The Daily Grind - Chapter 117 (Patreon)

Feelings and stuff today.  Unmitigated violence next time.

_____

When James woke up, he was almost surprised to do so in his own bed.

It was the same king sized monstrosity it had always been, although an observer who knew what to look for now would be able to see the stratified patterns of blankets and sheets that denoted the higher number of people that called it theirs.  Taking up the majority of the floor space of the master bedroom, with parts of Anesh’s room across the hall given up to computer desks and dressers and things, it left the only stuff in here as mostly James’ original furniture.

The window had a blackout curtain, so he didn’t know what time it was, but he did know he’d slept for a *while*.  He had that feeling in his bones and muscles; the kind he used to get after a delve where he had to jog a little too much, and had gradually been pushed back as his body had hardened into something a little more athletic.  That old feeling had, James realized with a stretch, never really gone away.  He’d just kind of gotten used to being covered in bruises and aches.  But something about the last week had left him… tired.

Maybe it was blood loss.  He had been shot a few times.  Or maybe it was just how overwhelmed he felt.

James had been sort of arbitrarily designated the ‘leader’ of the Order, mostly by virtue of everyone having this weird idea of owing him a life debt or something.  Hell, before his own idea of what they should be, there *was* no Order.  The organization had almost gone through auto-genesis, with only minimal input from James himself.  He’d known he didn’t want to call it a guild, he’d known they were there to help people, and he’d known that the dungeons were worth exploring.  And that had been enough; still was, really.  Almost.

But he didn’t actually have any leadership skills.  And not even magical ones, either.  Despite the fact that he had an orb about leadership, and a business degree that was nominally about the same topic, James had no *experience* leading.  He could say the words that made people listen, but he knew, on a deep level, that he just didn’t deserve the respect and authority that he’d had foisted upon him.

This feeling, James was aware, was called Imposter Syndrome.  And it was how his brain chemistry lied to him; especially when he’d just woken up, or right when he was trying to sleep.  So he took a few long breaths, screamed lightly into his pillow, and shoved the feeling of inadequacy aside for the moment.

It helped.  But it didn’t change that he still felt completely overwhelmed.

He started running down his mental checklist of problems.  Three dungeons, one new, one strange, one evil.  Two adversaries, one crippled and maybe gone, one the goddamn FBI.  One new species to integrate into society.   He paused in his thinking; this was sounding a little too much like Christmas music for early March.

But those were the big problems.  Then there were the *small* problems, that somehow still required his attention.

The basement operation of Research had things they wanted to talk about.  The Hunters wanted permission to build a shooting range.  Harvey had questions about exactly what level of secrecy they should be aiming for.  James *still* hadn’t officially quit his day job.  There was a dead body in their basement being kept religious vigil upon by a camraconda high priestess, and James probably had to deal with that at some point.  Also his boyfriend was on edge and angry lately, for a variety of legitimate reasons, lashing out at random things, and James really needed to get into the Lair and *talk to him* before Anesh could make another daring escape.  Oh, and he had his searching ritual with Secret.  And at some point, it was probably a good idea to actually *talk to Nate* about him being an agent of the government.

James curled up under the blankets.  Maybe he’d sleep in today.

He entertained that thought for about six minutes before he got bored, groaned, and rolled out of bed, thumping against the carpet on his elbows as he just let himself drop.  Yeah, it was a lot.  Yeah, he didn’t know where to start.  And yeah, James had a serious problem with anxiety taking over when he felt overwhelmed.

But also Anesh and Alanna were already up and doing things, and he actually cared about the people he had obligations to, and even better, he could *delegate* now.

And as a bonus, he thought as he checked the time on his phone, he was right on time to pet a dog on the way out the door.

_____

James pulled into the parking lot of the Lair, powered by mundane coffee and arcane sleep transfer from Sarah, who *had* decided to stay in bed another four  hours.  This power was addictive, and they were already in the red zone of abusing it, but James had a hard time worrying about that when his brain felt lit up with electrical potential.

“Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way early.”  He let the words roll easily off his tongue.  “We’re stretching the budget, and I’m not getting JP to cash out his investment portfolio for a hundred-k-plus construction project on a building we don’t own.”  James was addressing Simon and the other James, who still mystically resisted an easy reference nickname.  “Get a membership at a gun club, I know there’s a decent one over in Sherwood that my dad used to go to..” James choked on the sentence as he realized what he’d just said, but shook it off.  Today was not a morose day, dammit.  “We don’t need our own gun range.”

Simon and his James sighed in unison, and James realized that the two were currently wearing skulljack braids, probably connected to each other through the building’s *very* impressive wi-fi.  They didn’t argue, though.  Enough actual fights had shown them a losing battle when they saw it.

James had just let the door to the Lair close behind him when he stopped, had a thought like a bolt of lightning, and poked his head back out into the parking lot’s early spring sunshine.

“What are you two doing?”  He asked the duo, suspiciously.

The two of them, with one motion, looked down at the polished four foot lengths of wood in their hands, currently crossed between the two of them, and then back at James.  “Practicing?”  They said together.  “Anesh asked us to, we’re experimenting for the Armory.”

The Armory was a project that was absolutely working out just fine without James’ input, but he still kept up on it.  The general idea was that they should have a box of ‘upgrades’ in various flavors, that was exactly the right size to copy completely with the projector.  The kind of thing that could be used to bootstrap a new member of the order into someone at least a little bit equipped for delving, until they could get their own unique abilities.  So far, they had the purple orb for memory, a red orb for courage, and a trio of yellows for running, trauma response, and apparently now quarterstaves.  Alanna wanted to add a book from the School, James wanted to add a gun bracelet, and Anesh wanted to add Ganesh, though all of those were still being discussed.  Mostly with Ganesh.

James peered at the two young men for a second, then around at the rest of the parking lot.  Then up at the main road.  Then back to them, and their skulljacks and all-too-perfectly-timed movements.

“Go practice in the back lot, guys.”  He said, ducking back inside.

Shaking his head, James got about halfway toward the kitchen, and a fated meeting with Nate, before he was caught by Alanna and interrupted.

“Hey, have you seen Secret?”  She asked him as they stopped to chat in the cramped hallway, near where a plush leather couch was set into a little alcove in the wall.  There was a camraconda curled up on it, and the space around had been decorated with some of the pieces of art they’d brought with them out of their tower refuge.

“Yes!”  James replied cheerfully.

Alanna let him sit there with the goofy grin on his face for about fifteen seconds before she snorted a laugh, smiled, and corrected herself to “Tell me where the godsnake is, you wiseass.”

Still grinning back, James relented.  “He’s with Lua at the high school.  Since we don’t have a lot of time to keep eyes on it before it gets *shut down I guess*, she’s guiding him through in incorporeal form to do a sweep for any antimemes we missed.”  James threw his hands in the air in frustration before dropping them back to his sides.  “Why, you need him for something?”

“Nah, just concerned.”  Alanna shrugged.  “Also, yeah, the shutdown thing is… that came outta nowhere.  I’ve been slacking on keeping up with world events, clearly.  Which is *bad*.  Can’t let the dungeon make me uninformed.”

“Arguably, you’re one of the most informed.”  James pointed out.  “But I get what you mean.  I had to get Alex and Deb to do a logistical breakdown for me of why we cannot punch an epidemic.”

“It’s a pandemic now!”  Alanna informed him with grim cheer.  “Also, actually, wait, is that why Alex has been here all night?”

“What?”  James raised his eyebrows.

Alanna nodded, clicking her tongue.  “Yeah, she’s been ‘doing research’ for the last twenty hours or so.  I guess she’s trying to impress you.  Or kill a virus.”

“I would be perfectly impressed if she’d get some sleep.”  James sighed.  “Can you tell her to do that?  I need to go talk to Nate.”

Smiling with a full row of teeth, Alanna replied.  “Oh yes, I can tell her.  Honestly, that kind of dedication is kinda hot.  Maybe I’ll keep her.”

“Ask first.”  James scolded his partner.  He paused a second, then followed up with a curious question.  “Actually, hang on, are you bisexual? I never actually *asked*, I’ve just been coasting through our relationship and relying on constant existential dread and combat scenarios to keep all the awkward conversations away.”

Alanna ruffled his hair affectionately.  “Awww, that’s an adorably terrible idea!”  She said, and both of them laughed.  There was something about today that had put them in a similarly snarky good mood; maybe it was seeing the noon sun for the first time in what felt like months.  “And I dunno.  All my normal relationships failed horribly, and so far the only thing that’s worked out was literally dragging the people I liked into bed.  What sexuality is that?”

“Alanna, that’s not a sexuality, that’s… that’s not even a thing.  That’s either incredibly lucky, or assault, depending.”  James massaged the oncoming headache out of his forehead.  “Your relationship model is just being some kind of emotional bulldozer.”

“I like that!”  She laughed, beaming.  “Anyway.  Go talk to your rogue agent.  I’ll catch up with you later.  We need to talk about…”

“Lots of things, I know!”  James cut her off, already striding away down the hall.  “I have a list!  It’s so long!”  He griped, only half serious as he heard Alanna’s laughter chime behind him as the two parted ways.

He shook his head in amusement as he moved through the cafeteria space.  There were a few people here eating, or just relaxing on the beanbag chairs.  James was increasingly pleased to see that the camraconda population was continuing to integrate pretty well into the Order.  He knew it wasn’t a good indicator of how the world at large would handle it, but it was nice to see the serpent people sharing tables, food, conversation, and in once case a book, with the other delvers.

His brain had automatically labeled them as delvers, despite knowing  most of them weren’t.  But still.  Enough of them had participated in the Status Quo raid, and several more still had expressed interest in joining teams when they explored the attic and school, that James just kind of assumed that the whole population had been folded into the Order proper.

At this point, he thought with a rough sense of humor, about 95% of his people were rescues.  He really needed to recruit more to balance that out.  They couldn’t count on just saving people with compatible ideologies forever.

James winced as he realized what he was doing.  Then he added ‘recruiting’ to his mental checklist.

He pushed open the double doors of the kitchen, taking only half a second to glance over at the left-hand wall.  There was a sink, an ice machine, one set of normal coffee brewers, one coffee machine that would boost your mental acuity, and farther back, a nice little horseshoe shaped stainless steel counter for prep space.  This was all pretty mundane kitchen stuff.  But even with his constant exposure to weird spatial distortions, James still gave it a suspicious eye as he tried to figure out where the hell the couch on the other side of the wall *was*.

“Greet you.”  A digital voice pulled James’ attention over to the counter in the middle of the room, over by the back wall where the door to the walk in sat.  A camraconda, probably perched on a stool James couldn’t see, was at the counter.  It spoke through the speakers in a harness on its side, connected through a cord and an adaptor to the skulljack it had been gifted by the Order.  In its mouth, it held a long bladed kitchen knife, the speakers letting its speech be unimpeded by having its fangs clamped around the handle of the object.  It was slicing cucumbers.  It was also doing a startling precise job, given its restrictions.

“Hey James.”  Dave said from next to the camraconda.  He was dealing with a tray of thin bowls, arranging in them elegant piles of leafy greens, sliced vegetables, and chopped meat and cheese.  Chefs salads; the kind of thing Nate liked to have a dozen of on hand for when people came in and wanted something for lunch on short notice.  “What’s up?”

“Well, first off, I’m gonna process that I now know how a snake would hold a knife.”  James said.  “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“I prepare.”  The camraconda stated, and James detected a hint of pride in the words, especially with how it rose up to full height as it spoke.  “Much to learn. Much cutting.”

James nodded.  “Okay, yeah, that’s pretty much the perfect attitude for a prep cook.”

“That’s what Nate said, too.”  Dave told him.  “Also, he’s out back smoking, since you’re probably here for him.”

“Eh.  I can talk if either of you need anything?”  James prompted.  Instantly, he noticed, the camraconda broke eye contact and looked away.  It was a behavior that was becoming annoyingly familiar, and it happened every time he offered to talk, or to help.  “Oh, stop that.”  He rolled his eyes as he chastised the camraconda.  “You just got a radically different life, world, and destiny.  It’s okay to *ask me questions*.  I’ve got enough people around here acting like they owe me their lives.”  He muttered.  Dave turned to his work partner and patiently shrugged, but the serpent just went back to making short, precise cuts to the vegetable in front of him on the cutting board.  “Alright.  No rush, just remember I am literally here to help.  Dave, how’re you? How’s Pendragon doing?”

Dave pursed his lips as he added crumbled egg to a series of the dishes.  “She’s… okay.   Took some damage in the fight, and it’s hard to repair.  She doesn’t really heal that fast, and we got shot at a lot.”

“Yeah.”  James blew out a breath, noticing the camraconda nodding in agreement, and the population of the kitchen shared a quiet moment together as they composed themselves.  “Well, same thing to you, yeah? Lemme know if you need anything.”  James said as he walked through the center of the kitchen, heading through the dish pit toward the back door.  “I’m gonna go harass Nate.  You guys have fun.”

James turned away as the two nodded at him, and pretended not to hear their soft conversation as they tried to figure out how to adapt a salute to the camracondas, seeing as the snakes lacked any kind of *hands* to work with.

His smile faded as he approached the back door.  This was a conversation he didn’t really know what to expect from.  But still.  He felt good.  The day was shaping up.  And before his anxiety could give him a heart attack, he pushed the door open and stepped out onto the patio.

Nate was mercifully stubbing out his cigarette when James joined him in the break area.  Sitting on a wooden bench braced against the wall, with a nice view of the line of trees and plants that made up the barrier between their parking lot and the building next to them.  It wasn’t a warm day, exactly, but the weather was such that neither of them were cold in short sleeved shirts.

James stood there for a while, leaning against the closed door, looking out at the brief interlude of nature.  He realized, suddenly, that he didn’t know what to *say*.

This man had put his life on the line to fight with him, because he believed it was right.  Because he trusted James. Because he’d seen some of the magic in the world, and maybe wanted to hang onto that.

But he wasn’t some random chef; he was an agent.  He was a very *specific* chef, whose job was to spend time with the Order, and report back to a government that none of them really trusted that much.  The news cast everything he did in a suspicious light.  Did he fight to maintain his cover? Did anything he’d said to James mean a damn?  And, knowing all that, did it make even the smallest bit of sense why James *still trusted him*?

“So…” James started, clearing his throat.

“You need someone better on security.”  Nate cut in.  His voice was gruff, blunt, and utterly unhostile.  It was the same voice he used to tell people how to make killer potatoes, or the proper way to scrub a pan.  “Harvey’s a good person, and he’s the wrong person for this.  You need someone who’s at least a little bit of a bastard.”

“Not sure that fits our culture.”  James admitted with a shrug.

Nate spat to the side, flicking his cigarette butt into a coffee can filled with the things.  “You’d be surprised.”  He said.  “Lots of people with the skills have a change of heart.”

James didn’t reply for a while.  He let himself be distracted by someone pulling their car around to the back lot, before he found the words he wanted to respond with.  “Is that what you’ve got going on?”  He asked.

“That’s better.”  Nate said, approvingly.  “Be more direct.  Good leadership skill.”

“Nice deflection.”  James scoffed.  “Seriously, though. Can you just tell me what’s going on in your head?”  He looked at Nate, and realized in that moment that this burly tattooed jackass was actually *embarrassed*.  Or at least, something like it.  James pressed on in the silence.  “You gave me advice, after we killed those first agents.  You said, you told me, that I should trust myself when it came to making a better world.”  James leveled an almost accusatory finger at him.  “Was that a lie?”

“Nah.”  Nate said, tilting his head back to let the bald dome rest against the building’s siding.  “Nah, that’s real.  Everyone’s heard the recording between you and their boss by this point.  Those guys… you know, my team, we’ve done some nasty shit?  But no one *ever* just shrugged off feeding kids into the machine like that.”  He looked over at James.  “Your instincts were right.  Fuck ‘em.  World’s better off without.”

James realized, again, that Nate had tried to deflect.  This one was a lot more subtle, though, and it would have worked if James wasn’t a practiced master of deflecting from uncomfortable subjects.  “So what’re you thinking *now*?”  He asked.  “You’re still here.  You’re just gonna go back to making salads and spying on us?”

No one said anything for a while.  Overhead, a helicopter buzzed by.  Birds chirped.  Traffic gave a low background roar from the road.  The clack of wood signaled Simon and James still training in the parking lot.  The sun glimmered, waiting for summer.

“No.”  Nate said, pushing himself forward on the bench.  “No.  I quit.”

“What?”  James looked around in surprise.  “Wait, what?”

“Here.”  Nate said, reaching into his apron pocket and procuring a pair of glasses, which he handed to James.  “I should give you these back.  Hell of a tool, massive invasion of privacy, but no one ever cares about that.”

“I kinda care about that.”  James argued.

“I know.  It’s part of why I quit.”  Nate told him.

“I don’t… okay.  Yeah, okay.”  James tried to clear the lump out of his throat.  “Wow.  Shit.  We’ll need to hire a new chef.”

Nate blinked.  Then started laughing.  His laugh was a throaty wheeze, smoker’s lungs fighting with a powerful voice.  “Oh!  Fuck, no!  I meant I quit my other job!”  He corrected.  “I wasn’t kidding when I said we’d done some *nasty* shit.  But you?  You haven’t.”  Nate stood, brushing off pine needles from where they’d collected on the bench and his slacks.  “You’ve got a better world in mind, kid.  I’d like to see it.”  He said, pushing past James to walk back into the kitchen.

The door closed with a heavy crash, reminding James that they needed to get that door frame fixed, but also jolting him out of his puzzled stupor.  He’d just… quit?

James looked down at the glasses in his hand, then brought them up to his eyes.  He wasn’t kidding when he’d said he kind of cared about the privacy thing.  But he felt like Nate having literally been spying on them for a month or two balanced it all out.  So he only felt a little guilty as he looked at the back of the chef as he walked back toward the stockroom.

Nate Marselli.  Unaffiliated.

The last word showed for only a heartbeat before James made his decision, and then it changed, the word fractaling into a new shape as James chose to trust his ally.

Nate Marselli.  Order of Endless Rooms.

Knight.

_____

“I don’t mean to be a wanker about it,” Anesh was saying, “but it doesn’t mean much.”

James let out a guttural ‘ugggh’ sound from the driver’s seat.  “Come onnnnnn.”  He complained.  “It was dramatic, useful, kind of cute, don’t tell Nate I said that last part, and it’s just kind of a solid win.  Why can’t he just be on our side?”

Anesh glanced up from his phone, trying to make eye contact with James, who studiously focused on the road, even if they weren’t actually moving at the moment.  “Because that situation sounds like *exactly* how I’d bait you into believing something if I needed to.  A sudden windfall with a dramatic twist? James, it’s your aesthetic.”

“Okay, *fair*, but…”

“Also there’s too many ways around the glasses, if you know what they do.  And Nate *does* know what they do.”  The last words were a bit harsh coming out of Anesh’s mouth.

James withered behind the wheel.  “I wanted to trust him.”  He said.  “Wait, I still do!  This proves nothing!”

Affecting a very stilted American accent, Anesh made mouths with his hands and held a mock conversation. “‘Nate, you’re fired!’  ‘Oh no, now what will I do?’  ‘Well, if you need a hobby, how about spying on a group of rogue wizards?’ ‘Great idea, not-boss!’”  He glowered at James.  “See?  Easy.”

“Would that actually work?  Like, I feel they’d have to actually, you know, take him off payroll and close out his retirement account, right?”  James let his curiosity take over for his shame as he got caught up on the mechanics of the glasses.  “There was also no formal induction into the Order, either, so that means they know about intent.  Or maybe ‘membership’ is a fluid concept sometimes…”

Anesh tapped him on the forehead.  “Getting off topic.  Also the line’s moving.”

They were in a drive-thru.  It was well past time for both of them to eat, and ambushing his boyfriend with the offer of a burger had been enough to get James in the door for a conversation.  Better yet, the drive-thru was moving comically slowly, so they had plenty of time.

“Alright.”  James admitted.  “I concede that we shouldn’t just pretend he’s done a total conversion to team-us.”  He held up a finger.  “But!  I still want to give him a chance.  Besides, if he’s spying on us, then the worst case scenario is that the FBI knows that… hm…”

Anesh raised his eyebrows, having to put a lot of effort into not grinning as James trailed off.  “No no, go on.  I wanna hear this.  Knows *what*?”

“Okay, so, it took me about twelve seconds to realize that maybe we’ve done some crimes.”

“Some.”  Anesh flatly spoke.

“Many crimes.”  James relented.  He sighed.  “I guess I just hope it works out.  But we should have a plan for if it doesn’t, you’re right.”

“That’s all I ask.”  Anesh said, letting the conversation drift off, going back to tapping on his phone.

James waited for another space forward in line, which was about five minutes or so, before he tried to shift the conversation to his original goal.

“So… how’re you?”

There were times in his life where James felt like he was nothing more than a passive observer, watching some horrifyingly incompetent version of himself making absolutely impossible mistakes.  In those times, in the split seconds between the words, he usually wanted to slap that version of himself.  Right now, he really, really wanted to slap that version of himself.

Anesh barely glanced up.  “I’m fine.”  He said without much emotion.

James closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose, took a second to hope he wasn’t making a bigger mistake.  “No you’re not, man.”  He said, worry in his voice.  “And everyone’s noticed, too.  Alanna’s worried.  *I’m* worried.  And you know if I’ve noticed, that means something’s gone catastrophically wrong.  Please tell me what’s up?”  James pleaded with his partner.

With a tired sigh, Anesh tilted his phone down a bit.  He glanced over at James, and was mildly surprised to see his boyfriend looking at him with sad eyes.  He sighed again, a resigned huff of air as he looked away.  “I’m… okay.”  He said it, and James knew he didn’t mean he was okay.  Just that he was collecting his thoughts.  “Okay.  You know there’s several me.  Or at least, there were.”

“One week cooldown, right?”  James asked.  “Also, I still don’t know how to handle a copy of you dying.  I’ll be honest, it still hurts.”

“Yeah.  Well.”  Anesh’s voice was a riot of bitterness.  “Good thing you don’t have to this time.”

James blinked, not understanding.  “What?”

“I knew.  We knew.  The other copies and myself.  We knew which ones we were.  Are.”  Anesh met James’ eyes, and James saw he was almost in tears.  “I know you’ve got these grand transhumanist beliefs, and I thought I shared them, but *I’m dead*!  The original me has been dead since Status Quo tried to turn me into a magic item factory or whatever.  It’s just… copies.  Now.  Just spares.”  Anesh sniffed, rubbing at his eyes.  “It’s kind of bothering me.”  He tried to smile, but his voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

“I… aw, shit.”  James stuttered.  “But you’re all synced up.  You have the same orb upgrades.  You *know* you’re the same.”

“I want to.”  Anesh whispered.

James didn’t know what to say.  Didn’t know if there was anything *to* say.  He reached over, taking Anesh’s shaking hand in his own scarred palm; tried to impose some kind of comfort on his boyfriend.  Warmth fed through skin contact, and they sat there together, trying to wish everything better. But there wasn’t a magic spell to banish existential dread, or trauma.

They both started as the car behind them honked.  James pulled forward.  Both of them were thinking it was going to be wildly awkward when they had to order.

“We need to get a therapist.”  James offered, his heart recovered just enough to try to be light.

“We have Lua.  And Sarah, too.”  Anesh pointed out.

James hummed.  “They’re too close to us.  We need someone who’s an outsider.”

“You do understand that our lives are insane, right?”  Anesh said with a wet chuckle.

“All the more reason to get professional help.”  James grinned back.  “Now.  What kind of burger do you want? They have one made of *beans*.”

“I’m mostly vegetarian already and somehow you made that sound weird.”

James leaned over to give Anesh a kiss.  “It’s my job and my calling.”  He admitted, before rolling down the window to order.  Existential dread or otherwise, neither hunger nor drive thru lines waited for mortal man.

_____

“I’m confiscating this.”  James told the chastised looking camraconda and mongausse duo that were currently sitting before him.  He was holding up a pencil; rough blue wooden exterior, dull tip, and currently the cause of his headache.

His headache had started when he’d walked in the door, and Magneto had bounded by, being trailed by a quartet of broken tree branches, the natural wood whipping through the air as it raced after the dog-shaped distortion.  James was prepared to make some kind of quip about how normally it was the dog that chased the sticks, before the headache had appeared.

Specifically, the headache had started when one of the branches had clipped James in the forehead, knocking him on his ass and spilling his french fries.

The culprit was, beyond just the two nonhuman members of the Order that were screwing around with weird magical effects in the front lobby, was this pencil.  It magnetized wood.  That was something James was having trouble wrapping his brain around, but that might have just been because he hadn’t gotten to his stash of ibuprofen yet and his forehead ached.

“You can keep the sticks.”  James told them, and the two perked up.  The camraconda was one of the smaller ones, and while that didn’t really mean much given how dungeon life tended to work, this was one of the ones that was more child-ish in demeanor.  Deep in his soul, some part of James’ parenting instincts kicked into action.  “But play outside!”  He said with a firm tone.  Then he paused.  “No, wait!  Play… god dammit.”  He muttered, rubbing at his chin. “We need more space.  Okay, use the back lot.  Try to get in James and Simon’s way if they’re still out there.  They could use a challenge, okay?”

The two entities nodded excitedly at him.  James gave a small smile and a sigh as they raced off, a couple of the pile of pieces of wood jerking into motion to follow them through the air as the mongausse’s field clipped them.

He pocketed the pencil.  This would absolutely come in handy later.  He’d just have to figure out how once his painkillers and his lunch kicked in.

_____

“History isn’t real!”  JP slammed a paper down on James’ desk, his flat palm and splayed fingers making a satisfying slap as they hit the wood surface.

James eyed JP around the burger he held between his teeth, holding the food in place as he looked back down to where JP’s hand held the document pinned.  He took a bite.  Chewed.  Slowly.  Swallowed, set the burger back down on the wrapper he was using for a plate, and looked up at JP with disappointment.  “Half an inch to the left and your fake history would have splattered my ranch sauce across the room.”  He chastised.

JP tilted his nose up.  “Truth waits for no sauce.”

“Sure, but you could at least *aim* your… okay, nevermind.  History.  What about it?”  James tried to get a read on the document JP was now leaning on.

“Oh, this is nothing.”  JP admitted, folding up the sheet of paper and shoving it into a jacket pocket.  “I just wanted to make an entrance.”  He brushed aside James’ incredulous look.  “So, I’ve been thinking about Status Quo.”

“As have most people, yes.”  James dryly commented.

“Sure.  They’ve been covering up magic stuff for a *long* time though.  Their documentation dates back *ninety years*.”  JP emphasized the time frame, hard.  “So, in that time, do you think that maybe there might have been one or two teams just a little bit like ours?”

“Fuck, that’s way longer than I expected.”  James admitted.  “And yeah.  If you mean ideologically, sure.  The man upstairs seemed to think it was always groups of three, so they may never have encountered anyone *quite* like us.  But people who think like we do, sure.  Probably also people who want to rule the world or some dumb shit.”

JP frantically waved his hands in the air.  “Exactly!”  He exploded.  “Ninety years of dungeons, delvers, cover ups, purges, and after action reports that read like action movie plots!”  He exclaimed.  “And not a single one of those things made it into the history books!”

“Wait, not one?”  James frowned, eyebrows pulling together in thought,  “He basically flat out admitted Nike harvests product from a dungeon.  There must be other things that’re ‘real’ but kind of sterilized.  Right?”

“Sure, but no *magic*.”  JP reiterated.  “No mention of delvers being involved in any major political or social movements, no mentions of weird coincidences or near-supernatural events.  History, ‘normal’ history, is *totally barren* of this kind of stuff after about the early 1900s.  Which means it *must* be fake.”

“I’m not following.”  James rubbed his temple.  “Do you mean the Status Quo reports also bear out that there was no weird shit going on? Or do they talk about stopping people from using magic to cause large scale changes?”

JP settled himself into one of the chairs on the other side of James’ desk, and James groaned internally.  He just wanted to eat lunch.  “No, see, that’s the thing.  They don’t have any records of it either!  So my *theory* is that we’re in a simulated copy of the real world, where history is identical, and the ‘records’ of magic are only surface deep…”

“Get the hell out of my office.  I’m eating.”  James cut him off suddenly, his voice projecting the sound of an entire TED Talk’s lecture hall rolling its eyes at once.

“No no!  It makes sense!  I actually wanna hire someone to be a dedicated researcher on this.  I think there’s something bigger out there, that’s either been actively preventing magic from propagating to the public, or that such an effect isn’t required because the universe is *new*, and magic is a new addition.  So what I’m….”

“No.”  James cut him off.  “Nope.  No.  I actually have a sign up somewhere that says ‘no simulationist philosophy in this building’.  No.”  He pointed accusatory at JP.  “I will admit the history thing is weird, but that mostly just means that the only people succeeding are *exceptionally* good at stealth.  Or that there was some kind of quiet war, and the winners rewrote the history books.  It’s a known fact that we don’t know the full extent of the events of even the Great Depression, and that was fairly recent on a global time scale.  But I *refuse* to entertain the idea that we are but a dream within a dream.”

JP deflated briefly, before opening his mouth with a curious look on his face.  “We don’t know what happened in the Great Depression?”

“Not really.”  James shrugged.  “Lots of missing documents.  Tons of people just kind of vanished.  Widespread famine, obviously, but also a lot of unsolved murders and things like families just disappearing.  Also a pretty improbable  prison break happened during that time.  Cool stuff, in retrospect, but probably an awful time to live in.”

“I should look into this.”  JP murmured, standing up.

“Yes.  Go do that.  Let me eat my lunch.”  James ushered him out of his office.  “And please don’t end up making diagrams out of red string and newspaper clippings.  We’re running out of display boards for things like that.”

“I’ll add it to the budget.”  JP idly acknowledged James without actually addressing the real problem.  He left the office head down, deep in thought, and left James with a mounting headache.

James looked down at his burger.  Pushed it aside, and pulled his keyboard a bit closer.  Tried multiple times to compose a group message that didn’t sound crazy, even by Order standards.  Eventually gave up, messaged Alanna and Anesh to talk to JP about history.

Maybe his friend was right.  Maybe things were wrong.  Or maybe the adventurers and heroes of the past had some secrets they could yet unearth, and put to use.

Only one way to find out.

After lunch, obviously.

_____

As James walked through the front of the building, passing the half dozen camraconda lounging around out here, he wondered for the first time how often outsiders came up to the windows, peeked in to see what this place was, and got stared down by a security serpent.

It couldn’t be zero, right? The camracondas had been here for a couple weeks now.  And given that schools were cutting off early for the year, there were probably roving gangs of feral high schoolers poking around anything and everything that they shouldn’t be.  James would have to ask Harvey about it; they had a security system after all, and actual non-alive cameras around the building.  Though at this point, Harvey was drawing on people’s time to act as sentries, too.  No one had really signed up to be a security guard, but it was a job that needed doing until they were sure no one from Status Quo would be seeking vengeance.

“We should get curtains.”  James muttered to himself, mentally restocking his to-do list that he’d been steadily checking off through the day.  He had a few more things to deal with before he planned to go home and just do something *fun* - and also not life threatening -  for a while, and this next one was one of the trickier tasks for the day.

He rehearsed in his head on the elevator ride down.

The camracondas had brought with them as much of their nascent culture as they could.  Their art, their relationships, their personalities.  And also their religion.  And that, awkwardly, included the sentinel vigil of the body of the original human woman who’d created the place they had called sanctuary.  That body was now *in James’ basement*, and while he wanted to respect their culture and their right to self-determination, he also felt a very real need to figure out who she’d been, and especially if she had any surviving family.

“I understand your beliefs are important to you… no, too condescending.  Your vigil is important but… no, no, that just sounds dismissive.  Um… your culture is unique and I don’t want to trample it… *interfere with it*... but … god dammit, saying ‘but’ sounds awful.”  James slapped his hands to his face and let out a muffled ‘ugggggggh’ sound, cutting off almost instantly as he heard the elevator ding.  “Something about… trust… no.”

The elevator doors opened.  James stepped out, nodding to the camraconda coiled next to the elevator, one of the more stalwart guards of the high priestess.  His name, as James had overheard it, was Cold-Wind-Friction, which sounded cool.  His job was to act as a messenger and stand-in when the high priestess needed to talk to people, or sleep.

Camracondas did need to sleep, James had learned from Deb recently.  They just didn’t need as much; they sure *liked* it though.

“I’m here to talk to…” James stopped, then looked around the space he’d stepped into.

The camracondas had a set aside section of the vault for their practice, until a more suitable spot could be obtained; probably through green shenanigans.  The vault was on the other side of the Research part of the second basement.  Where the first basement was tight hallways and small concrete rooms, like it was plucked from an office building or something, the second basement was more of an open area.  It had one hallway at the start, that led left to bathrooms, or right to curve around into the main open floor space.

While the basement itself was ‘more open’, it was still a basement.  And that spot getting off the elevator was a landing designed for efficiency, not aesthetics.

Which is why it was *weird* that the space was now *much* more open.  The area stretched up twenty feet or so, there was a domed ceiling, and overhead, a railing jutted out of the mezzanine that looked down over the elevator doors.  A tight spiral staircase in the corner led up to the overlooking walkway.

The materials were all the same as the rest of the basement; concrete, exposed PVC pipe, and rebar.  But it had a certain elegance to it.  And the whole thing was lit by strings of colored Christmas lights, currently being hung up en mass by someone on the upper balcony.

“Sorry!”  Alanna called down to him.  “This one was my fault!”

“Why.”  James called back.  “What was wrong with our cramped, dark, artless hallway okay I’ll shut up.”  She bellowed a laugh, and even the camraconda hissed out his people’s version of humor.  

“Green orb.”  Alanna called down.  “Already recorded in the database.  Plus one balcony.”

“Is this one of the ones that Anesh copied?”  James asked.  “Because I can see that getting out of hand *fast*.  Like, we’ll be more dungeon geometry than building, after a few of those.”

Alanna rattled her colorful light bushels at him.  “It’d look awesome!  But no, this was one of mine, and since we don’t have the time or resource to copy *every* orb, I figured I’d fire it off.  It… I mean, it’s not *bad…” She sounded kinda dejected.

“It looks awesome.  Maybe we can get some art commissioned for the ceiling.  Go all Sistine Chapel in here.”  James grinned at her in the dim light.  “Anyway, I’ve got a meeting.”

“Have fun!”  She waved as he let Cold-Wind-Friction guide him through to the vault.

Neither James nor the camraconda said anything as they moved, simply keeping to a companionable silence.  Some - a lot, really - of the camracondas were, James was noticing, behaving a lot like the people they’d originally rescued from monster-Karen, almost half a year ago.  Respectful, bordering on reverent.  It wasn’t actually very fun, for James, or for some of the other delvers.  Though it *had* led to an uptick in the humans he’d saved treating him more like a person, now that they got a taste of their own medicine.

Stopping just inside the vault, James turned to address the spiritual leader of the camracondas.  She - and she did currently identify as female - was still adorned with many of the artistic trappings of her position. Though whether they were of religious significance or just personal taste James still didn’t know.  Behind her, on the wall of the vault, the desk panels carved with the history of the camraconda people were on display.   An anthropologist would have a field day with camraconda culture.

“Greetings.”  The digital voice came smoothly out of the Bluetooth speaker concealed somewhere in the priestesses adornments.  She didn’t look up from her charge; a woman’s body, lying in repose on a low metal table.  Wounds still fresh as the day she died.

He’d tried to come up with something elegant to say as an opener, but this scene tugged at his heart every time he saw it.  Anything even distantly related to planning for this conversation fled James’ head.  “Hey.”  He said softly.  “I…”

He trailed off.  What did you say to someone when you wanted to disrupt their main cultural pillar?  It was a tricky question.  It was an *impossible* question.  And as he tried to find the words to do so, he came to a realization.  He was going about this all wrong; he was trying to form this as an argument, instead of just asking and listening.  James leaned forward, dropping himself down to the floor in front of the table.  He noticed, as he folded his legs under him, Cold-Wind-Friction tensing up behind him when he got a little too close to the body on the table, but he didn’t move closer.  He just sat.

“This woman.”  James said. “How do you feel about her?”  He asked the priestess, waving an open palm at the dead woman.

“She saves us.”  The camraconda replied, almost right away.  Her digital voice stopped, as if that was the only thing there was to say about it.  The most important thing; and it very well might be to them.  James thought about it, and wondered if the tense was intentional.

He nodded, leaning his chin on an arm propped up on his knee.  “Do you ever wonder who she was?”  He asked her.

“Always.”  The priestess replied, shifting her tail in a way that didn’t move her gaze away from the body.  “Like thinking she has kindness.  Bravery.  Think she is like me.  Or Frequency-Of-Sunlight.”  The camraconda’s digital voice was turned quieter as she spoke, which James took to be either contemplation or reverence.

“She is strong.”  Cold-Wind-Friction said behind him, adding his own words to the answer.

James took a deep breath, and then let it out.  “You know, I came down here without really having a plan, so I’m just gonna ask this.  Would you like us to try to find out who she was?”  He made as much eye contact with the priestess as he vigil would allow.  “She might still have family, or friends out there.  People might know her.  I wanted to ask permission to search her for ID, maybe put a picture of her up or hire a private detective or something.”  He sighed.  “But… I can’t tell you that she will have been the person you believe she was.  And I also don’t want to force it, because she… well, she’s been in your care for a long time.”

The camracondas were quiet for a while as they thought about it.  And while they did, James sat, and thought about the dead woman.  Who had she been, before her life had intersected the Office?  He hoped she’d been someone worth these people.

Eventually, just as his legs were starting to get sore from the position he was in, Cold-Wind-Friction spoke up, moving up toward the table and the corpse.  “She had strength.”  He said.  His head and singular camera eye pivoted up to look at James, and the priestess, in turn.  “Before does not change the end.”

“She possessed family?”  The word family wasn’t one the priestess had ever really said before, though she knew what it meant, in theory.  Her people were her family.  They were important.

“She might have.”  James answered.

“They should know she is strong.”  The priestess said.  “That we love her for what she did.”

The words hung heavy in the air.  James felt tears on the edges of his eyes.  He steadied himself with a breath.  “Okay.”  He said, moving to a kneeling position.  “I’m gonna see if she has a wallet, and we’ll go from there.  We have more resources and tools than I ever really expected.  We’ll find something.”

“I will tell others.”  Cold-Wind-Friction said, and the priestess hummed assent at him.

He and James moved back to the elevator in silence.  This time, they saw the look on his face, and no one in Research bugged him.

_____

Anesh caught him right before he went home, plopping a folder of printed paper into his inbox just as James was trying to find his keys in the mess that was his desk.

“Hey!  I’m heading out.  Gonna go sit alone and watch youtube for a couple hours.”  James said the words with an almost palpable relish.  “When’re you gonna be home?”

“Later.  I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, and I’m feeling a lot better now.”  The ‘thanks’ was silent, but still there.  Anesh tapped the folder.  “We got a final count of all the stuff from Status Quo.  The Tools they were using, anyway.  There might be more hidden in the boxes of documents or something, who knows.  Their organization is bollocks.”

James perked up.  “Oh!  With the list of what they all do?”  He cracked open the folder, and started peeking at it.  “Yessssss.” He hissed out, impersonating a camraconda himself.  “This is gonna be so useful.”

“Yeah.  We’ve got notes on the ‘messages’ these things give, too.  It’s ‘ability name, level, progress, cooldown, stored charges’, and then any conditions at the end.  Like the automatic thing for the shields.”  Anesh shook his head, mournfully.  “I feel like they could have killed all of us without trying if they’d turned off the autopilot.”

“Any news on how they kept the gear invisible?”  James asked.

Anesh clicked his tongue in consternation.  “None.  But there isn’t much variety in the objects, so we have a full list of abilities already.  None of them do it; it must have been something else.”

“Bah.”  James griped.  “Well, this is still gonna be huge for us.  I can’t wait to play around with some of these.  But later!  I need downtime now!  Been doing stuff *all day*!”

With a soft smile, Anesh stepped around the desk and gave his boyfriend a reassuring hug.  “Yeah you have.  Go home, decompress.  Alanna and I’ll be back in a few hours and we can hang out, or just leave you to catch up on podcasts or whatever it is you do.”

“Mostly watch youtube video essays about professional wrestling.”  James admitted, pocketing his escaped car keys and breaking the hug as he held the office door open for Anesh to go out first.

“Why?”  Anesh asked.  “Do you… like wrestling? I feel like I should have noticed this.”

“Nah, I just like hearing people talk about it.”  James admitted.  “It’s just cool to kind of vicariously pick up a passion for something.  Like a hobby, but with less footwork.”

Anesh chuckled.  “You’re impossible.”

“I’m busy!  I don’t have time for wrestling!”  James countered.  “Besides… huh?”  He trailed off as his phone buzzed.  It was always worth checking, because at this point in his life, only two people texted him, and if it was the Order’s chat server, then it was someone asking him something directly, or from the Emergency Notification channel.

When he saw Anesh pulling his own phone out, and Sarah doing the same from where she was just walking in the door, James felt his heart tense up.

It was a message from Lua.  “SCHOOL OPEN.  EIGHT MISSING.  TEN MINUTES AGO.”

James’ phone started ringing in his hand.  Loudly.

He looked up at Anesh.  “Go get whatever might slip past the weapon restriction on the school.  Grab everyone who’s available.  Volunteers for combat!”  James pivoted around the room, catching the eyes of the handful of humans and camracondas here.  There’d be more in the back, someone on the roof, plenty of people in the basement.  “Civilians in danger!  Move!”  

He answered the phone.

“James!”  Lua’s voice sounded over the other end, panicked.

“I know!“ He barked.  “We’re moving!  Where’s the breach right now, and how many people are in the school?”

“It’s in an equipment shed on the field!”  Lua told him, voice wavering.  “I don’t understand!  I don’t know why so many students went in!”  She was well and truly panicking.

James spoke calmly and firmly.  “We’re on the way.”  He said.  “Don’t go in.  Meet us out front.  Have Secret keep an eye on the breach.  We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“James the police are here.”  Lua sobbed.  “They’re yelling, and half of them have their guns out.  I can’t do this again.”  She gasped out.

“Just hang on.”  James said.  “I need to move now.  We’ll be there soon.”  He hung up, without waiting for a response.  Looked up from his phone.

Alanna was already there, along with a half dozen other humans, and three camracondas.  James briefly considered asking Pendragon if he could pilot her and use her as a troop transport again, but that was a *little* beyond the scope of this one.

“What’s the plan?”  Alanna asked.

“The usual.”  James said, a strained joke in his tone.  “Swoop in, kick ass, save lives.”

“Can we make that our motto?”  Alanna said with a quirked eyebrow.

“Let’s give it a few more times before we commit to it.”  James quipped back.  “Sarah!”  He called her name, and tossed her an unpolished blue pencil out of his pocket. “Here!  Have fun!  Everyone else, I hope you read the briefing on the school; grab anyone else who’s ready, and get in the vans.  We leave in five minutes when Anesh comes up.”

James stood in the eye of a storm of motion.  Humans and snakes and a few other things besides burst into action.  Grabbing backup, helping camracondas into armor, pulling the excluded weaponry out of their emergency action kits, piling into vans.  James took a deep breath, only half paying attention, trusting his people to make this work.

His first thought was they need to do drills for this sort of thing, if it was going to be happening often enough that it could be their motto.

His second thought was that it was a shame they’d had to use their prepared thermobaric explosive on Status Quo.  It’d be another week or so before he’d have the option of blowing up the school sewers.

But oh, boy, was he feeling that hot anger that made him want to level the entire place.

He hoped this time they’d be fast enough.  That they’d be strong enough.  That it’d all work out okay.

Because if it didn’t, he was going to embezzle enough Order funds to rent a backhoe, and tear the whole high school down, brick by brick, and make sure this never happened again.