The Daily Grind - Chapter 273 (Patreon)

I may have overcommitted to this chapter.  Anyway here's 19k words.

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“The baglematic does not suffer from narrative inconsistency.  The bagelmatic produces crispy brown bagels on demand.  And who am I to argue with that?”  -Noah Gervias, A Thorough Look At Fallout-

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“Welcome in!”  James extended a handshake to the man he was interviewing in what felt like the earliest of mornings.  A litany of skills, both from orbs and from his time in exile as a business major, letting him modulate his grip for exactly the impression he was going for.  Friendly, confident, no overbearing challenge for dominance, no sense of anything to prove.  “I’m glad you called.”

”Who wouldn’t?”  The mildly beefy and tattooed hipster who had run into the existence of magic, inhuman species, and James himself while he was working as a waiter at a barbeque place stared at James with a shocked expression that he was trying to get under control.  “I mean, uh… yeah.  Of course.”

There was no need to do anything to put the man off balance.  Assuming James had actually wanted him confused at all, it wouldn’t have taken more than just having the interview in the normal spot he did his work out of.

James laughed at the way the waiter tried to put on a professional front.  Not a trained showing, but he was trying, even though he really didn’t need to.  “Alright.  Let’s go grab a seat in the little meeting room here.  My office is in use by an aggressive stapler trying to bully an EPA agent or something.”

”…okay.” The word was said with the tone of a man who was prepared to believe anything, but maybe hadn’t actually expected to have that preparation tested this thoroughly today.

His mistake.  James held the glass door open and let his interviewee in to grab a seat before he took one across the table.  “So!  Welcome in.  I know you told… probably Cathy… but I don’t actually have notes on me.  Do you have a preferred name and or pronouns?”

”Or?”

”This place is weird.”

”I’m just… like, okay, I appreciate the question.  Jesse, and they/he.  But I’m trying to imagine someone who has pronouns but no name?”

James thought about it briefly.  “I guess you could make an argument about the artist formerly known as Prince, but that’s A, a reference even I’m too young for, and B, probably inaccurate.  There might be an infomorph that could form that way?  I dunno!  It’s also not super important, but it’s a fun thought experiment.”  He settled back, feeling a little at ease to know that the person he was interviewing had that kind of thought process, and was willing to express it.

The Order tended to acquire a lot of people, in the sense that they often ended up with people who had no other options.  It was a grim reality, but when someone had literally nowhere else to go, and no one who even remembered them, it put them in a vulnerable position where they were often open to changing.  James hoped that the changes he pushed through the Order’s collective culture were positive ones, going off a policy of compassion and researched understanding first and foremost.  But it did change people to fit their culture, that was undeniable. When hiring someone, though, it was a person coming in from outside; usually someone still part of the world.  There was a lot of extra stuff to consider, ranging from if they’d even fit in, to if they’d be the kind of person who would abuse a skulljack and start spreading that problem around before anyone was ready.

It had been years, and James wasn’t sure they’d ever really be ready for that.

The point was, he was looking for people with the right attitude, the right openness and willingness to learn, and the right intent.  And in a quick little aside before the interview even started, his potential new hire had demonstrated at least one of those things.

”So!  You want to be a wizard?”  James asked by way of actually starting the interview.

”Who wouldn’t, right?”

”You’d be surprised.  A number of people wouldn’t have called the number.”

“Is this one of those things where normal humans can’t see magic, or where they self-justify it and don’t think about it?”  Jesse asked, rapidly tapping their fingers on the table as they stared out the plate glass windows to the sunrise over the city skyline, a state away from where they’d gotten in the elevator ten minutes ago.

James shrugged.  “Sometimes.  There’s a weird effect in place over what seems like at least all of North America where information about certain things… refuses to spread properly?  It’s very annoying.  Some people have a defense against stuff like that, but it’s rare, and I think there’s more people who have a particular vulnerability to it.  But also, not everyone would want to be a wizard.”

His interview subject shook their head, wiry beard drifting from side to side.  “That’s stupid.”

”That’s life.  Not everyone wants to be a doctor either, even though that’s cool too.”  James didn’t say that he had the ability to become a doctor in an afternoon if he got the right orb copies, and in fact, that it was on his list of things to do eventually.  “So, I’ve got a few questions for you.  You can think about your answers, but I am looking for honesty over anything else, okay?”  Jesse nodded at him.  “Okay.  What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money?”

That one got an instant answer.  “Play more disc golf.”  And after a brief pause, “Maybe get into craft brewing.  Go on more hikes.  If I’m really not worried, like, never work again not worried, then I’d probably get bored and want to get into some kind of park ranger thing.  Maybe do a few years on a firewatch.”

”What are you good at?”

“I’m good at learning new jobs, and being patient with customers.”

”…What are you good at if you were telling your friends and not lying to an interviewer?”

”Oh.  Uh.  I mean, disc golf again.  I’ve got an encyclopedic knowledge of all the birds in the US, and I know how to make a soufflé without fucking it up.”

“Much better.”  James nodded as his subject got into the casual flow of conversation he was looking for. ”How do you do working in groups?”

”Kinda shit.”  He said with a wince, like he knew it was the ‘wrong answer’.  “I like having my own stuff that I’m responsible for, so if someone else screws up, it’s not my fault, you know?”

James hummed.  That was fair enough, especially in the kind of environments that modern businesses tended to have.  “If you had to choose between being able to fly, or being able to teleport, what would you want?”

”…do I get to choose?”  The question got no response from James except a raised eyebrow.  “Uh… fuck!  Fly, I guess?  Wait!  Am I still not worried about money?  If I’m not worried about money I choose fly.”

”How many people did you pass on the way in here?”

Jesse settled a hand over their mouth in thought, lightly tugging at their braided beard, eyes turned upward trying to recall.  “Actually, hang on.”  It wasn’t that hard to just turn around in the chair, looking out the clear glass walls of the room to count the people who were working here today.  “Five.  Unless the plant, lamp, or vending machine count.  So between five and eight.”

”Damn, that’s really good.”  James laughed.  Not only was there no hesitation in counting Smoke and Scent-Of-Rain, but there was even a hedging of the bet.  And ignoring implicit rules to get more accurate results.  “You’re given ten thousand dollars and told to help people.  What’s the first thing you think of, and then how do you improve on it?”

”Very first thing?  Uh…uh… find a place with cheap apartments and rent a few of them for a year and stock ‘em with some easy food, then give them to groups who don’t have places to stay.”  Jesse looked like they already knew there were holes in that plan, and James waited as they tried to think of how to improve on the idea.  “Okay.  So, not good long term, but it could help a bunch of people get back on their feet.  But you’d need a support network, right?  Someone to check in on them.  Do I get magic for this?”

”Not yet.”

”Damn!  Okay.  Uh… improve it… I mean, if it works, for even one person, then we could just ask them to pay back into it.  Not like a loan, but any extra money would mean we could keep it rolling, right?   Does that count?”

”Interesting.”  James said easily.  “Alright.  You find yourself facing a perfect clone of you.  What do you do?”

”Get real confused, probably?  Make out?  Is there a right answer to this?  Does this come up?”

James laughed good naturedly.  ”I’m asking the questions here.”  He said.  “But also it’s more likely than you think.”

”Who wouldn’t want to work here?”

”Good question.”  James said with a grin.  “Okay, next question.  Scale of one to ten, how much danger do you think you’d be willing to live with?”

Jesse nodded sagely, leaning back.  “I figured out why someone might not want to work here.”  They said.  “Also… six?  Is six okay?”

”How much danger if surviving the danger directly gets you magic?”

”No, still a six.  That’s what I was assuming.  Is it some kind of weird ritual that turns me into one of the bug people if it goes wrong?  Or is that offensive?”

”That’s a little offensive.”  James admitted with a nod.  “Also no.  The magic is lots of things.  Ritual based is pretty low on our list.”  He briefly considered manifesting a towel to show off exactly how much phenomenal cosmic power the ritual James was most familiar with got him.  But held off, to continue asking questions.  “Do you prefer a broad mandate or specific tasks?”

”Tasks.”

”How willing are you to change as you learn new things?”

”I like to think I’m pretty good at it.”

”Do you want to work for an organization dedicated to improving the world, that leverages power both magical and mundane to try to help people in as many ways as it can?  The-”

Zero hesitation.  ”Yes.”

”…Do you want to know what the pay and benefits are like first?”

Slightly more hesitation.  ”…No.”

James grinned.  ”Well, you have to know anyway.  You’re hired.  There’ll be a group orientation this evening at six PM ‘downstairs’.  I should be there after I do a few other things today.”  He stood and offered another handshake.  “That’ll be where you get more one on one time with someone who’s deeper in the day to day organization of everything, and we’ll figure out where to start you.”  He dropped the handshake, still smiling as the newest member of the Order stood with a matching grin.  “Welcome aboard.”

”Thanks!  And this completely makes up for not tipping me with a magic wand.”

James made a show of blanching. ”Shit, did we forget to tip?”  He said as he held the door open, leaving the conversation there and maintaining the air of mystery on whether or not magic wands were still on the table.

You only got so long to goof with the new people before they figured everything out.  He was going to savor it.

____

James sat on a wooden bench that teetered under him, wiping sweat from his face with a towel and breathing heavily.  The lingering and quite unpleasant taste of exercise potion on his tongue was washed away as he gulped down water from the sports bottle that he grabbed from among neatly arranged rows of the things.

Overhead, the sun beat down. It wasn’t quite a burning hot summer, but it was great weather for stress testing Winter’s Climb spells.

Nate was busy with something, so Karen of all people was overseeing this training session.  And despite James not ever having noticed, she’d clearly gone a fair distance up the Climb herself, because she was not only familiar with every spell they had in their vault, but actively using some of them when it came up.

The main difference between Nate and Karen’s training methods, James realized as he felt his lungs start to soothe and his muscles stop aching, was that Nate mostly ran combat engagement drills for their new security teams.  Learning how to fight humans, effectively, in a variety of ways.  And in sharp contrast, Karen had them running drills for everything.

Combat, evasion and concealment, medical care in hostile situations, search and rescue, even just how to put out fires without hurting anyone else or themselves.  Karen had a list of problems, and she ran the group through all of them, one after another, and then looped them back to the start to do it better.

There was a focus on using their magic to maximal effect, but because of how often knights ended up with new magic, Karen’s training course took after Nate in that it emphasized creative application and always thinking.  The Order might be preparing them to be like soldiers in some situations, but they didn’t want anyone thinking that meant they were stupid.

Karen’s drills also including deductive logic puzzles, codebreaking challenges, and finding accounting discrepancies via skulljack while doing the other drills kind of went a long way toward cementing that they were moving past what humans should naturally be capable of.  When they’d started, James had been under the impression that Karen expected them to fail, but learn how to try, learn how to learn.  But no.  She was both careful and meticulous in how far she pushed the training group.  Which highlighted something else that Research had long had on the back burner; what, exactly, was the difference between one skill rank, and two?

Well, Karen had a few overlapping skill ranks that worked here.  But mostly, it was the unique too-large-to-copy green orb that she had cracked in the offices around Officium Mundi that had given her four ranks in planning training regimens.  It had also caused the building to repair cracks in the brickwork every week, so that was neat.

The overall effect of it was, James felt good.  He felt like he was getting better.  Working under Nate, yeah, he’d seen improvement, obviously.  Even just getting actionable practice with his repeatable spells made him a lot more useful.  But in one six hour session spread across twelve city blocks of seanic demolished Townton, James felt like he had forgotten what it was like to meet problems he couldn’t handle.

That… that mindset might be dangerous.  He’d tell Karen about it after.

Interrupting his musings, Simon dropped to the bench next to James, thunking the one leg that was a little too short into the sidewalk.  “Hurrrrrghgh.” He enunciated perfectly as he struggled to open one of the potion vials.

”Agreed.”  James said, having already had time to groan listlessly before the others got here.

The others were a collection of humans, camracondas, and one ratroach.  Arrush, specifically, had way more stamina than anyone expected, given how hard it was for him to talk for prolonged periods.  But Karen somehow seemed familiar with both his limits, and just how fragile he actually was compared to a human, and calibrated his training around it.

There were three people here, specifically, that James was paying attention to.  Alex and Spire-Cast-Behind were two of them.  Simon was the last, and one of the two that James hadn’t talked to directly yet.

“So, how’s Karen’s routine compare to Response training?”  James asked casually.  He’d done the Response courses himself; there was a lot of focus on civilian utility and deescalation especially.  They didn’t really do that many drills like this.  Running around an abandoned city, solving problems on the fly as their seemingly omnipotent GM threw stuff at them, often in the form of the Order’s own security teams.  Those kids were having a great time getting to team up on the specialized spellcasters.

“My everything hurts.”  Simon said.  “Why did I agree to this.  I wanna go back to Response forever.  Harvey doesn’t hate me.”

”The worrying thing is, I don’t think this is Karen hating us.”  James said.

Simon just groaned again in only half-faked despair.

“So.”  James said as Tennessee continued to do its best to give them heatstroke or maybe have them consumed in a cloud of mosquitos.

”Oh no.”

”I have a question for you.”

Simon looked up at James as the paladin rose off the wobbling bench and started stretching.  The exercise potion was turning the wet noodle feeling in his arms into the sensation of itchy growth, and the headache from using a few blue orbs in rapid succession was fading too.  But there was still something about James that demanded he put aside worrying about that, and pay attention.  “The last time you had a question for me, it was if Other James and I wanted to stay on.”  Simon said softly.

“I’m sorry.”  James said on reflex, looking away to stare back down the street toward the ‘town square’ they’d been restoring and actually using.  Their training site was two miles away, but there were still a couple of people going through the disturbingly routine process of clearing the road of destroyed cars.  “I wish things had gone differently.”

”So do I.  We, if you want to be weird about it.”  Simon said.  Then he shrugged, and regretted making the motion.  “Ow.  Also it’s fine.  I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I just want you to know that you’re ominous sometimes.”

”Oh.”  James legitimately hadn’t realized that.  But he should have.  There was, he knew, a tendency to get caught up in the newest project, or the newest disaster, and to have that stack on top of his own compounding mental health stresses until he forgot details.  Details like how others might be affected by those same things.  James took a deep breath.  “Yeah, I can see that now.”  He said.  “Maybe I should ask later.”

”Nah, I’m good.  What’ve you got?”  Simon said, and then he and James both flinched as two blocks away there was a metallic screech as part of a building was pulled into a controlled demolition.  Or at least, they hoped it was controlled.  Fortunately Karen was keeping even the people who were out for this drill updated, so neither of them had to run to provide medical aid to whoever had just dropped a roof on themself.

James stilled his heart as much as he could these days, and met Simon’s eyes.  “Next week, we’re going to take the oath of the first round of paladins that aren’t me.”  He said calmly.  “I want you to be one of them.”

”…You want me in charge of the Order?”

”I’m really not in charge of anything.”  James retorted.  “But… insofar as paladins are in charge of things… yes.”

Simon eyed him suspiciously.  “Why me?”

”Because you’re smart, adaptable, and generally a good person.  You already participate in multiple different aspects of the Order’s operations, people are familiar with you and like you, and you’re open to the kind of extensive use of magic you’ll need to keep on top of stuff.  You fit the ethical and capability requirements.  And… you know what it’s like to lose people.  And I trust you to turn that knowledge into the drive to keep it from happening to anyone else.”

”Did you have that all prepared?”  Simon asked.

”Yes.”

”Oh.”  He blinked, and looked down at the ground, taken off guard by how openly sincere James was being.  “If… if my James were still around, would you be asking him?”  He said.

”I don’t know.”  James said honestly.  “I don’t.  I never got to know him, which I regret.  I barely got to know you.  But I know what you’ve been doing, and I know that you’re getting to be the kind of one-man multitool that the paladins are supposed to be.”  James eyed Simon like he was trying to find something there to assess, but all he saw was the guy he’d known as a steady part of the Order since before it was the Order.  The guy who helped out, who kept going, and who was a lot more dangerous than people would expect from his disarming appearance and easy demeanor.  “But also, Other James is part of you, in a way I know I don’t fully get.  So yeah, I guess I am asking him.  I’m asking you.  All of you, all the weirdness wrapped up in who you are.  You.”

Simon didn’t say anything for a while, though he did drain the rest of his water.  “Who else?”  He said eventually.

”Alex.  And Spire-Cast-Behind.”

”…Spire I get.”  Simon said.  “But Alex?”

”Wait, really?”  James laughed.  “I actually would have expected it the other way around.”

”Oh man, no, Spire is exactly what you want.  She’s done everything in the Order at least once, including every delve.  And she loves a challenge.  Not great at planning, but still, she’s perfect.  Alex, though…”

James shrugged.  “Alex has basically been doing the job already.  She’s a little more chaotic, but that’s the point.  Paladins shouldn’t be copies of what I want, they should be the different faces of how we get stuff done.  And she does get stuff done.”  Except finding the belt.  The magic belt that had been lost for apparently ever since Status Quo attacked the Lair, that James didn’t even remember existing.  Alex had been hunting it like it was her white whale, to about as much success so far.

”Okay.  So, two humans and a camraconda.  No ratroaches?”

“They aren’t ready.”  James told him, starting to pace a little bit on the open stretch of reclaimed street.  “Even Arrush.  They will be, eventually, but none of them are yet.  Same thing with infomorphs.  Even the older, stronger ones.  Planner knows they’re not a good fit and explained why at length, Mercy likes her place in the hospital, Zhu… well, don’t worry about Zhu.  And then there’s the authorities, which are somewhere between dumb dogs and smart roombas in terms of mental capabilities.  Loyal, yes, absolutely, but I don’t trust them to make choices.  I don’t think they can make choices.”

Simon looked like he was deep in thought.  “What’s the difference between a paladin then and someone who chaotically moves between problems and projects already?”

”Neither Momo nor Rufus would make good paladins, because both of them don’t actually like talking to people outside of their close friend groups.”  James answered the question that Simon was actually asking.

There was another long pause, though not a quiet one.  In the distance, the sounds of voices and motion reached their ears, while a single car engine announced the restoration of the vehicle behind them.  That one would be added to one of the growing lots of cars the Order had access to, thousands of vehicles lined up, repaired by the gas that came out of the nearby dungeon but completely lacking in any purpose.

Bugs threatened to try to break through the insect repellant they had on.  A shift in the breeze brought the smell of rot and decay from part of the city that hadn’t been cleaned up.  Others from the training group started moving down the street to join them in ones and twos as the exhausting exercises started to wind down.

His mind wandering, James found himself thinking about giving in and joining the Akashic Sewer delve tonight.  He was already tired, but when he saw Arrush walking toward him, he felt his heart pulled in two directions.  Elation to see his boyfriend, as odd as that was to start getting used to, but also a dark pit in his stomach to know that more of Arrush’s species were held captive by a violent god in the ugly hole that was that dungeon.  And at least that he could do something about.

”Okay.”  Simon said, breaking James out of his grim thoughts.

”Okay?”

”Okay.  I’m in.  Do I get a secret agent number?”

“…No?  No!”  James cheerfully answered.  “You get loaded down with magical effects, and a lot of responsibility.”  He paused.  “Actually, there’s something important about that, that you need to know before agreeing.”

Simon snorted.  “I’m pretty sure I know already, but we can talk about it later.”  He pointed to where Karen was bringing up the rear of the group.

While James handed people water bottles as they arrived, and got rebuffed by Arrush when he went in for a hug and learned that the ratroach was far too hot, itchy, and uncomfortable to deal with physical contact, Karen stopped ten feet away and watched the group of knights flounder in drained exhaustion.

The older woman was wearing exercise gear instead of her usual professional attire, and James had started the day offended that she looked like she had more muscle definition than him.  Now he was ending the day less offended, and more just impressed that she had run all the same drills alongside them, with a seemingly endless well of stamina.

Karen looked at all of them and gave a single nod.  “Good work today everyone.”  She said simply.  “I’ll see you all next week.”

Then she strode off toward the town square, leaving the whole group behind as she moved with careful strides, looking for all the world like she hadn’t broken a sweat in the last six hours.

”That… that sounded like a threat.”  One of the new kids from one of the security teams said.

”I think it was more like a promise.”  Alex gasped out before she popped the lid off her sports bottle and poured the water over her face.

”Th-that’s worse.”  Arrush said, his bare chest rising and falling in an uneven pattern as his multitude of lungs worked hard with his panting breaths.  “S-so much worse!”

”I dunno, I feel pretty good!”  James said with a grin at all of them.  “I could do this again!”  A multitude of different eyes looked at him, and he suspected that Spire-Cast-Behind was considering whether or not she could freeze him long enough for the rest of the group to tackle him.  “I mean, I could do this again once.”  James appended.  “Any more than that and I might die.”

They relaxed.  That sounded more reasonable.  Once was doable

They could come back once.  And then reevaluate from there.  Which might… actually be Karen’s exact plan.

James bit his lower lip.  Four skill ranks in something really did make someone kind of scary, when it was something that involved social prowess.  Even knowing what was being done, he didn’t feel manipulated at all.  Just… like he was understood, and being worked with.  That was weird.  Or maybe perfect.  He wasn’t sure and he’d used up all his mental energy for a while.

”Alright.”  Simon said, standing up.  “I’m gonna go get lunch and then hang out on the couch and talk to the chanters.  The terrifying old lady who runs the burrito cart down here is around today, and that sounds great right now.”

”Dorothy isn’t terrifying.”  Alex tried to tell him.

One of the kids from the security teams looked around them, pointing at the devastation that still dominated this city in the wake of Townton’s violent upheaval.  “Do American cities always look like this?”  It was potentially an innocent question from a girl who had lived most of her life in a rural Indian town, but there was a level of learned confidence and snark to her voice that made it clear what she was saying.

”Dorothy didn’t blow up the…” Alex trailed off.

James cocked an eyebrow at her.  “Hm?”

”Dorothy didn’t blow up the city alone.”  Alex finished lamely.  “Alright, fine.  She’s a little scary.  But she’s also serving nacho bowls to a bunch of terrified turtley guys, and also to us, if we go there right now.”

“That does go a long way.”  Simon said before taking a more commanding tone.  “Everyone make sure you don’t leave any gear around!  Especially the drones!  The necroads will eat them if they find them when they move back into this area, alright?”

It was kind of fun watching Simon round up a group of people who had been opponents on the training field not even ten minutes ago.  He, Spire, and Alex led the rest of the Order’s new members away back toward the populated part of the city, the three of them talking about something that James had put on all of their minds.

”They look like they’re having fun.”  James said to Arrush when they were the last two left behind.  The ratroach just nodded at him, blinking rapidly, his smaller limbs scratching at the lines between his chitin and his hide.  “I’m still on Oregon time, so I’m not up for lunch.  But I do need a bath.  You wanna head back to the Lair with me?”  Arrush gave a much more enthusiastic nod, a few thick blue droplets flying from his triangular muzzle as he grinned at James.  “Excellent.”  James smiled back and offered a hand.  “I’ve got a little time before the next thing I’m supposed to do today.  I hope.  God Karen is exhausting.  Is this what it’s always like working with her?”  Arrush nodded again before they vanished, much more solemnly.

Karen was a very direct person, who had never once cared that he had different requirements while the two of them were learning to fight together.  But this?  Strict, demanding, pushing people to their limits… well, she’d gotten better at doing it effectively.  But four skill ranks had only changed the deftness of her approach, not the attitude behind it.

Arrush had a feeling that Nate wasn’t going to get his job back for this role anytime soon.

_____

Operations Manual update.  Mandatory for Response personnel, recommended for all Order members.

Order Of Endless Rooms Operations Manual, Section 1 Part 10-8, Response Uniform :

When Response was started, it was in reaction to a dungeon breaching into mundane Earth and killing a lot of people.  The initial concept in the aftermath of that disaster was that we had the ability and resources to have a team of combat-ready knights prepared at any time to teleport in to save the day.

Since that time, two things have happened.  One is that no other dungeon events have occured.  The other is that Response began deploying in response to a number of incidents that had nothing to do with dungeons at all.

The original uniform for a Response knight matched the original purpose.  Class two body armor, two weapons in different styles just in case a dungeon had a ban on one of them or its creations were resistant to something, any combative dungeontech we had access to.  The kind of thing you would wear if you expected to be on the front line evacuating civilians and holding back waves of monsters from somewhere like the Underburbs.

The current reality of Response is that people call us for help.  They call because they’re having a medical problem, because there’s a mental health crisis, because there’s an argument escalating to maybe a fight, because they’re worried about their neighbors, because they’re lost, because their kid is lost, because their car broke down.  Someone called us once because she couldn’t carry her groceries to her apartment.  We solve these problems.  We are happy to solve these problems.

None of these problems require body armor.

At time of writing, Response has responded to thousands of real crises, and even more small problems.  Across all of that, the number of times a Responder was attacked amounts to less than .1% of all calls for help, and none of those attacks would have been effective even without the armor.

As Response completes its transformation to a community safety unit that just happens to be able to teleport, we would be idiots not to examine how we present ourselves to the world, and to the people we are working for.

The job of Response has always been to make people safer.  We started locally, but every day sees us ending up a little farther from home, and a little more integrated into the world.  Despite the problems with the spread of information, there are people who recognize us.  And we want them to recognize us as people who aren’t a militarized police force.  Part of the reason Response was formed in the first place, even if all the rest of it has changed, is that a militarized police force was ineffective and bad.  And across the world, police forces keep showing off just how bad of a look body armor and heavy weaponry is.

Knights are meant to be better.  And also, you have shield bracers.

To that end, the new Response uniform is as follows, regardless of species:

1. Civilian clothing of your choice
2. ‘Blue orb’ patches to be worn on the shoulders

As we continue to grow and expand, Response is going to be met with a lot of challenges from the world.  But at no point should we forget what we want Response to be.

Response solves problems.  And we don’t need to look like stormtroopers to do it.

_____

James frowned at his computer screen.  Hunched forward in the comfortable chair that someone had once put in his office to help with his back pain and bad posture, utterly ruining the point of the chair, he sighed to himself.

”Do you think this is a little heavy handed?”  James asked Rufus, before realizing that only silence replied to him.  “Rufus?”  He looked around their shared office, but found no sign of the strider.  “Huh.”

Rufus must have gone out at some point while James was working on Operations Manual updates.  The document was kept constantly up to date by a number of people, but half those people often asked him to do the parts that filled in history, context, and reasoning.  And because of the constant updates, they’d gone to a system where every update was either required reading, recommended, or secondary.  It was flexible, if imperfect, but that was kind of the Order’s motto at this point and it was working for them.

“It is afternoon.”  A digital camraconda voice from the door spoke, getting James’ attention.

He looked up to see someone poking their head in, a boxy camera form with an aperture eye atop grey and blue cables in no particular pattern.  “Oh hey TQ.”  James said, before realizing that probably sounded really unenthusiastic.  “Come on in, I’m not really doing anything except wondering how much I should edit this.”

”Nostalgic.”  The camraconda said with an amused hiss as he slithered through the door and used the end of his tail to shove it mostly shut.  “I am here to complain.”

”Oh, heck yeah.”  James grinned at the camraconda as he moved fluidly onto the beanbag near the edge of the wide desk that James and Rufus shared.  TQ seemed to deflate as he settled into it, flopping his head over upside down to stare up at James, the coat he was wearing bunching up under him.  “Nice jacket by the way.”  James commented.

It was a little embarrassing, but he hadn’t been exposed to the growing culture of camraconda fashion nearly as much as he might have expected.  For all that he was the person to make the call and lead the way to liberating the first large group of camracondas from Officium Mundi, James often felt like he wasn’t really as close to any of them as a lot of other people in the Order were.  TQ was his friend, sure, but it was mostly in how they casually hung around each other while working on stuff, and not that James was immersed in the camraconda way of life.

He wasn’t sure how that had happened, exactly.  But TQ was wearing what looked like a puffy brown bomber jacket with the arms folded down along his sides, and it was a cool fit even on someone without arms.  Unless it was actually poofy enough to cover an armature backpack, in which case James found it impressive that the Order’s engineering department had built a set of camraconda arms that could maneuver in a coat like that, because he’d worn a jacket like that in college and those things were heavy.

”Thanks you.”  TQ replied to the compliment.  “It is your coat.”

”What?”

”I stole it.”

”How?  When?”  James was more impressed than offended.

TQ hissed an uncontained laugh.  “Sarah gave it to me, at D&D night.”  Unlike many camracondas, TQ didn’t actually use an assistance program for his voice.  But even still, the way he pronounced D&D in a precise letter-by-letter way made it sound unlike how James ever heard anyone else say it, and served as a reminder that he wasn’t talking to a human.  “She claimed you would not miss it.  And I believe her.  Because she is very powerful.”

”That is true.  I wouldn’t cross Sarah.  But that’s mostly because I think I’d die of shame if I disappointed her, and not cause she can actually just put me in a coma by looking at me funny.”  James admitted.  “How’s the game been going, by the way!  I’m super curious.”

”It is strange.”  TQ admitted, still staring up at James from his inverted resting spot.  “I had not thought that pretending to be other would be fun.”

James nodded.  “Yeah, it’s kinda the big hurdle with tabletop RPGs.  It’s, like… a game out of playing pretend.”

”Yes!”  TQ shimmied into a coil of camraconda in the beanbag.  “And that is new.  It was dangerous to do that, before.  Our siblings that did mostly broke and left.  Doing it now was scary.  But I am having fun, I think!”

The casual way the camraconda spoke about trauma that James felt he would have been broken by himself was heart wrenching.  But if TQ felt like he could say it without distress, then James wasn’t going to dwell either.  “So, what’re you playing as?”

”The most exotic thing.”  TQ replied.  “A human fighter.”  There was a brief moment of quiet, and then, James leaned over the side of his desk, resting one arm on it as he gave his friend the flattest look possible.  Lips pursed, eyes narrowed just a little bit, thoroughly unimpressed in every way.  TQ just kept up his innocent looking gaze, long tongue flicking out to taste the air in fast but casual motions.  “No one has ever thought of this before.”  He added, somehow smug about it.

That got James to crack into a burst of heaving laughter.  “Alright, alright!”  He said as he struggled to catch his breath, still leaning over his desk with one hand on the edge of it.  “That was fucking perfect.”

”Just regular perfect for now.”  TQ replied as if he’d been waiting for the comment.  “Will you join our game?  We are fighting a volcano currently.”

”That’s… a tempting way to get me interested.”  James admitted.  “But also, as cool as it sounds, and as much as I would like to hang out more, I don’t know if I could even keep up with the schedule.  Also aren’t there, like, four of you?  That’s already kinda pushing it.” James held up a hand as he leaned back, counting off names he knew were hanging out with Sarah at his apartment.  “There’s you, Smoke-And-Ember, Alanna, and… the ratroach I can’t remember or pronounce the name of.  The one who almost died.”

”Cheha.”  TQ’s pronunciation wasn’t great either.  The name was, much like Arrush and Keeka’s names, meant to be a soft quiet sound that could be said without drawing attention.  It was an almost breathy chaa-haa sound, that was very hard for a camraconda to say properly.  Not that James was doing any better.  “But also almost died is a bad qualifier for them.  That is so many ratroaches.”

”Yeah, it fucking sucks.”  James nodded.  “At least we’re working on it, you know?  Hell, I’m going back in tonight to see if I can get anyone else out of there.”

”May I join?”  It was hard sometimes to tell if TQ was serious about things.  The camraconda had found a streak of silly mischievousness in the absence of being responsible for the lives of sixty others of his kind.  But right now, it was clear he wasn’t kidding around.

On things like this, he and James were in agreement; no one deserved to live like that.  ”Absolutely.”  James answered quickly, slotting TQ into the strike team roster with his skulljack link.  “Done.  The Sewer’s been doing a really annoying thing with the timing of the door apparently, so we’re going in at around ten pm.”

”I will clear my schedule.”

”…do you have a schedule?”  James had to know.

”Of course.  I have three additional interviews today.  And I have allocated time for flirting with you.  And I am helping Mark with a construction after lunch.  And I am scheduled for a delve tonight.”  TQ listed things off.

James nodded along, then slowly tapped a finger against his lips.  “What was that second one?”

”You heard me.  Humans have good hearing.  Like dogs.”

”I… wait, is that a thing?  Sorry, I don’t want to get too sidetracked, again, but do camracondas not hear as well as humans or something?  I feel like I should know this.”  James admitted.  “I should definitely know this.”

TQ whipped his head back and forth, the top of his camera dragging against the carpet of James’ office as he was still mostly upside down.  “No.  We also have good hearing.  Like dogs.  Or humans.”

“Sometimes talking to you feels like a light jog through a conversational minefield.”  James told TQ with an amused huff.

”Thank you.”

James wasn’t fully sure if that had been a compliment, but it was actually funny to see TQ take it that way.  “Oh, wait, interviews?  Are you helping with that?”

”Yes.  I have your list of questions, and some of my own.  Cathy says I am doing a job.” TQ gave an odd little hiss as he spoke.

”…a good job?”

”She used an adjective.  I am not sure if she thinks I am foolish.”  The blue-grey camraconda stated, turning for the first time to look away from James.  “I know I speak differently.  I know I am not normal.  But I am not stupid.”  It wasn’t clear if he was saying it to himself, or to James, or to no one at all.

James slid out of his chair and dropped to the floor, scooting himself until he was leaning on the beanbag TQ was laying in.  In the most casual way he could, he settled an arm around the thick body of the camraconda in a comforting hug.  “I can talk to Cathy if you want.”  James said softly.  “But like, you’re using the most difficult method possible to talk with a skulljack.  And you regularly get the drop on people in banter.  So what I’m saying is, I know you’re not stupid.”

”I worry.”  TQ admitted.  “I know I sound wrong.  Texture-Of-Barkdust has been seen as flawed for the same thing when speaking to humans.  Your world is sometimes very mean.”

”Oh, I fuckin know.”  James nodded as TQ roiled to turn under his arm to face him.  “I’m working on it.”

”How?”

“Patience and compassion, mostly.”  James admitted with a shrug.  “It’s kinda working.  Anyway, do you want to do the next interview together?  I’ve just got to do an edit pass and then post this update.”

TQ looked up at the side of the human’s face.  James wasn’t quite looking at him, instead just staring at the rear window of his office and the view of the massive human nest outside.  But TQ was looking at what was important.  Someone who had never, not once, failed to care.

”I would like that.”  He said.  “I am two minutes late, so you will need to hurry.  I will place the blame on you for the distraction.”

James rolled his body forward, hopping to his feet and leaning over his keyboard to make a few rapid edits.  “That’s not fair!  Emotional support isn’t a distraction!”  He claimed with a laugh.

TQ also rolled sideways off his resting spot, rising up to his casual moving height, which put his eyeline at about three and a half feet over the floor.  “I agree.  But you have still made me late, and it is funny this way.  I will meet you in the conference room.”  He turned up his head toward James and stuck the end of his tongue out with a tiny hiss as he said his piece, before heading for the ajar office door.

James rapidly finished his update to the Operations Manual, and followed.  The Order was needed more people for a hundred different projects, and if he was lucky, they could fill at least a couple of those spots today.

_____

“What would you do if you didn’t need to worry about money?”  TQ asked their latest interview subject.  This one, at least, focused on him and didn’t break eye contact to look at James.

”How much not worrying?”  Ji-Hu asked, the South Korean student using only slightly accented english.  Or rather, he’d been a student until he’d failed to get into his target university, and had gone through a mild mental breakdown.  News of which had gotten back to a couple online friends, who just so happened to know about a job opening.

”All your needs met and enough left over to toy around with.”  TQ specified.

There was a long pause.  “This is an odd interview.”  The young man said.  “I don’t… know what I would do.  I am sorry.”

He moved to stand up, and James quickly held up a hand to motion him back into his seat.  “What are you good at?”  He asked, pretending that the person they were asking questions to hadn’t just tried to flee as soon as he felt like he’d gotten one wrong.

TQ interjected rapidly.  ”And, before you answer, I am going to save us time and specify that he is asking what you would tell friends you are good at, not what you would say in an interview.”

”But this is an interview.” Ji-Hu protested weakly.

”Well yeah.”  James admitted.  “But pretend it’s not.  Or, better, pretend that I’m an eccentric American with no sense of decorum.”

”Oh!  Yes, pretend I am that as well!”  TQ added with a cheerfully attached hiss.

Ji-Hu looked like he was entirely unsure about everything happening.  “I am good at… at making friends?”  He asked.  “That sounds so strange to say, but it is true.  Remembering names and things about people, that never felt like forcing myself to study.  I also know how to drive, but I do not know if that matters as much here.”

”Because it’s the US and everyone here worships cars in a very worrying way, or because we have teleporters?”  James asked.

”The… I’m sorry, what am I interviewing for?”  The student adjusted his glasses in a nervous tic that he’d been displaying every time someone said something like that.

”A job.”  TQ unhelpfully supplied with the kind of camraconda-specific digital tone that made it deliberately unclear if he was poking fun or being bluntly honest or both.  “How do you work in groups?”

The question seemed to be a refuge of normalcy to their subject, and he practically sagged in relief to have something he could give a good answer to.  “I’m very good at it.” He said with a tiny smile.  “I was always the one who organized group projects in school.  Put the pieces together.  Not something that gets you recognized, but I know that it helped.”

That was a good answer.  James and TQ made a shared mental note through their skulljack connection.  Who this person was and how they’d fit was starting to take shape.

”If you could choose between flying or teleporting, which would you pick?”  TQ asked, continuing the flow of questioning.

”Flying.”  Ji-Hu answered without hesitation.  “It would be safer.  And more… no. Yes.  Flying.”

”More what?”  James followed up, cocking an eyebrow.  “It’s okay to have weird reasons; you might have guessed but we’re into that here.”

The younger man sighed.  “More… freeing.”  He said.  “Teleporting would be efficient.  Flying would be… pleasant.  You could get away that way.”

”I like him.”  TQ said out loud, turning to James.

”You’re supposed to save that for the end.  We have more questions first.”  James reminded the camraconda.  “Like this one.  How many people did you pass on the way in?”

”Counting you?”

”No.  Just on this floor.”

”Three.”

James raised his eyebrows.  That was, if you didn’t count the plant and vending machine, correct.  And it was okay to not count them when you didn’t know.  It wasn’t like Ferndinand actually made a habit of showing off to every visitor.  It was more the instant answer that impressed him.

”Incorrect but not too bad.”  TQ said, getting a suppressed look of distress from the student.  “You are provided a budget of ten thousand dollars.  You have no time to consider.  How do you use it to improve the lives of others?”

This question always made people flounder, and this time was no exception.  But he recovered admirably, with an answer that very obviously drew on something from his own experience.  “Create a series of easily accessible videos that offer primers in different academic subjects, but for people who do not learn well from books.”

James was pretty sure that existed, but it was still a good impulse.  Education was important, though clearly the person on the other side of the table from him hadn’t really had a great experience with his own nation’s system.  A common problem basically everywhere.  “Alright.  Now that you’ve said that out loud, how would you improve your own idea?”

”Oh.  Interesting.”  Ji-Hu paused only for a minute as he thought.  “Different translations to make it more available to different people.  Sample tests attached to the videos to help with studying from them, for retaining information.”

To James, that was a weird impulse.  He did actually understand where it was coming from, but thinking of a test as an improvement was just not where his brain would go unless he forced it that direction.

”You find yourself” TQ said without missing a beat or giving Ji-Hu a breath, “facing a perfect copy of yourself.  Your reaction?”

”Is the copy a demon?  Or some kind of monster?”

”Good question.”  James lied.

Ji-Hu looked lost again.  “Well… if I trust you, then it’s a perfect copy.  Which makes them me.  If they are evil, then they might try to steal my life, so I shouldn’t trust them?  But now that I’ve said that, I realize I am desperate enough to have ended up here, so maybe they could just have my life if they asked.  But if they are exactly me, they wouldn’t want it either.  So we might end up in an argument about which one of us needs to tell our parents that we failed our entrance exams.”  He looked away from James and TQ before taking a deep breath.  “Is this likely to come up?”  The student sounded almost hopeful as he fidgeted with his glasses.

”That is the most depressing thing I have heard today.”  TQ said with an amused hiss.  “And that is impressive, because I have said some very depressing things!”

James pursed his lips.  “Yeah, yikes.”  He said quietly, running a hand over the edge of the table and trying to avoid saying anything quite so blunt.  “Actually, you’re not even on a bad track there with the open communication part.  I find that a lot of the scariest looking problems can be solved by just adapting to understand the situation and working to give people what they need.  So, like, I don’t hate your answer.”

”But let us move on.”  TQ said, and Ji-Hu gave the camraconda a grateful look.  “On a one to ten scale how much danger would you like to live in?”

”…One?  None?  No danger please?”

James hummed.  “Interesting.  And what if the danger could give you supernatural abilities or outright magic?”

”That is… a strange thing to ask me.  Does any of the magic make studying easier?”

”Shockingly?  Yes.”

”Eight, then.”

There was no hesitation there at all.  James made another note just under TQ’s own, that maybe this kid was hyperfocused on something that had consumed his life for a little too long.

”Would you prefer a job with a specific list of tasks you need to accomplish, or with a broad mandate that you could work within?”  James asked, trying to not get bogged down with how worryingly zeroed in on schooling Ji-Hu was.

”Tasks feel more efficient.”  Ji-Hu said.  “Being able to meet goals and know I am on the correct track is safer than not knowing if I am making progress.”  He frowned.  “But I have never tried any other way, so maybe I would need to try it to know.”

TQ gave a bobbing nod.  “A fine answer.  How well do you change in response to new information?”

”I don’t want to seem like the kind of person who brags,” Ji-Hu said slowly, focusing on the camraconda, “but I have been speaking to an alien life form for the last fifteen minutes.”

”Dang, that’s a good answer.”  James said out loud, leaning back and smiling.  “Alright.  Would you like a job?”

”Doing what?”

”You’re the first person to ask that!”  TQ said cheerfully.

James settled a hand on TQ’s head.  ”That isn’t an answer.”  He said with a laugh.  “The actual answer is, we’d move you around a lot for a few months until you find something that calls to you.  Your job would be as an assistant to whatever project lead you’re working with that week, with an eye toward developing personal skills, team cohesion, and cultural adaptation.  Our organization’s mandate is to improve the world in a variety of different ways, and the pay is probably a lot higher than you’re thinking.  This is not some kind of unpaid internship.”

Ji-Hu looked past them, out the window at the city skyline.  He was one of the few people who had actually arrived through the office building’s real world lobby and not the magical elevator that went up in Oregon and ended in California.  But still, he was a long way from home, and he took a deep breath as he considered the offer.

”My father wanted me to be a doctor.”  He said softly.

”That’s still on the table.”  James told him.  “We can start you with our medical wing, and see how you fit in.  But, I don’t want to leave this unstated; we’re going to want to know what you want and where you want to work.  I’m not hiring your parents.  I’m hiring the guy who’s good at making friends and organizing group projects.”

Ji-Hu nodded, and then refocused on James.  “I accept.”  He said.

James reached out a hand to shake.  “Welcome to the Order of Endless Rooms.”  He said.  “Cathy will get you set up with the registration paperwork and stuff.  And then you can take the elevator down for a tour of our actual headquarters.  Uh… be prepared to have that ‘adapt to new information’ thing tested, yeah?”

”It is a very long elevator ride.”  TQ said cryptically.  Out of everyone else in the Order, he understood exactly why James liked doing that kind of thing.

_____

James started to have dinner in the Lair’s increasingly fancy dining area as part of a lightly romantic date with Anesh and Alanna.  The three of them didn’t line up their schedules very often, and since James wanted to have eaten well in advance of the Sewer delve he had later, he felt like a dinner that was basically an exceptionally late lunch would be nice.

The dining room, originally just an open room in the commercial flex space that they’d leased to turn into the Lair, had undergone a number of transformations over the last couple years.  It had ended up looking a lot more hostile after the Status Quo attack on the building, with the high windows walled over and replaced with more defensible rebar and concrete.  But since truly eliminating that enemy, and then pushing back the threat of further retaliation with Planner’s infomorphic vigilance, they’d made other changes as well that had lightened the feeling of the space.

The walls that used to divide off a small secondary room, which had been where Response operated, had been reduced, leaving the whole place feeling larger and more spacious.  The walls had been repainted and decorated with hangings, including a trio of tall carved wood panels that several camracondas had made that depicted their escape from Officium Mundi.  What had originally been secondhand school cafeteria tables and benches had transitioned into padded bench booths along the outside walls, varnished wood surfaces, and basket seats for the camracondas.  Warm wood and orange lights that were still bright enough to see clearly under.  And of course, the litany of green orbs that were a constant addition to the building.

One of them gave the dining room more natural light, which was impressive for a space without windows.  At least one effect made more space for tables, and one just made more space period.  Further effects gave small but constant quality of life improvements, like making it less likely to trip, making the food more nutritious, and keeping the coffee hot.  And that was before James made a bunch of new recruits test crack more green orb copies later tonight.

It was a really nice place to just relax.  And the kitchen, staffed by people who actually seemed to enjoy or at least tolerate the job, made it a great place to get food at basically any time of day.  Which was perfect for the Order, which always had someone in the building that needed to eat.  And which was perfect for when James and his partners wanted to have a nice little dinner together without too much stress, when all three of them were busy with other projects.

”Not that we aren’t friends...”  Anesh started to say as James glowered over his salad.

Alanna was more blunt.  “JP what the fuck are you doing interrupting us?”  She asked their friend who was about to be downgraded to ‘friend’, jabbing a fork with her own chunk of salad on it in his direction.

James had gotten a salad because he wanted something light just to not feel hungry later.  Alanna had gotten a salad because she knew there was no limit to how much stuff you could put on a salad, and she wanted to apparently eat an entire pound of bacon.

JP just laughed as the trio stared at where he’d slid into the booth next to Anesh.  “Alright, I’m sorry!  Don’t get too mad.  I’m just here to give a quick update on a couple things at least one of you needs to know.”  He held his hands up, a self-satisfied look on his face saying that he wasn’t sorry at all.

”I already know about the new Response uniform.”  Alanna said, turning to show off her shoulder, patting the tips of her fingers on the newly minted patch stuck on her jacket.  “Personally I think we should have thought of this a lot earlier.  It’s the perfect inside joke; obviously blue orbs solve problems, but no one is gonna have a fucking clue what we’re talking about.”

”And I’m aware of Camille’s… sister.”  James said, frowning at the word.  “Is it sister?  I think Cam kinda knows they aren’t actually sisters, but I don’t know if that’s what she’d want to be called.”

Anesh tapped a finger on the smooth tabletop between them.  “You could just say ‘an Camille’, and use that voice you like where you know you’re using slightly incorrect grammar.”  He offered.

James gave his boyfriend a bright smile, feeling his heart melt at the words.  “I do like doing that!  Okay, yes JP, I know about how there is an Camille nearby.”

“Are we gonna recruit her too?”  Alanna asked.

”Probably nnnnnn- hm.”  James cut himself off.

Anesh laughed as he twirled his fork through his late lunch, mixing sauce and pasta in a casual motion.  “You, of all people, should know how this plays out.”

”It could go wrong!”  James said.  “Anyway, Alanna and I did our rebuttals of JP’s ‘news’, now you do one.”  He set his elbow on the table and cocked a finger toward Anesh in a dramatic flourish.

His boyfriend stared back at him, then slowly looked over at JP who looked like he was getting increasingly irate with these three idiots he’d decided to be friends with back in high school and had never escaped.  “Yes, JP, I already know that someone stole the room you were going to use as a secret clubhouse to be a pottery studio.”

”How do you know that?”  JP asked.  “The first part.  Not the… rest of it.  I know how you know the rest of it.”

”He knows the rest of it because his boyfriend is a pothead.”  Alanna said, deploying the joke she’d been trying to wedge into conversation for about a week.

James and Anesh both turned to stare at her, James having to shift so he was leaning against the room’s wall, open mouthed at the incredibly dumb joke that had Alanna looking like she’d just gotten away with the crime of the century.  Sitting up straight, head tilted back, a smile the made it seem as if she was eating some kind of priceless and irreplaceable artifact, looking down on her boyfriends almost imperiously.

”…Yeah, Keeka asked me to go with him to learn how to make pots and stuff.”  Anesh confirmed, turning back to James like he was having a normal conversation.  “It’s kinda relaxing, actually.  He is a lot more into it than I am, but I think it’s bloody cute so I’m not going to stop going.  Anyway, I had a feeling when JP showed up one day and then scampered off that he had wanted the room and forgot about it for too long.”

”JP’s going to be so disappointed.”  James said, trying to stab a rather resistant piece of onion with his fork.  “He may never recover.”

”I am still here.”  JP offered, deflating slightly.

Anesh nodded solemnly.  “Well, JP’s total devastation of his ego aside, I do love the new Response look Alanna.  A lot more approachable.  Less Amazonian warrior, which I’m sure will disappoint some people.”

”Yeah, actually, how often on Response have hostile people just given up because they wanted you to step on them?”  James had to know.  Well, he didn’t have to know, but he felt like he wanted to retaliate for Alanna’s earlier joke.

His girlfriend looked up with half a hard boiled egg in her mouth.  “Mmmph!  Wow, that’s a terrible question!”  She said as she chewed.  “That happened once, and people keep bringing it up!  But yeah, thanks cutie.”  She addressed Anesh directly.  “I like the style too, and also, bonus, I don’t have to fit into armor that I don’t think will ever really be that comfortable.”

”…That happened?”  Anesh asked.  “James I thought you were joking.”

”So did I!”

”Once.”  Alanna insisted, futilely.

JP sighed in an obvious attempt to get their attention.  “Still here, actually.”  He said.

”Once still seems like one more time than I legit expected.”  James ignored his friend.  “Like, you have to be committed to your kink to ask that in the middle of a fight or whatever.”

Alanna ducked her head, a hint of a blush on her neck, though she struggled to keep it from spreading even though she didn’t actually have that power.  “Can we go back to talking about Anesh and Keeka?”  She asked.

”Sure!”  James eagerly whipped back around to look at his boyfriend.  He’d just fully committed to not paying attention to JP at this point, until JP either gave up or actually told them what the fuck he was here for.  “So hey, it’s been a little bit.  Are things going okay with you two?  Everything feeling okay in the whole greater polycule we’ve got going on?  I know you know you can tell us if there’s problems, but sometimes it helps if I just ask directly.”  He explained himself.

JP cleared his throat.  “Can I… just…”

With a deep sigh, Anesh dropped his fork and shook his head.  “JP, just… just get into it, would you?  I don’t want to have this conversation while you’re here.”

”Thank you.”  Being acknowledged was like catnip for JP.  “…James is right.  There’s another Camille in the area.  Cam says she’s probably here hunting her specifically.  So our Cam is grounded, in case that comes up.  Nate said he was… doing something about it, so if you see him, tell him I want to know what the fuck that means.  I’m working on sourcing silver bullets for the inevitable showdown with the Last Line at some point, because apparently that works on Camilles.  And that’s actually about all I have for you.”  JP nodded to himself, making the small motion an almost graceful little addition to his words.  “Now is it my turn to discuss relationship woes?”

Anesh tried to shove JP out of the booth, which didn’t work for reasons of both lack of leverage and also that JP was a little heavier than he looked.  “Get out of here.”  Anesh tried instead.  “We’re on a date.”

”Yeah, your dates are the only time I can fucking find all three of you in the same place at the same time.”  JP said as he stood up, dusting off his lapel like it was an ingrained reflex.  “Anyway, now you know.  Be on the lookout for a lethally dangerous blonde that isn’t Alanna.”

”…I’m dying my hair.”  Alanna announced after JP left.  “I’m thinking orange and purple.  Turn myself into a sunset.”

Anesh raised his eyebrows at her over lunch.  “Is it odd that I feel like we should have a magic for that by now?  I can change skin color, after all.  That’s more work than hair color.”

”You can still do that?”

”Yeah, it copied over before… I died.”  Anesh took a breath.  “Sorry.  Bad memories.”

James reached out to offer a hand, and Alanna did the same next to him.  ”Hey, it’s okay.  Talking about feelings is our thing here.  No one’s mad at you for being upset that one of you died.”  He let Anesh weave fingers into his own and Alanna’s hands at the same time, his boyfriend looking like he wasn’t sure if he should put his fork down for this.

Anesh eventually just pulled back and went back to eating, honestly feeling better to know the other two were supportive.  He made a mental note to focus on this moment when he shared the day with himself later; a trick he was developing to make his life feel more like a single interlinked event and less like four people who happened to start from the same spot.  “Ahh, I feel like I don’t deserve you two sometimes.  Or Keeka, either.  And that’s going alright, since you asked.  I’m worried that he’s… a little too eager, maybe?  When I want to go slower?  But I do like him.”

”You two are very cute when you team up on people, also.”  James said with a smirk.  “Also I support Alanna’s hairstyle choices.  You’ll match Zhu when he’s on you.”

”Oh!  I didn’t even think of that!”  Alanna snapped her fingers in a delighted realization.  “How’s he doing, anyway?”

”Tired.”  James grimaced.  “He’s… tired a lot.  The purple that modified my brain really helped, but he’s still getting exhausted every time he ‘eats’, and it’s a lot worse for him than it was for me.  I think he’s trying to conserve energy for when he’s useful, like on delves and things, and I wish he wouldn’t.”

”Oof.  Have we tried-“ Alanna stopped, tilting her head back as she got a message prompt through her skulljack.  “Okay, gotta go.”  She said, leaning down to shove an excessive amount of tomato and cucumber into her mouth before slipping out of the booth.  “Mh muuvh ooh oow!”  She grunted as she waved and turned to hustle toward the stairwell that would take her to the Response basement, something having come up that required her attention sooner rather than later.

”We love you too!”  James and Anesh yelled after her as she wove through the tables that were half full with other members of the Order and also a few new hires that were looking distinctly out of place and confused as they waited for the orientation meeting later.

”Do you remember a few years ago,” Anesh asked as Alanna waved over her shoulder and vanished around the corner, “when we were talking about telling her about the dungeon for the first time?”

James smiled at the memory. ”We were fencing!”

His boyfriend nodded happily.  “We were.  I was winning.”  He laughed softly at James’ pout.  “I just… I have this memory of talking to you about Alanna, and thinking that I fancied her so much, but I knew you did too, and I didn’t want to step on your toes.”

”I didn’t even realize at the point that we were flirting with each other all the time.”  James admitted.

”We were?!”  Anesh couldn’t pretend to be shocked as James just leveled a stare at him.  “Right, right, I’ll trust you for now.”  He said.  “Did you ever think we’d end up here?”

”Not even a little bit.”  James said, finishing the last of his salad.  “But I‘m so glad we did.”  He said as he stood up from the booth.  “Also I also have to go, and I’m mad at JP for sapping our valuable date time, because it’s time for me to introduce a bunch of new people to the Order.”

”Have fun.  If you make another basement, I’m calling the fire department on us for some kind of violation.”  Anesh leaned over to let James plant a kiss on his lips before he, too, headed off to work.

And then it was just Anesh, finishing his food in a few quiet minutes before clearing their table.  He didn’t feel abandoned though; for one thing he could keep up a couple conversations online in his head, but also, he had some stuff to get to as well.  Research was working with the Library tablet today, and Anesh wanted to see if his mathematical breakdown of how a certain magical effect worked held up under detailed scrutiny from the analytical dungeontech.  Also he’d read James’ own report on the Utah spellcasting system, and since he had all night, he wanted to see how far he could push a single towel.

That was, of course, assuming Keeka didn’t distract him.  The ratroach was a little too eager, a little too excited, for Anesh to be perfectly comfortable.  But ‘not perfectly comfortable’ didn’t mean he wasn’t quickly falling in love all over again, and if Keeka asked him to drop what he was doing to go on some kind of small romantic adventure, Anesh would probably do it without a second thought.

Meanwhile, his other boyfriend had an actual job to do.  Compared to that, Anesh’s night was positively relaxing.

Well.  It would be, after he cleaned up their table.

____

“Magic is real.

Hello.  Welcome to orientation for your new job at the Order of Endless Rooms.  The name is not metaphorical or aspirational.

My name is James Lyle, and I’m here to give you a brief overview of what you can expect your first week to be like here, as well as to field any questions, but let me get through my little speech first before you ask, because I bet I’ll cover at least half of them in the next couple minutes.

We don’t know what magic is.  We call it magic, but honestly, a lot of it follows very specific rules.  A lot of it is also human-centric in a very suspicious way.  You might hear the term ‘xenotech’ thrown around, because often times it behaves like technology-but-weird.  You might also hear the term ‘dungeontech’, and that’s because of where it comes from.

We call them dungeons because they bear a lot of similarities to the idea of a dungeon in a lot of games.  Places that are filled with dangers and challenges, that operate on their own often inscrutable rules, hidden under our noses.

One of the primary roles of the Order of Endless Rooms is to be good stewards for these places.  Our job is not to eliminate them, or even specifically to take control of them.  Though if anyone wants to share, they’re going to have to present us with a really good case for why we should let them, because these days, I’m not inclined to trust a lot of other groups.  But it’s on the table, and I want to make that clear.

Many of us spend a lot of time in dungeons.  A non-zero amount of that time is combat.  You’re going to meet people here who are actually pretty dangerous, and you might be surprised by who they are when you realize it.  The nicest girl in this building is a living railgun.  It can take some getting used to, which is one of the reasons why we emphasize communication, understanding, and patience around here.

The tradeoff for throwing ourselves into mortal peril all the time is that dungeons do reward you.  Knowledge, strength, party tricks, even just the unique experience of having been in one can change a person in subtle ways.  They’ve got a lot to offer.  And if any of you are interested, we can share that with you.

That’s another point about the Order.  We’re not interested in hoarding power, we’re interested in purposeful and deliberate use of it.  No one person, in our opinion, should be elevated above all others.  If they are, then it becomes their duty to reach down and lift others up.  If you take nothing else away from this today, remember that.

You’ve all been hired for a variety of reasons.  Maybe you’re good at something specific that we need, maybe you’re the kind of person that thrives on adventure and adversity, maybe you’re really, really angry about how shit things are and you want to do something to help, maybe you just have a good attitude.  We’ve got places for a lot of different kinds of people here.

You may have noticed we also have a lot of different kinds of people here.  I know that all of you are aware of that, because it’s part of the interview, but let’s just lay it out.  Not everything that comes out of the dungeons is personal power, and not all the creatures those places create are enemies or monsters.  A lot of them are intelligent, often friendly people.

A lot of them need help.  A lot of them have been through… some stuff.

The Order of Endless Rooms has built a habit of collecting people who have been through some stuff, and giving them a place to heal, grow, and thrive.  And that place is now open to you as well, with all the perks and responsibilities that come along with it.  Just remember that the camracondas and ratroaches and infomorphs are all alive, just like you.

You might be wondering what, exactly, you’ve gotten yourself into.  Good question!  The answer is both simple and complicated.  In front of you is a list of questions, including for your preferred availability - actually preferred, don’t lie to us to look good - and you can fill that out after I’m done rambling and we do one other thing.  From there, our local mastermind will assign you to work with one of the different departments or projects that we have going.

You’ll be there for a week or two.  Long enough to start to learn if you like it or not, and to get a handle on a small part of our overall operation and culture.  Then you’ll be rotated to another spot.  This will happen a few times over the course of your introductory period, and after that it basically stops when you decide you’ve found the place you want to be.  A lot of our projects are temporary positions, so in the future you may find this happening again.  Or maybe you’ll be the one proposing a new project.  That’s just kinda how it goes around here.  We aren’t wasteful with our resources, but we’d rather they get used than hoarded, so there’s a lot of flexibility.  It’s more important to us that you do something you care about and you do it passionately than that you fill a specific job.

Sometimes we do need a specific job.  When that happens, we have ways of getting people up to speed.  Anyone in the Order, myself included, can be shuffled into emergency positions.  Though that shouldn’t ever last more than a week or so.

As for what those projects are?  We like to do things that work toward making the world better.  Community outreach, search and rescue, construction, infrastructure development, medical aid.  Imagine the kind of basic spread of ‘this would be nice’ sort of ideas, but then imagine that we have literal magic.  I know I mentioned the magic earlier.  I feel like I should mention it again.

Magic is real.

And sometimes, magic is very, very stupid.  Sometimes it’s teaching you about phone book formatting.  And sometimes it’s curing cancer.  Sometimes it’s stupid and profound, and you get the ability to slightly cool one spot and heat up another spot and you think ‘this seems… not helpful for dungeon delving’ and you might be right but then your engineering team has a fucking aneurysm over the potential.  And then you have a new project that involves trying to get a local electric company to help build a large scale free energy source.

I see three hands up, and let me cut you off.  Yes, you can work with that project.  Yes, that is real.

You all got to see hints of it during the interview, and just hanging around.  Permit me the delightful pleasure of listing things that we happen to have in this building.

A break room table that switches bodies.  A laserdisc that makes you slightly resistant to drowning.  A spell that creates towels.  Psychotropic laser pointers.  Highly volatile plants that grow organic highlighter ink.  A crown that makes you want to write poetry, among other things.  A meat-seeking rolling office chair.  A chair that’s hard to remember that is mercifully a different chair.  Personalized Car Talk episodes.  Computers that are more wireless than you are thinking when I say ‘wireless’.  A second, different cure for cancer than the one I said initially.  People who are maps, and if that one is the one you get confused on, I’m very sorry.

That’s the good side.  Here’s the reverse.  The world is more dangerous than you suspected, and some of you probably already thought it was pretty dangerous.

Two years ago, something called a pillar pulled a stunt that dumped the contents of a dungeon into the high school that was on top of it.  Hundreds of people died before we got there, and some of our own people went down trying to stop her.  One year ago, an egomaniacal cult leader depopulated a small city in his attempt to turn himself into a god.  Thousands dead, and the city is still aggressively forgotten by the public.  Last month, a group of authoritarian normalcy enforcers tried to burn Yamhill to the ground on the off chance that it might kill the people we rescued from them.  They were keeping their prisoners, human and otherwise, as livestock.

This is on top of the mundane evils of the world.  There are active wars going on.  I try to keep up on what’s happening with ‘normal people’, and I’m pretty sure parts of South America are heading in a bad direction on that front.  There’s child slavery and human trafficking.  There’s poverty, exploitation, and all the bland dehumanization that comes from colonialism and capitalism working hand in hand.

We are… a few hundred people, half of whom aren’t recognized as people by any major government.  We want to help.  But we’re too small for a lot of those problems.  We do what we can, even if some days it feels hopeless.

I don’t think it’s hopeless.  And that’s why you’re here.  Because there are people who care, people who are clever and kind, who are worth taking a chance on.  And I think that all of you would do well if we gave you a chance to do some good.  There are thirty six of you here today, which represents a significant percentage increase in our organization’s population.  I’m not pinning all my hopes on you alone, but still, I hope you’ll join me in trying to shape the future.

Now. In front of you on your tables is a container that I cleverly used to hide your intake forms.  Go ahead and open that now.

Yes, those look like bath beads and sticks.  I don’t know what to tell you.  Sometimes magic looks a little silly, if you don’t know what it does.  Don’t poke the green ones yet.

This is your first step into our world, that I hope you’ll make your world too.  If you were wondering why we’d hire people without qualifications or formal education?  Well, here you go.  Some of you have already figured it out.  Before you leave this room, you’ll be qualified to provide first aid, you’ll speak three languages, you’ll know how to drive stick, do gymnastics, and how to listen.  That last one might be the most important skill available.

There’s a few other things in there that are important too.  This is what I can give you.  Our world is often dangerous, but I want to keep you all safe as best I can, so you can help me protect everyone else.

I’ve asked you to save the green ones because, for a variety of reasons, you’re the first to use these particular orbs.  And I’d like to go through the list and have you all share what changes you make to our headquarters.  The Lair might be new to you now, but before today is over, you will have made your mark on it.  And it is my hope that it’ll make a positive mark on you, too.

Speaking of people who’ve made marks, since none of you ran in fear at any point, you’re all formally invited to one of the only formal ceremonies that the Order of Endless Rooms actually has.  That’ll be next week, and you can see what happens to people who fit in too well.  We give them responsibilities, as some kind of terrible punishment.  It happened to me, and this is me warning you, it can happen to you, too.

That’s my speech.  Let’s go to some questions now, since I see all of you have at least two.  That’s not magic on my part, I just know how this goes.”

_____

“Can you be a good person if you never hurt any bad people?”  James asked as he adjusted the biker’s leathers he was wearing before moving to check Spire-Cast-Behind’s armor.

The Akashic Sewer had long played fast and loose with the idea of banning stuff from its premise.  Mostly in the form of ripping away anything that it seemed to count as a weapon or electronic toy.  Going off of the nebulous and arbitrary limits of what a high school usually used and never codified, that meant that laptops without minesweeper installed were usually fine, but cell phones and drones were no gos.

Lately, it had escalated to body armor, which was annoying at best and potentially lethal at worst.  There were small mercies at least; the door to the Sewer was actually a door now and not a pipe-lined hole in the ground, which meant that when stuff got torn off your person it wasn’t going to threaten to break in half as it strangled you by getting stuck in your own clothing.  It just… pushed backward.  It was actually a lot like the green orb totem that repelled cables that the’d found a couple weeks ago in Officium Mundi, shoving back against things it didn’t like.  Though the body armor repellant was still growing in strength, so you could wear it.  It would just be a constant force shoving against the kevlar and hard plastic shell, trying to pin you to the wall where the door vanished once you were through.

So they’d done what they did best and adapted.  And that meant essentially heavy leathers or sports padding.  Both of which looked hilarious on camracondas, one of which looked hot on Arrush.  At least in James’ opinion.

“Of course.  I think.”  Spire answered as she double checked her heavy-duty mechanical arms for range of motion.  The battery life on them was only about forty minutes compared to the far, far more efficient lighter packs or even the camraconda rifle mounting.  But, again, the dungeon of the night made certain choices better.  “Why ask?”

“Mmh, just felt like asking you a probing question.”  James said as he buttoned up part of a jacket sleeve to a completely unrelated button sewn onto the back of the garment that Spire was wearing in defiance of her body shape.  “Just as part of the trial that this delve sorta is.”

”Why are you testing yourself here?”  Spire-Cast-Behind turned her eye up toward James, her colorful cabling reminiscent of the kind of snakes you were never supposed to pick up twisting lithely under her coverings.  “Are you sick?  We can take you to a medical.”

”I’m not sick.”  James laughed.  “And no, we’re here to test a few people on how they work together.”  He dusted his hands off and shouldered his backpack, the last piece of prep was to affix the heavy filter mask over his face before he was ready to go.

Alex already had her mask on, Simon’s was hanging from one strap as he waited for the others.  Spire-Cast-Behind and TQ had their own camraconda style masks on, and it felt bad because it was a lot less comfortable for them than for a human in terms of how much their faces moved.  But at least they could speak unmuffled; the running theory was that their voice speakers counted as prosthetics and the Sewer didn’t care to ban them.  Arrush didn’t have a mask, because he’d melt through it, and James thought that was the dumbest fucking thing ever.  He also thought Arrush wanting to come along was a bad idea anyway, but his new boyfriend had been adamant about keeping James safe, even if it meant going back to the place that had created him.

”This never stops being weird.”  The uniformed human who had let them into the building said, shaking his head.

”Yes, James is very strange.”  TQ replied to the school’s designated police officer.  His name was Rourke, and for a little while, he was one of the people the Sewer had targeted with a hostile infomorph that made him violent, unstable, and confused.

James had restrained himself from making a comment about how he was already a cop so the Sewer didn’t have a lot of distance to go.  It turned out that Rourke himself was… fine.  He was fine.  Once the infomorph parasite was dealt with, he’d agreed to assist with containing the dungeon, though he didn’t want much more to do with the Order of Endless Rooms.  The defensive assignment infomorph that had been in his head hadn’t ended up becoming a person, either.

He was, apparently, one of those people for whom magic and weird things could be acknowledged, but that wouldn’t adapt to them.  Wouldn’t change.  But he sure would comment on how weird camracaondas were.

It was the kind of thing that was so petty that James wanted to say it was entirely ignorable.  But also, he felt a deep and painful rage at the fact that some of his friends had to survive being prisoners to a mad god for their whole lives, only to end up being belittled by this jackass.

He let TQ’s joking banter with Rourke cool him off, opting for smirking slightly at the officer who kept staring at the rusted blue security door that had shown itself this time next to the big storage fridge in the cafeteria kitchen.  “Alright friends.”  James said, including Zhu in that as the navigator fluttered to life around him, a glowing orange mantle of feathers thicker than he’d ever been before.  “Let’s get moving.  Spire, Simon, and Alex take point on this one.  The rest of us will back you up.”

”Yes boss.”  Simon said easily.  Alex just nodded, while Spire-Cast-Behind threw glances at the two humans that seemed to have figured out something that she wasn’t in on yet.

As a group, in a combat formation that was becoming more and more practiced, they moved into the second worst dungeon James was aware of.  Their formation only a little bit staggered as James settled a comforting hand on Arrush’s back, letting the ratroach know that he was there for him if he needed to talk.  But Arrush had already determined that he was going to face this personal challenge head on.  So, in they went.

The first room was almost normal.  Not exactly normal; it was a dark concrete box with some kind of dampness on the floor that made the stone treacherously slick.  But despite only having a single flickering dying light tube overhead, and being filled with stacks of dirty desks and chairs in a style that didn’t match the high school outside, it could have been… a normal storage room.  Which, Spire-Cast-Behind quickly point out, was ominous as fuck if you considered that anyone not paying attention might walk in here without realizing that this was the kind of place that sealed the door behind you.

The second room abandoned all pretense.  Here the concrete was rougher.  The pipes bulging out of the wall like massive worms, with cracks that hissed steam or dripped corrosive liquids.  It would have been pitch black without their light sources, which would have made it easy for the fist sized roach things to snap into their ankles or cables.  Instead, the majority of the bugs that rushed them in ones and twos got intercepted by a combination of Simon’s makeshift quarterstaff and Spire looking at them, pulped into bursts of red sparks and hissing green ichor.

The third room looked like it was a twisted gym locker room.  Most of the lockers were rusted hulks, sealed behind magical dungeon locks that needed green sparks to open, but Simon had some from a previous delve and they cracked a couple to stash the books inside.  Avoiding the puddles on the floor just seemed logical, and they collectively decided not to risk the massive door with the frosted glass window that shifted with threatening shadows.

The fourth room was the first one where they had to go through a pipe tunnel to get to it, and they were promptly ambushed by a tumorous mass of rat flesh that exploded when it died.  The fourth room also offered a choice in path, something the Sewer had been doing more lately.  After clearing the bugs and violent infomorph fragments, James, Zhu, and Arrush stayed behind while the others split off down the two paths and scouted ahead.

One side apparently went to a dead end, with a drywall pylon in the middle of a lake of something that smelled like Axe body spray even through the filter masks.  Simon had climbed it with Spire’s help, and found another source of the unknown purple sparks at the top.  The other path led deeper in, and once reunited, the party continued on.

Another room, this one over a massive pit.  They fended off an ambush from falling screaming crow-wasps that reminded James far too much of Banana.  None of them would surrender or accept the offer of freedom, choosing to throw themselves over the edge of the perilous pipe bridge when caught rather than be taken from the dungeon.

Another tunnel, this one with some kind of mushroom that sprayed spores on anything that moved, a coat of fresh fungus growing from wherever it touched at high speed.  Alex hit it at a distance with a water balloon full of vinegar, and, worryingly, reaped a harvest of red sparks for her trouble.

Another room, this one with multiple classroom doors on the left and right walls, and more overhead as well.  They took them in turn, unsealing them with their red sparks and solving the puzzles inside to collect more greens.  Or, in one case, finding the door open already and a nest of ratroaches living there.  They’d attacked on sight, but there was a distinct difference between the suicidal assault of something that worshiped the dungeon’s love of violence, and something that was just terrified.  It had taken almost no effort for the three paladin aspirants to subdue the nest without injuries to either side, but significantly more effort to convince them to telepad out.  But they did do it, while Arrush stood at James’ side, his uncovered claws digging into James’ hand as he waited nervously.

Another tunnel.  They found an intersection, which would have been a devious way to split them up or get them lost if it weren’t for how quickly one of the paths revealed itself to be a dead end and a trap when one of the pipes tried to grab them.  They hadn’t actually managed to kill that one, even as a full party working together, and that was worrying.  Without heavy weaponry, there was only so much people could do against two inch thick iron.  They still got away though, and continued.

A cavernous room lit by glowing waterfalls of impossibly radioactive sludge.  They fought one of the frog-dogs, and James learned that he could in fact turn parts of it from frog to bat.  It had been a moment of vindication for him, and total confusion for the thing that had been trying to kill them.  But also, something about the change had calmed the frog-dog down in a rapid and almost unnatural way, and Spire had gotten the big creature teleported away to the medical team on standby in the Lair as well.

A room with a series of ledges made out of hissing boilers and pipes that heated and cooled at random.  There was an easy path through, but Simon and Alex took advantage of their supernatural mobility and also Spire’s help strategically freezing them to scale parts of the long room and collect more purple sparks from the plinths scattered around overhead.

A room where they were attacked by a feral swarm of ratroaches, nothing behind their eyes but gleeful violence.  Arrush had slipped into the fight when Alex took an injury, effortlessly moving through the pack that screamed and clawed and stabbed at the defensive formation of the Order.  In many ways, the Sewer was hard for him; this was where he suffered for years before being freed, and he never expected that freedom besides.  Seeing the people suffering here like him hurt.  But in other ways, this was easy.  These… weren’t people.  It was, he knew, too easy to delegitimize the existence of others.  But in this case, it was a simple fact.  These were hollow nothing things, biologically incapable of anything more than hunger and joy at causing pain.  And he cut through them like he was made for it.

In the next room, they found a ratroach that was also made for killing.  Among upturned cafeteria tables coming out of the dirt floor like standing stones, a series of wet floor signs that were so yellow they set off everyone’s Geiger counters guarded a sunken pool in the floor.  A bounty of shaper substance, enough to fully fix every ratroach the Order had rescued and more; the trio taking point had moved to secure the room, clearing out the small bugs and vine limbs, making sure there were no conversion maggots or carpet shrooms anywhere.  And while doing that, they’d been jumped by the solitary ratroach that had claimed this place for its own.  Ten feet long, chitin coming off it like spikes, a twisted face with an extra mouth that never stopped laughing as it pounced and tried to murder them all.  Everyone had fought that, and they’d been lucky and skilled enough to get out with only a few minor injuries per person.

Another tunnel, another room, another tunnel, another room, multiple dead ends and time spent searching branches, and TQ suggested to James that maybe the dungeon didn’t want them leaving anymore.  James might have agreed, but he wasn’t leading this delve.  And he wouldn’t call it until it was a serious risk.

It was a moot point anyway.  In the next tunnel of pipes, Alex and Spire collectively put together something that no one else had even noticed.  The intersections that led ‘deeper’ always had specific marks on the shattered pipes overhead.  They always had something glowing; Alex even commented it was the game design trick of leading the player with light.  They tested it for a couple more paths, and it seemed to hold up.  After that, as they were starting to get tired, they used the information to skip over side paths and go straight to the ‘end’ of the dungeon.

There were, James knew, deeper parts of the Sewer.  Places where the pipe tunnels cut sideways and led to… it might be accurate to call them parallel copies of the place.  Complete with their own populations of prisoners and dungeon toys.  But this time, they headed straight to the arena that guarded the exit.

The mockery of a basketball court continued to offend James, but he noticed something interesting about the stands full of ratroaches and other creations.  The first time he, Anesh, and Alanna had been here, there had been a lot of salvaged human clothing among them.  Football gear and backpacks and casual teenager clothing, all tattered and in scraps, trophies from the dead.  Now, though?  They still wore similar styles, but it was… different.  The details were wrong.  Letters were twisted, the styles were off, the material was wrong.

The dungeon hadn’t been killing and looting anyone for a while.  So it was making its own false trophies.  James smirked at it.  And at the towering white-furred ratroach woman that dominated the center of the court.

Before the group could move, Arrush took a step forward, looking around the fire-lit cavern like he was almost nostalgic.

”If you need help,” Spire-Cast-Behind offered quickly, “scream loudly, and we will move.”

Arrush huffed once as he looked up at the endlessly remade face of the thing that had been his master for long enough that he’d lost count of the days.

”Wellllllcooooom baaaack!”  The ratroach’s wet voice had a twisted melody to it as she stretched out the words.  “Kneeeew yoooh wooooullldn’t leeeave meeeee!”  She seemed almost… happy to see Arrush?  Her face was split into a massive smile, polished fangs that glittered like gemstones showing.  The rest of her was similarly indulgent; opalescent spirals of chitin that twisted across her hide, her fur a shimmering white that seemed incapable of acquiring the filth and poisons of the Sewer.

James and Zhu set a paired hand on Arrush’s shoulder, and his friend took a long breath of the smoke filled and toxic air.  He stared up at the Beautiful One, the twisted monster that had forced him to change with the shaper substance over and over, making him a better soldier, a better enforcer of her will and the dungeon’s will through her.  So many times that it was dangerous for him to change again now.  And not just him, but Keeka as well.  She had stolen so many futures from them.

And she looked so thrilled that he was back.  Not just happy; desperate.  And suddenly, Arrush realized, there was a gap between him and this place that he could never, would never, and didn’t need to cross back over again.

Then he tilted his head back to look at James.  “Is this what I was afraid of?”  He asked in a soft rasp that barely carried over the rattling metal of the fence around them and the jeers of the things behind it.

”To be fair, she is the size of a bus.”  James said glibly.  “That’s a little scary.”

”Nnoooooo iggnhooooriing!”  The Beautiful One screamed, dropping to plant all seven limbs on the gravel, even the ones clutching weapons.  She lunged forward toward them, sprays of loose rock flying into the concrete bleachers of screaming and jeering Sewer creations.

Two thousand pounds of heavily modified murderous Akashic Sewer creation came to an abrupt halt as Spire-Cast-Behind and TQ collectively locked eyes on her.  “If you would like to have a private moment, you are not allowed.”  Spire told Arrush.  “She is very heavy.  And you deserve better.”

”Yes.”  Arrush agreed suddenly.  “Yes.”

”You good to leave?”  James asked.

”I am.  There was never anything here for me.”  Arrush smiled, shaking with laughter that brought tears to his eyes.  “I’m sorry, I made this about me.”

Zhu batted him on the shoulder with a feathered projection.  “Even I know that no one minds.  You needed something different to heal.  Now!  Let’s take their stuff and run!  That’s how James heals from trauma!”

The various creatures behind the chain link fence of the bleachers were starting to realize something was wrong, so the group rushed to complete their task.  Sixty green sparks opened half-buried lockers, yielding another eight Sewer lesson books, three hundred red sparks cracked the final door that would let them out to a different part of the high school than where they started, thrown open by Arrush and held by officer Rourke on the other side as the camracondas slithered backward keeping an eye on the Beautiful One.

And all the while, Spire-Cast-Behind called out over them, raising her volume to be heard with sharp clarity.  “You were offered freedom once.”  She told the Beautiful One.  “Nothing has changed.  You can leave with us.  Anyone can.  We could take you all.  Who is bold enough to try?”

Many of them screeched louder, chittering wet hisses and barks mixed with a dark buzzing from the crowd.  But Spire, even focused on the massive ratroach that had twisted her own body to be what she thought was a beautiful weapon, could spot the few that didn’t scream.  That had corrosive tears running from their eyes as terror and the threat of their peers kept them from lunging for freedom.

“Left side, two in, the ratroach with the red fur.  One row up, three farther, the crow.  Right side, ratroach with a broken arm, at the front pressed into the fence.  Another at the top of the cage, the one trying to sneak over the back.”  Spire quietly relayed the locations to Alex and Simon.  And Arrush and James, who had turned around to join them now that their exit was ready to go.

“I’ll take the left side.”  Alex said with a snarl as the camracondas kept the massive threat of the Beautiful One in place.  “I’m gonna have to break through.”

“With you.”  Simon said.  “Arrush, get the escapee.  James…”

“On it.”  James moved quickly, ducking past TQ and making damn sure not to break line of sight.  A quick application of [Separate Alloy] ripped a hole in the chain link fence, and the terrified ratroach screamed as it fell through the gap where it had been shoved by the press of bodies behind it.  James caught the thing - light, too light, like it had never eaten a meal in its life - in one arm, while his other hand made a finger gun and [Paved] the two ratroaches with knives out that lunged with feral hunger as soon as an opening presented.

The spell, barely enough to injure a human, splattered their corrosive blood across the crowd that surged for the gap in the fence.  James felt claws and teeth sink into his left arm while with his right he backhanded the next thing that came for him, backpedaling to make space.  Arrush was already running for the door carrying a ratroach paralyzed with fear, and Alex and Simon were busy methodically funneling what seemed like half the things on their side into creating a barricade of bodies before they got their two targets out.

The rescues that could run, ran.  Panicked, maddened flight.  The last desperate attempt to flee from creatures that knew in their hearts they were already dead.  But they made it through the door, Alex and Arrush and James right behind them.

Spire-Cast-Behind called out to the Beautiful One again.  “We will be back.  For you, for anyone.  We will never stop coming back.  Please consider accepting our help.”

As she called, and everyone converged on the door, there was just one last thing.  As Simon felt a sudden curious urge, and changed his jogging course toward the exit to move past one of the basketballs laying on the court.  There had been basketballs here before, probably; it was a basketball court after all.  But he couldn’t remember ever having seen one.  When he got closer, this one looked clearly in theme for this dungeon, a little too bulbous, with little white bumps across it like it was far too organic.  But before he could steer away from it, one last thing popped into his vision.

The number of purple sparks it needed.  A number well within what he’d collected.

Calling an alert to the others, Simon reached down to touch the basketball, the lights flowing out of his hand and into the surface, before it cracked open.  Sinuous white strands dripping from the inside, a wet fleshy interior that smelled like blood and oil through his mask.  And out of it, something moved.

A flat body the size of a quarter, four legs of black metal with little spines all the way down them.  And one single amber eye on its back that stared up at Simon without any discernible emotion.  It stood on the edge of its egg, looking at him, like it was expecting something.

”Fuck.”  Simon said.  And then stuck his gloved hand out to it.  “Come on.  The door’s waiting, if you wanna go.”

The simple amalgam of parts leapt forward in a flash.  Ignoring his hand and wrapping its legs around his wrist; its eye pressed against the back of his arm just before his hand, flicking around as it took in the new world.  The spines of its legs sinking into his armor with ease and holding it in place.

”James!”  Simon yelled as he ran for the door, the last one of the team leaving the Sewer behind.  “I fucked up!”

_____

”Good work today Spire.”  James said after they returned to the Lair and were in the process of cleaning up.  He needed another long bath after that, but he had one thing left to do.

The camraconda shook off her armature pack, hissing a sigh at the relief of the weight.   ”Thank. I was trying to be like you.”  She said.

”Yeah.”  James smiled.  “I know.  That’s why I have a question for you.”

Spire-Cast-Behind looked over at him as he pulled off leather padding and tossed it in the bin of things that would be getting purified with the really strong chemicals.  “You are an attractive personality, but I believe I am not romantically inclined today.”

TQ’s burst of giggling hisses cut them both off as he rolled into James’ feet.  “You have a reputation!”  He announced joyously.  “It should be JP but it is you!”

”…Okay, well, to be fair…” James was smiling, not even offended by being shot down for a proposition he hadn’t been about to make.  “No, I was going to say.  Next week there’s a thing where I’m announcing a few new paladins.  You should be one of them.”

”No.” Spire said instantly.  “I am the wrong choice.”

That wasn’t exactly the answer James had expected from her.  “Uh…” he looked down at TQ, who was no longer rolling in amusement.  “Why?”

”It should be him.”  Spire-Cast-Behind pointed with her tail at the other camraconda.  “Are you blind?  He kept our people all alive.  Saved us, saved me, over and over.  And is closer to you than I am now, too.  He is what you want.  Not me.”

TQ pulled himself up, any amusement gone from the grey-blue camraconda’s mannerisms.  “No, back.”  He said simply.  “You are wrong.  I did what was needed of me because I had to.  I had no choices.  Now I do.  And I choose… to be less.”  TQ straightened his body out, staring down Spire-Cast-Behind.  “I am not meant to be a hero.  I am meant to be soft and silly.  I have found my place, and it is not this.  You seek the future.  You seek the challenges and the problems to sink fangs into.  And you deserve this.  Honor, for the honorable.”  He hissed sharply at her, almost like a challenge.

Spire-Cast-Behind looked back at him almost curiously.  “Did you plan to say that?”  She asked, the volume on her voice subdued.

”Yes.”  TQ answered her bluntly, and James had to bite his lip to keep from bursting out laughing as he felt like his day had looped itself.  “Now say yes to what you want, and prepare to be recognized for what you already do.”

Spire looked up to James, but he just shook his head as he cleared his throat.  “Uh, yeah… everything TQ just said, actually.  I also had a thing prepared, but… yeah.  Spire, you’re the one I want.  You have never once failed to step up for us, even when you barely knew who we were.  You’re kind and clever, but also brave and bold.  You’re it.  You’re the paladin archetype.  If you say no, that’s okay, but…”

”Yes.”  Spire-Cast-Behind answered.  “I will say yes.”  She added, more quietly.  “Now… leave.  I need to think.  And also bathe.  Before the smell becomes permanent.”

”God, that would be the kind of bullshit the Akashic Sewer would do.”  James muttered grimly.

But even that thought wouldn’t keep him from feeling like it had been a good day as he went to join his boyfriend in scrubbing away the smell of ash and meat that clung to their skin and fur.