The Daily Grind - Chapter 264 (Patreon)

“I have no friends who want to hear about how hot the San’Shyuum used to be.” -Brian David Gilbert, Unraveled-

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Two days later, after taking some real time off to recover a little bit, James came back to the Lair.  He’d been keeping up on reports and digital chatter through his whole day off as he hung out with Anesh and watched pirated anime on their couch with a dog who seemed like she really wanted to offer commentary, but still couldn’t actually speak.  The anime was fine.  The outcome of everything else wasn’t.

Whatever Status Quo had triggered in their effort to flush out the chanters hadn’t been focused on the actual city of Yamhill, but it ended up being collateral damage anyway.  A little over a thousand people had lived there a week ago.  Now, more than half the buildings were just gone, and fire damage marred the rest.  An unknown amount of acreage of farmland was ash, and the two reasons there wasn’t a massive forest fire carving through the state was a truly impressive reaction by the Forestry Department and seemingly fewer points of ignition outside of human occupied areas.

Sixteen humans were confirmed dead.  An unknown number injured.  The fires hadn’t spread especially fast, and Response had not been shy about evacuating everyone they could.  The fact that there were so few deaths was a miracle.  A few of those deaths also seemed to be from Status Quo, though why they’d shot random people wasn’t clear and may never fully be understood.

Response was out of the area now.  After helping to remove the deeply incriminating evidence of a series of shootouts, they’d been gone leaving only hundreds of stories from the survivors of being pulled from impossible situations by teleporting snakes and silent ghosts.  Which was actually irritating to Harvey, personally, because the man had coordinated with the local sheriff and been utterly open about what the Order was doing.  And yet something kept those memories from really sticking the way they should.

And into the gap Response left, Recovery moved in.  Reconnecting people with friends and family, retrieving important objects from unstable structures, arranging therapy and long term support, and infusing the Order’s wealth into putting lives back together.  Everything they did was documented and far more legal under US law than Response, but somehow, they’d be remembered even less.  Just ghosts that had nudged things into place.  It was almost a powerful metaphor, but again, really annoying for anyone that wanted to actually be recognized for their good work like they deserved.  And they did deserve it; James was planning to find a way to show them, too, at some point.

James wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he got to the Lair.  But the mood in the building was… almost alarmingly positive.  People just generally seeming happy that there was one less threat to them out there, and they didn’t have to get shot at for it to happen.  And that had given him a brief spike of anger, before he forced himself to remember that was the point.  He was the one who got shot at, so everyone else could be happy.

Well, ideally, he also didn’t get shot at either.  But if someone had to, it should be him, the guy who was really hard to kill and wore shield bracers like they were snap bracelets.

And any lingering irritation vanished when James spotted Keeka on one of the lobby’s beanbag chairs, sitting near the column of glass and metal terrariums, a bearded dragon sitting on his head.  The ratroach looking delighted and completely at ease as he let the lizard slowly navigate around his upturned triangular snout.  The ratroach’s two lower arms were curled up around his back like he was waiting to catch the mundane lizard if it fell, but aside from that, there was no tension to the scene at all.  Just someone cute being cute.

The realization that he found Keeka not just cute, but utterly adorable, caught James slightly off guard.  He’d said the words before, partly joking, but it hadn’t really sunk in just how attached he’d gotten to both him and also Arrush.

Sadly, he had an appointment to keep, and if he missed it because he was flirting with Keeka, then Planner would…

“What would Planner do?”  James asked himself.  “It’d probably be nonlethal.  Like, surely their revenge wouldn’t actually be lethal.”

A small whisper of a pen across a page reached his ear.  “You would be just too late for taco night.  Every week.”  Planner replied to the question inside their domain.

“Well shit.  That’s worse!”  James did not actually think that was worse, he wasn’t exactly married to the idea of taco night.  But it was funny, and he liked Planner’s creativity, and he really didn’t want to upset the neurotic infomorph that kept their schedules.

Downstairs was as busy as ever, and as James passed through Research’s zone of control, he found himself grinning at how the pen that used to contain a cluster of shellaxies from Officium Mundi had grown slightly and now had a handful of stepshells from the Ceaseless Stacks mixed in.  The two species had somewhat similar care and feeding needs, it turned out; while the hermit crab footstools didn’t actually eat computer bugs, they did like crickets, which the shellaxies would happily share with them.  They also seemed a little less intelligent, but up to this point, none of them had shown even the slightest sign of hostility to anyone.  Shellaxies were still animals, in a way; if you annoyed them, they’d try to bite you, and they were dangerous, no matter what cute name they had.  But the stepshells were just… happy to be here.

Accessing the Order’s vault was actually easier than it maybe should be.  It wasn’t exactly meant to be ‘secure’ so much as it was just where they stored stuff and had a stricter inventory system than anywhere else.  The really dangerous stuff; specifically the notes from the omnicidal Horizonist mechanic, that was kept in an actual secure room.  This was just a place that required a passcode and duel authorization to get into.  Which, when James thought about that, kinda did make it sound overly secure.

Of course they’d taken that secure room, which had a containment pen for anything dangerous and alive that they teleported out of a dungeon at the back and shelves and racks lining the walls that gave way to a quiet and somber shrine that held the loot drops of everyone who had fallen that they could retrieve, and used a pair of orange totems to make it bigger.  While the drawers and shelves out here held labeled orbs, spellbooks, map fragments, and a host of esoteric things that they might want to use or copy at some point, the small door to the left that should have overlapped with a computer lab instead led to a cramped room that held guns, ammo, and the twenty grenade launchers they’d liberated from ruined Townton police stations.  An actual armory.  The room to the right was kind of like the part of a bank where you could open your safety deposit box, and it was where James steered.

Nik was already in there waiting for him.  “Good, you’re here!”  The young man looked up from the clean metal table that he’d piled a stack of tattered books on.  “I was worried you got lost.”

“How, exactly, would I… no, nevermind.  Also nice ‘stache.”  James gave an appreciative nod at Nik’s newly luxurious and darkly green facial hair.

“Thanks.  It’s fake.”  Nik answered rapidly.  “Well, sorta.”

James flicked his eyes around the clean walls of the room.  “Uh… why?”  He asked.

“We’ve been over this.  I screwed up with the shaper substance, and my own facial hair looks like ass.”

“Okay, two things.  One, that doesn’t mean you screwed up.  Lots of guys have really stupid facial hair.  Like me!”  James swept an open hand across his cheek.  “That’s why I’m smoooooth.  Because the alternative is I look like a creepy gym teacher!  Also two, why not just try again, but with actual medical help this time?”

“…you know, you’re not the first person to make me feel more male by insulting my beard, which is kinda… uh… not nice.  You’re not nice.  But you are something.”

“Thanks!  Here to help.”

“Also the shaper substance is pretty much reserved for the ongoing stream of ratroaches we have coming in.”  Nik said.  “We don’t actually have that much of the stuff.  So my ego is a low priority.”  He looked up suddenly.  “Which, uh, it should be!  I’m not whining!  God, everything is so close to perfect, I’m not gonna make a big deal about not having sideburns.”

James shrugged.  “Hey, it’s okay to have dreams.”  He offered.  “Also pretty soon we’re gonna be ‘done’ copying logisticors, maybe we can replace that slot with just making more shaper substance.”

“It’s a bad ratio of volume to effect.”  Nik shook his head.  “Ah, sorry, I already thought of this.  Not that you’re not… fuck I’m just gonna say a bunch of stupid shit today, okay?”

“That’s pretty much me all the time.”  James patted Nik on the shoulder as he took the other chair in the room.  “Anyway.  Should we do what I’m here for?”

“Yeah.”  Nik passed him a hard plastic bulb filled with something that looked like a pulpy white mixture shot through with lines of gooey red.  “So.  Drink about a third of this, then we can get started.”

“I really, really do not want to.”  James took a deep breath as he prepared to imbibe a potion that he loved the effect of - even when it wasn’t synergizing with magic, it was just so cool to be able to focus on reading for the pure joy of it, and retain every line - but despised the taste, texture, and general experience of.  “I utterly despise being a test subject.”  He took a deep breath, and tried not to inhale through his nose as he tilted his head back and squeezed a heavy mouthful of the grim fluid onto his tongue.  “Hurrrrgh.”  He announced as he struggled to swallow, eventually managing, if only barely.

Which was when Nik decided to go for a killing blow.  “To be fair, we’re pretty sure this doesn’t work.  You’re, like, verification number ten or something.”  He said as he passed James the first Winter’s Climb spellbook.

James felt his stomach roil with both flavor and anger.  “I will get revenge for this.”  He swore as he started filling his open learning slots one by one with the magics that he’d chosen.

Frost Vector, Call To Blood, Mountain Of The Self, Survival Flare, Frostwake, and, as a treat to himself, Cloud Prowler.

Well, maybe not just as a treat to himself.  James was going to be one of several people who would be exploring what the limits and responsibilities of having a new life form on call were.  He’d had that presented to him when he’d requested the spell in the lineup by someone from Research who hadn’t actually met him before, and had needed to go through a fairly comprehensive set of questioning before he was allowed to check out the spellbook.  James found it hilarious, since he’d written the questionnaire, and had explained afterward that he was already familiar with the standard of care, for a variety of reasons.

There were a hundred ideas for what to do with the cats.  Give them orbs, or Sewer lessons, or their own Climb spells, or skulljacks, or whatever.  But James just kind of… wanted a cat that he wouldn’t be allergic to.

And since after making his selections, he still had one Climb spell slot empty, so it wasn’t like it was a waste.  At least, that was how he justified it to himself.

“Now!”  Nik clapped his hands.  “While you’re down here, you wanna get more magic?”

James sighed.  “I mean, yeah?  But like… okay, this is gonna sound like my wizard privilege showing, but I actually can’t make use of that much extra magic?”

“Oh ho ho, look at the paladin, too many magics, huh?  Too good for the little hedge mages in the Order?”  Nik laughed as he lightly teased James.  “But seriously, really?”

“Sorta really, yeah.”  James nodded with a grin.  “So, for some stuff, like purple orbs, it’s fine.  They stack, make my frail meat suit better, and I never have to think about them except when it’s one of the ones that forces me to adapt.  And even then, I’ve gotten used to my absurd acceleration, so I don’t think about it anymore.  Usually.  But for Route or Climb spells?  Or even absorbed blues?  I have to think about using them.”

“…yes?”  Nik tilted his head.  “Yes.  Yeah, that’s… that is how you use them.”

“Nik, you go on delves.  Come on.”  James rolled his eyes.  “How many things can you realistically focus on in a fight?”

“Oh!  One.”  Nik admitted instantly.  “I see your point.”

“Yeah.  So if I keep piling magic into my… magic… organ… then I end up kinda wasting it?  Like, later today, I’m gonna go debrief on a fight I was in and get reminded that I didn’t Pave anyone.  And that’s literally the most straightforward combat spell possible, it just punches someone.”  He sighed as he helped Nik align the Climb spellbooks with his good hand, and followed the younger knight out into the vault area to replace them in their sealed shelf.  “So I guess if you want me to test a magic, I’m up for it, same if it’s passive, but if it’s just adding a new thing to think about when I’m gonna have to do training runs every day for the next month just to master what I just got?  Pass.”

Nik sighed.  “Yeah, that makes sense.  It’s the Utah Vancian stuff, if you were curious.  Since we have duplicates of the little disc things, and the spells are… uh… I mean they… well, like, if you…”

“Nik.”  James folded his arms as Nik locked the shelf and avoided his gaze.

“It’s kinda cool?”  He offered.  “I mean, one of them makes a towel.  That’s useful at least.”

“What do we have.”  James sighed.  “I guess I can just take something for daily life.”

“Make a towel, make a chair, turn a frog into a bat.”  Nik rattled off.

James waited.  And then stopped waiting.  “Right.  I talked to Charlie about this three crises ago.”  He sighed.  “You know what?  I actually might have a use for that last one.  Wait, isn’t this the thing where it takes forever to slot a spell?”  James asked.  “I remember Morgan telling me the rescued teenagers complained about that.”

“No?”  Nik closed one eye as he checked something through his skulljack.  “No.  It’s five minutes for the frog thing.  Eight for a towel!  It’s a bad towel though, I should tell you.”

“Get me the frog book.”  James sighed, going back to take a seat and trying not to think about how much his back and shoulder still hurt, or how the sling he was wearing itched.  Nik came back pretty quickly with a book that was way more obviously a spellbook than anything else the Order had, leather bound with weird runes on its cover.  And also a small bronze disc.  “Neat!”  James said as he picked up the disc and snapped it in half, accepting that he was going to have to get used to this magic and every magic sooner or later.

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“So, the syntax for this…” Nik started to explain.

“No, no, let me guess.”  James loved trying to get inside the headspace of dungeons.  Even one he’d never ‘met’ personally.  Part of it was thinking, if he designed this magic, how would he express it in a way that was technically correct, but also hard to parse.  “Is it level, then number, then spell?”  He asked.

“Yeah?  Yeah.”  Nik looked marginally impressed.  “This dungeon adds to our growing list of places where the magic is two-stage, and it feels almost purposefully designed to not be discovered.”

“It probably was.”  James mused.

“Sure.  But like… the mix of slots and books is weirdly common, as far as dungeons go.  There’s a theory that it’s like orbs; convergent evolution where they’re finding a way to be as unhelpful as possible so that they aren’t worth farming.  Or maybe so none of their delvers get too strong.”

James nodded as he opened the book to the first page and started looking at it.  “I can see… uh… what’s up with this?”  He held up the tome with his free hand, wishing he could point while he did so.

“Oh, yeah, it’s gibberish.  They’re like that.”  Nik nodded.  “Sorry!  It’s all just actually useless ‘runes’ and stuff.  And you have to focus on it for eight whole minutes.  Have fun!”  He stepped back, quashing his desire to talk about dungeon taxonomy with James.

“I hope the reading potion helps with this, considering I can still taste it.”  James grumbled, the flavor of the worst raspberries still lingering on the back of his tongue.

It didn’t.  If anything, it made it worse, because he clearly remembered his time staring at the lines and symbols of the spellbook, even though it really didn’t mean anything and he’d learned nothing.  But five minutes in, almost on the dot, something did change.

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1: 1 Charm River Transmutation|

“Wow, it really does just attempt to provide no information.  That’s wild.”  James laughed as he closed the book and sighed, stretching as he stood and left the side room.  He handed the book back to Nik with a shake of his head that said clearly that he was disappointed that he’d never get those eight minutes of his life back.  Nik just paused in sorting a tray of orbs to replace the spellbook, looking apologetically guilty the whole time.  “Alright.  Well, that’s… sure something.”  James said.  “Anyway.  You wanna ramble about split magic systems at me for a while?”

“Yes.  But I can’t.”  Nik let out a relieved chuckle.  “I’ve got two more people coming through for Climb equipping, and they’re both gonna take a little longer since I’m helping with their choices.  But later?”

“Later.”  James nodded.  “Thanks Nik.  And hey, thanks for keeping this place looking nice.  It’s good to know we aren’t gonna lose random Squo items with everything sorted.”

“Hah!  Yeah!  That would be impossible!”  Nik laughed out in a squeaky voice as he ushered James out of the vault at a rapid pace.

James stood on the edge of the Research den as the door sealed behind him and the electronic lock beeped shut.  “Alright,” he called out to the dozen people nearby, “what did you guys lose?”

Everyone was suddenly really invested in their work.

_____

A day later, his arm healed.  One second, his shoulder was cracked and slowly mending, the next, James was fine.  Well, not ‘fine’, since there had been a searing pain of skin and muscle warping and pinching as his bone had resealed itself, but fine in that once he stopped screaming, it faded pretty quickly.  Though he was caught totally off guard; normally the magic didn’t do that.  But maybe he had just always used it on clean breaks before.  Or on outright preventing damage to begin with.

Now, at least one purple orb had refreshed and was back on cooldown.  He noted the time when his vision stopped blurring and submitted it to the group studying that kind of thing, and then immediately took a course of action that would make any of the medical staff in the building scowl at him by asking if he could join the next day of training drills.

Nate, who had gotten back from his vacation to find a fresh source of stress, had stared at James with his eye twitching before agreeing to set something up, and then throwing James out of the kitchen.

And now, James was regretting it.  Nate had tapped into the list of favors that Bill’s crew owed him to get them to remodel the back parking lot with liberal uses of [Manipulate Asphalt], [Make Door], and the somewhat terrifying blue orb power of [Complicate Route].  Now, instead of a parking lot, there was a temporary set of structures that would have been right at home as either a paintball arena or a US Army shooting course.  It was actually rad as hell, and James really wanted to actually play magical paintball here.  Which he sorta was doing.  But Nate was determined to focus down on his weak points, and drill him out of bad habits in every way that he could, and so James was getting a workout that was somehow more strenuous than the actual combat he’d been in yesterday, leaving him a panting sweaty mess after each ‘round’.

“What’s that?”  Nate’s voice broke through to get James’ attention.  He stood over the bench that James and a whole lineup of one of their security teams were sitting on.  Most of the others were catching their breath, wiping sweat from faces, and squeezing water bottles for all they were worth.  James, though, had already gulped back his water to wash the vile taste of exercise potion out of his mouth, and was looking into a long cardboard box someone from Research had run to him.

“Orbs.”  James answered, and noticed the group of new young men and women next to him all suddenly start paying a lot more attention.  They were different than the ones James had worked with a few days ago, but no less interested in the magic side of the Order.  “I didn’t get a chance to go into the Office because of… you know.  The stuff.  But they did a few copy runs of different Stacks orbs and I’m supposed to record this batch.”

He didn’t have his skulljack braid in, because Nate had told him it was cheating, which was bullshit but whatever.  So James just used the provided notepad in the box to start filling in as he went through the mostly green and purple orbs in the box, all of them wrapped in labels with a number designation.

[+1 Flora Rank : Tree - Cedar - Cyprian]

[+1 Flora Rank : Grass - Kentucky Bluegrass]

[+1 Flora Rank : Tree - Mango]

[+1 Flora Rank : Blackberry - North American - Navaho]

[+1 Tool Rank : Computer - Laptop - VAIO - SX Series]

[+1 Tool Rank : Centrifuge]

[+1 Tool Rank : Screwdriver - Robertson]

“I really, really do not get these things.”  James sighed when he was about a third of the way through.  Nate cocked a mostly-fully-regrown eyebrow at him, and James explained.  “They’re not bad, don’t get me wrong.  And I am supposed to be funneling more magic directly into my blood these days or whatever.  But… okay, you know how the Office’s skill ranks make you good at something?”

“I’m familiar with your bullshit, yeah.”  Nate nodded.

James nodded back.  “Okay, well, these ones make you good at getting good.  They don’t do anything else.  So, with the Officium Mundi yellows - or any of them that might have a skill rank I guess- there’s always this chance that you get something weird, but then you can make it fit into your life.  Or change to take advantage of it.  These Stacks orbs just feel like they’re making more work, instead.”  He sighed.  “I realize I’m bitching about literal magic.  But I just do not know what I’m supposed to do being an estimated thirty percent better at learning about mangos.  I like mangos, but…” James shrugged again.

“So, these things don’t give you superpowers?”  Nate asked, tapping the box with his knee.

“Not really.”  James answered.

Nate nodded slowly.  “Okay.  Set that down.”  He ordered James, who gave him a curious look but still followed the direction, capping the cardboard box and leaving the notepad on it.  “Squad!”  Nate’s bark was loud, abrupt, and made James’ adrenaline spike as the man next to him suddenly shouted.  “Defensive positions, you have one minute!”

The security squad on the bench dropped their water bottles and reacted impressively quickly.  To James, anyway.  He felt like if Nate ordered him to do that, he would have given a confused look for half of the allotted minute.  “Oh, wait.”  James groaned as he realized he was about to be told to move again.  The exercise potion helped, too, so he couldn’t even say he was sore; he just felt lazy after attempt after attempt working on integrating Climb spells into how he moved and fought.

“Get your sparkly paladin ass up.”  Nate told him without humor.  “What are you focusing on?”

James grunted as he rose to his feet and stretched his arms, before double checking the padded snowboarding pants he was wearing didn’t have holes anywhere he was about to be sliding against the ground.  “Use my mobility, don’t get married to cover, don’t panic-cast.”  He took a deep breath, feeling for the sensation of his Breath in his chest, waiting to be used.  Nate had him pushing himself, but it was a warm afternoon and he wasn’t in any danger from using it up.

“Okay.  You get one invisibility use.”  Nate indicated the earring James was wearing.

James tugged on the wrists of his gloves.  “You know, this would be more fair if I got an airsoft gun too.”  He said.  He had to tag them to knock them out of the game.  He’d been getting better though; he had about a fifty percent win rate against the team of six.  Though unfortunately, they were getting better too.

Nate leveled an unamused stare at him, then turned toward the cluttered temporary structures that filled the parking lot and bellowed.  “Team three, ready!”  He didn’t wait for them to call back; they’d learned after the first two times that Nate wouldn’t make them, and that they were giving away where they were hiding.  “Beat him in this one, and you get the paladin’s box of toys to split!”  He added.

“Hey, wait...”  James was actually cool with that, but it still made him start to chuckle and turn toward Nate.

Which was a mistake, because Nate’s yelled. “Begin!” signaled the start of the drill, and as with the last three times, one of team four’s members was crouched behind a low barrier right at the edge of the field and instantly started trying to shoot James.

James heard the mechanical sound of the airsoft gun before the first pellets started flying, and he made up for his distraction by hopping forward to use Nate as cover, which didn’t in any way stop the unseen kid from firing on him.  Asking the mystical blood magic earring nicely to spend a charge to make him invisible for the next minute and fifteen seconds, James focused on the area around him and let his enhanced hearing figure out what side of his organic cover his opponents were still shooting at.  Then he took off running in the other direction.

It wouldn’t take them much time to locate him when he made his presence known, so James needed to make the cloak count.  He sprinted at high speed around the perimeter of the arena, then picked a direction to move in.  The opposing team would have to have spread out to watch every angle, which meant James wouldn’t have to face all of them at once.

He made full use of his improved acceleration to close to one of the weirdly out of place ornate wooden doors standing in the open with a thin asphalt wall to one side.  The door was ajar, but he ignored that to circle the piece of cover, and headed for one of the assuredly unsafe two-floor structures that had been set up.  Even if he didn’t find anyone right away - because they’d gotten good at lurking - he’d at least have a vantage point.

It was pure chance James caught a hint of motion, down a thin corridor between pieces of constructed cover.  One of his opponents looking exactly his direction, but not seeing him yet.  They had a wall between them and James, which wasn’t going to help them.

With his timer ticking, James decided to deal with anyone else nearby after picking off this one.  Turning his sprint toward the wall they were hiding behind, knowing he was about to be observed, James exhaled a spell and felt his chest cool off in a way that was actually quite soothing as he removed all friction between his pants and the ground.

He’d tried this a lot with boots, but his boots were separate objects, and actually he needed to be able to use them to move.  Pants were a much better option.  It still hurt when he dropped to his knees on the parking lot’s surface, but he just kept going at high speed, and so even when he flickered back into visibility, James was moving fast, low to the ground, and way too close to be reacted to effectively.

“Shit!”  The defender got out before James slid past their cover, one hand grabbing their calf and yanking them to the ground, hard.  He used his feet to stop himself, rolling across this supine foe to slap their chest and a ‘vital’ point with his palm.  They groaned in frustration, but didn’t yell now that they were out.

James pulled himself into a somersault and rolled over to another piece of cover, but ended up way too open to the raised floor behind him as the other team started yelling his location out.  Swearing internally, he remembered Nate’s direction and kept moving so as not to get pinned down.  He’d been really careful to not reveal that he had enhanced hearing this whole time, so when he caught two of them talking in low voices planning to flank him from two walls over, James took advantage of it.

Or tried to.  It was hard when there was a spotter on the high ground that kept telling the others where he was.  But the whole point was to exercise how good he was at abusing his tricks, so he did exactly that.  [Manipulate Asphalt] at range was harder than doing it up close, but James peeked through one of the weird doors to look across an alley, and open up a hole near the bottom of a wall that should be large enough.

Then he burst through the door, avoiding fire from the two that were circling him and running straight for the gap.  Sliding through was almost easy, but he scraped his forehead on the edge as he did so and so when he popped up right between two of the enemy, his eyes were watering and he really wanted to just give up and go get some ice.  But he had momentum and actually didn’t want to get shot with an airsoft rifle today, so he ran across the shady room, dodged an orange traffic pylon, tapped one of the surprised defenders with his fingers and then pulled the acting-corpse in front of him to use as cover from their partner.

The partner threw themself sideways through one of the windows, firing backward at James as they did so, and getting a yelp from the hostage that they hit.  “Sorry!”  James told his victim as he let go of their arm and ran perpendicular to where the other one had jumped, listening to where they were circling the building.

Then he fired off a charge of [Manipulate Asphalt] at the wall, opened an arm sized hole at head height, and slammed his shoulder into the asphalt as he jutted his hand out and slapped the flanking trooper in the face.

Paradoxically, it felt so, so good to be able to slam his shoulder into things without pain.

“Three down.”  James spoke to himself as he pulled his arm back and ran for the opposite side of the building, running over what he’d been working on in his head.  Take advantage of mobility, don’t hunker down.  There were more of them than him still, and they didn’t need to get close to win.  Cover was bad unless it was leading him to his targets.  Keep moving.

He kept moving, listening for when the spotter up high yelled his position, and kept his head down when they took shots at him.  They probably knew they wouldn’t hit from that distance and with James running, but it cost them nothing to try and he only had to get tagged once.

As he crossed an open space at a run to avoid taking any of those strat shots, James parkoured his way through a sideways door, and then realized that he hadn’t been avoiding the shots so much as he’d been being herded.  Because the room was occupied by more than just a half dozen traffic cones and a pillar holding up the roof in the middle; the other two defenders were already here and focused right on him, from all the way across the space.

James did the thing he wasn’t supposed to and panicked cast, a burst of cold meeting the heat in his chest from the exertion as his Frost Vector removed the friction between his right foot and the floor just before he landed from his leap through the gap.  With his other foot he kicked off the wall, momentum making the push a little lackluster, but still boosting himself toward the relative safety of the pillar in the middle of the room, curling in on himself to minimize the target that he presented.

Then he hit a puddle.

How there was a puddle here, he didn’t know.  But it highlighted an instant problem with Frost Vector, which was that if the surface changed, the friction also changed, and real fast.  James suddenly found his spell countered if not outright canceled, and suddenly his upper half was moving way too fast for his lower half.  What was going to be a last ditch attempt to reach cover was instead him sprawling wildly onto his chest as he failed to keep his balance.

Then there was a mechanical whirr, click, thunk, and James felt a plastic pellet bounce off the back of his head, only barely slowed by the bound mass of his hair.

“Ow.”  He groaned out.

“Yes!” One of the defenders shouted.  “Fucking yes!”  He turned and high fived his partner, the two of them standing over James’ prone form.

“Good reflexes.”  James grudgingly groaned out a compliment as he pushed himself up, trying to swipe water off his pants.  At least he wasn’t that wet.  “I thought I could get to you, but got unlucky with the puddle.”

“No you didn’t!”  The celebrating trainee had a grin from ear to ear.  He held up a water bottle that was sitting on a ledge nearby and shook it, generating no sound.  “Eh?  Eh?”

James looked back to the thin puddle on the ground, right in his way for the path he’d chosen to take to breach the building.  “Holy shit.”  He laughed.  “Alright, you fucking got me!”  He offered a high five himself, which the kid accepted a little more awkwardly.  “Okay, let’s go tell Nate.  Guess you guys get some orbs to split.”  James gave them an earnest smile as he stepped out of the building.

And got shot in the head by a barrage of pellets from a high vantage point.

“Ow, fuck!  No!  I’m out, I’m out!”  He raised his hands in surrender.  “God dammit I was already out!”

“Oh!  Sorry!”  A girl’s voice yelled back.

She didn’t sound that sorry.

James didn’t blame the celebrating victors, though.  Especially after he got some cool cream for his forehead.  They’d earned their orb box.

The breakdown of what he’d done wrong with Nate was less fun.  But it was important.  James wasn’t here to be coddled, he was here to learn.  And he planned to keep going until six on one was a real disadvantage to his opponents.

_____

That evening, James helped out with a Recovery job.

Specifically, he was talking to the various prisoners who’d been liberated from Status Quo.  About half of them were already gone, and the polite way to explain that was to say that they’d formally requested to be released from the medical facility.  The more actual way to phrase it would be to say that they had, in various forms, demanded to be let go and asked to be dropped off in empty fields or in one case the parking lot of a derelict Best Buy.

They didn’t trust the Order, was the point.  But the Order of Endless Rooms had a policy for this, and it didn’t rely on being trusted.  The people who wanted to leave got to leave, and that was it.  Even if some of them seemed like real assholes, that didn’t make them threats or problems, and no one deserved to be made a prisoner just for having magic.  Also, it was entirely reasonable for someone to seem like an asshole when they’d been kept in an infomorph-induced prisoner state for weeks or months, waiting to be fed to a monstrous bug thing.

But some of them had remained, moving into the expanded apartments in the basement, or taking the offer of financial support to get their own places nearby at more mundane apartments or rental homes.  Many of them were going to have a long road to recovery from the trauma of it all; they’d lost friends, sometimes the people closest to them in the world, and it had happened when they’d effectively been kidnapped and mentally violated.  The ones that ran from the Order, James was worried about, but they were at least running.  The ones that stayed were the people who were hurt to the point they’d almost given up, or they were the ones who felt like there was no point trying to recover their own lives when everyone had forgotten them because of the effect of the prisoner infomorph.

James really hated those things.  Research had tried to pry into how they worked, but like most infomorphs, they just didn’t work without a mind to exist in.  And given how they seemed capable of causing permanent changes in a person, it didn’t seem like a great idea to ask for volunteers to be test subjects.  And they did seem like ‘dumb’ infomorphs, in the same vein as factals or whatever identity-shredder memeplex the Office used.  So while he hated them, he didn’t hold a grudge, and they were all gone now anyway.

Which mostly just left James talking to survivors, reassuring them that things could be better, and offering what the Order had.  And, pointedly, not prying into what their dungeons had been.  And that was the situation that found him sitting at a kitchen table in someone’s apartment, drinking hot chocolate and answering questions that he was pretty sure had been covered, but were being asked again to try to absolutely make sure the Order wasn’t lying or covering something up.

“So how long does this go on for?”  Azalea asked him.

James didn’t know if that was her name.  On a practical level it didn’t matter, and on an ideological level, he felt like people should name themselves whatever they wanted.  “Which this?”  He asked.  “Like, this check in?”  He took a sip of his cocoa and tried to not get distracted by the tree right outside her back porch waving in the breeze.

“No, this.”  She waved around the front room of the one bedroom apartment.  “The whole thing.  How long until I need to pay you back, or whatever you want.”

“Uh…” James stopped himself from reflexively saying it was indefinite.  “So, I want to say it lasts as long as you need it.  On a practical level, we probably could pay your rent forever.  Realistically, we’d like to get you back on your feet within a couple years, though if you want to join the Order, you probably could.”

“A couple years.”  The chubby woman leaned her elbows on the kitchen counter she was hiding behind, cradling her own cup of hot chocolate.  “You get that’s, what, forty grand for this place?”

James flicked a finger against the side of his cup.  “Probably.”  He said.  “Money is a tool to me, at this point.  Paying your rent is… I dunno, less efficient, but not that much compared to what we’re bringing in.  At a certain level of organization and magic, you can make a lot of money.  Though ideologically I’m sorta uncomfortable with it.”

“You don’t wanna be rich?”  She asked, suspicion on full blast.

“Eh.”  James shrugged.  “It’s not like it’s not cool, I guess?  But I need you to understand that my idea of luxury is having a bed big enough to fit all my boyfriends in it.  Money over a certain point just kind of… eh?  I’d rather filter it into doing something useful.”  James admitted.  “Do you wanna be rich?”

Azalea didn’t even think about it.  “Fuck yes.”  She said.  “Can I be rich if I work for you?”

“Probably not.”  James admitted.  “I mean, you’d get paid pretty well.  Sorta depends what job you want I guess.  Wanna be a programmer?  We need more programmers.”  He chuckled lightly at the look she gave him.  “Alright, no on that then.  I mean, we can give you the skills!  We have that power!”

“Oh yeah?”  The words were tense, but seemed honestly curious.  “Just handing out skill upgrades?”

James nodded.  “Pretty much!”  He said enthusiastically.  “We’ve got a few ways, too.  Could have had more if Status Quo didn’t make a habit of murdering dungeons.  Direct skill ranks from the orbs we collect, actual human… well, person… skill download from the skulljacks, if we get really lucky we might actually find an orb for learning to use computers better soon.  Who knows.”

She stared at him, setting her mug down and tracing a finger around the rim in a nervous arc. “You get how creepy it is that you just tell people what magic you have, right?”

“Maybe.”  James said.  “No?  I dunno.  I’m literally telling you to entice you by showing off what we have to share.”

“Right, and all you want is what I’ve got to give back.”

“Well, no.”  He left his hot chocolate half finished on the table, the sugar a little too much for him right now.  “That’s a common worry.  But no.  If you want to share what your magic is like, you can.  If not, you don’t need to.  It literally won’t change anything.  That’s sort of what I’m here to remind you about, I guess?  Like, I brought a copy of your lease for you, so you can have it.  You’re paid up until next November.  You don’t owe us anything.  We want one thing, and that’s to unfuck as much of what Status Quo did as possible.”

“Yeah?  Well good luck.  As long as those bastards are still out there-“

“They aren’t.”  James cut her off, voice tight.

“What?”

He made a conscious effort to unclench his fist.  “They aren’t out there.”  He repeated.  “Not anymore.”

“…oh.”  Azalea picked up her cup, tilted her head back to drink the rest of it, and lowered it into the sink pinched between her fingers.  “My brother and I found a weird tree behind our uncle’s house when we inherited it.  It grew like it was an archway, like in that one movie.”  She didn’t clarify which movie, and James really wanted to ask, but felt like that could wait.  “And every full moon, it was a door.  And we… you know.”

“Went in, checked it out, found some dangerous stuff, and some cool stuff?”  James tried not to smile, for fear it might seem condescending.

It didn’t quite work, the woman snorting and tugging on the edge of her shirt as she leaned forward on the counter again.  “Yeah, you know.  There was so much… I don’t even know where to start.  There were plants made of glass and a pond that was liquid light, and my brother… Christ, the fucking idiot tried to kiss a mermaid.”  She rubbed at her forehead.  “I’m lying, actually.  He succeeded.  That makes it so much worse.  He was… he was…”

Her voice cracked, and James felt like an awkward intruder in her home because he knew what happened to her brother.  So he said nothing, and waited.

After composing herself, Azalea cleared her throat.  “Whatever.  You wanna know about the-“

“I actually don’t.”  James said softly.  “I’m not kidding.  You don’t need to tell me.  You can just talk about your brother and his mermaid girlfriend if you want.  I know… I know a lot of the time, the people in our line of work that we lose don’t get a proper memorial.  But we can have one for them, if you want.”

Azalea bit down on her lips, sucking air through her nose and fighting back tears as she shook her head.  “Maybe later.  Maybe with someone else.  No offense, but I don’t really know you.”

“No, that’s fine.  I’m mostly just here filling in for Cathy today.”  James gave an awkward laugh.  “If the magic is easier to talk about, I’m okay with it.  But also, I can head out if you need space.  I really was just here to make sure you were doing okay.”

“No, no.  I can do this.”  Azalea reassured herself.  “The magic… Christ it’s so stupid.  It’s upgrades to things you can do.”  She saw James questioning look, and the hungry curiosity he was repressing.  “Like… each little spell or whatever would give you a stupidly specific action, and if you do exactly that, then it makes it better.  My first one was…” she let out an awkward and unexpected laugh of her own, “was that if I cut one inch off a carrot with a reverse slice and a kinda weird grip on the knife, then it would make the carrot more healthy.”

“That’s… weirdly specific, yeah.”  James agreed, no longer hiding his smile.

“See, you think it’s fucking stupid too!”  She accused him.

He held up his hands and laughed.  “Do you wanna know what my first skill was?”  James asked, and got a quick nod.  “I got a rank in phone book templating.  Not even that, it’s only for New York phone books.  Do you know how often that comes up?  The Order of Endless Rooms has literally been doing espionage work in New York for months now, the one time it should matter, and it has never once been relevant.”

“Wow, that’s so dumb.”  She said before clapping a hand over her mouth.  “I mean…!”

“No, you re right!”  James reassured her.  “It’s practically a tradition for us that everyone’s first thing is just so silly.  My boyfriend got a skill in Swedish warships, I think.  It’s frankly a miracle that I kept going back at all in the first place.”  He shook his head.  “You’re not alone even among people we rescued, either.  Someone else’s dungeon gave buffs that stacked up every birthday.  So, like, a whole year before you got these tiny passive upgrades.  I know of another dungeon that makes you look at squiggly lines for a while before it gives you the magic to make a very uncomfortable towel.  Sometimes this stuff is bad.”

“…that’s wild.“ Azalea chuckled to herself.  “You probably know, though, but… sometimes…”

“Sometimes it’s not.”  James agreed.  “I know.  And that’s why it’s worth it.  But also, it’s worth it, because it’s magical.  Not just magic, as a tool, but magical to see what’s out there.”  He looked out the window to his left, talking as he watched the perfectly normal tree, fresh green leaves waving in the spring wind.  “Some of the people I love aren’t human.  Some of the places I’ve seen, I’ll never forget.  And some of what I can do now, let’s me… well… help people.”

There was a brief pause in the conversation.  “Really?”  She asked him eventually.  “That’s all you care about?”

“Kinda!”  James told her.  “Thing is, I could hoard it all for myself, you know?  But if I did that, I would have missed out on at least three dungeons.  I’d never have the time to explore all of them on my own.  I’d be dead a hundred times over just from stuff like the cameraconds.  I’d be missing half my coolest magic, and I’d be fucking miserable besides.  I give away the majority of the cool stuff we find, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and maybe that’s naive and stupid, but holy shit am I having a good time.  I mean, when I’m not running into Status Quo, again.”  He added the last part grudgingly.

Azalea gave him a considering look.  “Is the birthday… dungeon?… birthday dungeon still around?”

“No!  And I’m so fucking mad about that!”  James rapped his knuckles on her table as he stood up.  “Alright.  I’ve got three more people to talk to today.  If you wanna talk more, I’ll try to make time later, or you can set something up with Recovery.  You’ve still got the contact info for if you’re in trouble or need something, right?”  She nodded at him.  “Cool.  Let us know if you need anything, alright?”

“Yeah, alright.”  She said as she followed him to her front door.  “So, are you collecting dungeons?”  The question was probing and not as subtle as she thought.

“Yes, but not like you mean.”  James told her.  “And I’ll be honest, I don’t think we’re gonna find a single living dungeon from anyone we pulled out of that prison.”  He didn’t look back as he slipped into his shoes.  “I think Status Quo had a way to kill them faster.  Either that, or it’s just bad luck.  But it doesn’t matter, we’re not building a stockpile exactly.  Dungeons are only worth it if we’ve got the people to check them out.”  He left the statement open ended as he pulled the front door open and got hit with a warm wind.

“Were you serious?”  She said when he was halfway out onto the old wood that connected the front doors of six different small apartments.  “About recruiting someone like me?”

James looked back at her.  “The first thing you talked about was how cool the plants were.”  He said.  “You’re exactly who we want to be recruiting.”

She glared, not at him, but at something behind him, around him, at everything that was the world on the other side of the door.  “People never want to help.”  She stated.  “You know, before… before this.  Shit, man, a few months ago? I worked at a KFC.  You know, just so you know I’m not some kind of mystic hero or anything.  My brother was homeless.  It’s not like we didn’t have friends, but they weren’t friends, if you know what I mean.  We were so utterly boned until our uncle died and we inherited the house.  There was no financial aid, no one covering rent, he barely even got help from soup kitchens.  And then, all of a sudden, there’s magic.”  Azalea’s eyes tracked back down from looking up at the sky to skim across James’ steady gaze.  “Could you have helped?”

“With the magic?”

“With rent.  With anything.  This all went wrong because we were so broke we tried selling charmed stuff on eBay.  Could you have helped us?  Maybe covered the estate tax, or showed us how to be safe with the Garden, or kept the jackbooted thugs from ever finding us?”

James thought about it, and didn’t like the answer he came up with. “Yeah.”  He sighed.  “We probably could have.  Three months ago?  Yeah.  Yeah we could have.”

“Why didn’t you?”  She asked.

“...I don’t… know.”  James answered.  “Maybe we just aren’t moving fast enough.”  He grimaced as he offered her a weak shrug.  “There’s real reasons, like that we don’t actually have the kind of intelligence network that they were working with.  We aren’t spying on everyone.  Mostly.”  The last word was muttered under his breath.  “But I can’t give you a good excuse.  We could have helped, if we’d known.”

Azalea took a deep breath, like she was preparing to verbally unload on him.  And then she just stopped with a hand on the edge of her door, and nodded.  “Maybe go faster next time.”  She said as she shut him out on her apartment’s front porch.

“...Yeah.”  James agreed.

—-

A timer on the desk James was using started beeping, and he started uttering profanity stolen from various science fiction series as he leaned back away from the screen he was staring at, rubbing his eyes.

“Okay.”  He spoke to himself and possibly to Assorted Jellybeans as the shellaxy tried to menace James into giving it a bag of crickets through the fence of the pen it was in.  “That’s three in a row.  We can safely say that you cannot slot Utah magic through a live feed.”  He pulled up the shared spreadsheet that someone smarter had set up for him, and he’d just been filling in.  It took a tiny nudge of a thought, the newest emerald chip program that was now copied into every skulljack braid making spreadsheet manipulation an effortless breeze.

He recorded his time on this particular idea, number of tests, and any personal notes.  Information about what was and wasn’t possible slowly growing as James checklisted a series of his own ideas on the one magic that no one had really gotten around to testing or working on yet.

It would be a lie to say that he’d been in this basement for twelve hours working on this, because he’d taken breaks and also because some of the tests required being outside.  But he had spent pretty much all day on it, trying to distract himself from what was going on at some point this evening.

Reading the spellbooks without focusing on the images?  Didn’t work.  Reading with the grotesque raspberry and ink potion?  Didn’t help.  Reading through a recording?  Reading through a webcam?  Didn’t trigger the effect.  Reading when you had a robot turning the pages for you?  Worked normally.  Reading while you had no open spell slots?  Didn’t do anything.  Attempting to ‘read’ the runes from your own memory because you had seen too much of this fucking book?  Nothing.  Attempting to read from digital memory through the skulljack?   No.

James was legitimately disappointed by that one, he’d thought he was onto something.

Using different locations?  Didn’t seem to change anything noticeable.  He’d need dungeon access to try to get weird with that one.  Reading at the same time as someone else?  Worked fine.

Reading in a ‘race’ with an opponent while Research tested a copy of the Beloved Winner Seizes Momentum figurine that they’d made from the Ceaseless Stacks loot pile?  In a twist that made James’ brain feel like it was melting, winning that contest had dropped the time requirement for the next attempt by a whole minute and a half.  It hadn’t lasted, but that was actually very cool, even if it had spoiled one of his other tests with an unforeseen variable and made him waste six and a half minutes.  The followup test showed that the ‘momentum’ didn’t actually work if he won a different kind of contest either, though it did make him slightly better at arm wrestling.  Or at least, it felt that way, and he got to take a break to learn just how secretly buff Mars was.

James was testing this predominantly with the Saint’s Wrap spellbook, which made a towel.  The towels weren’t very good; coarse and not really absorbent.  But the part of his brain that had lived technically below the poverty line after finishing college kept telling him they were free towels.  They were also piling up near his workspace like he was doing all the laundy for a bad motel.

Reading while doing other things was circumstantial.  Walking on a treadmill?  Fine.  Jogging?  Also fine for the one attempt that he tried.  Listening to a podcast?  Not fine.  Listening to music?   Fine.  Trying to play minesweeper through his skulljack with pure fumbling willpower and no intermediate program?  Absolutely not.  Playing Tetris normally?  Actually worked on the third attempt when he’d turned Tetris into a meditative focus.

James let his attention scan across his list of tests, looking for what his next target was.  One idea that he’d been putting off because he was lazy jumped out at him, and he sighed as he figured he might as well try it. At least he could bring the spellbook out of the vault and to his temporary desk where he could be amused by a determined shellaxy while he ‘read’.  As long as he wasn’t going anywhere with it and followed proper procedure, there was no way it was getting lost this close to the room.  He hoped.  He assumed Research couldn’t lose valuable magical gear within ten feet of the place they stored their dungeontech.

He took a minute to disable the webcam he had set up facing the open book, then took it back to his desk, and lingered before sitting down.  Savoring the feeling of moving after too long stationary.  His bruises and scrapes from training yesterday still stung, but in a way that just made him want to get back to that instead of this, but learning how to fight singular wizards wasn’t on Nate’s personal spreadsheet for training plans for his developing soldiers today.

James stopped stalling, sat down, and got to reading.  Eight minutes later, the spell conveniently informed him of its settling into the structure of his soul.  Or whatever organ dealt with making towels ex nihilo.

|1 : 2 Slots Empty

1 : 1 Saint’s Wrap

1 : 1 Charm River Transmutation|

And James, against every part of him that wanted to go do anything else by this point, sat still, kept his eyes on the book, reflexively turned the page, and kept carefully focusing on the lines and angles and shapes of the meaningless runes that made it up.  The next page wasn’t appreciably different than the first, though some of the marks were different, and James tried not to worry too much about how memorizing this was affecting his brain as he went back to staring.

Mostly he was resigned to this idea getting lumped into the ‘yeah of course that doesn’t work’ category.  Which was why, eight minutes later, he felt his eyes widen as the magic shifted and changed.  He couldn’t describe the feeling; the spell being learned didn’t feel like anything, but this?  It felt like he was eight years old and had eaten too much sugar before bed and his mind was moving too fast for the frail husk of flesh that surrounded him.  Just for a moment, though.  And then something more concrete and less terrible caught his attention.

|1 : 2 Slots Empty

1 : 1 Saint’s Wrap +

1 : 1 Charm River Transmutation|

James lost his focus immediately, but that was fine.  The damage, such as it was, was done, and the smug grin on his face from being vindicated in this process felt better than anything he’d experienced all week.

“Behold!”  He announced to Assorted Jellybeans, flourishing his hand palm down over the side of the desk.  “My magnum opus!”  Casting Utah magic was easy enough that James found it kind of insulting.  You just… did it.  It was actually simpler than the process of mentally asking Status Quo items to do their job.  So he made the spell go, and a towel appeared, and dropped to the floor.

When he picked it up, he knew instantly it was better.  A little softer, a little plusher, a little wider, and a little more pleasant of a color.  Just a little better. In every way a towel could be.

“Okay.”  James grinned as he folded it and started a new stack of his own personal replacement for Bed Bath and Beyond.  “Now let’s do it again.”  He dove back in, revitalized.

It took one successful repeat and one test that failed because he lost focus for James to decide he wasn’t as revitalized as he’d expected.  Staring at the stupid spellbook of summon bath towel was just not something he had any mental capacity in reserve for.  Which was why he didn’t mind so much when a pair of hands slipped around his head and covered his eyes.

“Guess who!”  Alanna said as she pressed up against him.

“The mid nineties when this was a thing?”  James asked.  “Here to haunt me, the ghost of a decade past where everything was just as shit but seemed fine because I was a kid who couldn’t read the news and didn’t know how many war crimes were going on every day?”

Alanna turned covering his eyes into lightly strangling her boyfriend.  “You are the fuckin’ opposite of fun today.  I thought you’d be happy to see me!”

James laughed, the sound slightly awkward with her throttling him back and forth in his chair.  A feeling like a warm wellspring of joy pouring up through his chest as he turned his head up and kissed her chin.  “I am,” he said when he was done being murdered, “so happy to see you.”  He had known Alanna was going to be back probably sometime today with the rest of the Route Horizon delve, but he hadn’t actually realized how much he’d missed her until this moment.  “I love you.”  He told her with a dopey grin on his face.

“And that’s before I give you your first surprise!”  Alanna said with a grin.  “Behold, the fruits of my adventure!”  She leaned over James, covering him with her frame as she spread her hands on his desk and framing the little plastic baggie with some scraps of paper in it that she’d brought him.  “I hope this is actually a surprise, anyway.  I wasn’t sure if they made it back in time to get duplicated, or if anyone told you.  Or, like, if you googled it.  Since you’re even more on the internet now than you normally used to be.”

“The internet is great though.”  James defended his skulljack habits.  “I can read fanfiction while I use the bathroom!  Who could hate the internet.”

“Eat your maps.”  Alanna laughed at him, her voice slowly filling the lonely hole James had been feeling in his life.  “This one is kinda stupid, but it’s something, so everyone gets a copy!”

Knowing he wasn’t gonna get to ask her about her trip until he did so, James pulled out the map fragments and set about trying to line them up.  A bit of a trail guide, a printout generic google maps knockoff showing a gas station parking lot, and a fragment of a highway geological survey connecting them.  And then James was staring down at a black globe; barely visible points of light for his other spells rushing away as he descended toward a growing strip of light, miles of highway and tiny blobs on either end lit up golden against the abyss of his Route Horizon spell globe.

When he opened his eyes back in the waking world, he knew what he had been gifted.  [Dial Breach] allowed him to take control of a nearby sound system’s settings for a few seconds, at the cost of six Velocity, more than he even had access to right now.

“Wow.”  He wheezed out a laugh.

“I know, right?”  Alanna said, still leaning on his shoulders.  “It’s so dumb.”

“I can see why everyone was fine keeping this secret from me.  Also I love it, thank you.”  He pushed his chair back, nudging his girlfriend until she relented and let him up.  “And you.  I love you.”  James stepped up to press his shoulder into her chest, curling around to kiss her neck again.

Alanna flushed as she tried to push him back.  “You already said that!  You’re gonna ruin my cool warrior girl aesthetic if anyone sees!”

“Oh, yeah, because that’s at risk.”  James rolled his eyes as he took in his partner.  She had a dozen bandages all over her arms and face along with an obvious tan, was wearing a coat with one sleeve ripped off, and had a dark streak in her hair that James hoped was something as benign as just oil.  And she looked like she had been having a great time.  “You wanna tell me what happened?”  He asked, thirsty for details.

“Yeah yeah, sure, during your second surprise.  What are you doing down here anyway? You know it’s a nice day outside?”

“Eh, I was checking out the Utah magic.  Doing iterative tests.  It’s… uh… I mean, I don’t get a chance to do this kind of stuff anymore, you know?  It’s not super critical, but I actually love playing with magic and I haven’t found a new way to use an orb in months so I’m in withdrawl.  Also checking off things that don’t work is satisfying.”

“Fun?”

“Satisfying.”

“So not fun.”

“…satisfying.”

“So… if I, maybe, had a table waiting for us at a fancy barbeque place, and wanted to ask you out…” It was genuinely amazing that Alanna could sometimes look so timid when she talked, despite also looking like she’d just finished helping Max Rockatanzky escape the thunderdome.  “Would you abandon your super satisfying magic work to go on a big date?”

“Absolutely.”  James told her, throwing his arms around her shoulders and moving in for a real kiss.  He paused right before their lips met.  “Wait, hang on.  Big date like… like a date that’s very important?  Or like one where Anesh and Sarah and Anesh and Anesh are also there?”  He shook his head as he pressed a finger to Alanna’s lips.  “Nevermind, either one sounds great.”  He stole a smooch through her now muffled attempt to explain.

Alanna kept trying to talk through the kiss, which just made both of them fall into a fit of giggles, both of them catching their breath before she answered him.  “The second one.  A date with everyone you said.  And maybe also Zhu, who’s asleep now but wanted to try ribs.  And maybe also Arrush.  And Keeka.”

“…Now see here.”

“Oh come on!”  Alanna elbowed him as she walked by and spun to lean on his stack of terrible towels.  “I just had to deal with a week of Arrush being so fucking head over… over whatever ratroaches have that are like heels… for you.  And I know you feel the same way, cause I’ve been in your brain!  And also Anesh’s brain, which is why Keeka’s there, cause even if you didn’t love the adorable twink rat, Anesh sure fucking does, and it’s so gay, and I’m doing that thing you said you loved about me where I’ve replaced tact with being an emotional bulldozer that makes the relationships happen!  This is how things get done, James!”  She paused only briefly to catch her breath. “You did this to me, and now it’s your turn!”

James chewed on the inside of his cheek as he glowered at her, unable to actually argue with any of that, and feeling his desire to eat an entire rack of ribs and flirt with people he loved slowly overwhelming any protests he might have had.  “Did I tell you already that I love you?”

“Yeah.  I’m pretty great, aren’t I?”  Alanna crossed her arms, one tanned forearm sticking out from her shredded jacket.

“…Wanna see if we can get TQ to come too?”  He proposed.

“Oh I didn’t forget anyone!  He’s upstairs waiting for me to pick him up.!”  Alanna slapped the back of one hand into her other palm with a crack of noise.  “So since that’s a yes from you, I’ll be right back!”

“You’ve got time, I need to check this dumb thing back in.”  James motioned to the spellbook as Alanna reared back and turned like she was going to sprint straight through any Researcher dumb enough to step into her path.  “Hey!  I’m glad you’re back!”  He yelled after her.

James shook his head as Alanna jogged off to find another friend to rope into dinner.  Date or not, he imagined this would just be a great night.  And he legitimately was looking forward to hearing about the adventures of everyone who went into Route Horizon.

And apparently Alanna was excited too, because James felt something click inside of him.

<| Corridor Filled : Bond Formed - Anticipation : Share - Strength : Vector - Touch : One Corridor Established : Zero Corridors Empty |>

“Right!”  James blinked away spots in his vision as the intrusive and imposing thought caught him off guard.  “Forgot about that one!  Shit, is this really the first time that’s come up?”  He laughed, getting looks from some of the other people nearby.  “Alright, cool.  Hey, does anyone know where Nik went?  I need to get this back into the vault.  I’ve got a date to get to.”