherent thought about this, only half-noticing Anesh moving in his direction through the agitated cluster of Order members that were occupying the front room.  “Do we take them out?”  He asked, mostly himself.

JP shook his head.  “I don’t know if we can.”  He ran a hand over his hair, the motion smoothing out the single strand that had rebelliously been out of place.  “Also, they had a team.  Support, backup.  And even before the Ides of Marching, they cut through the security on the palace.”

That sounded even worse.  ”Well shit.”  James exhaled as Anesh reached their group, adding to the sandbar they were forming in the current of foot traffic.  “Hey love.”

”JP did you ruin my country’s government?”

”I swear to god you all need to stop asking me that.”  JP looked put out.  “I don’t just cause problems on purpose.”  He held up a hand to both Cam and James, with Sartori closing his eyes solemnly and raising a wide fin toward Anesh for good measure.  “I don’t cause international incidents.  How’s that?”

”Better.”  James said.  “And JP’s innocent.”  Taking the opportunity to examine his partner, James saw that Anesh looked like he wasn’t doing well at all.  The shorter human was clenching his hands nervously, practically hyperventilating.  “Are you okay?”  He quietly inquired.

Anesh shook his head.  “BBC’s already reporting on… on this.”  He said, tapping his skulljack braid.  “Like it’s a legitimate transfer of power.  They’re saying they’re revoking passports.  Everyone is supposed to return, or lose citizenship, and… and…”

”Anesh.”  James stepped forward, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend and tugging him close in a firm hug.  “You think we’re gonna feed you to a wizard king?”

”Wizard kings.  Well, kings and queen.  Or maybe just monarchs?”  JP was being too casual, polishing his fingernails on his coat, but James rapidly recognized that he was doing it on purpose to distract Anesh.  “I didn’t ask their pronouns.  I was mostly trying to figure out if I should shoot them.”

Anesh’s voice sounded very small as he talked into James’ chest.  “Everyone is acting like it’s normal…” he whispered.

“The Tyrannies definitely have some kind of mind control.  Society or nation based, probably.”  JP said.

Cam nodded with him, unclipping something from her own skulljack and breaking her silence.  “Your memory shows them discussing titles as a construct.  Likely that is what the crystal does.  Sartori, you mentioned things feeling like authorities?”

The assignment bobbed on JP’s shoulder, voice coming out reedy and musical.  “A little bit.”  The new little guy replied.  “Even less alive.  If I hadn’t seen an authority I don’t think I’d even have known where to look for them.”

”I wonder if that works in other ways.”  James mused.  “Like if there were living skills out there, would that be a way to train to spot people with yellow orbs?  That could be… now is not the time for this.”  He stopped himself as Anesh clamped a hand on his shoulder, still caught in the hug.  “Anesh, you can’t go back.  We need to try to stop anyone from going back, actually, until we know what’s up.  And if anyone tries to make you, I’ll deal with them.”

Another Anesh that had heard the news in a slightly different context approached where James was hugging his duplicate.  “My problem isn’t that.  It’s that no one should be trying in the first place.”  That Anesh said, voice tense as James opened up one arm to pull him in against himself.

”This may require retaliating early.”  Cam commented.

James didn’t know if she was joking.  Actually, she probably wasn’t.  Cam had a developing sense of humor, but she didn’t joke about tactical situations.  While he was concerning himself with that, Alanna arrived, wedging through the crowd and impacting the back of both Aneshs to further envelop them in a hug.  “Hey dorks.”  She announced herself.  “Why’s everyone seem like they’re going to a funeral, did JP end the world early?”

”Does anyone here have faith in me?!”  JP demanded, honestly a little annoyed.

”I do!”  Sartori exclaimed.  “I know you would only end the world on purpose!”

”That… is… yeah, thanks little guy.”  JP pinched his nose.

James shook his head at Alanna, his look conveying that they weren’t screwing around.  “Anesh’s home country just experienced a coup.”  He said.

”Oh shit, your parents.”  Alanna pushed away from the hug.  “Is it chaos and soldiers in the streets?  How many people do we need for an extraction and-or counter-coup force?”

Cam shook her head.  “Minimial impact so far.  But it’s only been hours.  The new heads of state are enhanced somehow.”

”…my parents…” Anesh muttered, not even having had that thought.  “Oh bloody hell.”  His voice choked.

“There’s at least twenty people in the Order from the UK.”  James suddenly realized.  “Oh fuck me, we’ve been recruiting internationally on purpose, and… oh hell.”  He echoed Anesh.  “A lot of people’s parents.”  He said, meeting Alanna’s eyes.

This was no longer a hypothetical distant disaster.  Not that it was to begin with; teleporters made everything roughly equidistant.  But there was an emotional difference in a problem happening in the place where some other people live versus the place where my boyfriend’s parents live.

The problem was, if JP’s account was anything to go on, there was a non-zero amount of local mind control happening.  It hadn’t hit JP, or the rest of their rogues in training that had telepadded back as soon as they’d been alerted and were even now being gathered up by Nate for debrief.  That man was actually standing nearby glaring at JP like he had laser vision, which might mean JP should get his ass into that briefing too.

So sending people in was a potential disaster.  Or maybe sending people in now was the only way to make this less of a disaster.

He needed some information, and a plan.  And James could get one of those things quickly through the Order’s network.

So he started checking.  How many knights did they have, both total and active?  Who was rated for potential danger like this, who had heavy infomorph support to counter potential mind control, who would even be willing?

The Order, for all that they had people who responded to the title of knight, wasn’t a military.  They didn’t give commands and expect total obedience.  A lot of people would submit to ad-hoc command structures for various purposes, but there was a lot more heavy use of the word ‘voluntary’ around here than in any global military.

And yet they got shit done anyway.  Maybe it was just the scale they were working at, but James was kinda happy with how things were going, and the systems they were building.

None of that changed the fact that the Order currently had one hundred and nineteen knights; counting the paladins, who were just knights but shinier.  One hundred and nineteen people that were the edge of their sword, the first into the fray when things got bad.  But also the people who, on a daily basis, were active in Response, were going on dungeon delves, were going through extensive training for a variety of things, were studying and refining their magic, and were a huge central part of the Order.

Which was a big part of why of those hundred and nineteen people, not all of them were available.

Twenty were on Response shifts, though they were probably the easiest to reassign.  Another dozen were in Oklahoma, acting as leadership for the growing local force that was dealing with the dungeon creatures there.  Almost forty people were currently off the rotation with injuries of varying sorts, with two more being sick.  And then there were the seventeen knights of various species that were currently much harder to contact, being in active dungeon delves.   Another handful unavailable for personal reasons, and then a few who were currently pushing the limits of studying Verdigris Venture spells and probably wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted.  And more marked as ‘on assignment’, with more details about which paladin they were bailing out of a crisis if James looked deeper. 

Which left…

”Holy shit.”  James said out loud.  “A majority of the easily available knights are in this room.”

”Great, let’s get to it.”  Alanna said bluntly.  “I’m still good to go, I-“

”You’re definitely not on the list.” James glared at her, one hand coming off of an Anesh to poke at the padded wound dressing underneath the shoulder of her sweatshirt.  His girlfriend had either not noticed, or actively ignored, the injury she’d taken earlier that day.  Right up until setting foot in the Lair, where Mercy, their doctoral infomorph, had possibly literally smelled blood.

Or maybe it was Deb.  Deb seemed to have more medical related superpowers than her bond did, actually.

”Okay.  No rushing.”  James decided, making a snap decision about the risks.  “JP, get your ass in the briefing room before Nate melts you with his mind powers.  Cam, put in a directive with Recovery, have them start gathering information and drawing up a plan for extracting any families, possibly more refugees, but wait for Nate to give a green light.  Alanna, gather the rest of our precious boyfriend-“

”I’m right here.”  Anesh muttered against James.

”-and get him some dinner.  And yourself some dinner.”

Alanna narrowed her eyes at him, puffing out a breath to dislodge a strand of her hair that had fallen onto her face.  “And your dinner, buddy?”

”My dinner will be whatever is convenient from the kitchen, while I make sure I’m not late to my ratling greeting and possibly group therapy session.”  James told them.  “And then maybe that same thing, again, as I rush to get to the strategic planning meeting for knight deployments.”  He paused.  “Maybe if Nate approves the extraction, I can stop at some kind of ancient and homey pub and get real British fish and chips.”

“Real British fish and chips covers a statistically significant range of quality.”  Anesh muttered like he was trying to latch on to anything else to think about, before the other iteration of him took a short breath and tried to talk through his anxiety.  “My parents aren’t going to want to leave, even if it is a disaster.”

”We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”  Alanna said confidently.  “Come on.  Let’s go steal a table.”  She raised an arm in the air, catching the attention of her sisters, who she’d left lingering near where Arrush and Keeka were awkwardly watching the whole conversation, the two ratroaches equally out of place in the tide of a serious situation as the two teenagers.  Both duos jerked into motion as Alanna waved at them, then paused and did the thing where they looked back and forth between themselves and the woman that had summoned them, trying to deduce who was the intended recipient of the communique.  “All of you, you fucking idiots!  Come on!”  She demanded, dragging Anesh out of the main room, the others following, fast enough that James barely had time to reach out and briefly intertwine his fingers with Arrush’s paw as the ratroach passed.

JP had already vanished, which left James back talking to Cam.  “Are you certain you want to continue your scheduled duties?”  She asked him.  Almost like she was concerned.

He sighed.  “Yeah.”  James admitted with a thin line on his face.  “For some of us, the world is turning upside down.  For a lot of people, though?  Today is their first day as our citizens.  This matters to them.  It’s worth doing it right.”

He’d sort of jokingly said ‘rats’ earlier, but the actual distribution of species was a mix of the Pylon’s ratlings, migrating umbral, and a few ratroaches and camracondas that were making the transition to living semi-independently in Townton.  And it did matter, that they got greeted properly.  That they heard not only what was expected of them, but what kind of support they could expect and community they could take part in.  That they saw that someone cared.

Earlier, during the planning out of the Order’s future, multiple people had brought up the simple fact that the Order derived a lot of actionable strength from its internal diversity.  Sacrificing the work that went into that, just because it was convenient, seemed wrong to James.

And besides, it wasn’t like it was stressful.  He kinda liked public speaking.  And the look Cam gave him when he said that got a real laugh out of him.

The dragon-winged girl who could survive anti-vehicle rounds balked at addressing more than three non-subordinates at a time.  And she really did look like she’d be more comfortable with the fall of western civilization than with giving a speech to a crowd.  Though, to be fair, James wasn’t exactly enamored with western civilization these days, so it was more of a coin toss for him.

Either way, it lightened his step as he headed to his next destination for the day, determined to not let the chaos ruin every part of today.

_____

That thought had clearly been foolish.

Getting to the community hall in Townton that was his destination had required that James navigate an obstacle.  That obstacle came in the form of about a thousand anxious and rather cold people forming a kind of human morass around the logisticor point.

The wall included not only the physicality of human bodies, struggling against the Tennessee December, but also a sonic wall of raised voices.  Shouts and demands coming from the adults, wild screams of both fear and excitement coming from younger kids who felt like they were on an adventure, or babies that really weren’t happy to be here.  It took James about a minute to realize he was having trouble parsing any single thread of language because everyone was speaking Spanish, and then took him another minute to find someone from the Order to explain what was going on.

That someone ended up being Spire-Cast-Behind.  The camraconda drawing James like a beacon somehow, her authority fluttering behind her as a three foot long glowing green scarf as she calmly directed a crowd that was doing a relatively good job of listening to her.

”Spire what the shit.”  James opened with.

”There has been a dungeon incident.”  The paladin replied after finishing a quick conversation with an older man wearing what was clearly a borrowed coat.  Swinging her body around to address James, the camraconda straightened up.  “The Last Line was present.  Before the situation could evolve into something unacceptable, my coterie and I called in an evacuation of the local population.”

James looked around at the press of people that had spread out into the plaza surrounding the logisticor platform that was still mostly under construction.  ”…It might take a little rapid work to house this many-“

”No.” Spire-Cast-Behind cut him off.  And suddenly, James realized that she didn’t sound nervous or tense at all.  She sounded smug.  Just a little bit.  His paladin was, softly, bragging about something.  “Our initial reaction was correct.  There was marginal loss of property, but without any local human anchors to target, the Last Line and his soldiers were forced to move on the dungeon directly.  The situation has been resolved, for the time, and we are in the process of returning everyone to their homes.  Reconstruction will be an effort for the coming weeks.”  She paused, and then added, “Additionally, I have acquired one more Camille for your collection.”

”I’m not… we aren’t… that’s…” James felt like there was some kind of cosmic force that was determined to make this the longest day in the entire timeline of his life.  “I mean… yeah.  Okay.  Yeah.”  He let out a long breath of hot vapor into the frigid air.  “Good job.  Next time let me know?”

”You were busy at the time we began, and once the plan was working, there was no need.”  Spire told him, arching her neck upward, her lens facing toward the darkening grey sky.  “I am beginning to understand.”  She said, voice even but loud enough to be heard over the crowd.

”Understand what?”  James had to know.

”What you wanted from me.”  Spire-Cast-Behind replied with a hiss that left her tongue sticking out into the cold air, a silly little affectation as she turned back to him.  “From all of us.  Agents with agency.  People who don’t need orders, just initiative.  It took me some time to internalize, and I am curious if my crafted nature as a camraconda impaired this.”

James nodded slowly.  “I mean, I also wanted superheroes.”  He admitted.

”I am getting there.”  Spire told him.  “Now get out of the way.  We have not yet constructed a multi-platform transit system for the logisticor and there are people to return to their homes.”

Stepping aside, and plotting a path around the shifting crowd that James could now see was sort of divided into lines and segments, he gave her a reassuring nod.  “So do we have another dungeon, or…?”

”I will let you know if the Line left anything intact for us to explore.”  She said, digital voice bluntly flat.  “Leave now.”

”Yes ma’am.”  James laughed as he escaped.

Townton was exactly as he’d left it.  Cleanup from the solstice celebration was mostly done already, though there were a few things James would probably help out with…

He cut that train of thought off.  He would help where he could, but the bigger stuff took priority, and stressing himself out by adding even minor things to his mental list was something he didn’t need.

The building he was heading for was actually on the far outskirts of the part of Townton that the Order had been rebuilding.  What used to be a budget hotel, the Red Lion Inn had briefly been a base of operations for the Horizon delvers, before everything had sort of migrated to cluster around the more convenient part and logisticor point.  In theory, they could just move the logisticor coordinates at any time, but it was easier to plan out sewer networks this way, and while this place had a huge parking lot with only a few necroad-shaped holes in it, it just wasn’t as convenient.  It did have a bunch of green orb effects though, and most of the bigger holes in the walls had been sealed up, so that was something.

James was certain that, as Townton kept expanding, and the line of the city’s ‘main space’ passed this building, that it would get a lot of attention.  Or demolished.  In theory, the idea of a series of small rooms with the basics, with communal spaces and food being centralized and shared, was kind of perfect for the culture the Order was building.  In practice, cheap hotels felt unsettling to be inside of.  They could do better.

For now, though, it had a big room with couches and chairs and stuff, and it was actually kind of the largest available place in Townton that wasn’t outside or in an active restaurant.

James wasn’t the first person there, but he offered quiet greetings and small smiles as people filtered in.  His own nervousness about what was going on elsewhere wasn’t exactly put on pause - he was definitely eating too many of the snacks here for it to be anything except anxiety eating - but having something concrete he could do helped him keep outwardly cool.  There were people investigating.  He didn’t need to go do anything right now.  He did need to trust his friends and knights.

And what he’d told Cam was true; the people here were having a ‘first day’ in Townton that should be something good.

The people in the room were mostly a handful of umbral and ratroaches, with a few humans or camracondas that James recognized along for moral support.  More umbral kept arriving though; the solid shadows moving with their crablike gait, dust caught in sunbeams stirring as they entered mostly in small groups.  A lot of them seemed surprised that the room they were gathering in had couches wide enough to accommodate their odd proportions, but the surprise wasn’t an unhappy one.

In contrast to the gradual arrival of most of the people as the clock approached the scheduled time, the ratlings arrived as a group.  Thirty of the short dungeon creatures, most of them wrapped in coats that had never been sized for them but had been refitted with either magic or just the eager hands of the Iranian tailor that had moved into Townton and gotten really excited to make pants for nonhuman species.  Their fur was almost all black, but with a texture that made them stand out against the umbral’s similar coloration, and a uniformity that set them apart from the ratroaches.  And unlike both those species, the ratlings seemed downright happy to be here.  Eager and talkative, speaking to each other with voices full of laughter, conversations that they happily spread to the others around them as the members of the Order that had guided them here lingered in the warmth of the interior.

One of those people, a kind of slender camraconda, approached James where he was standing near the front of the room, waiting for when everyone had a minute to settle before he started talking.  “Hey.”  The camraconda’s voice came out… strange.

”Hey Color-Of-Dawn.”  James said back.  “Are you… alright?  You’re not sick, are you?”

”No.” The word appeared to take effort on the camraconda’s part.  “Sorry.  This is Morgan.”

James nodded, not moving from his position of leaning on a chair with his arms crossed.  ”…Why?”  He asked when he’d had time to fail to digest that.

”Color-Of-Dawn wanted to try.”  Morgan, swapped into his camraconda partner’s body, explained.  “Then overslept.  And I had a job.  So Color-Of-Dawn is sleeping.  I am here.”  He paused, and then added, “Its name sounds weird with this voice.”

”Well, thanks for coming out to help.”  James tried not to laugh, though the smile on his face was a very comfortable one.  It was kind of nice to know that even with things going to hell, there were still antics happening just out of his line of sight.  “So, are you gonna pick a camraconda name now?”

Morgan looked up at him with a jerk of his neck that probably wasn’t how camracondas were supposed to move.  “That sounds.  Like.  Cultural appropriation.”  He said.

”Bunch-Of-Flowers has a camraconda name!” James pointed out.  “Also I was talking with TQ about this… uh… eight million years ago.  He had this really cool point about how there’s no such thing as a ‘camraconda name’?  There’s actually just Order names.  Like the naming schema didn’t exist before their participation in our shared whole, and so saying it’s purely a camraconda thing is kind of silly.  I bet there’s gonna be other people picking names like that over time too.”

”Camracondas have different names too.”  Morgan pointed out.  “Misha.  Myri.  Steve.”

James frowned.  ”Misha’s a… ratroach though?  No, wait, we went on that Pylon delve with a Misha.  Wait are there two Mishas?!  Why?!”  He still hadn’t fully recovered from there being two different Marks in the Order, though at least one of them had the good grace to have the name be a kind of wordplay.

”Good name selection.”  Morgan didn’t have the hang of sounding smug or coy with a digital voice yet.  But James still felt it.

”Did you say Steve, too?”  James asked idly as he noted the time and the end of the constant influx of people.

”Joke.”  Morgan said.  “Need help?”  He asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, James noticed and quirked a small smile at the way that Morgan still moved his mouth around while talking.  Body swapping into another species form, apparently, didn’t do much to give you the reflexes and instincts they had.  Actually it was kind of impressive Morgan was moving at all, unless he and his partner had been doing this more than James knew.  Which wouldn’t be surprising, but the body swapping table was supposed to be in a secure location.  “I’m fine, get out of here.”  He waved off the kid.

Morgan wasn’t the only person that left, a few other volunteers did too.  There was a somewhat quiet mood in the air today, which mixed oddly with the cold.  As James stepped into the cleared space in the front of the room, the people who were gathered mostly settled down.  Mostly.  Some of the younger ratlings didn’t exactly stop talking, or racing in circles around a couch and squealing out gasps as they did so, which made James realize that the next time they did this kind of introduction, they really needed a place set aside for kids.  Fortunately, even the older humans seated in the hotel’s rearranged lobby didn’t seem upset by it.

”Alright, seems like this is everyone!”  James announced, raising his voice to a comfortable level.  “Welcome to Townton.”  He said with a smile.  “My name is James Lyle, I’m here to talk to you about living here as permanent residents, and give you the basics of what you can expect, and what’ll be expected of you.  Before we get started, does anyone have any pressing questions that… yeah, the umbral with the really cool bead adornment.”

Umbral, mostly unaffected by the cold, kind of had the biggest range of leeway on what they wore, and their own sense of fashion was still developing.  The one that had raised a hand to James, their body cracked in half to unfurl the heavy limb that was larger than both of the ratlings on the couch with them put together, slowly lowered it as they were acknowledged.  Their voice came out with a static crackle of charged air.  “I think… I’m here by mistake.  I can’t afford-“

James cut that off real quick, as he saw a few of the humans that were part of the group tense up at the word ‘afford’.  “Yeah, you’re in the right place.  Let’s start there!”  He clapped his hands softly.  “Townton has public housing.  Which is to say, all the residences in Townton are publicly owned, and having a place to live and a sustainable life is the right of anyone here.  You don’t have to afford anything.  Because of our sources of income, and also several very convenient pieces of magic, providing for the population of the city is within our means, and you are all welcome to share that.”  He ticked off things on his fingers.  “Housing, food, water, power, common goods, public transit, public spaces, and general safety, are all freely available.”

A human man with a worryingly gaunt face and a patchy beard raised his hand and didn’t wait to ask his question.  “So communism?”

”Sort of!” James answered honestly, perking up as he did so.  “Just to address a quick common concern we hear, personal property is different than private property.  If you’ve got, like, stuff?  That’s yours, don’t worry about that.  But some things like automation, including magical forms of it, and physical land, are all public.  If it helps, think of the total value of Townton as a big number, and if you live here, part of that number is always yours.”

”What if the number goes down?”  One of the ratlings asked excitedly, seeming more engaged with the civics discussion as hypothetical than with what James had intended this gathering to be.

”…Well, then everyone has a little less.”  James answered.  “Which is why we’re constantly looking for and implementing new ideas to make sure the number is sustainably big enough for everyone.  Anyway, moving on from that!”  He laughed as the stubby face of the ratling in question fell, and made a mental note to invite them to talk more later.  “For all of you, you do not need to worry about that now!  We have plenty of space at the moment, even with our population growing.  So let’s talk about that.”

He started pacing slightly as he spoke, calmly going over points as he kept a calm smile on his face and watched the crowd.  Some of them were actually taking notes, which James found kind of hilarious.  “Housing in Townton is currently mostly in the form of apartments, since a lot of the individual houses were… incapacitated… during the event that happened here a couple years back.  Now, apartments are spatially folded, and I have a big stack of pamphlets here about the safety features we’ve put in, yes, I see all of you who would like to read those.”

”Good!”  Someone yelled at him, their voice amused.

James grinned back.  “Anyway.  While most apartments are human-standard, we’re working on ones refurbished for different shapes and sizes, and you can request those.  Our construction team has a queue, but we’re getting through it.  You can choose to live alone or with other people; if you have a family or people you just want to live with, that’s an option.  But also if you’re uncomfortable living by yourself, you can opt in to a program to be matched with roommates, which so far hasn’t led to anyone getting thrown out a window, and I count that as a success.”

An umbral shifted slightly, the long tendrils that made up their upper portion swaying as they spoke up.  “Didn’t-“

”I don’t wanna talk about it.”  James said with that same amused grin on his face.  “Now!  Food and other goods are available from our main store, and we’ve got a bunch of other small places popping up for specialty goods.  There’s also several restaurants around.  And again, I want to stress this; you are all welcome to any of it, and the cost is part of the operational costs of Townton, so you never, ever, need to worry about being hungry.”

It kind of sucked.  James should have found that to be the most satisfying part to share with them.  But he’d done this introduction a few times, and all he could think, every time, was that it was so painful to see so many different types of people trying to hide that they were crying at that specific piece of news.

Steadying his voice, he finished the first half of his speech.  ”Now the rest of what you can have for free is somewhat magical.  The Order doesn’t exactly produce a ton of surplus magic, but what we do, we try to make available to everyone.  You’ll have an allocation budget that’s smaller than what a member of the Order of Endless Rooms gets, and also has restricted access to the kind of spells that can be weaponized, but aside from that you’ll be able to pick up skill orbs or other random fun bonuses.  There’s a guidebook on it, and a few people around both Townton and the Order have their own explanations or even classes if you’re interested.”

One of the ratroaches, a surprisingly short member of the species who James was pretty sure had recently gone through shaper surgery to end up in their cleanly asymmetrical form, tentatively raised a soft paw before being pointed out by James.  “E-even u-usss?”

James held back from saying ‘especially you’.  Because that wasn’t exactly true.  But he did give a reassuring nod.  “Everyone.”  He said.  “And speaking of everyone!  I invite you all to look around at the people here today.”  James saw some of them take him very seriously, especially the ratlings who he was learning tended toward being very literal.  “Townton is composed of a lot of different species.  You may even be one of them yourself!  I’m going to tell you all something right now that I want you to remember for as long as you live here, okay?”

He paused for a second to make sure he had their attention.

”There is no ‘separate but equal’ bullshit here.  There is no room for bigotry in this city, of any variety.  This place is for all of you, and everyone else, and this is the first of the things that is expected of you as citizens; that you make it a place for everyone.  We are different, and we are together.”  He let the sternness fade, but only after making sure that everyone had heard him.  The umbral, almost as a unified whole, were making that motion with their tendrils that James had come to associate with a nod.  They understood exactly what he was going for.  The smattering of humans looked more apprehensive, but since at least a few of them were refugees because of varying forms of bigotry, he was willing to give them a little time to adapt.

”Now, what that means on a practical level,” James continued with a more friendly tone, “is that you’ll probably need to know some specific things about different species.  Some things aren’t that relevant to daily life, like knowing that camracondas can generally freeze things by looking at them, or that umbral can turn basically two dimensional for a little bit, but others are.  If you end up working with food at all, knowing that crocamaws are near-fatally allergic to capsaicin is really important.  Knowing that ratroach blood can be corrosive before their reshaping is vital for providing first aid if you ever need to do that.”  He splayed his fingers, looking down for just a moment.  “We’ve got a responsibility to each other, you know?  So we’ve got a lot of easy to access resources, and you can always ask to learn more.”

”What about us?”  An umbral asked nervously.

”You mean the magic source?”  James asked openly, and got an even more nervous waving of that umbral’s spiked tendrils in reply.  “Yeah, that’s definitely part of it.  Obviously exploitation of anyone is a problem; no one gets to kidnap you for points, no matter how magical you are.  But for umbral specifically, we’re working on an organized system of gifting your spells back to you on rotation.  It’s a lot of math, which is why several of my boyfriend is doing it and not me, but you can learn more by attending the public city council meetings.”

”Gifting…?”

”Yeah, the magic from your dungeon can be gifted.”  James was downright happy to share this bit of information.  “And while you guys can’t earn it, we can totally give it to you.  Since it regenerates every day and most people never need to use every spell every day, it’s not only free but actually a huge increase in total magic floating around to give some back to you.  Cool, right?”

The umbral stared at him, blue rings of eyes peering at James from across their body, before their tendrils slowly stilled and the seam where their arms met eased back together as they relaxed.  “I think I see what you mean when you say you want us to be unified.”

”Thank you!”  James laughed.  “Now, that’s the perks and the fun stuff.  Let’s talk responsibilities.”  He took a deep breath and stopped pacing, the old carpet of the lobby scuffing under the toe of one of his shoes.  “The basics shouldn’t surprise you.  No violence toward others, including harassment.  No exploitation of others.  There’s a legal code you can reference at any time, and it shouldn’t surprise you what’s in it.”  He looked over their faces, the ratlings looking the most out of place, but still following.  “Now.  We do need upkeep, to make this whole system work.  You aren’t going to be assigned hard labor, that’s stupid.  But we do ask that people chip in, and there’s a system for that set up too.  I’m not the right person to explain all of it, I’m just here to give you the outline.  In general, everyone needs to put in… ehhh… about ten to fifteen hours a week.”

”You are fucking kidding me.”  One of the humans exclaimed.

”That cannot be… accurate?”  An umbral added.  “Or what he said.  About joking.”

James cleared his throat.  “Yeah, so, uh… there’s actually a lot of complex logistical and economical reasoning at play here, and I don’t think the kids who have been busy vibrating through their seats ever since I said ‘you can have magic’ want to hear it.”  Several of the older ratlings - maybe parents, maybe just the oldest surviving members of their species - gave him sheepish but appreciative fanged smiles.  “If you want to run your own business, there’s a process for starting it, and you’ll probably need to do more work.  But if you just want to have a nice life here, and plenty of time to play mahjong with your friends at the cafe, then yeah, ten hours is the average.”

”I have a new question.”  The same umbral raised his hand again.

”Yes, umbral can actually cover some labor hours by playing mahjong at the cafe, because of how your whole… thing… works.”

”That wasn’t my question…” the umbral paused.  “But, that is interesting.”

”Oh, sorry, what’s up?”

”What does Townton… produce?”  The umbral asked.  The question struck James in an odd way, the branching shape of solid shadow reminding him suddenly of one of the first umbral he’d actually talked to, Ash.  Ash had been one of many of the species held captive to power the magic of the humans ‘renting’ them, but because he was being imprisoned by a talkative account manager, had a lot of background knowledge about business.  This felt similar.  A question driven by curiosity in a profession that had been acquired against the umbral’s will.

James still tried to answer.  “Technically, Townton’s main production comes from the dungeon nearby, Route Horizon.  There’s a lot to learn about it, but mostly magical gasoline, and the source for some useful spells.  Also car parts.  And kind of necroads, though they’re sort of stable right now, we think.  Oh, don’t poke the necroads, they can be skittish, but the ones inside the rebuilding zone are friendly.  Agriculturally, Townton produces small amounts of various stuff, and large amounts of terrifying ecological disaster beans.  But to answer the unspoken question, Townton operates at a loss.  It’s supported by Order efforts elsewhere.  Though also, ‘elsewhere’ means less when you have teleporters.”  He smiled as he stopped his pacing underneath one of the dressed up light fixtures of the hotel lobby.  “Sorry, this is a tangent that probably means very little to half the room.”

One of the ratroaches who had been staring unblinkingly at James jerked upright ever so slightly as the smile landed on him.  “I’m interested in beans!”  The ratroach’s voice had the tightness to it that often followed when a member of the species suddenly gained the ability to speak freely, and was still all too used to every word hurting.

”Okay, well, you can be on bean duty.”  James said with friendly amusement, hearing a few people chuckle, but more importantly, seeing the ratroach actually look legitimately interested in the prospect.  “So!  Basic needs, basic work, basic magic.  One more thing to cover before I let you all go.  Basic community.”

”Is this where we find out that this is a hippie commune?”  One of the umbral asked with a warm summer breeze of a laugh.

James opened his mouth, then closed it again, a look of consternation on his face as he tilted his head at the umbral in question.  The way the shadow people had an amount of cultural context constantly caught him off guard.  They were still often just as new as camracondas or ratroaches, but they’d been exposed to humanity for a while, and they just kind of made references like that in a way other dungeon species didn’t.  “We’d be more like a micronation, I guess.”  He chose to answer.  “Mostly ignoring that though.  For your first week, month, maybe year here, you’re going to get a lot of help from a lot of people.”  He softened his tone, facing them directly now without his normal nervous fidgeting.  “For some of you, you’ll be learning how to live independently from the ground up.  Some of you will be healing from trauma, and building trust.  Some of you will just need to participate in the planning process to make apartments that have shorter counters.”

”Us!”  One of the younger ratlings’ paws shot up, as much as their stubby arm really could.

”Yup!”  James smiled at the three foot tall black furred kid.  “Anyway, as you might have guessed, that help is given freely.  But here’s the important part.  At some point in that week, month, year, lifetime… you’re going to encounter other people who need help too.  Sometimes they’ll be new, like you.  Sometimes they’ll just be in an awkward situation for the day.  Sometimes you won’t even know.”  James shrugged, palms facing up as he spread his arms.  “What we ask is that you give back what you can.  You aren’t legally mandated to be nice to everyone, that’s insane.”

One of the umbral lanced a tendril into the shadow at their side, breezing out a laugh.  “Good news for you.”  They whispered just loud enough for James to catch it, while the umbral they were teasing tried to elbow them without unfolding their body.

”Anyway, I know this might sound weird, especially to some of you more familiar with humanity.”  James acknowledged the suspicious looks, mostly on the humans.  “Asking everyone to ‘just be helpful and get along’ is kind of naive, right?  And maybe you’re right.  But that’s sort of why we have these little introduction meetings.”  His smile came back in force.  “So I can tell you that no one expects you to be perfect, we just hope that you’ll see what we’ve got here, and what I at least think is pretty cool, and you’ll want in on it.”

That same human man from before laughed.  ”Hey man, you’re giving me a house, I don’t think I have room to whine.”

”Oh, we have a department for whining!”  James said cheerfully.  “Recovery has a Townton office.  But don’t tell any of them I said that!  They know my secret weaknesses.”

“Also some of us are in the room.”  Sunrise-In-Clouds called at him from where the camraconda was providing a calm presence to one of the more nervous ratroaches.

”Right, that’s my cue to escape.”  James said.  “Thank you to everyone for being here, whether you’re helping or moving in.  And to everyone that is moving in… welcome to Townton. For as long as you need a place, you have one here.”

James had never really been good making exits.  At least, not when he wasn’t escaping from being shot at.  So he just kind of sketched out a bow to the crowd, and stepped back to signify that he was done speaking, before turning and trading out with one of the Recovery agents that was here to go over more fine details about addresses and where to do laundry.

_____

There was a big part of James that felt like maybe he was being a little too indulgent in his favorite part of the Order’s control of Townton.

Especially when he’d just heard about whatever was going on in London, but also, just because there was so much else he could be doing that would have had a more concrete use.

Learning anything about biology or computer science, or just playing a pickup game of basketball, would advance one of the Akashic Sewer lessons he had.  Any of those would make him a more effective combatant and delver, though with the weather as it was in most places he knew, basketball might require him to get a gym membership somewhere and join a group of humans that were more normal.

Spending time studying Venture spellbooks could stock up his already pretty long list of single-use spells, and the more time he put in, the better he could make any individual cast.  More useful teleports, or sword summonings, or fireballs, all of that could be useful in a practical way.  Hell, even ignoring equipping spells as an activity, James could be absorbing red orbs and rotating through using the interrogations on spellbooks as fast as he could without melting his brain.  After all, that reduced the time to equip a spell from a given book, permanently, and if James was going to keep picking up the ability to create rope from nothing, he should probably invest in it.

Or he could be stockpiling more Velocity.  Occupying the passing lane on the highway, pushing his Velocity to its cap, and then going home and carefully using the leveler crown’s primary effect.  That crown did a lot of random stuff, but among its many ‘functions’, it compressed down Velocity into a kind of high-powered state that boosted any of the Horizon spells it was then used for.  It wasn’t something a person got to pick and choose on, but it was a good use for setup time if someone had it, allowing them to be surprisingly dangerous out of nowhere.  The crown’s effect of making a person produce ratroach-arousing pheromones was just a bonus.  At least, to James.

Or he could be pouring his Breath into various wands that were quickly starting to become commonplace around the Order, stockpiling Climb spells for anyone to use without the backlash.  Or he could be playing board games with Terror and… actually no, Terror was a bad choice.  He could be playing board games with Ash and Ink, slowly building toward more of the spells the umbral granted to people who ‘defeated’ them.  Or he could be working on trying to figure out what all the new stuff in his personal demiplane did.

Heck, if he wanted to be of immediate practical use by doing something physically active and kind of dangerous, James could just teleport to northern Oklahoma and hunt down some of the loose dungeon wildlife that was still an uncontained and ongoing problem there.

Or he could be making active plans for a delve.  Or some other operation, too.  There were so many things on the table right now that James might be called on for, that he could contribute to the designs of.  Intelligence gathering, assault mapping, even just sharing delve tactics, it was all something that he could have done instead of this.

And yet.

The more time passed, the more there was going to be that a paladin could do.  He could be doing something to make himself stronger, or to advance the Order’s goals, or he could be having dinner with his lovers, or he could be training.  Or, he could be here.

Telling a group of people, many of them from different sources, here for different reasons, that they were all welcome.  That of all the things he could do, he would always spend some of his time and strength to make a place for them to gather and become something new.

James aggressively didn’t believe in fate.

But he did believe he had something that was meant for him to do.

And whatever he had to do, he had to start somewhere.

So it started here.  On a chilly Tennessee evening.  And James almost had himself convinced that this was something he was totally comfortable with, when he got a message.  Specifically, one of those messages that bypassed all of his mute settings, and made both his phone and the brain it was connected to chime loudly.

Well.  At least James got to finish his fun introduction speech first.  He’d have to make time to get to know the ratlings, and everyone else too really, later.

Maybe fate was just mad at him for continuing to ignore it.