Dead End 2: Deathly Di-Di-Doo Ch.23 (Patreon)

[Briefing]

— The Sagely Savage of Man and Beast and GOD! (Savage) —

The voice of their Storyteller came through loud and clear, and Savage listened well indeed!

“T-01:30:00~ You don’t know for certain yet, but there’s a certain tingle down all of your spines, isn’t there? The clock is ticking… There will be work to be done.”

A countdown; how grand! Purpose and drive! Would something detonate with dreadful finality when the zeroth second struck, or would something launch anew? Savage knew not, and that was ALL of the fun!

He had arrived IN REINCARNATION (and bless his immortal brother for the chance!) beside Gabriel, both already under Mr. Monroe’s supervision.

He remembered the training that he’d gone through before HE arrived. He remembered excelling in all the wrong ways, and earning the scorn of his trainers for ‘unfitting reality deviance’. He remembered Gabriel earning similar scorn for her background; the trainers had hated the idea that her father was a hunter most noble and faithful and that she had her own knowledge (and worse, own interpretation) of the supernatural to call upon already.

That scorn they’d both earned persisted past training. Though they’d passed, they were assigned to a ‘dead end’ (HOW FITTING!) posting where their supervisor was even more scorned than they were.

They were the only two members of his team, and it was quickly made quite clear to Savage that that was an unusual arrangement, entirely due to Mr. Monroe’s objectively lacking internal means within SAR.

The supervisor in question chuckled sheepishly. “Thank you all for working with me. I won’t waste the opportunity you gave me, Mrs. Johnson, and you seven? I’ll do the best I can for you. I know this is all probably a lot, to say the least.”

Still, Savage grinned! He rejoiced! His blood raced and Cut through his veins!

The ‘chronicle’ he’d joined could now begin in earnest! All nine of the players had come to stand in the same room, with their Storyteller watching closely! 

From here, how could he do anything less than EXPERIENCE EVERYTHING?!

“T-01:26:09…”

“You owe me,” Mrs. Johnson said to Mr. Monroe, just a smidge smug.

She sighed more humbly a moment later, “And I owe you, to be fair. You needed the help, but so did I. This much fresh meat isn’t something I’m suited to handling alone.”

“Meat?” THE Morrigan scoffed. “Nothing about me is ‘fresh meat’. I am the Divine.”

Mr. Monroe blinked at that. “Wow, yeah, they’re fresh-fresh, aren’t they? Where’d you find recruits like this, Mrs. Johnson? And seven of them?”

“On assignment. It was unexpected but fortuitous.” She waved. “They stumbled into the nexus anomaly I was researching from the outside. I’ll have to reassess all of that data and likely come up with a new solution. That’s for me to worry about, though. I hear you’ve finally gotten a mission to call your own again.”

“Finally-!” Mr. Monroe gushed, his tone relieved. “Even if I only had two agents to work with, just being able to do SAR work again was enough for me.”

“And then I came along and made your week.” Mrs. Johnson smirked.

Chuckling, Mr. Monroe raised his hands to acknowledge the point in their verbal spar. Savage observed the interaction between the two SAR agents. Their relationship seemed good, a surprise considering Mr. Monroe’s apparent unpopularity. It looked to Savage that Mrs. Johnson had something of a soft spot for her peer.

“You two are talking an awful lot like we aren’t even here,” Alice grumbled.

“I would like to know more… about the mission… we have been… volunteered for…” Solomon stated.

“Yes, what is the actual purpose of SAR? What work will we be doing?” Rose asked; Baby continued. “How are seven ‘fresh meat’ schmucks supposed to make a difference for you, eh?”

“Not schmucks.” Mr. Monroe firmly shook his head. “Fresh and untested, yes, but each of you is a beacon of potential. You are Awakened. Enlightened. With enough will and effort, you can do quite literally anything you set your mind to. Especially if you have someone to show you what’s possible and how.”

“That.” Mrs. Johnson said, rolling her wrist Mr. Monroe’s way. “Is what he’s best at. I’ve rarely seen a supervising agent get so much from those he works with. He’ll show you the truth of the world as I never could.”

“And then, she’ll get half the credit for seven effective agents with none of the effort,” Mr. Monroe joked.

“Woe, the consequences of cooperation,” Mrs. Johnson deadpanned right back. 

Alice snapped at the pair. “Oi, flirt later; information now!”

Mr. Monroe startled at the frankly spoken implication. Mrs. Johnson said nothing, just observing how her colleague reacted.

“F-Flirt?! No, no, you misunderstand our relationship!” He hurriedly denied, telling it to himself as much as he told it to the rest of them. “We work well together, but I know I’m just an anchor around her neck. Best not ‘get it twisted’ as the kids might say.”

Simmy cocked her head and signed. “What kids say that?”

Savage turned to Mrs. Johnson with COMPASSION! UNDERSTANDING! “… My condolences.”

“We’ve been married for about a year now. Filed the forms and everything,” Mrs. Johnson deadpanned back.

Savage blinked in surprise. As did the others. The apparent couple surely didn’t show it! Except they did, if one looked closely, Savage realized! HAHA, how good for them!

“And you’re still… like this?” Alice asked the ‘husband’ half of the pair, her nose screwed up in confusion.

“I think they’re adorable~!” Gabriel squealed, much to Mr. Monroe’s blush and Mrs. Johnson’s non-reaction.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I’m sure if I did, it would be irrelevant to your situation here,” Mrs. Johnson replied, cool and composed. “Now, SAR and our work. Silence.Align.Reinforce; the order of operations is spelled out in the name.”

The others still looked confused, but Gabriel and Savage both nodded. They’d learned as much during their time in training.

“Silence that which screams against reality, align them with the baseline the Technocracy defines, and reinforce everything so Consensus can be maintained,” Gabriel recounted.

“Our current mission,” Mr. Monroe picked back up the BALL O’ SPEECH!

“Will concern investigating minor anomalies in something of a Technocratic No-Man’s-Land, where we’ll be the only SAR team in operation. The city of San Francisco still cleaves to Consensus, largely, but it’s far from securely ours. Reality Deviants claim much of the city and surrounding area: from Garou Werewolves to Changling Fae to the creatures Vampires know as Kuei-Jin — they call themselves the Hungry Dead, and there are certain distinctions that set them apart from Cainite Vampires enough for differing nomenclature to be necess-!”

Mrs. Johnson cut him off. “Focus.”

“T-01:20:34~…”

“Ah…” Mr. Monroe chuckled at himself and his tangent. “Right. The point is that SanFran is contested ground. And that’s without even mentioning the Traditions’ mages, the independent Crafts, and sorcery-based organizations like the Arcanum.”

“Even with so much technology and ‘good business’,” THE Morrigan scoffed at the idea. “Coming out of the city?”

“It’s a city of two worlds, innit?” Baby asked rhetorically, musing. “All the suit-stuff up top and all the counter-culture down below.”

“Yes.” Rose nodded along with her other half. “I can see how that would be considered a sort of No-Man’s-Land if the Technocracy is in the business of defining one set reality. And I can’t, of course, because we still know so little.”

Savage laughed aloud. “HAHAH~! Trust that Gabriel and I feel the same! I have already begun to assume that we will never have all the knowledge of all things, the WHOLEST OF HOLISTIC STORIES, HA! Isn’t it glorious?!”

“… I think you and I have different definitions of ‘glorious’,” Simmy signed.

“Quite,” THE Morrigan drawled in agreement. “How can I claim my own glorious Divinity if I know so little? You, Supervisor. You claim to guide us in Enlightenment. Do so.”

She turned to Mr. Monroe with the last, intent and demanding, and the world hung on a moment.

Sean’s voice came in that moment. “A show of force in Forces, then? What is THE Morrigan’s intention?”

‘Just dramatics,’ THE Morrigan replied to their Storyteller, shaping her magick through him. ‘A Sign of the Divine, made visible for everyone to see. A stretching shadow and a certain weight to the room, yes.’

“Forces 3 to manifest a Sign of the Divine, aided by your particular Avatar; 3 dice for Arete, and I’ll make it difficulty 5. That’s… 10, 5, 5. 3 successes, one critical. And thus, THE Morrigan’s Avatar is manifested better than even she expected.”

The world resumed without a hitch. The room chilled with the icy gravity of the Divine. Ice that was not mere ice crystallized in the air and froze there, a hanging shield of shimmering snow. THE Morrigan’s shadow, cast by harsh lights overhead, stretched unnaturally to wrap around her and her shield of snow. Darkness danced between sparkling reflections.

In that moment, even Savage believed she was of the Divine! It was GLORIOUS; something novel, something completely new to EXPERIENCE!

“Easy, easy!” Mr. Monroe called out.

He and Mrs. Johnson looked largely unfazed by THE Morrigan’s show of Avatar, though. The others couldn’t help but take steps back, but the agents in the room were far from cowed or even awed as she might have intended. Savage stayed rooted where he was, his own Avatar Cutting through the impossible new weight upon the room.

“Man, they really are green,” Mr. Monroe sighed.

“She doesn’t know any better,” Mrs. Johnson agreed, nodding nonchalantly. “But there’s potential in that, too. I’m confident you can mold them into something productive and worthwhile.”

THE Morrigan glowered at them, her whole shadowed and shimmering shield seeming to glare with her. “There will be no hands to mold me but my own! Do not think you can ignore-!”

So soon, the world hung on a moment again. Sean’s voice came calling. “THE Morrigan’s Avatar insists on declaring itself for her on a mere dramatic whim. Mr. Monroe soothes it back for its own good. His Enlightenment flexes here and there, subtle in its Willful might. Ice that runs so hot? Shadow that rages against the light? Gravity without a proper source? ‘No, it just won’t do,’ Mr. Monroe declares.

“The immediate world shifts to his assertion of will and paradigm: the Malleable Flow of Causality. He asks reality itself for the source, the causes. Without asking THE Morrigan once more, it cannot answer, and thus it falls in line under a more experienced Avatar’s eyes.”

The world sprang forth unto the next moment. THE Morrigan’s magickal working was not smothered in its crib; it was questioned, and it failed to answer. Ice melted. Shadows fled from the harsh light overhead. Gravity itself whimpered and faltered without cause.

THE Morrigan was left stunned, her mouth working open and closed. Mr. Monroe looked up from the magi-tech watch on his wrist, his inputs there leading to a renewed reality.

“Right,” He said. “We should talk about Enlightenment: how it really works, how it can be used, and how much it might cost you to use it improperly.”

Mrs. Johnson nodded. “They need the lesson. But let’s make this doubly efficient. Our agents need to be outfitted to at least the bare minimum, and I’m sure you had your own plans for Requisitions before I barged in on them.”

Mr. Monroe perked up at that, so earnestly excited that Savage found the energy infectious! “Oh! Yes! That should actually make for a good learning aid, too! Come along, come along!”

He didn’t wait for them; Savage praised his enthusiasm! The laboratory-looking room they’d reunited within was his, and partitioned by walls that were soon revealed to be holographic as Mr. Monroe rushed right through one to find what he was after.

The space in front of the holographic wall was clean and orderly — perfectly put together to host guests. Behind the wall, they all saw that Mr. Monroe’s true workspace was a chaotic mess of inventions, contraptions, and so very much ENLIGHTENED SCIENCE! There were hovering holo-screens covered in racing data, weapons picked half apart and forgotten, devices of gloriously unknown origin and purpose!

Mr. Monroe raced into the mess with familiarity. It only served him so well. Halfway to his intended destination, he tripped over a knot of cords that came up to his knee. Mrs. Johnson just sighed as she watched.

“I’m okay! Mind the knot! I have the data to prove it has a mind of its own, and it’s a grumpy one!”

The rest of them were left looking at each other. Baby&Rose, Didi, Gabriel, and Solomon silently showed amusement on their faces. Simmy was practically vibrating an inch off the ground, her eyes looking everywhere and taking in everything. Ophy walked in her sleep, and Alice gave one of her usual groans. Savage’s grin was sharp enough to Cut!

“We step into the breach, my new friends!” He declared. “What awaits us, I know not, but I am ECSTATIC to find out!”

Ophy frowned, roused from her open-eyed nap. “… Loud.”

Savage lowered his voice for her sake. “My apologies, little one.”

The pint-sized dreamer shook her head. “Nn, not you. The lab. Loud.”

“Oho?”

That information just fortified his excitement to EXPERIENCE the glorious cacophony their supervisor could make!

IIIII

“T-01:01:01~…”

Savage and Gabriel had already been outfitted with the bare minimum, enough to satisfy Mr. Monroe’s standards. Judging by the glances Mrs. Johnson was sending their way, his standards were higher than the norm.

They had Focus-Watches similar to the ones the full-fledged SAR agents wore, and skin-tight ‘Chameleon’ undersuits of some material that was just splendidly comfortable on the skin. Savage never wanted to wear anything else, in fact! Goodness, the EXPERIENCING he could get up to in a suit like this!

… He supposed the watch was nice enough, too. It didn’t seem to do as much for him, situated on his wrist rather than held firmly in his palm, as some intrinsic part of him seemed to prefer.

His and Gabriel’s training had taught them the potential within their watches, but only barely. Enough to interface with the basic systems of technomagick all around them, but far from enough to do more than activate those systems. Savage had the suspicion that SAR at large had wanted them competent but not capable.

They’d already seen Mr. Monroe do things they hadn’t been taught with his watch. Even now, they watched him do more. With just a thought, the watch took everyone’s measurements and tailored their own undersuits to the data before somehow suiting them all up in a flash of light, as if the technomagick material was printed right onto their skin.

“O-Oi!” Alice flustered. “Ask a girl first!”

Mr. Monroe ignored her complaints without any apparent malice; he simply didn’t hear her as he rushed about his lab to outfit them as he thought agents should be outfitted.

“He doesn’t seem to mean any harm, dear,” Didi soothed her in his place. “I don’t think he even noticed what he was doing.”

“The fool did not,” Mrs. Johnson confirmed.

“What is…?” Simmy signed a Question into existence. “How does…?”

A moment later, the Answers came to her. Her Chameleon suit shifted from pure black to the paleness of her skin. Then, it shifted again as words were written across it — notes on what she did and how she did it, Savage noted for himself.

That development finally roused Mr. Monroe from his preparatory fugue. “Spectacular!”

He rounded on Simmy, leaning in close to read the written notes on her skin. He muttered softly and nodded quickly and laughed excitedly to himself as he did.

“S-Space, please,” Simmy shakily signed.

Mrs. Johnson pulled her peer (and spouse!) up by the scruff of his lab coat. “It’s impressive, yes, but you can appreciate her talent from a polite distance.”

“She does not even have a focus yet!” Mr. Monroe exclaimed. “Interfacing with the Chameleon with nothing but a Question and an Answer is no small feat!”

“Get her a focus, then, and see what more she can do with it,” Mrs. Johnson chided.

“What is a… focus?” THE Morrigan asked, crinkling her nose at having to lower herself to do so.

“Tools! Materials! Anything, really, that we Awakened can enact our Enlightened paradigm through!” Mr. Monroe answered. “The watches are the foci that SAR prefers for its agents, but unless jailbroken, I find them woefully limited — both too general in some ways and too specialized in others. They work well with properly personalized updates, though! That’s part of what little aid I can give you as my agents!”

“Little, he says. As if his updates aren’t the only thing keeping him politically afloat,” Mrs. Johnson deadpanned. “But you’re getting ahead of yourself, as always.”

“I am?” Mr. Monroe blinked. “Oh, I suppose I am… Very well, then: Enlightenment!”

“T-00:56:27~…”

He clapped to emphasize the word, the title, the nature they all now claimed! Savage gave the eccentric master his fullest attention! With Sean’s countdown ticking in their heads, it was best to EXPERIENCE in the moment!

The others were just as invested. Seven more Focus-Watches were pulled out and presented to the seven without. Mrs. Johnson did the honors, letting her spouse speak.

“What is it? Like, really?” Alice asked, suspiciously eyeing her new watch.

“That’s complicated! No one knows, like, really-really!” Mr. Monroe happily chimed. “But broadly, Enlightenment is the soul-deep realization that reality is not as it seems! There is more to it, of course; much more.

“A mere logical realization is not enough for true Enlightenment; the soul in question must also awaken their Avatar, that spark of awareness, will, and power within us all. It will be different for everyone, but I’m sure you’ve already noticed it for yourselves.”

The Sword That Cuts; Savage nodded in complete understanding, even with how little he truly knew. Something sat comfortably within his palm, held firm — ALWAYS…

When he looked, there was nothing there, yet just holding that nothing, he knew that reality was his to cleave as he would.

“Now, I’m sure Mrs. Johnson has relayed some of the Technocracy’s mission, the purpose we all direct our Enlightenment towards,” Mr. Monroe continued. “That mission is only made possible because reality is as our Avatars make it, even those Avatars that still sleep.

“That is Consensus. It is a lie.”

“Yeah, I think we kinda figured that much at this point,” Baby snarked.

“Yet reality is still… well, real, to some degree, isn’t it?” Didi asked.

Mr. Monroe nodded. “For most, a lie that is accepted as truth can be more real than any fact. And for the rare Awakened few, our Avatars grant us the ability to mold that lie, that truth, and whatever malleable reality lies in between as we believe it can be, should be, will be.

“That is Enlightenment. It, too, is a lie. But again, a lie that is accepted as truth can be more real than any fact.”

“We all… lie to ourselves… then?” Solomon asked.

“Not as such.” Mr. Monroe shook his head. “The key lies in our Avatars; Awakened, they enforce us upon reality. Unlike the dormant Avatars of sleepers, our Avatars are active — Awake — and so they act according to our conscious direction, our interpretations and understandings, our will, and our paradigm.

“Reality asks, ‘How do you think the world works?’ Active Avatars allow us to answer, and unless contradicted, so it is.”

Simmy sucked in a silent breath, signing, “Question and Answer…”

“Contradicted?” Gabriel asked. “By other Avatars? By reality? By… Paradox…?”

“They would’ve warned you about that in training, but I’ll bet no one took the time to explain. Even SAR prefers its agents to fit into certain molds,” Mr. Monroe scoffed.

“Careful,” Mrs. Johnson warned with a fond sort of undercurrent to her words. “Any of our peers hear that, and they might jump at the chance to call it you encouraging deviance.”

“It’s short-sighted, is what it is,” Mr. Monroe grumbled. “Not like understanding enables our Enlightenment as much as will does. Not like an agent who actually knows the dangers will be less likely to waste themselves by stepping on reality’s toes.”

“Go on, then,” Mrs. Johnson invited, smirking at him. “Explain Paradox to recruits who don’t yet know the difference between Coincidental and Vulgar workings of Enlightenment.”

Mr. Monroe raised a hand to do just that. Then, he paused, and his hand drifted back down. Still, he tried.

“So… a spirit — yes, spirits are real; yes, they’re everywhere — originally created in another form by the Order of Reason was empowered beyond anyone’s expectations during a battle so Vulgar that-…”

He trailed off as he realized that explanation would be getting into the weeds of history.

“Wait, let me try that again: all Avatars, sleeping or Awake, give pieces of themselves as tax to a sort of… spirit of Consensus reality that somewhat hypocritically hates what those Avatars can do, except when reinforcing Consensus in the ‘right’ way to-…”

He trailed off again as he realized that explanation would quickly grow too contradictory for newly Awakened minds.

“Shit, uh… Reality has its preferences for the way things should be, according to Consensus — but it’s not alive-alive… except when it kind of is — and when you’re witnessed crossing those lines, sometimes by other Avatars and sometimes by the not alive-alive but still kind of alive reality, it bites back with oddly ironic punishment because-…”

After three failed attempts, he fell silent and thoughtful.

“Essentially,” Mrs. Johnson picked up the question for him. “Without getting into the history and the mechanics, reality has fangs. Those fangs are Paradox, and they come out when Consensus is broken in an unacceptably Vulgar manner. That’s Vulgar with a capital-V, by the way.

“The backlash can present itself in an infinite variety of ways, but there does tend to be an ironic connection between Paradox’s punishment and the crime against Consensus. A mage who favors ‘fireball’ a bit too much may find themselves spontaneously combusting. An agent who blatantly rides a hoverboard down the street may find themselves run over by a good ol’ Consensus-compliant semi-truck.

“You didn’t realize it, Morrigan-”

“THE Morrigan,” The Divine witch in question corrected.

“Yes, THE,” Mrs. Johnson drawled. “You didn’t realize, but the working you just pulled could very easily have seen you ironically smited or damned to some strange Hell by Paradox if you were anywhere other than among Awakened peers.”

“Because it was Vulgar?” Alice asked. “Blatant magicky stuff? Where are those lines actually drawn: Coincidental vs. Vulgar?”

“And if we can’t do it all Vulgar-like, what’s the point~?” Baby bemoaned.

“Oh, you can,” Mrs. Johnson answered Baby first. “You can go the Vulgar route. You just have to be prepared to accept the unpredictable consequences. We would prefer if you didn’t, of course; it goes against Consensus and all that we try to build. But sometimes, needs must.”

“It is all about picking the correct tool for the correct job, no?” Savage asked. “Mine Sword, it may be Vulgar, but sometimes, reality must be CUT, YES!”

He brandished the unseen sword in his hand, now knowing that this was a safe enough space for it. THE Morrigan had gotten her chance for dramatics; Savage shall have his, too!

The world hung on a moment. “With an Avatar like yours, I’ll call that an automatic success, especially since you don’t have any effect but dramatics in mind. Just remember: the clock is still ticking.

“T-00:44:04~…”

It was a thrill like no other to exercise his Enlightenment, Savage found. His seemingly empty hand carved through the air where he swung. Wounds were rent in reality, and through them, he EXPERIENCED lovers’ whispers and childish laughter and the ecstatic high of a man on Earth!

Then, just as quickly, the wounds healed over. All that was left was Savage and his Sword.

Oh… and the others. They were backing away from him warily, all except for Gabriel, THE Morrigan, and Ophy.

“Ah, my apologies.” He quickly bowed his head in repentance. “I was too excited for my turn to FLEX, HAHA!”

“Always fascinating-!” Mr. Monroe gushed. “Getting to see more and more paradigms is what I live and work for! Oh, I already have ideas for how to tune your focus-watch to best fit that exceptional Avatar of yours, Savage!”

Mrs. Johnson just sighed. “To answer your question, Alice, the line between Coincidental and Vulgar is drawn where the result or the execution can be excused by accepted reality.

“Let’s take Savage’s… Sword as an example. Cutting through space and time with an empty hand and unknown Forces would be considered explicitly impossible by almost all understandings of the world, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah…” Alice slowly nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

“But if Savage had applied the same effect more subtly in a busy and preoccupied crowd, the wounds might’ve slipped under the radar, and the noises that came through could’ve been excused as coming from someone else in the crowd. It’d be a dangerous line to walk, but not necessarily Vulgar.

“As the sleepers and as Consensus perceives us and our effect on the world,” Mr. Monroe confirmed and added. “That is where truly spectacular things can be done, so long as the work of Enlightenment is kept beneath the proverbial table.

“Say, for another example, you stop by a coffee shop, looking to pay with change. But you’ve got nothing in your pocket. If you still reach, it would be entirely plausible for an outside observer to believe you do have something in there worth reaching for, and thus, with moderation, you’ll have free rein to realize an effect that would fit the situation. You might call upon your wallet from across space with the Sphere of Correspondence; observers would simply assume you had it with you to begin with.

“That would be Coincidental, and it wouldn’t incur the wrath of Paradox. Of course, if you forewent the masquerade of plausibility and simply called your wallet right there on the counter before the eyes of everyone, the same observers would call that rather impossible, and Paradox might pelt you with spare change from all angles on your way out.”

Savage nodded attentively. The explanation was committed to his memory; it would be incalculably valuable in the chronicle to come, forsooth!

The others paid just as much attention as he did. Some of them — Solomon, Simmy, and Didi — were nodding thoughtfully. Others — Baby&Rose, Alice, THE Morrigan, and Gabriel — just as thoughtfully, seemed to be thinking up ways to apply the lesson. Alice stared at her hands with a furrowed brow. Ophy slept standing; she Dreamed, even now.

“And… the Focus-Watches can help with all of this?” She asked.

“Yeah, that’s another thing~!” Baby chimed; Rose finished the thought. “How do we actually do… any of this? Whatever you want to call it — magick or enlightened science, Vulgar or Coincidental.”

Mrs. Johnson let her spouse answer that one. Mr. Monroe nodded and stood proudly. He waved the watch on his wrist for all of them to see.

“That entirely depends on you and your unique paradigm!” He exclaimed, explaining. “You are Awakened! Your Avatars allow you to alter the world as you believe it is, or as you believe it should be! I view the world through the lens of a Malleable Flow of Causality. My favored foci are suited to revealing the Causes and Effects, and tweaking variables in the former to bring about changes in the latter, or even vice versa!”

“Unfortunately, proper guidance only goes so far there,” Mrs. Johnson added. “You’ll have to find the methods that work best for you individually.

“That’s part of why Mr. Monroe’s Focus-Watch updates are so valuable. If you can put your paradigm into words for him, he can… sympathize with the lens you see Cause and Effect — his own paradigm — through, and alter your assigned foci to fit.”

The world hung on a moment with that offer.

“Follow through, and I’ll add personalized techno-foci to each of your character sheets,” Sean said. “Along with whatever else you can afford to Requisition from SAR and Mr. Monroe’s personal collection. This is where you pick your tools for the coming mission. You have… about half an hour before you set boots on the ground. Choose wisely. Or don’t; take whatever seems coolest and live with the consequences.

“You have heard what you’re being tasked with, and you’ve gotten your first lesson on magick — enlightened science as the Technocracy stubbornly calls it, but there, I’m biased. Soon, you will walk onto the contested front lines of the Ascension War as a team, an amalgam of agents. Unlike most agents of the wider Technocracy, you won’t be fighting the war directly. That’s not the work SAR does.

“Instead, you will be protecting the innocents of that war from threats within it and without. How you deal with the anomalies you encounter will be up to you. What more you find around and beyond them will be, too.

“There may be friends in your future, if you’re open to them, but there will certainly be foes. To many, you work for the Devil. The truth of the matter is more nuanced, as you’ve come to see. 

“In the end, that is what this chronicle is about. Awakening, Enlightenment, Ascension; it all comes back to perspective. Each of you has your own — your paradigms — but then, so does Mrs. Johnson, so does Mr. Monroe, so too will every mage, every agent, every sleeper, and every supernatural soul you find.

“The Technocracy insists upon its one true perspective, but even within the organization, that monolith isn’t quite true in practice, is it? On the opposite end, the Traditions pioneer individuality, perhaps selfishly; where do the limits of it lie, and when do the costs become too much to pay?

“Darker perspectives still lie beyond and hide within them: Marauder and Nephandi. The former are perspectives driven Mad; the latter are perspectives inverted, seeking to drive themselves to Descension and drag all that is with them.

“As the countdown strikes zero, set forth with those perspectives in mind. Acknowledge the ones beside you. Together, weather any storm that may come.

“T-00:30:30~…”

Savage couldn’t help but grin so wide his cheeks ached. Perspectives to EXPERIENCE and good work to be done; it would be GLORIOUS!

IIIII

— Sean Caine, Storyteller —

I hummed to myself as I noted down my players’ Requisitions, keeping the clock ticking all the while.

The personally updated Focus-Watches and Chameleon suits, of course. They were the bare minimum Mr. Monroe would give his agents. Most supervisors would give factory-fresh Focus-Watches and nothing more.

The mage in me observed Mr. Monroe’s work with the watch updates, finding myself genuinely impressed. It was no small feat to tune techno-foci to decidedly untechnomagickal paradigms, even if magick and enlightened science were made of the same stuff in actuality.

For Savage, his Focus-Watch was updated with an augmented reality blade, extending his Avatar physically, metaphysically, mentally, spiritually, and even digitally.

Didi’s update was deceptively simple. Just a heartbeat monitor on the surface; below the surface, it was a Heartbeat monitor. It heard the Heartbeats as Didi’s Avatar did and translated them into legible — even alterable — data.

Gabriel’s Focus-Watch could now boast a Memory reader, for both her own and the Memories of others, even spirits. Her Avatar could act on those Memories and the Driving Will within them.

Alice was given a spiritual scanner and communicator to fit her merit as a medium and her Avatar of the Umbra’s Shimmering Veil.

Simmy’s Avatar of Language, Question, and Answer was channeled into a pseudo-AI assistant for her Focus-Watch, communicating the information her Avatar sought and found.

Ophy’s watch was updated with an automatic dream journal program that recorded constantly and even allowed her to edit her Dreams if she saw fit.

Baby&Rose had their Focus-Watch updated with a mirror app to enable their Avatar’s Visions in Mirrors; it was also capable of projecting those mirrors outward for greater ‘enabling’.

Solomon’s watch received the ‘prediction’ treatment, as Mr. Monroe put it. To enhance his Survivor’s Intuition, Mr. Monroe tapped his Focus-Watch into each of Solomon’s Spheres — Entropy, Correspondence, and Time — to create a predictive program tuned to Solomon’s life experiences: Intuition augmented.

THE Morrigan’s watch update took the shape of a folkloric database containing all things Divine. She could find Signs and Incarnations in everything with all of that information on her wrist, and since magick/‘enlightened science’ was all about belief, that gave her as much material to work with as there were Divines in human history.

Smiling to myself at the progress, I furthered it by rolling for Requisitions — a Storytelling guide to what Mr. Monroe would find or could source for his agents.

Three rolls of 3 gave Didi, Baby&Rose, and Ophy the worst luck. Ophy would find herself with a Dream VR device, Baby&Rose would receive an unmatched pair of Seeker-Surveillance Nano-Drones, and Didi got a case of Erg Cola, technomagick energy drinks that could keep the dead running for a week after death.

A roll of 4 gave Gabriel a Universal Identification Card Mr. Monroe had lying around: psychic paper that would show a target whatever they needed to see.

With twinned rolls of 5 for Simmy and THE Morrigan, they both took defensive options: Kinetic Transfer Safeguards. Simmy likely did so for the protection her squishy, intelligence-focused self needed, but THE Morrigan did so for the option to turn the KTS’s usual trenchcoat into a fashionable gothic cloak fit for a Goddess (in SanFran, where they were headed, a goth goddess in a cloak was far from the strangest thing one would see).

Rolling a 6, Savage could’ve chosen something rather good. Instead, he requested a stockpile of designer technomagick drugs big enough to make a Changling prince question reality — or in Savage’s case, help him EXPERIENCE a bending reality. He got it, too: L-S^2-D chapstick, DMT-OX eye drops, and a Psilo-Mesca-Huasca temporary slap-to-activate tattoo on his left butt cheek.

“I’ll slap my ass and trip my way to TRUE EXPERIENCE, YES-AHAHA~!” Savage had declared as soon as the tattoo was applied.

… I was just waiting for a botched roll to have someone slap his ass before he was ready; oh, the joys of Storytelling.

A roll of 7 allowed Alice to choose an X14-A Thunderhead from Mrs. Johnson’s personal collection as she pitched in to help her peer and spouse. It was a pistol almost as big as her arm that she could barely hold up properly, the .50-caliber Desert Eagle body ending in a 10x set of rotating barrels. No, she didn’t know how to use it; she had no dots in Firearms. Yes, I was going to allow it anyway.

Finally, with the highest Requisition roll of 9, Solomon was granted an EXO-Skeleton to fit his already massive frame. Mrs. Johnson was the source of that one as well, and as the Storyteller, I thanked her for that support. It would certainly be something to watch Solomon punch out a Werewolf warform if the opportunity arrived.

I took a moment to relish the crunch of Storytelling as the countdown approached zero. In chronicle, the freshly outfitted amalgam was led to a portal; a high-class BnB with a gorgeous view of San Francisco waited on the other side.

All nine of them stepped through. The world hung on a moment as they were thrown into the deep end. I spoke to them as their Storyteller, urging them to swim.

“T-00:00:00. T+00:00:01. Best get moving; there’s work to be done~…”