The Daily Grind - Chapter 179 (Patreon)

Not sure I like this chapter, but it is certainly here.

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“Alone in its orbit, the Blue, the Empyrean Parasite, the ineffable creature of secret inner fire that had been first among all of Life, saw. The results of its work were painted across eons, and this latest thread it had woven into the grand tapestry pleased it to no end. There had been such potential here, and now it was realized in full.” - Apotheosis, Thrive -

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James’ car, which was actually Sarah’s car, rolled down the freeway at a steady fifty miles an hour.  The low speed suited him just fine right now; he wasn’t in much of a hurry, for a handful of reasons.

For one, this stretch of road wound through a rocky region. Arizona didn’t really have much on the mountain pass roads he was used to complaining about every time he tried to take an in-state road trip anywhere in Oregon.  But it still had ups and downs, the black asphalt of the road winding through canyons of orange and red rock.  During the afternoon, sunlight still warm even in the winter had played sharp shadows off the surrounding terrain.  Now, at night, there was a more ominous looming to the shapes around him.

Extra reasons included that Sarah’s car wasn’t built to do eighty for stretches of time longer than two minutes, that fuel efficiency was a real concern, and that his Velocity was already topped off anyway.

For another reason, there just wasn’t anyone here.  The freeway was pretty much empty, and James hadn’t seen another car for at least ten miles.  And without the pressure of keeping up with traffic, James found he was perfectly fine to go at whatever speed he wanted.

That was how he’d been doing this vacation the whole time, really.  And it was, for all he’d started out pretending he was going for a specific objective, a vacation.

Travel for a bit, stop somewhere.  Get off the main roads sometimes, see where it took him.  Usually it was nowhere, but sometimes it wasn’t.  He’d seen a lot of weird west coast tourist stops that he hadn’t really intended to be destinations.

What was supposed to be a straight line to the destination the cartomorph in his head was signaling him toward had instead turned into a week and a half of short hops from gas station to gas station and hotel to hotel, with interesting little diversions mixed in liberally.

Cartomorphs.  Those ethereal life forms spawned from the Route Horizon monster kills.  No one was sure if they ran on mental hardware the same way other infomorphs did, but they sure seemed to bond with a single person a lot more directly than an Officium Mundi assignment did.  They were living maps, the voice guide and position tracking of a GPS all rolled into one magical ball and living in your mind.

The point was, James could go at his own speed, and with the magic of the internet, he didn’t need to feel like he was abandoning the Order to do it.

Stuff just kept going while he was away.  Which was *perfect*.  He’d finally gotten enough people to act like he wasn’t the big boss that he was, effectively, no longer in charge.

In a way, it was kind of scary.  For a lot of people, “being in charge” was a form of freedom, and for James to willingly give that up… well, there was a real part of his brain that was culturally conditioned to feel like he was letting someone else take control of him.

But James had a bigger idea in mind.  A world of mutual decision making, where administration and management didn’t equate to ownership and domination.  On a small scale, it wasn’t too hard to make it work; he *trusted* the people in the Order.  Even the new ones.

On a large scale?  The coin toss was still in the air, for now.  But he wasn’t out of rough ideas he wanted to try out to influence where it landed.

A thin string of information ran through his brain, and a small divergent path highlight itself in his vision.  James smiled slightly as he shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable after four hours on the road and completely failing to figure out exactly why his pants ceased to be comfortable the instant his road trips passed the two hour mark.

The cartomorph in his head, which was leading him to presumably a pretty good burger place, wasn’t really a person yet.  And that crux wouldn’t come until he made it where he was going.  But a week of driving together had led to them working out a sort of communication channel between James’ waking time behind the wheel, and the ethereal life lived inside his thoughts.

Divergent routes were a simple ‘yes, no, elaborate’ system of the map asking him questions.  But it worked well enough, and he was prone to rambling to himself anyway.  On the third day, they’d also had to establish a ‘repeat song’ code, as it turned out the map really liked some of James’ music.

“More about what?”  James asked out loud.  “Leadership? Organization formats?  What the Order’s been up to…?”

At the last one, the alternate route shifted, and he nodded.  “Yeah, I miss ‘em too.  Though we’ll be back before you know it.  Possibly literally!”  He shrugged in an idle gesture to himself before getting back on track.  “Things seem to be going okay.  Delves are going well, minimal problems there.  JP’s got, like, most of the rogues watching a house full of silent potion people, so that’s a thing.  Response just onboarded another wave of people, which is making a local ambulance company annoyed that they can’t find EMTs to hire, which Harvey *says* they don’t know is us, but I dunno.  I am just kind of waiting for the moment, you know? When everything comes together at once.”

“No.”  Signaled the map.

“Okay, you don’t know.”  James sighed.  “You know… okay, gotta stop saying that.  You don’t always know.  *You*.  Fuck, what does that word even mean anymore?”  Freed from the bonds of conventional language and the need to make sense to another human, James was finally left to just let his mind wander verbally.  “So, I’m probably one of a small percentage of people who likes sci-fi stories enough to decently conceptualize a being that can think, but not person.  Person is a verb now.  It’s also a really messy verb, because it means a lot, and nothing.”

His hands tapped and folded over the wheel as he drove on, headlights cutting through the crisp and empty night.

“You aren’t a person.  Yet.  But you’re still ‘you’.  And you can learn, and sometimes want things.  That’s a *weird* state to be in, because I’d kind of call that being a person?  But obviously you disagree, and there seems to be some kind of hard conceptual gate you can’t get past until we get where we’re going.  Like… kind of a lack of self-conceptualization. I *think* this is what Freud would call not having an ego, but I also don’t really want to give ‘ol Siggy credit for anything.”

“Yes” signaled the cartomorph sharing his headspace.

“Right.”  James sighed.  “And then we choose, yeah? *You* choose.  You already know I’ll have you if you want to stay.  If you don’t want me, there’s a whole Order to choose from.  Or just hang out in until you find who you pair well with.  Or *so many* options.  You are, quite possibly, the first being who will be able to consent to whether or not you exist, before that’s an issue for you.  That’s *amazing*.”  James paused to glance down at his gas gauge before flicking his eyes back to the road, doing his best to push off the grim feeling in his gut when he thought about existence like this.  “Also a little terrifying.”  He added.

“Yes.”  The cartomorph signaled, a few times in sequence.

Yes it was cool, yes it was creepy, yes it consented.  James got the point, and smiled.

“I mean, humans have been arguing over what a human is for… basically for as long as we’ve been around.  There’s this old, probably not true, anecdote of a greek philosopher explaining that man was a bipedal organism.  And someone in the audience asks, ‘with feathers’?”  James stifled a laugh as he told the old story.  “So the guy nods, runs out, and comes back an hour later to slam a plucked chicken down on the table, yelling ‘Behold! A man!’”

“No.”  The cartomorph signaled.

James chose to interpret this as incredulity.  “Oh yeah.”  He said, before correcting, “I mean, ‘oh, probably not’.  Look, language is hard, you’re gonna have to get used to people sounding like idiots all the time.  Which *might* be a human thing!  That’s the point I’m going for.  The story might be not real, but it highlights a very real problem that we have, which is that we don’t know how to define ‘human’.  And we absolutely don’t know how to define ‘person’.  You can think, but don’t feel, or want.  Does that make you less valid as a person already?”  He paused, and really thought about it.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know what I even *want* the word to mean.  But I look forward to seeing you grow, I guess.  That’s all.  That’s where I was going with this, probably.”

He trailed off, not really sure if he had anything else to say, and let the softly playing music from the car’s radio take over as he pressed on.

All too soon, other cars started showing up on the road in ones and twos as he neared the tourist town he was stopping at.  James checked in to a room at an omnipresent Comfort Inn, updated his mental spreadsheet on the quality of local water pressure as he took a shower, and made use of bad hotel wifi to check updates on the Order’s server with tired eyes.

He was *so* tired.  Something like thirty plus purple orbs shoring up his flimsy human shell, and yet, just driving a car for a few hours left him flopped on the bed like an inanimate object, barely focusing on his phone screen as he checked in.

The last thing he remembered mentally processing before he fell asleep was a logistics report on drums of gasoline in inventory, and something about a combat briefing on an angry gas station, which he felt like he’d probably misread.

Tomorrow, he’d make his destination, and start heading home.

James woke up more or less resigned to the fact that whatever this place was, there was no way that it could actually live up to the expectation that a two week long vacation just for one burger had generated.

It wasn’t going to happen.  It was, end of the day, a mundane burger joint that served, as far as a non-corporeal entity without access to yelp reviews was concerned, pretty decent food.  James had eaten *multiple* burgers on this trip.  Some of them also pretty decent.  This place wasn’t going to be anything overly special, it was just… the last stop.

He took some time to wake up slowly, checking in with his friends and partners, flagrantly missing a narrow window for hotel breakfast, before he headed out.

It was almost insulting that the weather here was so perfect, in the middle of the winter.  Back home, James got to experience days like this maybe a handful of times during the peak moments of summer.  Here?  This blend of comfortable warmth and colorful sun was just a daily thing.  Hell, it was practically a reminder that if he’d decided to do this four months ago, he’d be sunburnt already.

“Alright.”  James spoke to himself as he wriggled to a semi-comfortable position in the driver’s seat of an unfamiliar car.  “Where’re we going today?”

The cartomorph responded with a nudge, and James followed.  He only had to double back twice when he missed sudden turns, before eventually finding himself on a long rural road to nowhere.

Cartomorphs were great for abstract exploration and adventure, but he was under no illusions that a GPS would have given him more of a heads up as to what lane he needed to be in.  Hell, he’d checked a map on his phone repeatedly this trip, just to know where he was.  “Near the southern US border”, currently.  Not that it told him much about where he was *going*.

Around the car, prickly grasses and sharp trees flew by as James drove.  An hour passed, then another.  The mile marker signs ticked up, but he didn’t really know where he was going, right up until he saw the scraped up old road sign for a town called Gila Bend.

A much larger sign that looked like it was made in the 1970s greeted him after he’d rolled across a bridge over a thin river and started seeing buildings. Population 1,700 people and 5 old crabs.  Quaint looking place.

There were two kinds of small towns that James had experienced over the last few years, across multiple trips on the road.  The first kind were the ones that were dying.  Maybe a gas station and two places to get food, a handful of old houses and a few businesses to support them, in the middle of nowhere.  Those places maybe used to be mining or farming towns, but now just kind of kept up a drifting existence with no real identity, old buildings continuing to crumble until maybe one day everyone had finally moved away.  Highways providing *just* enough passing traffic to keep a few places going.

There was almost always at least one active serial killer in those, in his experience.

The other kind were almost worse.  The places that retrofitted themselves into tourist destinations.  Places to *go*, rather than just places to pass through or places that had their own living economy.  The kind of places that would pour half the budget into remodeling Main Street, that had six antique shops, and always at least as many rustic bed and breakfasts.  Beds and breakfasts?

They were, the point was, quaint.  Artificially quaint.

This one was *both*.  And it put James a little on edge to take unmaintained old roads at low speeds, past buildings with ‘historical site’ plaques out front, when he could see houses that hadn’t been remodeled since the 50s just one street over.

He did *not* get a good feeling from the town.  Even as he followed his cartomorph’s directions through it, most of his focus going toward driving safely while trying to ‘listen’ to someone else, James was noticing a lot of people giving him uncomfortable looks from sidewalks and porches.

“You, are not welcome here…” he muttered to himself.  Adding a minute later, “Maybe I should have asked if we had any spare Arizona plates before I came down here.  I bet we have a dungeontech thing that changes license plates.”

James was distinctly aware that Sarah’s car, in multiple ways, marked him as an outsider.  Maybe this was just the town being tired of *more tourists*.

Though there was also a part of him, the part that had to analyze every piece of weirdness in his life as a kind of survival strategy, that wondered if there was such a thing as a naturally occurring infomorph on earth.  The dungeons, after all, mimicked organic life.  Were infomorphs just parroting a form of life that had always been in the background of human life? And if so, were one or more of them here, making this place feel… shitty?

It took less than ten minutes of driving through the small town before he pulled into a parking lot, and somehow got more confused, rather than less.

Dak’s Daycare, the burger joint was called.  It was like someone had lifted a building from a century ago and dropped it down into the modern day; polished chrome, red leather, a big sign with a weird looking Minotaur mascot on it.  It was almost totally anachronistic, and yet, it also felt… not contemporary, but very real.  A real place that was ready to go.  Maybe it had been here the whole time, maybe it was built recently and the owner just liked the aesthetic.  Either way, it fit perfectly into the run down vaguely hostile tourist town that, yes, *did* have at least two antique shops that James had seen on the way in.

What was confusing about it was that the parking lot was *packed*.  And for a town of this size, that would have made this one building a hell of a tourist destination, but James hadn’t even been able to find this on google.

What made it more confusing was the pair of what looked like TV production vans, and whole ecosystems of electrical cables running across the parking lot and through the front doors.

James found what was *probably* a parking spot, wedged over to the side next to a half-maintained hedge and facing an empty field of red dirt and cacti., like the town just hadn’t properly rendered in beyond that line, and killed the engine.  Stepping out and taking a long breath and a stretch of his sore muscles, he reached out to the cartomorph in his head, to see if anything had changed.

Technically, something had.  It was pointing him at the door.  But aside from that, no lock had been undone, and no choice had been made about personhood.

James shrugged.  They’d get there when they got there.  No hurry.  In the meantime, it was late afternoon, he was hungry, and also ravenously curious about what exactly was being filmed here.  And also if it was going to stop him from getting a burger.

So he threw a mask on, and sauntered in to a scene of absolute chaos.

Two people were arguing loudly over by the old style jukebox - complete with actual record collection - over something about a script.  An impossibly irritated guy with a power drill and a desperate need for a better belt stood on a ladder affixing what looked like a lighting rail to the ceiling.  In the back, through the window into the kitchen, the hiss of cooking meat and the smell of something delicious wafted through the absolutely packed front room.

The vast majority of the booths and tables were filled.  It looked like the half of the town that *didn’t* have a disdain for tourists had turned out for their chance to be on TV.

“Just grab a seat anywhere!”  A lanky guy with a scrap of hair left on his head and an apron around his waist called as he ran through James’ field of vision.

James shrugged, glanced around, found a spot, and took it. Settling into an uncomfortable chair at a small two person table, just as there feeling of something completing flooded through his self; an unlocking and a progression and a dozen other things all at once impacting the cartomorph in his head.

Just as soon as it happened, the feeling was gone.  Something settled in, and the sensation of a long nap briefly brushed against his thoughts.  And that was it.  A two week vacation, and now James was done.  He could go home right now; the actual objective complete.

He still wanted a burger though.

“Hey what can I get for you!”  The balding guy’s voice made James jump as it came out of nowhere, and he realized he’d spaced out for a few minutes.  Larry, his name tag read.

“Oh!  Uh, you know what? Surprise me.  A burger of some kind, whatever’s good.  No pickles.”  James said.  The dude eyed him with a kind of ‘really, man?’ Sort of look for a second, before shrugging and scribbling something on his order pad.   “Also, hey, what’s uh… this?”  James jutted a thumb toward the production crew.

“Not here with em?”  Larry asked.  “They’re filming some Food Network thing.”

“Oh yeah? Is Guy Fieri here?”  James asked, perking up.

“Different show.”  Larry shook his head.  “It’s a vacation thing.  They said they were doing B-sides today?”

“B-Roll.”  James autocorrected.  And then, “Dang.” He clicked his tongue in disappointment.  “Looks like you’re having fun, huh?”

Larry just gave an exhausted ‘eh’.  “It’s busy, they’re in the way, and my boss sucks.  Also I don’t have time to talk.  I’ll bring the food out when it’s done.”  And that was that, the man vanishing as stealthily as he’d arrived, with that kind of rapid movement overworked food service staff had been mastering since the dawn of time.

James was going to just settle back and wait, watching the unfolding activity around him, but one of the other customers had other ideas.  “New in town?”  The older man asked him from a couple tables over with a strong voice.  His words cut over other small conversations, and James spotted a couple other diners turning to look at him as the guy who looked a lot like a kindly old uncle right down to the facial hair greeted him.

“Yup!”  He answered back with a smile, before realizing the other man wasn’t *really* smiling at all, despite the warmth in his words.  “James.  Nice to meet ya.”

“Ah, another kid looking to get on TV, eh?”  The man who didn’t introduce himself said.  Again, he *sounded* friendly enough, but James narrowed his eyes slightly at the disconnect between the cheerful words and the grin that didn’t reach the man’s eyes.

“Nah, nah.”  James shook his head.  “Honestly, a friend told me about this place, and I was in the area, so I figured I’d drop in.  No idea this all was going on today.”  Technically, none of that was a lie.

“Oh yeah?  What’s your friend’s name?”  The man’s words took a sudden hard turn, almost like a challenge.

James blinked, then shook his head.  This was a bizarrely hostile situation, and he didn’t particularly feel like engaging with this dude.  Especially not now that half the diner seemed to be listening in, whether they wanted to or not.  “They don’t have a name yet.”  James said.  “I’ll let you know when they pick one.”  He took refuge in technically true bullshit, this time of a more mystical nature.

“Another immigrant, huh?”  The man snorted.  Loudly.  “Figures.”

James looked around at everyone else, genuinely wondering if he was being set up.  But no one looked willing to get involved.  Even the one girl on the camera crew who would meet his eyes just gave him an exhausted shrug.  Was this dude just hanging around hassling people today?

Internally, James wanted to just call the guy an asshole and disengage.  In theory, he *knew* people like this existed, but he’d spent almost every waking hour building a social structure that didn’t *do* this, and so it was a little jarring to be back in the ‘normal’ world.  So, despite what he wanted, James went for polite when he opened his mouth instead.

“Alright.  You’re being kind of a shithead.”  Someone said, and James pursed his lips as he realized that had been him.  Well, too late to disengage now.  “I’m not really interested in your casual racism, so I’m just gonna sit here and wait for my burger, okay?”

“Hey!  Language!  There are *children* present!”  The man sounded indignant, but for the first time, had what looked like actual glee on his face as he jabbed verbally at James.

“Yes.  You’ve already introduced yourself.”  James said.  “Look, it’s been a long day.  Even if everyone else in here is super racist, I doubt they actually want to hear you yelling.  Please leave me alone.”

That, it turned out, was exactly the wrong thing to say.  James sighed as the man ramped up his verbal tirade, getting slightly louder as he just… kept going.  About a lot of stuff that James honestly did stop focusing on after the first sentence.  He tuned the man out playing Sudoku on his phone, especially once he stopped actually yelling at James, and just started talking like he was monologuing for the camera.

The cameras weren’t on.  James had caught the same camera girl’s eye again, and they’d shared another confused shrug.  The cameras absolutely weren’t rolling.  It was kind of hilarious, honestly.

At a certain point, the owner came out of the kitchen with someone who looked like a producer, and got the yelling guy to settle down.  James got the distinct impression they were friends, but that Yells was just kind of a known factor locally.  The kind of guy who actually voiced a lot of buried disdain and hate out loud instead of just scowling at people.

James was still waiting for his food, and in the absence of the ability to do more on his phone than make spotty calls and play puzzle games, started talking to the lurking production crew.

“Yeah, we’re waiting for the lights to go up.  Hanging this stuff is actually kind of a process, and it sometimes takes too long.”  The girl setting up stationary cameras out of walking lines had told him.  “It’s a pain in the dick, and I’m glad I’m not doing it.  Better than lifting it ourselves though.”  James absolutely believed she’d done that before; her arms looked more toned than his, and he had literal magic to help him exercise.

“Also the building is a billion years old and we have a bet on if it collapses.”  Her teammate and or unpaid intern added.  “I bet no, because that would be exciting.”

“I bet yes, because I love tempting fate.”  The girl said, before running off at a producer’s call to adjust a camera angle.

James just watched it all with a small smile.  The whole thing had this mix of organized chaos and professional madness.  Like everyone knew what they were doing and had a casual disregard for timetables and the laws of physics.  It felt really familiar.

“So hey, what’re you doing here anyway?”  The intern asked James while they leaned against a back wall by the splintered doors to the bathrooms, James having long ago resigned to waiting well over an hour for his food.  “Like, are you here on work or something?  You don’t match the tourist profile.”

“Oh, I’m a utopia wizard.”  James said.  “I do shit with magic to build a better world.”

He even managed to say it with a straight face.

The kid - who was probably the same age as James - looked at him with an uninterested glance.  “You can just say you don’t-“

The thing, suddenly, that crystallized the scene for James into something *truly* familiar was the feeling of imminent disaster.  A feeling that bloomed with a hot rush of panic in his chest as a loud *crack* rang through the building from where their contractor had just put a little too much weight on a ceiling that had probably been unsafe since it was built.

*Now*, he thought as the ceiling bowed downward and the squealing of overstressed metal took over the soundscape from the cracking of wood, he really felt welcome here.

There was no time to think.  There was only time to react.  And James had gotten very, *very* good at reacting.

One step, then another up onto an occupied bench, shoving himself up with all the extra motion his purple orbs offered to tumble over the back of the seat and across a mat of cables across the middle of the floor.  From inside James mind, an engine kicked to life, and three orange lines lit up his conceptual vision, pointing to three different people.  And from one particular skill orbs, he *knew* what was about to happen.

As the ceiling buckled overhead, and chunks of debris started to fall, James grabbed a plate off the floor with his left hand, trusted to his Aim, and backhand flung it behind him.  Then he toggled his shield bracer to ‘falling building’, which he was *alarmed* to find was in the record already.  And as he kicked forward and reached the collapsed ladder where the contractor had fallen and a pair of the TV crew were checking on him, he reached into another part of his soul and spun up the psychic mechanism that let him move roads, pairing it again with Maker’s Hand Upon The Wheel to make sure he did this *right*.

From an outside perspective, everything happened at once.

There was a crack, and a thud as the contractor fell off the ladder.  Then, while the crowd was still making curious and concerned nosies, the building had shifted, the ceiling bowing inward as something gave way that really shouldn’t have.

Then James had flung himself at high speed up to where the contractor had fallen, just before the ceiling collapsed in a spray of dust and a falling support beam, half the roof coming down on top of it in a wave of unstable material.

All of it eliciting a blazing golden dome of light around the spot it was collapsing on.

As the building wobbled dangerously and the crowed started screaming, though, what looked like the entire parking lot had lanced through the far wall with a shattering of glass and the scream of warping metal, support pylons of black asphalt establishing themselves in rapid succession, propping up the building that looked like suddenly a stiff breeze might threaten to knock it over.

Practically no one noticed the plate, thrown like a frisbee, that shattered as it collided with a broken piece of falling pipe, sending shards of porcelain down to get stuck in a certain angry asshole’s sideburns, but deflecting the more dangerous and far sharper problem just enough that he didn’t get himself impaled.

Around James, multiple people coughed, choking on dust that was almost certainly full of asbestos, while he held his arm outstretched, shield charges ticking down steadily as he held the support beam and half the roof off the few people around him.

“Out!”  He pointed with his other hand at the still partially clear way to the front door.  The pile of failing construction overhead shifted slightly, and he tried to shift in a way so as to make it fall *away* from them.

The producer scampered, suit jacket catching on a splintered bit of wood and shredding with a dry rip as he pulled his way out.  The camera girl, though, stopped and slung an arm under the contractor, dragging the man’s bulk with her as she moved.

James checked his charges.  Ten, and counting down.  This was one of the Status Quo bracers, too, the ones that were crafted by blood sacrifice and cursed with shitty recharge timers.  He didn’t have time to screw around, so as soon as they were clear, he followed, letting the collapsed support beam slide off the edge of his shield, taking two more charges with it as a chunk of a falling light fixture and another part of the ceiling structure clipped him on the way out.

The parking lot was madness.  People who had run through the hole he’d made in the wall, as well as members of the TV crew and staff who had been in the kitchen ran around yelling for various things.  *Most* of the building was still standing, but the front right dining area was just a hole visible through the roof from the outside. James tried to keep his breathing steady as he wiped absolutely carcinogenic dust out of his eyes and brushed his arms off, suddenly wishing he’d worn his coat.

“Shit.”  The girl next to him said as she sat the contractor down, and James glanced over to see her pulling back, one hand covered in blood.  “F-fuck.  Shit.  Uh.. help!”  She yelled, head whipping around and voice rising as a panicked stammer entered her words.  “Someone call 911!”

“County hospital is a half hour away.”  James caught someone saying, realizing suddenly that he *couldn’t* hear any sirens on the way.

James reached into his pocket and pulled out a mercifully intact phone.  Punched in four digits from memory.

One ring, and someone answered.  “Response.”  The young man’s steady voice met him.

“Marcus.”  James said.  “It’s James.  I have someone injured here.”  He rattled off an address.  And then, realizing at least two people were staring at him, and what was about to happen, added; “The team is coming into a crowd, they’re filming some cooking channel show.  Tell Harvey… something.”

There wasn’t even hesitation.  “Help is on the way.”  Marcus said.  “Arriving in thirty.”  There was a pause on the line, before Marcus asked, “Is it Guy Fieri?”

“It is not Guy Fieri, I asked.”  James reassured him, voice still thin from the adrenaline flooding his limbs.  “I’ve gotta go.  Thanks Marcus.”  He said as he hung up, fumbling the phone back into a pocket.

From twenty feet to James’ left, three people snapped into existence.  Someone screamed, but he wasn’t paying attention.  As Nikhail ran toward them and James indicated the fallen contractor, something green and flexible spiraling off his arm, James called out to the other two.  “Ann!  Triage!  Sort this mess out!  Knife!  With me, we need to check the building!”

“Yes boss!”  Ann nodded, before turning, taking a deep breath, and beginning to shout simple commands to the crowd with an arcanely enhanced voice.

There were still a handful of people in the front of the building, those who were clustered at the tables, and had been blocked in by half the ceiling cutting off the door.  “Everyone okay?”  James called out, and got a half dozen different answers.  Most of them were confused, many of them were people swearing at him, and at least one was a young kid screaming.  “Alright.  Knife, can you lock this in place?”  James rapped his knuckles on the collapsed support beam.

“Done.”  The camraconda said.

“Okay, everyone, let’s get you out of here.  If anyone’s hurt, stay put.  Everyone else, there’s a gap here you can crawl under.  It’s not gonna fall, let’s go.”

One by one, James coaxed the diners out of the place, begging the building to hold itself together for as long as it took.  A couple people didn’t want to move, or felt like they couldn’t move.  He understood; not every day you had architecture fall on your lunch.  But he kept calling for them, until even the most stubborn of them had gotten out.

One of the parents of the crying child actually scrambled to leave first, and James was not oblivious to the death glare the other one was giving their partner as they pushed the kid forward.

“Good job buddy.”  James offered a high five to the young human that couldn’t be older than six.  “Wait right here, okay?”  He added, reaching through the gap to offer a hand to the crawling parent.

The front was clear.  James didn’t see a clear route to get into the kitchen, or the rest of the back, and didn’t even know if this building had a basement, but he had a place to start at least.  Slipping out, he nodded to Ann, ignored the questions people were yelling his way, and circled around the structure, Knife-In-Fangs trailing behind him.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for.  The employee door in the back was just far enough to the side of the building that the roof caving in had crumpled the top of it, jamming it in place.

“Hold here.”  James said, tapping the top, and Knife-In-Fangs echoed agreement with him.

Then he stepped back, pulled on his asphalt control again, letting the last charge of that slip away, and harpooned the door.

James didn’t have any Velocity left to boost his fine control with, but he wasn’t particularly concerned.  This wasn’t some hefty security door, this was just a lacquered wood barrier.  Thick wood, sure.  Front door thick.  But James had been practicing, and he was getting a lot better at lancing things with chunks of road.

Working as fast as he could, he extended hooks from his asphalt spike and tore the door out of its position, the structure around it frozen by the camraconda’s intervention.  “Come on!”  He called to the employees and TV crew that were cowered inside, about half of them - the smarter half in his estimation - crouched under the heavy metal food prep tables.  “Let’s go!  Can’t hold this up forever!”

“My goddamn door!”  An older man, presumably the owner, yelled.

It was a hollow protest.  He stormed out with everyone else, and while the others got clear of the building, retreating to sit on curbs or the hoods of cars, the owner looked around like he was trying to find the machine responsible for breaking his kitchen door.

“Sir, please step back.”  Knife-In-Fangs instructed, drawing a jolt of motion from the chef as he turned to stare at the camraconda.

“What the hell-“ The man stepped up to the serpent, blocking his line of sight, and behind him the building shifted, crumbling a little more into the gap James had made.  James grabbed the older guy by an arm that was practically indistinguishable from a grizzly bear, and yanked him forward as a few chunks of roofing tile cascaded down and broke on the ground.

“Go sit with the others.”  James pointed.  He tried to remember, and put into action, a dozen different things he knew he needed to do.  An authoritative voice during a disaster, clear instructions, and people would listen.  Get them clear.  Don’t go back in, things might explode. What things? Any things, somethings.  Just keep clear.

His head started to hurt, and probably not from inhaling the dust of a collapsing building constructed in the 30s - he was wearing a mask after all.  But there were just too many things to keep track of, and this *wasn’t his specialty*.

It was also catching up to him, as he looped back to the front of the building to find two more Response members, Ann holding a man in a headlock, and Nikhail missing, that he *may* have just done something slightly more out in the open than maybe they’d been doing up to this point.

One problem at a time.

James pulled his mask off and took a breath of air that smelled like sawdust and french fries.  “Thanks for the assist.”  He muttered to the cartomorph who had gone back to napping, as he found a clear spot and slumped down to a seated position, legs vibrating.

“What the fuck was that?”  A hoarse voice called James’ attention upward.

He glanced up, popping a joint in his neck as he did so, to see the camera guy from earlier.  ‘Earlier’, hell, five minutes ago.  Tops.

“Which part?”  James asked.

“You… the whole… the building fell down!”

“Yeah, I blame you for that.  Or… uh… the other girl.  Look, whoever bet that the ceiling wouldn’t hold the lighting rail.  It’s their fault.  You tempted fate.  Poor choice.”  James’ heard his own words like a rushing in his ears, and tried to tip his head to make the noise stop.  “Ow.  I feel like I got hit on the head.”  He muttered, rubbing just under his ear.

The cameraman just stared at him.  “You said you were a wizard.”  He coughed, spitting out a wad of dusty phlegm to the side of the parking lot.  “You were…”

“Oh, yeah, I wasn’t kidding.  Right, magic is real.  Sorry.  That’s just something you’ll have to live with.”  James shrugged.  “Maybe don’t tell everyone else around here just yet.”

“Oh god, is this…”

“It’s not a secret, no one is… none of *my people* are going to kill you,” James hated having to make that distinction, “and you’re fine talking to me.  I just mean that… look, I think one of your editors tried to attack my medic, and Ann has him in an arm bar.  And I expect that’s probably the most reasonable reaction anyone would give.”  He waved idly to the crowd of people in the parking lot, half of them sitting and staring at the building like they didn’t understand what just happened, half of them making calls, half of them yelling or arguing, often with each other.  “Oh hey, I hear a siren!  Wonder who shows up first?”  He looked out behind them, to the expanse of road leading away from the town toward empty desert.

James had seen roads in Route Horizon that looked less desolate.  But from this slight hill the restaurant was on, he could pretty clearly see a set of lights from a state trooper car as it sped toward the town.

He sighed and reached out a hand, the camera guy taking it by instinct and helping him to his feet.  “Okay.”  James said.  “I gotta get going.  You okay?”

“No!”  The guy threw up his hands.  “No I am not okay!  I’m… you can’t just do that, dude!  Magic is real? What?  What the…”

“Alright, you’re okay.”  James patted him on the arm and moved to check in with Ann and the others who were handing out bottles of water to the crowd, and having conversations with clumps of diners.  “Ann.  You… uh… good here?”  He waved at the man she was still holding who was still trying to punch her.

“Fine.”  Ann said.  “What’s up?”

“Nik at the hospital?”

“Along with three injured and Mir, yeah.”  She nodded.  “Everyone should be okay.  Is that fire and rescue I hear?”

“Police.”  James crushed her hopes.  “Might want to make ourselves scarce, keep this from getting out of hand.  Everyone looks safe, though.  And there’s not much else we can do here.”

Ann dropped the man, spinning away as he flailed on the ground.  James offered him a sympathetic hand up, which he took suspiciously, while Ann turned away and barked a few simple commands to the other Response members.  With rapid efficiency, the four remaining members of the Order wrapped up what they were doing, finished their conversations, circled up, and vanished as Ann tore a telepad.

“What… no!”  The man James had helped up clenched a fist, yelling at nothing as he tried to dust off his torn suit jacket.  “They kidnapped my cousin!”

“Oh, the contractor?”  James asked him, getting an affirmative.  “Yeah, don’t worry about it.  He is, most likely, at the closest hospital.  Teleporters, yeah?  Last thing I heard was that no one was in critical condition, and they have a *very* good medic.”  He pulled out his phone.  “Did she ask for your contact info? Here, give me your number, we’ll call you when we know more.”

The sudden shift from being headlocked to being helped seemed to both put the man at ease, and confuse the hell out of him.  James still got a number from him, but also a question.  “Who the hell are you?”  He asked.

James just grinned, stepping back and waving as he got back in Sarah’s car, and left the scene, passing a pair of state troopers as their own cars pulled into the crowded parking lot.

He felt kind of bad for not giving an answer.  But to be fair, he was still working on that himself.

He also felt bad, hitting the main road again and finding the fastest highway north, that he had gone through all that trouble just to not get lunch.

Though there was a pretty hefty level of self-satisfaction at his own actions.  Building better systems was appealing and a great long term goal, but *this* had been adrenaline pumping, immedient, and also very important to the lives of several people.  So he was giggling madly to himself as he drove, that same adrenaline slowly wearing off.

He would have felt worse about the whole thing, probably, if he’d noticed that the camera crew had gotten an almost perfect shot of three humans and a camraconda teleporting out.