The Daily Grind - Chapter 389 (Patreon)

This is the bonus chapter week. This is chapter 1 of 2 for this week.

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"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world." -Louis Pasteur-

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It was with some surprise that James ended up back in Townton without being shot.

The whole drive down the highway, heading toward the largest interstate cutting through Utah, he’d felt like he was two seconds away from being taken out by either sniper fire or a random explosion.  A tension in his chest as he knew he was going to be killed, that someone was going to at least try to hurt him; a tension that no amount of prepared defense was doing a damn thing to alleviate.

But then the convoy of assorted vehicles had pulled over at the site of his demiplane slip, and been abandoned on the roadside as they’d prepared to funnel what was probably more people than intended through the gap into James’ private world.

Slips were weird.  James knew that he could take people through with him, but he’d never really stress tested it himself.  Fortunately, other people had, and he had the ability to read reports.

The sensation of holding his arm through a hole in the world so that it didn’t close, feeling the resistance as space itself went from ‘mostly fine with this’ to ‘growing impatience’ to ‘petty ire’ was deeply uncomfortable.  But if this was all it took to manage an evacuation, he’d handle it and he wouldn’t even complain once.  At least, not until the very end, when he was back home.

The Recovery team went first, the batch of them who had just come down here today looking a little put out that they were immediately turning around.  Then, once there were responsible adults in place to make sure that no one was going to walk off an edge and into a semi-eternal void, the dozens of younger humans and less mature dungeon life were funneled through.  It reminded James like nothing so much as a school field trip; heads down, bags clutched awkwardly, and half the kids looking like they’d been forced to wake up against their will and already partly carsick.

Alex and Simon went last, the rest of the Order crew already through and herding the kids through James’ demiplane toward the door.  He felt like he should have been able to feel it.  The demiplane was kind of a part of him, so it was strange that he had no proprioception for it.  But that was kind of the least of his concern at the moment, it was just a distraction.

Because he still sort of expected someone to take a shot.  Even up until the very last moment when he stepped through his own portal and found his demiplane ground mildly scuffed by the passing of fifty sets of feet, paws, and tails.

That was fine.  It would repair itself.  Demiplanes always reset to default, whether you wanted them to or not.

James took the time to check some of the stuff in here while the others carefully wound down the staircase to the trio of doors he had.  Those doors all had their own keys, and he was so happy they worked the way he wanted.  He could pair a door somewhere else just by using the key on it - and they always fit, because magic - and then it was a free one way connection from his demiplane to anywhere.  Naturally, James kept one of the keys in his always-carry kit, and set one of them up in a freestanding door in Townton just in case he ever needed it.  Which he did, now.

Eventually, the keys would respawn in here, though the doors wouldn’t change their destinations until James actually used them.  So it was flexible, reliable, and consistent, and an escape route was the least useful that this magic could ever be.  His test with Clutter Ascent had already shown that he could get into at least some dungeons with it.  But also… James didn’t have to be the one turning the key to link a door.  Some invisibility, a teleporter, and the Order of Endless Rooms could deploy a whole shield team inside an opponent’s house if they wanted to.  Which would be a bit of a surprise, he was sure.

Townton also might be a little surprised to get a few more people than they’d expected from the personal teleporter, but the Order was smart.  And especially once they were outside the memeplex range, James was sure things would smooth out fast.

Meanwhile, he checked the other parts of his demiplane, circling around the wooden wall and the couches that Arrush and Ink-And-Key were waiting on, moving through floating pieces of terrain until his boots crunched on gravel from one of his first upgrades.

”Dammit, Alex was right.”  James said as he looked at the mostly melted snowball sitting on its plinth.  “Well, at least I probably know what that is.”  A snowball of fire resistance.  Helpful, he supposed.  Though he did test it, standing in front of the thing and holding a lighter under his hand; feeling the heat, but not any damage from the fire, watching the snowball that had otherwise been static start to slowly drip into water that pooled on its plinth.  “Hope that regenerates.”  He muttered, looking back at where a dwindling crowd of kids were being guided one by one down the stairs to the doors.  It probably regenerated; everything in a demiplane did eventually, so James wasn’t worried.

The other thing he checked was the jewelry box.  He was just curious about if it was going to have anything, since he hadn’t lost any jewelry lately.  The leveler earring it had replaced was an amazing piece of recovery from what could have been a serious hit to the Order’s armory, but James didn’t actually have that many magic rings, especially ones that got melted on a regular basis.

So he was a little surprised when the container had a leveler earring in it.  Again.  A perfect copy of the one he was wearing.

”Okay.  So.”  Zhu said slowly, talon tracing the fancy box on its little shelf.  “What we need to do is make a lot of magic earrings, and then get you enough piercings to qualify as goth.”

“Sure.  I can get a trenchcoat.  That’s still a goth thing, right?”  James stared at the little piece of magic in his palm for a while, ignoring Zhu’s fashion advice, before nodding to himself with pursed lips, and handing it to Alex as the last of the crowd finished evacuating his demiplane.

”Oh!  This’ll be great for tomorrow.”  Alex said appreciatively, affixing it into her ear.

”Whaaaat’s tomorrow?”  James asked with sudden anxiety.

Alex raised her eyebrows back at him.  “Simon and I start prying into the godeaters?  Did you forget?”

”I’m not gonna lie, I somehow thought you’d be taking at least a day off.”  James admitted.

Zhu made a revving sound of laughter.  “Why did you think that?  Is the oxygen in here already running out?”

James determinedly ignored the chuckles from the others that were loitering in the closest thing his demiplane had to a public area.  Other people sometimes got fairly expansive zones in theirs; streets or courtyards or even structures like Alex had.  Mismatched and still suspended in a void so nothing that it wasn’t even empty, sure, but at least with a little walkable area.  James got a bamboo path and an offshoot area of rough wood floor that was maybe the size of his apartment’s kitchen.  Though at least the green orb - painful as it was to use - had added a little area to the place.  “I guess I’m not taking a day off either.”  He said, easing back onto the arm of the brand new yet apparently old couch that Arrush was sitting on.  “Fuck there’s so much going on.”  He groaned, rubbing at his eyes.

The feeling of a paw settling on his flank would have been more comforting if Arrush hadn’t just applied pressure to where James had been shot by a ratling crossbow last week.  It only took a short hiss of pain for the ratroach to adjust though.  “At least… at least this will help with the banana problem.”  He said, leaning to look around the corner at the last few people descending the steps into the depths of James’ demiplane.

”…The what?”  Alex asked, sharing a baffled and slightly unsettled look with Ink-And-Key.

The camraconda lolled his head over the end of his own couch to look up at James and Arrush.  “Are bananas going to kill us all now?  I should have prepared for this.  I should have done more.  It will be embarrassing to die to this particular out of context problem.”

Arrush looked like he was contemplating throwing his alchemy mask at Ink-And-Key.  “No.”  He said instead with a huff.  “Townton has a large number of bananas.”

”Wwwwwwwhy?”  James asked his boyfriend.  “Did we find magical bananas?  Or do you mean Ann’s fosterling?  And if so, I have more questions.”

”Oh shit, no, I know this one!”  Alex relaxed with a sigh.  “The people Spire bailed out of the path of the Lloyd sold them to us.  Or gave them to us?  It was so cheap it was basically free.  And that also reminds me!  That dungeon is still down there in Uruguay, you should go check it out sometime.”  She told James.

He coughed.  “Me?  Not you?  Don’t say you’re-“

”I’m busy.”  Alex said anyway.

”-yeah.”  James rolled his eyes.  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.  Hey, let’s get the hell out of here before the air actually runs out, yeah?  Ink, do you need help down the stairs?”

The camraconda hissed at him in annoyance.  “I am not incapable of stairs.”  He told James indignantly.  “I am simply larger than - oh they are spiral stairs.  Oh no.  Oh I have been rude too quickly.  Fortunately I have a solution to this.”  The camraconda leading the way through the thin space of James’ demiplane pushed himself forward with a heavy slithering motion, casting a single limited use of Appointed Arrival as he did so.  The spell, thankfully, worked on his species, and he was rather grateful that the study time for it was often less than the time it would have taken to painstakingly navigate stairs anyway.  “There.”  He spoke from the bottom of the steps.  “Now I shall resume being belligerent, as I was correct the whole time.  Also which door do I take?”

”The middle one!”  James called down, shaking his head.  “Alex your coterie is weird.”

”You’re telling me.”  The paladin laughed back at him.  “But hey, have you ever heard of the Order of Endless Rooms?  They’ve got some real weirdos working for them.”  She announced as she took careful steps down the twisting staircase toward the temporary escape.

”…I’m not weird…” Arrush pouted next to James.

James patted his boyfriend on his shoulder.  “You’re beautifully weird.”  He informed him.  “Come on firefly.  Let’s go enjoy Townton for a little before something else comes up.  Maybe we’ll see some of those other weirdos while we’re there.”  He offered a hand.

With a chitter, Arrush took it, and let James haul him to his feet.  “Maybe.”  He said agreeably.  “Maybe we can hide from whatever wants you next.  The park has a lot of good hiding places.”  He grinned at James impishly.  He and Keeka had found several excellent concealed spots around Townton’s park, and he would be happy to share them with his human partner that really, really needed to not be called on for anything for at least a few hours.

”I’ve got questions!”  James laughed as Zhu knowingly poked at his side.  “Now let’s go, I wanna see if you like how these doors feel.”

As it turned out, Arrush didn’t.  Too much static electricity.

That didn’t stop James from loving his one-way doors to anywhere though.

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“No.”  Cam told her Crimson sister.  “There is no limit to it.”

”…I don’t understand.”

”We know.”  Cam and Ami said at the same time, the two sisters sitting at the salvaged and scuffed wooden table that had been moved into the apartment’s kitchen.  Both of them raised their coffee cups at the same time, though they took different depths of sip.  Cam was more used to it, and Ami's lips still had some twisting to the flesh that made it harder to drink deeply.

The Crimson kept staring at them from where she was standing in the arch of the apartment’s hallway.  “Are you going to explain to me?”

Cam resisted a sigh, though her cerulean scaled wings drooped over the back of her beige and white kitchen chair that was doing an admirable job of holding her weight.   “Sister, there isn’t anything to explain.”  She told her mirror.  “Take as long as you want.”  Refocusing on Ami was the work of a tiny flick of both their eyes.  “Now.  I will be spending fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred scrubbing the dungeontech conversational recall file for information.  Will you be available to cover my patrol of Townton during that time?”

”Yes.”  Ami gave a half-nod, head jerking downward and then not seeming to ever complete the nod even though her gaze leveled out anyway.  Cam wondered if she nodded like that.  “My mandated interrogation will be complete by then, and I have become familiar with your standard route.  I will not socialize with TQ however.”

Cam gave her own nod and almost winced as she realized she did nod that way.  ”Acceptable.  He’s been in a rather unhappy mood lately.  I would like you to do a wellness check on Mist and Calypso however.  They have been isolating themselves.”  It was difficult to track the movements of all six hundred plus umbral in Townton, especially as the number kept growing, but Cam had a protocol for it that was working rather well.

”He was shot in the head.”  Ami defended the camraconda, accepting the secondary task without question.

”I was shot in the head and didn’t complain.”

”You asked paladin Lyle to shoot you in the head to field test your armor, that does not count.”

”Hm.  Sophistry is more difficult than I realized.”  Cam sighed.  The two sisters sipped their coffee again, both of them half talking to each other, half listening to a local news report through their skulljacks, half reading copies of recovered Status Quo documents on the table.

Neither of them turned to acknowledge the Crimson that was still standing and glaring at them.

”At eighteen hundred, I wish to… I want…” Cam faltered.  “Do you want to come with me to see Kiki?”  She asked, forcing herself into a different pattern.

”Yes.”  Ami said instantly, before seeming to shrink in her seat.  “If that…”

”Yes.”  Cam told her, reassuringly.

”Neither of you have explained!”  The Crimson finally snapped and demanded an answer from her sisters.  “What do you mean there isn’t a limit?!  How am I supposed to… to…!”

Cam looked over at the Crimson that had been annoying her ever since refusing to leave after failing to murder her.  “I am becoming frustrated with you.”  She said pointedly.  “Not everything needs to be a fight, sister.  Nor is it a trap.  Go take your shower, and use as much hot water as you want, it isn’t complicated.  This is how-“ she found herself choking on the word, blinking as she turned away and caught her breath.  “This is how our people live.  You decide when you’re done.  And I know we have told you this before.”

The Crimson glared back at her, mouth open to say something, when the front door was firmly kicked open and Nate backed in wheeling a hand cart.  “Getting this shit up the stairs was a pain, so you better fucking…” he stopped as he turned around and saw the three of them, before turning to Cam and jerking a thumb toward the Crimson.  “Why’s she naked in my living room?”

”She is having a crisis of faith over our cavalier attitude toward the existence of the water heater.”  Cam answered, looking around Nate to the banker’s boxes he’d brought up.  “Is that the rest of the New York Status Quo reports on the chanters?  Thank you.”  She noted Nate’s expression of concern.  “It is very strange seeing you frowning intensely at a naked woman that you know looks like me.”  She told him.

Nate grunted and shook his head, kicking the door shut, apparently allergic to using his hands on it.  “It’s different and you know it.  Hey!”  He gruffly barked toward the Crimson.  “I’m making you breakfast.  You’ve gotta tell people when you’re hungry, dumbass.”

”Oh damn.”  Ami said with her own sigh, two fingers gently running down the side of her face and tracing the slightly ridged flesh there.  “I did not think to tell her.”

”Ah.  She is underfed.”  Cam realized what Nate’s interest was.  “Ah, I did it again!”  The heel of her palm impacted her forehead.  She had forgotten this same important thing with Ami as well.  Camilles never showed up with the ability for self advocacy.  “I need a script for this.”

“I am leaving.”  The Crimson said, turning on her heel and stalking back through the hall, Cam and Ami watching her leave.  A few moments later, the sound of the bathroom door shutting and the gentle static of the shower sputtering to life reached them.

Ami and Cam nodded to each other, sipping their coffee again, though one of them found her mug empty already.  “She needs to eat more.”  Ami said.

”Don’t get on a fucking high horse, you barely weigh seventy pounds.”  Nate commanded her as he started throwing pans on the stove with no regard for the integrity of the metal.  “Dammit, where’s my cast iron?  Or did that get haunted too?”

”I do not think things get haunted out of the kitchen.”  Cam told him.  “And it is to the right of the stove.”

Nate popped his head up to glare at her over the counter, one tattooed hand pointing Cam’s direction.  “Something tried to give me a heart attack for remembering a fucking bedroom, don’t tell me there isn’t an infomorph that eats my memories of where my fucking pans are!”  Nate’s voice rose to a yell accompanied by a clatter of metal as he went back to his search on the wrong side of the stove.  “Why are we still living here?”  He grumbled.

Cam actually had an answer for that.  “It would be difficult to investigate the antimeme that did that to you if we simply left.”  She said evenly.  “And something of that strength likely means it was recent, possibly local.  What we now know from our pillar research regarding dungeon concentration makes it likely there is another dungeon within the area.  Possibly one we have already located.  Staying increases our chances of locating it again.”

And also she didn’t want to leave.  It occurred to Cam only as she was speaking that she could simply move to a different home down here; even with the influx of population the Repair division had been doing an admirable job of keeping up with the housing needs.  But this… was her home.

When had that happened?

Townton, yes.  She understood that.  She understood that she had become bound to this city through a series of emotional and social tethers that she couldn’t bring herself to unhook.  She like the magically enhanced outdoor cafe, she liked the necroads she had begun to have small sign language conversations with, she liked Horizon delves, she liked the large scale chant that wasn’t just chanter voices anymore, she liked - for entirely non-metaphorical and impersonal reasons - seeing ruins replaced or revitalized as the city grew into more than just a few blocks of slapdash temporary structures.

But Cam didn’t know when she’d started thinking of this apartment as hers.  Not hers alone, but the place that she belonged.  The home she returned to at the end of a patrol or a delve or a meeting.  The bedroom where she kept her therapy journal and didn’t feel like it would be compromised, the kitchen where she’d learned how to make eggs, the living room where she and Nate had multiple corkboards up to track their ongoing investigation into the Last Line’s other daughters and the new problem of the Coalition.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Nate’s ongoing plan of muttering his way through breakfast stopping as he actually tried to make conversation.  “Plans for today?”  He asked her.

”Various.”  Cam told him.  “Planner has allocated some more time to helping with determining what it was exactly that infected us, though knowing how these things tend to work, I doubt we will locate anything new here.  I will also be an escort for the Pylon program tonight, so don’t make dinner for me please.”

Nate’s look told her that she was getting leftovers anyway.  “Be careful.”  He told her uselessly, a lot contained in those simple words.  “And before you go, hand off your dailies.”

”Ah, of course.”  Cam rose from her seat, taking Ami’s mug with her as she slid their dishes down the counter to the edge of the sink.  Reaching one hand over, Nate caught her palm in his grip, and Cam fed the two daily casts of Salt that she had from her umbral interactions to him.

It was such a small spell.  And yet it wasn’t.  Though she still wished she’d gotten her advancements in a different order, because Muscle Empowerment was far too strong to only have a single use, and Repair Document was… well, actually, Repair Document as her third was fine.  Not quite as clandestine as she wanted, but it had its applications.

”Thanks kid.”  Nate told her, the words flaring against something in Cam’s chest that she didn’t know the term for.  “Oh yeah, Pia says hi.”

”Oh?”  Cam hadn’t really known that Nate was familiar with any chanters enough to be able to put names to shell patterns and facial structures, but she really shouldn’t be surprised.  The man was much smarter than he let people realize.

He shrugged as he hauled ten different things out of the fridge in one curled arm.  “Well, she said to tell you hello with a lot of intentionally restrained excitement and that feeling where your fingers itch if you aren’t doing something.”

”Restlessness.”  Ami offered.

”Yeah, thanks.”  Nate nodded to the other Camille.  “You still doing martial arts stuff with them?”

”The necroads as well.”  Cam nodded.  “I find the process of iterating on self defense techniques is exceptionally useful for learning them myself.  Especially as I have a non-standard body profile.”

Nate raised his eyebrows, the lines of fur on his head having finally recovered fully after the fireball incident.  “That what you’re calling it?”  He asked.

”I have to call it something.”  Cam let a small smile onto her lips.  “Now.  I need to prepare.  Our reports from Utah have…” she stopped talking, her and her sister both tipping their heads toward the window with the same hawkish motion as they caught an out of place sound nearby.  “That is…” before she could finish that thought, Cam got a message.  “Oh good.”  She said out loud.  “Our paladins are back.”

“Actually good, or did I teach you too much sarcasm?”  Nate asked her.

Cam considered her reply.  “I’m going to ask to borrow a shotgun before embarking later.”

”I have one you can use.”  Ami told her helpfully from the kitchen table.

“I’m gonna strange James.”  Nate said with something almost cheerful.  “Every time something like this happens?  More work.  I can feel it coming.  We can’t just have one goddamn week where we get used to this shit, learn how to work in the new magic, maybe figure out why the government has a grudge against airports.  Can’t have a day where I get to grill and get drunk and talk about basketball.”

Cam snorted back at him, a habit she wasn’t sure she liked realizing she was picking up.  “You can have a day off whenever you want.  The lack of air travel doesn’t stop us from taking vacations.”

”Alright, fine, you brat.  I’m gonna find an empty tropical island somewhere and we’re going to the beach tomorrow.  Bring some chanters, they’ll probably love that.  Happy now?”

”…No, I have work to do.”  Cam told him.

”I can cover your work, do not worry.”  Ami told her, patting Cam stiffly on the edge of one of her wings as her sister walked by with a barely concealed grin, escaping out the front door with a brief comment of “I have an interrogation appointment, I must go.” and leaving Cam to the wolves.  She was trying so hard, to be more like the sister who had been here before her, but she still had no idea how to perform an act of physical affection, and it didn’t really help that neither did Cam.

Nate stared after her.  “The fuck is she talking about?”

”Therapy.”

”Mh.  Yeah, okay.  I’ll give her that one.”

”Do not.”  Cam almost rolled her eyes.  “I must go too, though.  If only to check on who has shown up.  This may upset my plans for the day.”

Nate flipped his spatula at her.  “Get out of here.  I’ve got a quiche to make for your dumbass sister.”

”…That seems like it would take some time.”  Cam questioned.

With a shrug, the chef started whisking eggs in a bowl.  “I’ve got time until she’s out of the shower.  It’ll be forty minutes before the hot water runs out.”

”And you know this because?”  Cam asked with a gentle laugh that she enjoyed the feeling of as she found her shoes by the door and donned the jacket with the blue orb patches on the arms.

”Experience.”  Nate said with his own smug smile.  “There might have been a few idiots coming through here before who all got the ‘take your time in the shower’ speech.  It’s forty minutes.”  He told Cam with certainty.

Cam refused to feel embarrassed.  “You’re correct, I just don’t like that you noticed.”  She told him, hiding her face behind the open front door.  “Remember not to use any orange as garnish with her.”  She reminded him.  “She’s new.  She won’t…”

”Hey, all of you having the same allergies makes this easy.  Now get out of here.  You’ve got shit to do.”  Nate told her.

What he left out - what Cam knew he was leaving out - was that he had his own shit to do as well.  Rogue operations, conversations that were close to interrogations with some of their newer pickups from different places, background security checks for people coming in to form the next shield team, being their point of contact for the ex-FBI squad that was currently somewhere in Brazil for reasons Cam didn’t yet know…

Nate did a lot of things.  And she was kind of surprised that he was willing to take time out of one of his rather narrow windows for downtime to make a quiche for one of her sisters.

But maybe she wasn’t that surprised.

Just a little worried that Nate might not ever actually be sleeping.  Did he have that option?  Cam needed to reference his profile, he might have magic for that.

For now, she had something weird that was probably James’ fault to handle.

_____

“Why didn’t any of you tell me dungeon expeditions are boring?!”  Dance demanded of her perfectly normal family unit as she slithered into the Northern Oklahoma Proud Grandparents Adventuring Society clubhouse library and threw herself with all the velocity she could muster over the edge of a chair.  “I’m still bored!”  She declared, before rolling so she had an upside down view of the room and the various old humans that were smirking at her.  And also one new person she didn’t recognize.  “Oh, hey dude.” She addressed the scruffy looking human male that smelled like cigarette smoke and was staring at her.

”Hi.”  The man said, clearing his throat and looking at one of the grandparents.  “Mom?”

The woman didn’t look up from the game of cribbage she was engaged in like she’d wagered her soul on it.  “You’re on your own!”  She called to her son.

”Right.  So…”

The man didn’t get much farther before the rest of the scout team came in behind Dance, Alice still in the process of giving a reply that Dance wasn’t really listening to.  “-and you wanted to come!  You could have brought a handheld, you could have brought a book, but no!  You said dungeons were exciting!”  Alice dropped the bag she was carrying onto the floor and slid it with a foot behind the aquarium.  “You could have listened to us!  You could have said ‘oh, mom, you’re so smart and you’ve gone on so many delves and I trust your opinion and-‘“

”Hey!  I’d never say that!”

”I know!”  Alice yelled before stomping out the other side of the common room.

Charlie watched her go, then looked back at Dance with a disproving shake of his head.  “You should stop antagonizing her.”  He told the girl, before realizing that Manon hadn’t walked farther into the room and was lurking behind him, the crocamaw using his frame as cover.  Charlie had already noticed the newcomer, but hadn’t really considered it would make anyone nervous.  “Hey there.  Relative?”  He asked to break the ice.

”Yeeeah…” the man said slowly.  “You?”

”No, we’re just friends.”  Charlie answered, walking over calmly and ignoring Dance’s feeble attempt to bite at his leg.  He extended a hand.  “Charlie.”

The man took his hand in a grip like he’d long ago forgotten that handshakes didn’t have to be violent combat.  “Steve.  I’ve seen Men In Black, so I’ve gotta ask…”

”We aren’t going to mind wipe you.”  Charlie answered quickly.  “Planner’s busy today anyway.  The quick version is that magic is real, we’re exploring a relatively local hole in reality, and your mother could probably explain more.”  He explained with his usual subdued tone of quiet appraisal.

”Right, right.  And the aliens?”

”Valued members of our organization and family.”  Charlie’s voice didn’t change as he looked down at Dance, still upside down and draped over a chair.  “Inexplicably.”

”Hey!”

Steve nodded slowly, though like he didn’t really mean it, as more people filtered into the library behind Charlie and Manon.  Several of them he actually recognized, because they were older friends of his mom.  “Wait, Eileen?  What are you wearing?”

The woman in question, currently looking somewhat grumpy and frazzled, looked down at herself and then back at the younger man that was questioning her.  “It’s armor, Stephen.  Goodness, put that college degree to use, would you?  Miriam!  Your son is asking horrible questions again!”

”He’s on his own!”  Miriam yelled back, getting a loud laugh from one of the other players in her card game.

”Why are you wearing…!”

Charlie didn’t hear the rest of that sentence.  He was intelligent enough to extrapolate, anyway.  Normally Charlie had an aversion to working with incomplete information, but…

Well he’d had this conversation before.  Operating out of the Northern Oklahoma Proud Grandparents Adventuring Society clubhouse and home base while his team investigated the local dungeon conditions meant that he’d been present for at least five different cases of a family member showing up and making a big deal about the existence of Dance or Manon.  He’d also been present for one of them that had gotten a man disowned by parents that were incredibly disappointed with his bigotry.

Fortunately, Manon hadn’t been present.  Unfortunately, Dance now knew that Charlie wasn’t quite as levelheaded as he often made himself out to be, and that he wasn’t exactly an expert in a brawl.

For the time being, though, Charlie had work to do.  He could spend time negotiating Dance’s performative tantrum, or helping Eileen walk someone through the fact that just because many of the people here were back in action as dungeon delvers didn’t mean the Society’s Valentine’s Day pot luck was canceled.  But he didn’t want to.  He wanted to do paperwork.

Paperwork was soothing.  Some people liked the hairpin that let them skip the repetitive part of it, but Charlie didn’t feel the need to waste charges at the moment.  There was just something satisfying about the Order having cleanly organized files now where he could insert addendums regarding biomes, life forms, dungeontech, and magic rewards.

First, though, there was a different kind of bookkeeping.  And that was the fact that it had been a week in the dungeon, and then about two hours on the road to get back here, plus a stop at a McDonalds for everyone in the car that wasn’t Charlie, and all of that time meant that between one and five apocalypses could have occurred.  So Charlie needed to catch up.

A quick look through the critical information channel got him up to speed.  The Tyranny situation was ongoing, the mannequin spawns had been managed without casualties, air travel in the US was still halted and the rogues had no information on how, the sun cult wasn’t a cult and had been peacefully resolved, the Underburbs hadn’t attacked, and the paladins were collectively back from Utah with about thirty young refugees and no good news.

The world hadn’t ended.  That was good news.

With that out of the way, other news could wait until Charlie’s own reporting was done.  Claiming a spot on the big couch where, mercifully, no one was watching football at the moment, he opened his laptop and got to work on an outline while someone’s worldview shattered nearby.

Bank dungeon biomes, multiple, diverse, threats in each of them often novel yet capable of migrating.  Lobby, wide open areas, echos, plants and furniture, minimal value but often safe.  Counters, misnomer, includes offices and space on both sides of teller counters, spatial warping in effect, biome cuts through others and overlaps itself in significant ways, access requires unorthodox navigation, contains multiple forms of trap.  Pools, submerged hallways and stairwells, area is…

”What’cha working on?”  Dance asked him.

”The report on our boring dungeon.”  Charlie said.

Dance ducked her head, slithering up against the couch next to where Manon was sitting near Charlie.  “It wasn’t that boring.”  She said sheepishly.

Manon raised his head, the heavy motion giving him the reach needed to settle the end of his long maw on the top of Dance’s camera head.  “Y-you almost drowned.”  He told her from the end of his mouth that was now resting on her.

”I did not!  I know how to swim!”  Dance retorted, trying to escape and finding that she couldn’t.

”I’m sure you do.”  Charlie said, continuing to the executive office biome in his outline and leaving a reminder for himself about the empowering zone effect those places had on local wildlife.  “But you can’t swim when you’re wearing armor, and you know Alice worries about you when you almost drown.”

”…do you not worry about me when I almost drown?”  Dance asked him.

Charlie didn’t look up.  “I worry about you every time we do anything dangerous, Dance.”  He said.  “I just try to not let it make me angry.”

”Oh.”  Dance deflated slightly, her cabled form slumping.  “Uh.”

”That’s worse!”  Manon whispered to her.

”Yeah I know!”  Dance exclaimed, energy coming back to her.  “That’s so much worse!  Okay, new plan!  Manon, we’re gonna have to go into dungeons alone from now on!”

”No.” “No.” Manon and Charlie answered in perfect unison.

At the point that Dance tried to tackle Manon for his unwillingness to engage in some kind of dungeon-based suicide pact, Charlie tuned out the kids’ fighting.  Manon, at least, was a little cautious, so he could probably be trusted.  And as long as the two of them were wrestling around on the big throw rug of the common room and not the cold marble of their camp in a dungeon, he was willing to let them play without worrying that one of them was going to need medical attention.

Charlie ignored the thunk of one of them slamming into the base of the couch in what was probably supposed to be a dramatic roll, and got to work outlining the dungeon’s basic magic.

For good or ill, on a week long expedition into a dungeon it was more or less a given that some of the loot drops weren’t going to survive all the way to the copier ritual.  Which meant they had a lot of field-tested examples of the magic, which included enough variety that Charlie could say there was variety.

The little diamond loot drops gave jobs.  That much they’d already know.  Unlike an absorbed orange orb, though, these jobs were from a workplace that actually expected timely results.  Users were given a time limit, and a quantity of material that they were expected to collect.  If you had that material under your ownership when the timer ran out, then you were rewarded with Wealth mana.

Charlie had given up on not calling the various magic system resources mana.  The Order’s internal documents didn’t use the term, but he was being practical here; everyone could recognize it, and it simplified things.

The mana of Wealth was useful for two things.  One was opening doors, which it did ‘fluidly’, and perhaps implied that it was capable of other freeform magical uses, a thing Charlie included in his report.  The other was that it could be fed into various dungeontech from the Bank dungeon as a power source.  A majority of the immediately useful dungeontech was creation based; producing matter on demand in various types and forms.  Though there was also a collection of magic items retrieved that had minor reparative, or even just aesthetic effects.

The interesting thing to Charlie about the loot drops was that they were operating on a similar level of information as purple orbs.  Purple orbs had a natural tendency to lie to their users through omission; there wasn’t exactly a good way to tell if something was a one time change to a body, an effect that followed your sense of self if you migrated to other bodies, a physical amplification to a single body, a magical amplification to a single body, or a genetic alteration that was likely capable of being passed on to hypothetical children.  That was a rather wide scope for what a single orb could do, and even if they told the truth about the end effect, they didn’t explain how they were getting there.

The diamond drops were the same way.  Some of the jobs given required that you gather material, which would then be removed from reality (or perhaps just warped somewhere else, there was no way to confirm without sufficient information).  Some jobs would leave you with the material after the timer elapsed.  The first kind of job tended to repeat with the same requirement, while the second would repeat with a higher requirement, which led to a different style of challenge.  One was about cultivating a sufficiently stable income stream, while the other was about building a large enough warehouse.  And of course, it didn’t stop there either.  Some jobs simply didn’t repeat, but you could usually tell because they would offer bulkier Wealth rewards.  Some jobs would loop and change their target, usually ones that wanted specific currencies shifting to another nation’s form of money.

And all of them only gave information when they were acquired, and when the job’s timer ran out.  Charlie was used to that by now, but he didn’t have to like it.

He also did not like speculating.  This wasn’t exactly new, he’d disliked speculating for a long time.  But Alice had informed him that if he didn’t include discussed potential plans for the dungeon in his report, she was going to break into his laptop and introduce random typos.  He assumed she was joking, but he was also willing to humor his cohort.

So the magic section contained thoughts - his own and others from the expedition - on potential, and tactics they should test immediately.  Wealth mana collection by timing copied jobs and moving ownership of material between delvers.  Using Wealth-powered dungeontech to produce more material than was required for jobs to generate more Wealth.  Determining if Wealth could be converted to its ‘fluid’ form to be shared or stockpiled.  That kind of idea, that they had no reason to assume would work, but that they could try with minimal investment.

As he kept fleshing out the report with references from notes, photos, and video from the delve, Charlie also checked the Order’s database multiple times for comparisons.  It was during that process that he discovered that there was a new asset from Pylon Motoric that generated clear text explanations on how to use tools.  Including magical ones.

”I feel as if someone should have told me about this.”  He said, staring at his screen.

”Did you just discover YouTube?”  Alice asked as she returned, dropping down next to him and propping her feet up on a now-exhausted Dance that was laying sprawled out in a line on the carpet and panting heavily, having failed to overcome her adversary.  “Don’t start watching shorts, you’ll try to kill someone over a bad explanation.”

”I would not do that.”  Charlie said on reflex, assuming that if Alice was claiming it, it was probably a joke.  “Did you know we have a truck that makes FAQs?”  He asked her.

Alice, eyes closed as she listened through enhanced senses to the entire room, didn’t move from where she’d sprawled over half the couch and instantly lost the will to adjust her body any further.  “Yeah.”  She said.

Charlie paused.  Slowly turned to face her.  “How?”  He asked, one hand starting to close his laptop in anticipation of a long conversation.

”I’m lying.”  Alice answered, and Charlie instantly reopened his screen and went back to typing in mild exasperation.  “Hey don’t forget to put the seeds in there.”

”I won’t forget.”

”The seeds are a big deal.”

”I am aware.”

“Okay, as long as you know.”

The seeds were a reward that came from one of the jobs that they’d been lucky enough to find the conditions to complete once.  It had been a much larger gem, and had the so-far unique condition of giving a job with multiple requirements.  But when it was done, in addition to giving approximately forty Wealth, it also created something physical for the user.  A trio of small seeds; or gemstones shaped like what was very obviously supposed to look like seeds.  They’d saved one, planted two while still in the dungeon using salvaged pots and soil, and had been testing what the potential plants needed for sustenance.  So far, judging by the single sprout they’d gotten, it looked like they needed Wealth.

What that was going to amount to, Charlie didn’t know.  But after a week of carefully planning ambushes on hostile dungeon life, risking layered defensive trap zones, and getting so much practice in lockpicking that his fingers still hurt, he was willing to accept that it was something worth exploring and leave it at that.

There was a persistent thought, as he worked on his expedition's full report, that this magic was maybe not what the Order wanted or needed right now.  That it was a waste of replicator space, that it wasn't civically sharable, that it didn't do anything new that they couldn't do better with other magic, that it wasn't especially useful.  But he didn't think that was relevant to whether or not he should explain it fully.  After all, a lot of magic was circumstantial or mildly inconvenient, and it still got used.  A lot of magic the Order had was actually difficult to justify, as it had to be compared to modern technology, and quite a lot of magic failed to live up to the value of a backhoe or a gun.  But on the other hand, some magic that might look useless, like the Office's red orbs, was actually increasingly valuable as it became better understood.

It was far too early to know if there was a secret layer to this dungeon.  It was too early to know if the watch that could convert Wealth into cleanly pressed cones of sand was going to have some kind of niche application.  It was too early to guess if Wealth itself was going to be a massive scaling problem or a silver bullet.  The only thing it wasn't too early for was what Charlie could do right now, which was outlining a report that was going to form the foundation for their future delving to answer all the other questions.

It was maybe ten minutes later that he found himself staring at the glowing screen of his laptop, not having typed a single letter in that whole time.  “I think I’m tired.”  He said out loud, before looking around and seeing that the population of the Society building had shifted around a bit while he was working.  Grandparents and other Order delvers mingling and chatting about their experiences, telling the people who hadn’t come about adventure and treasure and the power of friendship, probably.  Charlie looked over at Alice to say something, and found his fellow scout snoring on the couch, her feet propped up on a camraconda that was also unconscious.  Manon, too, had crawled around so that he was squeezed between Dance and the bottom of the couch, the camraconda girl held like a stuffed animal as he also napped.

Charlie considered his options.  Going home and going to bed sounded uncomfortable; it was too early in the day.  He could try to press on and finish his writeup while the memories were still relatively fresh, but…

He stood carefully, so as not to disturb the others, and stretched.  A quick walk in the freezing wind outside sounded nice right now.

And it would give him some time to review what else had happened over his skulljack.  That was just good efficiency.  And if there was one thing that could energize him, it was overlapping useful tasks.

_____

“I can’t believe you made me teleport to another state just to get coffee.”  Reed complained as her roommate dragged her into the single functioning Townton cafe.

There were two different food carts where coffee could be acquired, but this was the only place that was deliberately a cafe.  It had once been a parking lot.  It was technically still a parking lot.  But a formidable application of Thermodynamic Tunnel casts and possibly an orange totem had made the space under what was supposed to be some kind of big tent into a place that felt very homey.  She wasn’t sure, but she was confident that someone had done something magical to make it smell good in here.

Either that or it was her new senses.  Though Reed really needed to stop calling them new.

”You need to relax!”  John told her as they stepped in out of the light drizzle outside.  “And I don’t just mean you need to stop bossing me around, I mean you, personally, need to sit down.”

”I’ve been sitting down all day!”  Reed retorted.  “All I do is sit down!” She flicked her tongue over her muzzle, salivating at the taste of scones in the air.  “I… mmmhh…”  Any further complaint was sidetracked as her gaze drifted to the glass case full of pastries up front.

John nodded as he looked back, waiting for Kyoo to follow them in.  “See?”  He said with an irritating lack of smugness.  “Look, ever since your shaping you’ve been hiding, and doing nothing but work, and even I know that’s bad for you.  You can’t lurk in our apartment twenty four seven.”

“Bold words from the dumbass that thought he was morally obligated to test thousands of pens every day.”  Reed griped.  But her heart wasn’t in it, and the look John gave her made her feel like she’d just kicked a puppy, so she stopped looking at him and focused on the cafe instead.

It was surprisingly busy, for a Wednesday afternoon.  A lot of kids here, Reed realized, which was probably why it was so loud.  But there was something nice about her freshly modified hearing meaning she no longer felt like she was drowning in the sound.  It should have been a school day, but a lot of the children here were human.  Also a few of some kind of clay golem thing.  

Reed had a brief moment of feeling like she’d finally lost her grip on the endless stream of incoming reports about new dungeon life.  A process that had started when there’d been a ratling in her office one day for no reason, and had continued growing since then.

“Kyoo, can you grab us a table?”  John asked as he nudged Reed forward to the line by the counter.

”Yeh!”  The former ratroach wearing Reed’s old body smiled, slinking off to one of the coveted corner tables and obviously psyching herself up to ask to take an empty chair from another nearby group.

The line in the cafe moved slowly.  The baristas here weren’t lazy, but they had no interest in pointless rushing, so things moved at a steady pace.  While they stood there, John awkwardly balanced on the balls of his feet before leaning a little closer and talking out of the side of his mouth.  “Hey, you’re okay with Kyoo here, right?”

”What?”  Reed blinked with her now-deliberely asymmetrical rows of eyes.  More than just an aesthetic choice, she’d refined the style of vision that made other ratroaches harder to fool with optical illusions.  It had taken surprisingly little time to get used to it; things just looked normal now, even after only a few days.  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

”You… uh… haven’t talked to her since your shaping.”  John said.

”I was quarantined.”  Reed said indignantly.

”You’ve been home for a couple days.”

”I…!”  Reed stopped, and looked over at where her old body was leaning forward on the table, curly hair puffed out from where the current user had lain their head inside folded chubby arms.  “I haven’t talked to her?”  She asked.

John shrugged.  “I know you’re just being an introvert.”  He said, and ignored Reed’s protest.  “But she’s been worried.  And also you haven’t talked to me either.”

”Is this an intervention?”  Reed asked, bifurcated tail flicking under her heavy dress.  “This feels like an intervention.”

Pausing to let a chanter scuttle between them and the person in front of them in line, John shrugged.  “I don’t know how to intervene.  I just test pens.”

”Okay I’m sorry about that.”  Reed breathed out, reveling in the perfect flow of the sensation and the total absence of pain that had grown far too familiar in her time with this body.  “I just…” Her arms folded around her torso, her own variant of the semi-standard fixed ratroach form clutching at her body.  “I don’t know.  I thought she’d be mad.  And then I got busy.  I’m always busy I guess.  I like Nik, I swear I do, but he keeps trying to think of ways to use the shrink ray we got to copy stuff, and we haven’t done a single real test with it yet and I’m stressing about if he’s gonna recklessly blow something up.  Which isn’t an excuse, but it was easier to just say nothing, and…”

”You’re the head of an Order division, I don’t think you get to be shy.”  John told her with a shrug, still not looking her direction, because as Reed had learned in her time living with the guy, he was even more socially awkward than she was.  “I dunno.  But I’ll grab our drinks if you wanna go talk to Kyoo really quick.”

Reed looked at the line ahead of them, and judged that ‘really quick’ could probably cover a five minute conversation.  More if she was right about the umbral at the front of the line ordering stuff for a whole construction team.  “Yeah, okay.”

Standing up had become effortless; a thing she wouldn’t have dreamed of in either body she’d worn in her life.  But that didn’t actually mean she wanted to just stand there for an indeterminate amount of time.

So Reed found herself settling onto a mildly comfortable chair that seemed specifically modified to be easily usable for people with tails, with a little divot in the back that her own fit into without having to pinch.  Watching as her old body looked up at her.  “Ooooh.  Hi.”  Kyoo said shyly.

It was, Reed was willing to admit, weird to see her own face looking back at her.  A face she’d hated seeing in the mirror every day, a body that she had hated being in, and here was someone she’d traded with, wearing it like it was a prize.  It made her, she acknowledged, feel a kind of disgusted guilt with herself.  Like she’d cheated Kyoo out of something important.

”Hey.”  Reed said more nervously than she’d expected.  “Uh… sorry John dragged you out here.”

Kyoo shook her head, still peering over the arms that were folded on the table.  “It’s okay.  I’m happy.”  She paused, and familiar eyes turned worried.  “I’m sorry.”

”What, what?”  Reed asked, concerned.  “Wait…”

”I made you mad.”  Kyoo slumped.  “I think?  I don’t know!  Everything is confusing, and I thought it was all good!  But I think I did something wrong.”

Reed huffed out a breath and then started laughing.  A musical chittering that she began as a sardonic chuckle but quickly took over her voice until she’d run out of air.  “Kyoo…”

”I don’t know what the laughing means either!”  The anxious ratroach in a human’s body said, one arm now covering the curly hair of her head.

“I’m not mad!”  Reed said, trying not to begin another laugh.  “I’m just an idiot!”  She blinked, abruptly noticing that her eyes were threatening to drip glowing tears into the fresh fur of her face.  “I’m an idiot, and I feel awful!  Because it’s like… it’s like I stole your body, right before it got to be something good, and I gave you that mess, and it’s not fair!  You don’t get to be yourself!  And I wasn’t hiding from you specifically I’m just bad with people and I didn’t know what to say and I thought that maybe if I ignored it for long enough everyone would forget and things could go back to normal.  Which is stupid, but I’m kind of stupid, so…” she tried to give a casual shrug.

Kyoo raised her head, human face bearing an expression that translated pretty well across several known species, and tried to smile at Reed.  “I… like this though.”  She said, sitting up to a height that Reed had always found awkward and looking down at the overweight form she was wearing.  “It’s nice.  And I don’t care about being myself!”  Kyoo laughed, and this time, Reed didn’t hear her own old voice, she heard someone else that just happened to be using those vocal cords.  “I’m comfortable.  And if I’m not, I can trade.  Again.  Is that okay?”

”I…” Reed paused, and then widened her variable eyes as something clicked for her.  The simple acknowledgement of something she’d technically known, but hadn’t felt; that this was permanent.  This was her body, that wasn’t.  “I mean…” she said, split arms loosening their grip as her paws settled more comfortably around her.  “Yeah.  I guess so.  That’s your body, you can do whatever you want to it.”  Reed grinned in a glowing arc.

”Oh!  Good!  Because I was going to get a tattoo!”  Kyoo said happily, relaxing as tension bled out of the conversation, both of them realizing that things were actually far more fine than they’d thought.

Reed coughed suddenly.  “A tattoo?  Of… what?”

”A tree!”  Kyoo declared.  “I like them.”

“I don’t think I could get a tattoo.”  Reed admitted with a nod that she hoped carried respect.

Kyoo nodded back.  “Yes, you have too much fur now.”

”I… no… well yeah.  But I meant before.  I don’t like needles, so…” Reed had a stray thought.  “Wait, can you tattoo chitin?”

”Kind of!”  John interjected, sliding a trio of mugs he was awkwardly holding onto the table as he arrived.  “You can get ink or etching done, but it isn’t as permanent.  Glow’s got that whole mandala thing on her shoulder, right?”

Reed looked up at the counter, seeing the vibrantly happy ratroach working the espresso machine in a light tank top, despite the cold outside.  Her shoulder and most of that upper arm did look like it had some kind of patterning on it, but it was hard to tell from here if it was a tattoo or just a natural part of her body.

”What… is this?”  Kyoo’s question drew Reed’s attention back, the other girl looking down into the mug John had brought.

It prompted Reed to test her own drink, and found that it was something earthy, floral, and not great.  “Yeah, John, what did you get us?”

”…Matcha?”

”Why did you think either of us would want that?”  Reed pressed, using the voice she adopted when she was trying to lead a junior Researcher to the conclusion of ‘we should not risk blowing anything up for a test’.

John gave a guilty shrug.  “I thought everyone liked it!”

”I do not like it.”  Kyoo took another sip and then gave a full face grimace so strong it made small canyons in the skin of her chubby face.

Reed didn’t bother trying hers, instead setting her mug in front of John for later.  “I’ll get my own drink when the new line dies down.”  She sighed. “In the meantime… uh… does… anyone want to hear about some math I’ve been doing?”

John dragged his gaze away from where a group of chanters and one young human woman that looked kind of familiar had just put out a local chant burst of gratitude and interest.  “Oh, you were doing something other than sulking?”

”Hey!”

”Do not be mean to Reed!”  Kyoo jumped to her defense.  “Even if she deserves it!  Because she worried us!”

”…Heeeyyyyy!”  This protest was more drawn out as Reed took time to process what Kyoo had said.

John gave a smile that made it clear he wasn’t sure if his joke had been too far, and appeased Reed the best way he knew how.  “Tell me about the math?”  He suggested.

”Right.”  Reed latched onto that as a quick way to escape the more emotional conversation.  Not that it was bad, but it was… a lot.  And she needed a break.  “So. Sewer Lessons, right?”

”Eugh!”  Kyoo made a noise that she was pretty sure was a human way to express displeasure.

”Yes thank you.”  Reed smiled at her, and did not know how to process Kyoo’s face, which was her old face, blushing and being hidden again.  “So, it seems like the numbers have settled down for new Lessons.  Did you guys know the early ones were all over the place?”  John just shrugged, while Kyoo kept her head down on the circular varnished wood table.  “Well they were.  But now, they’re more or less constant.  A hundred points for level one, doubling every level after.”

John could follow that at least.  “The rice problem, sure.”

”The… yeah okay.”  Reed ignored that.  “But!  A problem!”

”Yes.  The Sewer.”  Kyoo agreed.

”No!  A different problem!”  Reed waved her split left arms in an animated motion as she got into the presentation she was still refining.  “Every tier of Lesson you have - defined as the current number of upgrades you are actively working on in a Lesson - adds a cumulative fifty percent increase whenever it calculates the requirement for next level.”  She traced a claw across the table, drawing an invisible spreadsheet.  “So your first Lesson is always a hundred.  But if you already have a Lesson at level one, your second Lesson will start at one fifty.  If the first Lesson has been advanced once already, or if you have a second Lesson already, then the next new Lesson will start at two twenty five.  Follow?”

”…Sort of?”  John grimaced, and then realized that Kyoo was nodding enthusiastically, and seemed to actually be completely on track, which made the man wonder how many math skills the ratroach had been picking up.  Because he was already struggling.

Reed ignored his consternation and continued.  “So we know from Ink-And-Key’s particular test, along with a few others we have going now, that if you get three copies of the same Lesson, you basically get each stat it offers, right?”  She did not wait for acknowledgement, mostly only asking as a courtesy.  Reed sort of assumed anyone working in Research would be up to date on the basics.  “So.  With that in mind.  I’ve been trying to find the optimal way to approach Lessons.  And I think I have a plan.”

”Is your plan obtuse and expensive?”  John asked, already starting on the second matcha that he’d gotten for himself while Kyoo longingly looked toward the front counter where the line was almost dwindled enough.

One short break to get real drinks - and several scones - later, Reed continued.  “No.”  She said as Kyoo tore into a pastry in a way that made Reed feel strange about seeing her old body eat.  “It’s perfect.  See, you start with a single Lesson you want to heavily invest in, and get it up to about tier eight.  Then, three copies of something you want every stat in.  Now, at this point, you’re thinking, but Reed!  The scaling cost means you’ll never get anywhere!  And you’re right, but also wrong!”

”I was thinking that.”  Kyoo nodded, crumbs falling from around her mouth.  “Lessons are strange!  But I know that learning twenty thousand things would take forever.”

”Wait, twenty k is how high it goes?”  John asked curiously.

”No, it goes much higher.”  Reed said with her shining blue grin.  “Twenty thousand is about where we stop for the trio of Lessons, which is only tier three or four.  It mostly lets you overlap knowledge, since learning something goes into all of them, right?  Anyway.  Next-“

”Next?!”

”Next you take a lone Lesson with one stat you want.  The multiplier at this point is… like…”

Kyoo thunked a heavy hand into the middle of the table.  “Fifteen to sixteen hundred percent!”

”Sounds about right, thanks.  But if it’s just a Lesson in the first tier?  That’s only a few thousand points.  Four or five thousand is a lot, but we know you can get there with study and orbs.  James did it, and I don’t think James is that focused.  Don’t tell him I said that though.”

”Oh I’m gonna.”  John promised.

Reed’s own blush of awkward embarrassment was a neon green that was a sharp contrast to Kyoo’s human red from earlier, but she fought through it.  ”After about Lesson number nine, you won’t be getting any more, obviously.  And none of them will ever hit tier three.  It’d be… uh… two hundred thousand points.  That might be possible?  For something like physics or biology?  But I don’t think there’s two hundred thousand things to learn about reading, for example.  And even if you do, the next tier is in the millions, and forget it.”

”So where are you riding this train of thought?”  John asked with idle curiosity.  “You want one point in nine different stats?  Is that it?”

”Well, just one point in a stat is a huge upgrade.  And I also want focused amounts in specific targeted things.  I’ve got a list of Lessons I’m working on picking from!  But I do think number one would have to be sex ed, since it’s the only one that gives Health that we know.  But I’d have to learn… I think it’s twenty five thousand things?… about sex?”  Reed fought off the ingrained shame that came from saying that out loud, instilled in her by her painfully human upbringing.  Instead of dwelling on that, she bit into the buttery form of one of her scones and was rewarded with a fountain of crumbs down the front of her dress.  “After that is picking and choosing individual Lessons for targeted stats.”

John nodded. ”So you’re entering your slut era.  I’m happy for you!  I knew that would happen eventually!”

“How?  What? Wait, what?!”

Kyoo, mouth full of scone, nodded energetically and reached over to set a pale human hand on top of one of Reed’s paws that was now frozen on the table.  “Finally!”  She said with more volume than Reed wanted to hear in the cafe.  “I have suggestions for you!”

”I… am… no, this is not where I expected this conversation to go.”  Reed slumped, trying to regain her momentum.  “I just wanted to talk about Lessons!”

”I kind of assumed this was hypothetical.”  John said blandly.  “Nine Lessons?  You’d need years of stipend for that, and that’s with a lot of ‘ifs’.  Also we barely know how to guess what a Lesson book will be.”  He paused as Kyoo gave him an inexpert pouting glower over their table.  “…but also I support your sexual liberation?”  He followed up, and got a satisfied nod from Kyoo.

Reed was starting to change her mind about whether this was a good angle to direct the conversation.  Now she kind of just wanted to curl up and die so that it would at least be over with.  “Yeah.  Hypothetical!”  She said with a squeaky chittering, before dragging the conversation away from this before it was too late.  “John what have you been working on?  Please?”

”Oh, we’re talking about work?  I dunno man-“ He again paused as Kyoo tapped him on the shoulder.  “-I dunno woman.”  He corrected without missing a beat.  “I miss the pens.  Is that insane to say?  We’ve got so many new people, and, like… I think someone assumed the pens were a new person ritual?  So there’s two umbral, a ratling, a camraconda, a chanter, a human, and a human, and they’re all doing pen testing, and they’re… they’re…”

”Doing it bad?”  Kyoo asked with raised bushy eyebrows.

”No!  They’re keeping up!  They’re clearing the backlog!”  John declared, whipping his head around to stare out one of the clear plastic flaps that made up the layered walls of this tent-based cafe space.  “I just… times are changing.”  He sighed wistfully.

Reed stared at the Researcher who was now also a part time delver for a long time, slowly extracting her paw from under Kyoo’s hand as she pulled her arms back and very deliberately raised her scone up to her muzzle to take another bite in slow motion, staring at John the whole time.  “Really?”  Reed asked with a drawn out use of the word.

”I didn’t notice!”  Kyoo said, amplifying the sarcasm.  “Home is so stable and normal!”

Giving an appreciative nod as his plight was acknowledged, John moved on as if he wasn’t currently being mocked.  “Anyway I’ve been ‘upgraded’ to working on the weird Garden coins.”

”They’re all weird.”  Kyoo said happily.  “They smell!”

”…Everything smells.”  Reed told her.

”They smell in this body!  That’s different.  This body’s nose is… is… dull.”  She gave a sheepish purse of her lips toward Reed.  “Sorry!”

Reed chittered in amusement.  “It’s fine, I prefer this one too.  I’ll check for purples for you later.  Anyway, coins?”

”The weird coins, specifically.”  John said.  “They’re no pens, it’s true.  But at least it gives me something to do.”

”Even with the FTQ?”  Reed asked.

John paused.  “The… flametongue… no that’s not the right abbreviation, what are you talking about?”

”The Frequently Trucked Questions.”  Reed said, claws bisecting what was left of her scone.  “The truck that tells us things?”

”Oh.”  John relaxed.  “No I do it manually.”

It felt like there was a story there, but John seemed happy, so Reed and Kyoo just shared a look before letting that weirdness roll past.  ”Any new level three coin?”  Reed asked.  “Or a four, at all?”

”Nah.  So far, I’ve got an L-2 that holds two spells and casts them together-”

”Inconvenient!”  Kyoo declared.

”-an L-1 that speeds up the time to advance of any of the same spell as what’s in it, but only if it’s a lower advancement-“

Reed raised two of her paws, fingers splitting off as she asked a question.  “How did you figure that out?  Actually what is your methodology?”

”Instinct.”  John declared, which was about as scientific as saying ‘vibes’, and Reed knew it.  “Anyway, also an L-1 that delays the casting of the spell for an inverse portion of time to how long you focus on it, starting at an hour.  And an L-2 that steadily advances over time automatically.”

”Next time lead with that one!  That sounds good!”  Reed’s eyes widened as she paused in reaching for the next scone, feeling a brief flash of guilt that she was falling back into the old habit of maybe eating too many pastries and other sweet foods.  “Why did you put that on the list with the penalty coins?”

”Well… if you advance an L-2 enough, it becomes an L-3, depending on the spell, right?”

”Right…”

John shrugged.  “And since we only have the one L-3 coin now, and we only use one per caster…”

”Ah.”  Reed nodded, seeing Kyoo do the same as her fellow Researcher caught on.  “Brain damage.”

”Our old nemesis.”  John agreed.  “Anyway.  I want to make Garden spell testing the new intern thing.  I miss my pens.”

”You are impossible.”  Reed told him.  “Will you ever be happy with anything?  You wanted adventure and then went on a delve and immediately came back to Research, too!”

”I never left Research!”  John declared.  “And also I got stabbed!”

Kyoo prodded him in the side ”Only once!”  She challenged.  “That’s barely any!”

”…Okay I’m changing my side in this argument.”  Reed said.

”Also, I’m happy now!”  John said, his smile growing as he relaxed into his seat and looked around the cafe.  “I mean… I am, right?  I’m kinda happy now.  This is nice.  I just like complaining.  Though!  If you two want, we can go poke around and see if we can find a better L-3 somehow?”

Reed glowered back at him.  ”I’m wearing a dress, I’m not going on a delve.”

”Oh.”  John’s face fell.  “Well… you could get changed?  We have teleporters, right?”

Reed chittered out a huff.  “Nah.  Maybe later.”  She leaned back in her chair, tails flicking on the arranged throw rugs behind her.  “I think I’m kinda happy here too.  For the moment.”

Around them, a couple dozen people sitting around mismatched tables and chairs went about their days.  Coffee and pastries facilitated conversations and dates and meetings and plans and just simple breaks from work.  Outside it was drizzling, but the rain would let up soon enough.  In here, it was warm and comfortable and there was something nice about just being able to sit with people who really, actually, did seem to understand her.

For a little bit Reed forgot about the stress of Research, forgot about the anger at trying to repeatedly block ‘family’ that kept calling her, forgot about the guilt at eating a second scone, forgot about the panic that she’d somehow hurt her friends, and, very deliberately, remembered that she was part of the construction of a new world where people were allowed to like themselves.  

And then she got in an argument with John and Kyoo over the best Garden spell to pair with the Officium Mundi spellcasting skill, and while all the feelings persisted they were kind of swallowed up by the group’s attempt at a spirited debate.  A debate that somehow - and Reed would swear it wasn’t her fault this time - became a debate about droid ethics in Star Wars.

It was a weird afternoon.

But it was also just kind of nice, in the face of everything.

_____

Waking up brought with it a spike of panic.

Momo opened her eyes in the room that was dark except for the red and orange glow of her lava lamps. Her hip hurt, which meant the painkillers had worn off while sleeping, and sleeping in a contorted blob probably didn't help either. Moving, a process that felt more like a procedure these days than it ever had before, was out of the question unless the world was ending.

"Hey."  Her mouth felt like it was full of chalk, the word coming out in a rasp from her sore throat.  "Hey, El."  Momo tried to get her girlfriend's attention, heart pounding.  "El?"  Her voice spiked in pitch.

El, who was sitting propped up in bed against the cool concrete brick of the wall, looked away from the sketchbook she was drawing in under the low light with her mutant eyes and toward Momo.  "Hey, go back to sleep."  She said with a worried softness.  "You need some water or something?"

"Is the world ending?"  Momo asked in that same rasping voice.

"No, dumbass."  El's voice sounded so far away to Momo.  "You're having a nightmare again."

Momo's breathing sped up.  "Oh."  She said.  "Sorry."

"Stop apologizing, drink this."  A straw was presented in the gloom, close enough for Momo to sip at the bottle of water El kept that always seemed to be perfectly cool.  Possibly a flagrant abuse of magic, but they had a million blue orbs now anyway so it was probably fine.  "Now sleep."

"Sorry I'm keeping you up."  Momo muttered into her pillow, sagging back into the bed.

"It's six PM and I'm meeting someone for dinner in, like, twenty minutes.  I just like hanging out with you while you sleep cause I can record you snoring and embarrass awake-you later."  El told an already-unconscious Momo.  "Alright, well, goodnight."  She kept looking down at the bundled form of the other human in the blankets, biting her lip as she shook her head.  "Fucking hell."  El murmured to herself.  "I think everyone always thought that 'dungeon casualties' was going to be dead people."

This was harder to deal with.  Better, obviously.  El kind of preferred Momo alive, all things considered.  But it was so weird to see someone fall apart, more cracks showing every day from an injury that it felt like Momo should have been able to bounce back from.  Most of the time, she was... not fine, but Momers hated letting herself be slowed down, and El knew it.  So her girlfriend would act like everything was cool, and then overexert herself or something stupid.  But in moments like this?

Sometimes Momo slept for fourteen hours a day and still woke up exhausted and sore and having a panic attack.  Sometimes she woke up crying, or, once, screaming.  And El didn't know what to do about that, except bully her into getting shaper surgery or force feeding her purple orbs until something worked.

Because something had to work eventually.  Or else El was going to have to get back into delving in a big way until she made something work.

She kind of suspected that eventually she'd stop enjoying whatever the relationship she had with Momo was.  But that was a problem for future El.  Present El was in that kind of recklessly stupid headspace where she was wondering if maybe she could kidnap her sleeping girlfriend and volunteer her as a test subject for the giant hypnoplant that maybe healed people.

Actually present El was going to be late for a thing.  So present El extracted herself from the bed, careful to not crush anyone in the process, and made an escape.

She felt like her life had gotten impossibly weird.  But she kinda liked it.  She just wanted Momo to be able to keep up, because there was just too much cool shit going on for that girl to be sidelined by an injury.  Especially, El figured, if the world was actually gonna end!  She needed Momo at least able to do a jog if they were gonna outrun the apocalypse together!

Future El was gonna have to get off her ass and do something about that.  Fortunately, she wasn't future El yet.

But man was she not looking forward to how much danger that was gonna involve.

”Oh shit!”  El said a little too loudly as she left the room, narrowly dodging tripping over a box of hand shovels Momo had for some reason.  There was a bunch of new notifications on her phone that she was using as a flashlight to navigate, the device having been neglected while she was fucking around in bed.  “I need to start making sure the world isn’t ending before I tell her.”  El said as she headed out.  “That’d be fucking embarrassing.”

______

James finished debriefing his paladins, and then cast them back to the winds.

Alex and her coterie, including Liette, were returning to North Smiths almost immediately.  Most of the rogues were going with them, though the field operatives on the Recovery team were sticking around Townton to help the new kids acclimate until they were needed down south again.  Or… back west again.  James kind of lost track of geography when everything was next door.

Liette had actually wanted to talk to him, but there hadn’t been time with everything going on.  But there’d be an opportunity later, especially since there were a couple independent navigators going back with Alex’s crew.  Also one assignment-class infomorph, which had surprised James a little when Debt had showed up at the mustering point.  The many-limbed infinite shark manifestation studiously avoiding looking in James’ direction, which was deeply impressive for something that had more eyes than stars.  So James needed to talk to him at some point too.

For now, he saw Alex off with a hug and a reassurance that she was doing a good job and he wouldn’t tease her about Liette where anyone could hear him.  A joke for which he was - perhaps deservedly - thrown into a nearby hedge.  Ink-And-Key also got a hug, the camraconda bemoaning his role as the only one capable of keeping Alex alive, which James made sure to thank him for.

Simon’s group was more straightforward.  They were going back to Saskatoon to investigate a series of assaults that had happened.  The local police technically were on it, but the umbral were certain that heels were being dragged, and Simon had been unhappy to learn that his time in Utah had him more out of the loop than he’d wanted to be.  The people in his coterie, excepting the mongausee that had no strong feelings on the matter, were a little less happy to be going back to a city that they maybe weren’t welcome in.  But Simon had done that thing James was constantly impressed with where he’d just looked at them with a frown until they’d admitted that they’d rather help than do nothing, and that had been that.

Simon got a hug too, which had seemed to surprise him.  Like he wasn’t used to it.  Which… well, that was probably true, but James wasn’t super interested in whatever tradition had caused that situation.  He also got a “Good luck.”  As well as a reminder that if he wanted to bring James a new dungeon for his birthday, then he’d be the one on the hook for doing the math on how much time dilation had messed with James’ actual age.

Spire was, ironically, going the opposite way, to what had originally been Simon’s work.  She and her coterie were going south again - actually south, James checked - to Uruguay.  There was a potential dungeon there to find, as well as potential clues as to the activity of at least one pillar.  Also the national government wanted to give her an award.  After which, she planned to try to leverage the social status of that award into getting a permanent public Order facility set up there.

James wished her luck, gave her the maybe-traditional paladin hug, and reminded her that she was legally allowed to throw Riho into a river if her coterier was too belligerent.

And then, everyone had gone.  Paladins wasted no time teleporting that wasn’t the slight hang time on the telepads.  Rescues had been led off to get food and their introduction tour of Townton.  Even Arrush and Zhu had left, his boyfriend getting a long kiss before being sent off, and the navigator having his teasing attempt at a horrible kiss thwarted by James’ quick thinking before he arced down the wet street toward Townton’s navigator hatchery to check in. And then  it was just himself, Morgan, and one semi-invited guest.

James wasn’t even expected anywhere.  He was so, so close to having a moment to breathe.  A moment that he would absolutely be using on a dungeon delve, of course, but it was the choice that counted.  He wanted the responsibility to be gone, not the activity.  All that stood between him and that was one quick little conversation.

”Come on.”  He told Morgan and Three Oh Six.  “I’m starving and I didn’t get to eat what with your weirdo cousins driving us out of town.  Let’s go grab something to eat, and you can tell us what message you’re supposed to pass along.  And then maybe answer a lot more questions.”  James said.

”I’m only supposed to talk to you, actually…” Three Oh Six said, still clearly high strung and not looking any less nervous now that she was in a city that she’d never heard of full of strangely shaped people all over the place.  “And, uh…” The oilslick stopped talking as James stared at her in an attempt to emulate Simon’s power, and then turned and started walking toward one of the newly refurbished structures surrounding the logisticor plaza, Morgan falling into step behind him and doing a much worse job of covering up his laughter.

The oilslick followed.  Though it was hard for James to say he would have been disappointed if the important messenger from a dungeon itself would have been willing to just abandon her sidequest and leave him to his lunch.

But a conversation could be fine.  As long as it didn’t upend everything again.