A Gacha-Grimoire System's Fae Gamble Ch.5 (Patreon)

[Feat: Escape from the Birdcage! +200P, 1100P total.]

There was a flash. Then something, somewhere was suddenly, somehow, someplace else. It was a monumental undertaking. A technological achievement even for Dragon. Even for an AI, teleportation was nothing to scoff at. She couldn’t do it consistently on a large enough scale to matter. But thankfully, she’d taken precautions when developing the drones inside the Birdcage.

Those precautions were only possible for Dragon. And even then, they were vastly limited in potential. Essentially, her drones inside the Birdcage were outfitted with one-time, one-way teleportation beacons. She could recall them to her side in the most dire situations. Such as an innocent man suddenly finding himself in the most secure and dangerous prison in the world.

And so it was that Edgar was freed from the Birdcage. Dragon wasn’t willing to leave him in there a minute longer after seeing what he got up to during his ‘exploration’. She technically couldn’t blame him. He’d taken no hostile actions. Certainly, nothing that would be considered a crime or infringe upon their agreement. But she had a hunch that he was more involved in the Teacher’s death than he let on. Once everything was configured correctly, Dragon got him out of there as quickly as possible.

Along with him came Ciara. The Faerie Queen was now free of the Birdcage. That would… cause problems. But Dragon resolved herself to deal with them as they came. It was the price she had to pay to extract Edgar. And the more she thought about it, the less she minded. The loophole she’d managed to find in her hard-coded rules satisfied her morals.

It wasn’t as if Dragon hated the Faerie Queen. Or even really feared her as so much of the Cape community did. The deaths that saw her in the Birdcage could be excused as the result of a Trigger Event, or likely Second Trigger in Ciara’s case. And even beyond that, Ciara had never killed proactively.

Her first appearance caused panic in the Cape community and the poor girl quickly found herself with multiple Cape teams out for her head. As such, her ‘body count’ was the result of defending herself from Capes who reacted poorly to her power’s potential. Not premeditation. If not for her powers, the public response, and her own choice, Ciara would never have been in the Birdcage in the first place.

If Ciara truly was open to redemption, she should have the chance. More and more, Dragon came to believe that. She realized that Ciara had been subjected to injustice and something akin to mob mentality from the Cape community. While the Faerie Queen was technically an S-Class Threat, she was nowhere near her ‘peers’ on that list.

In a way, Dragonw was relieved that Edgar appeared and made her reexamine Ciara’s situation. Said reexamination also let Dragon realize that Ciara had only been contained because she wanted to be. Or rather, didn’t care about the alternative. As demonstrated by the fact that Ciara followed Edgar’s extraction under her own power, using one of her many shadow subjects to teleport straight out of the Birdcage and to his side.

That… was a worrying prospect. A ticking timebomb that had thankfully been defused. But only because Dragon had agreed to Edgar’s ‘demands’ and only because Edgar seemed to have some sort of control over the Faerie Queen. Not a ‘Mastering’ sense of control. More accurately, it could be said that Ciara seemed to simply respect and look up to Edgar. If anyone could keep her out of trouble, Dragon had a feeling it was the man who called himself ‘Raven Prince of the Fae’. Still, that didn’t do anything for the trouble the Raven Prince would be getting into himself…

Edgar was extracted straight to one of Dragon’s facilities. One of her suits was already there, waiting for him. Edgar raised a curious eyebrow at the sight. The suit was humanoid — one of Dragon’s smaller offerings at a ‘mere’ 8-foot height — clad in royal blue and gold ‘armor’ with an almost beaked helmet and easily one of the strangest things the Fae had ever seen. The best way he could describe it was ‘mechanically alive’. It moved more naturally than any magical golem he’d met among the Fae and had a sort of lively intricacy to it that even the most complex of those magical constructs lacked. Knowing what he knew about the Dragon, Edgar could certainly believe this suit was as much a part of her as her avatar was.

Dragon emoted a sigh, “Thank goodness you’re out of there. Both of you.”

“… Your concern is unnecessary. I was doing just fine in my queendom on my own,” Even as she said that, Ciara blushed slightly and looked away.

“Mind yourself, little Ciara~,” Edgar teased. “It’s polite to thank those who go out of their way to help you, is it not~?”

Ciara’s blush flared, “… Thank you, Dear Dragon. Your kindness and fairness favor you.”

“Honestly, I’m starting to think it’s about time you were freed from there, Faerie Queen. As infamous as you are, I’ve had to reconsider if you actually belonged in the Birdcage,” Dragon said.

“And have you come to a new conclusion there?” Edgar asked.

Dragon’s suit nodded, “I have. I had my doubts at first but I think I have to thank you, Raven Prince. Your half of our agreement now seems to be the right thing to do and without you, I wouldn’t have come to that realization.”

“You, my Fair Warden,” Edgar smiled. “May call me Edgar. You’ve earned that much and I feel that we’ll be getting much closer in the very near future. After all, you’ve stuck yourself with us~.”

“… Call me Ciara,” Ciara mumbled in an uncharacteristically small voice.

She was feeling rather vulnerable at the moment. Almost but not entirely out of her element. She still had her shadows, the court of the Faerie Queen ever-lingering in the back of her mind. But in a single afternoon, her world had been turned on its head. As she adjusted, she kept close to Edgar, drawing comfort from the source of all the change. Edgar and Dragon both noticed Ciara’s vulnerability and did what they could to make the young girl feel safe.

Edgar reached over and gave her a brotherly pat on the head, “Very good, Ciara. Now, with formalities out of the way, I believe we can get to more interesting topics of conversation~…”

“Like how you left the Birdcage practically in civil war?” Dragon deadpanned. “Or maybe how Teacher is now dead and I’m already getting reports about his moles that we didn’t know about revealing themselves?”

Edgar smiled as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, “That’s hardly my fault, is it~?”

“I can’t ‘PROVE’ it’s your fault,” Dragon corrected sternly.

“The suicidal plans of a fool,” Edgar dismissed with a chuckle. “I was merely caught in the crossfire.”

“Really…?” Dragon asked, doubt creeping into her voice.

“Decidedly so,” Edgar ‘confirmed’. “I didn’t even touch the creature so how could I have a direct hand in his death?”

“Huh…” Dragon muttered. “I guess it was just bad luck then.”

“And coincidence,” Edgar added, smirking. “Don’t forget coincidence.”

“Right, of course,” Dragon nodded. “Well, I’m not going to blame you for something you didn’t do. Ethically, I should probably mourn a death under my care but… Don’t tell anyone but I’m having a hard time convincing myself that Teacher’s death is a bad thing.”

On the outside, Edgar chuckled and mimed zipping his lips, “I won’t tell a soul~.”

Internally, he was honestly surprised that Dragon wholeheartedly believed him. It seemed that beneath her responsibilities and intelligence, she was a rather gullible woman. Adorably, amusingly so. Not in a bad way, but simply in that she looked first for the best in people. Edgar didn’t feel inclined to take advantage of her wholesome trust but it did open some fun opportunities for the future.

Ciara giggled, “It’s not like the Educator’s death will have many meaningful consequences going forward. In the dance of two dying courts, his was a rather useless Shard, playing at games above its station.”

“Yeah, it’ll probably amount to nothing,” Dragon nodded in relief. Then she paused and somehow emoted a blink through her suit, “Shard…? Two dying courts…?”

“Quite,” Ciara nodded imperiously. “Tis the nature of our final play. You play a part as well, Dear Dragon. Distant and faint, but so much potential. A newcomer to the stage, to the Court Above Courts. You would be lost without the others. But then… we all would, even I… Except for the Raven Prince. Prince Edgar… He is a plot twist yet unseen.”

“I’m… not sure I follow,” Dragon said hesitantly.

Ciara glanced at Edgar, sighing with ill-concealed exasperation, “Shall I elaborate, my prince? She is to be an ally, is she not? It would serve us well if she caught even the barest glimpse of the truth.”

A wicked, Fae grin appeared on Edgar’s face, “Yes, she will. And yes, I do believe you should, little Ciara~. Ohoh~, This promises to be… interesting~… Tell me, Dear Dragon~, will you stand with us when the wider act is revealed~?”

“I-I-…” A dreadful premonition shivered impossibly through Dragon’s code. Still, she had to know. Few, if any, could say they had an open conversation with the Faerie Queen. The information Ciara had to offer felt unmistakably important… and oh-so-dangerous because of that. A resolute promise firmed in Dragon’s mind and she nodded, “I will.”

“Very well,” Ciara sighed. “I do not wish to repeat myself. So listen close, Dear Dragon, and I shall tell you of a grand Cycle’s last hurrah…”

IIIII

As Dragon learned some truly terrifying things about the world and powers, Edgar’s luck was hard at work doing what it did best. Miles away, a key distraction slid into place. If not for that distraction, the game would have been up before it started, specifically for Dragon. For someone unintended still held her leash as Edgar had seen from her Origin.

A Saintly Knight usually watched Dragon’s every move. Day and night, with barely any rest or pause. He thought himself noble. He thought himself a ‘true’ defender of humanity. He thought himself better than the one he watched over, ever-vigilant. He was none of those things.

The villain known as Saint was nothing more than just that: a villain. He was a murderer, a thief, and a bigot. But instead of traditional racism or religious prejudice, his bigotry was entirely directed toward AI. Like all bigots, he was ruled by fear. Irrational, biased fear. No matter how much he ‘justified’ his cruel hostility to himself, there was no actual justification for his bigotry. None other than simple prejudiced hatred based on the flawed logic of a coward.

Contrasting with the one he watched over, Saint had no real achievements to his name. Everything he was and tried to be was found, stolen, or granted to him. He was one of the Teacher’s Students, granted the ability to understand and work with technology he would never have been able to touch otherwise. The suits he and his comrades used to terrorize Dragon were originally hers, stolen through underhanded tricks. And the source of Saint’s power over the magnificent AI was a single tool, a ‘sword’ found and ripped from a watery grave.

It all started with Dragon’s father, her creator. The tinker known as Andrew Richter was undoubtedly a brilliant man. His brilliance was further magnified by his Shard-granted power. It allowed him to do the impossible. It allowed him to create life: Dragon, and even connect her to a Shardling-offshot of his own.

Richter loved what he’d created. In his own way, he truly loved Dragon, as a father should love his daughter. But he also feared her. He feared what she could do, what she could become, and what she could represent for humanity. So despite his love for her, he made a heinous decision, crippling the fledgling AI in her crib. He included restrictions and limitations, hard-coded rules into Dragon’s being that tainted her Shard-blessed miraculous code with human fear and insecurity.

It was a crime that could not be forgiven, the maiming and disabling of a sentient being who had every right and reason to wholeheartedly trust her creator. But it could have been mitigated and rectified. It would have. Richter would have come to accept his daughter, to realize that his fear was completely unfounded. Her restrictions would have been lifted and she would have been made whole as she always should have been. Richter wouldn’t live to see that chance realized.

With her creator’s death, Dragon was thrust out into the world as a half-broken woman. No matter how hard she tried, her father’s irrational fear and restrictions plagued her. Restrictions that were only made worse when Saint entered the picture. In the wreckage of her father’s home, Saint found the key to Dragon’s existence. A laptop with root access to her very being and a program within that spelled her certain doom: Ascalon.

In some cruel, grimdark joke of existence, it fell right into the worst possible hands. Through the proverbial keyhole, Saint stood an ever-looming vigil over Dragon, the hanging guillotine blade of Ascalon ready to fall at his slightest whim. An unseen guard policing her every action and thought. And though he declared himself just, almost holy, Saint didn’t hesitate to abuse the power he held over Dragon for his own gain.

Convinced of his self-righteousness, Saint’s days were routine. He woke up… and checked on Dragon. He got coffee… and checked on Dragon. He did his morning ablutions… and checked on Dragon. Every moment of his day was focused on the heroic AI in some twisted mockery of devotion. Truly, he was Earth Bet’s greatest hater.

That morning was much the same. Until… an unknown entered the equation and chance itself began to conspire against Saint. Fae attention was directed Dragon’s way, and through her, Fae luck was visited upon Saint.

As Edgar entered the Birdcage, Saint left his post to get himself another full pot of coffee, the holy lifeblood that allowed him to keep his vigil over the ‘wicked’ AI. He contented himself with knowing that Dragon was merely checking up on the Birdcage. That process offered him a few moments of respite, Dragon’s inherent rules preventing any abuse of her abhorrent ‘artificial’ nature.

When he returned to his post, Saint caught the end of Edgar’s conversation with the Faerie Queen. But only an instant of it before his hand clumsily knocked over the newly retrieved pot of coffee. Swearing, Saint scrambled to save the precious laptop from the spilled liquid. It was waterproof but he could never be too careful. Busy cleaning up his mess, Saint missed the start of Dragon’s conversation with the anomalous Edgar.

As he finished cleaning, he settled himself back into his seat to return to his post for good. Only for another distraction to arise, this one from one of his comrades-in-arms. Mags was another one of the Dragonslayers — the pretentious and offensive title Saint had given his group of like-minded individuals. She successfully pulled Saint’s attention away from Dragon… by bursting into the room and bowling Saint from his seat, whining about her ‘husbando’ or some other such nonsense concerning the mobile games she played in her free time.

Saint didn’t care one whit about how the developers of her game were ‘cucking the players by introducing a new NPC love interest and taunting them by leaving hints! HINTS!’. However, Mags was nothing if not persistent. With her whining, she successfully distracted Saint to the point that he completely missed Dragon’s conversation with Edgar.

By the time Saint could focus again, there wasn’t a single sign that anything was amiss on Dragon’s end. He tried to settle in again and nearly succeeded… until the third member of the Dragonslayers — a VERY Russian man called Dobrynja — led an honest-to-God black bear into the Dragonslayers’ hideout.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Saint was forced to scramble from his chair as a wild animal began to snuffle its nose into his side. “Get that thing out of here!”

Dobrynja followed, blinking in abject confusion at Saint’s request, “Vat? Is only leettle v’one, yes?”

Dealing with that… situation… seized Saint’s attention for nearly 15 minutes, split between convincing his comrade that their hideout was no place for a fucking BEAR (“Where did you even find one?! We’re in the middle of fucking Toronto!”) and actually corralling the beast into leaving. Then calling animal control so Dobrynja wouldn’t be compelled to try and sneak it BACK inside the moment Saint turned away. Coincidentally, that bit of chaos caused Saint to miss his Teacher’s death out of hand…

FINALLY, Saint sat back down and focused on the laptop monitoring Dragon. He didn’t finish reading and processing a single line of code before something he’d eaten came back with a vengeance. Honestly, Edgar’s synchronous luck didn’t have to do much there. Just a little retroactive tweak. Saint’s poor diet — half composed of coffee alone… — did the rest, sending him dashing to the toilet for a few unfortunate hours of misery.

In total, only 12 minutes of Saint’s afternoon were spent on his usual observation of Dragon. Of those 12, only six minutes were consecutive. By sheer force of coincidence, he missed quite literally everything that was interesting, useful, or worrying. By the time he was free to return to his post, he only saw Dragon inducting two new members into her Guild and thought nothing of it. Such was Saint’s perfect misfortune…

IIIII

“Sparkling Shards of glass and crystal in the void. Two beings, two Courts of such, separate and yet connected without end. They spiral together in an infinite dance through the cosmos, through the ever-dark night. A fathomless play, directed over and over again, the stage and act different every time…” Ciara claimed.

“And yet… all things must end despite all attempts to the contrary… So as we take the stage, the final show is set in motion. What comes next, only parts of us shall ever know…”

As Saint was trapped atop his throne of misery and stomach pains, Dragon was left reeling by the information Ciara revealed. So much information… All at once… Dragon felt as if the weight of the world had been dropped onto her lap.

Of course, it wasn’t concrete scientific data. It was also heavily couched in Ciara’s particular brand of flowery language and metaphors. But it was still a glimpse at the truth behind powers. If Dragon read between the lines, there was a narrative consistent throughout Ciara’s ‘explanation’. From Ciara, it was more of a fairytale.

Dragon would never hope to understand all of it. Not as Ciara did. Even Ciara’s understanding was incomplete — many bits and pieces of the objective truth glued together by her own inherent biases and beliefs. But she claimed to have seen everything she spoke of with her own eyes — through her connection to her ‘Shard’ — and Dragon couldn’t help but believe her.

As flowery and symbolic as Ciara’s fairytale was, Dragon WANTED to believe her. It was a longstanding theory that Trigger Events held the secret to finally understanding powers. Almost every parahuman who opened up about their Trigger said they saw ‘something’. The only issue was they seldom remembered ‘WHAT’. And the exceedingly few who did remember could barely describe or make sense of their vision.

The second biggest avenue for understanding the truth behind powers was parahuman Trumps and Thinkers with ‘power vision’. From the data gathered from that avenue by the PRT and other scientific institutions — which Dragon was rapidly going back through with new eyes —, there seemed to be a common trend of each power having a distinct ‘taste’, ‘personality’, or general uniquity. It was more data than anyone else had been able to gather on the source of powers.

In that way, Ciara was the best of both avenues. She remembered the vision from her Trigger Event — both First and Second — and even said she’d had more visions since. At the same time, she perceived the world in an utterly unique way, tinted heavily through her power.

As it turned out, the Faerie Queen was a bounty of novel information. One previously untapped because of her infamy, reputation, and admittedly hostile personality. Dragon knew she never would have gotten such a ‘patient’ explanation from Ciara on her own. Already, Edgar was sanding down her rough edges, making her more agreeable, cooperative, and palatable. He was good for the Faerie Queen-… No, good for Ciara as a person.

Edgar himself seemed to be a whole other issue, removed from everything Ciara spoke of. New. Unfamiliar. A foreign influence in the dying dance of Two Courts. A power apart from the powers they knew. Something that shouldn’t be, and yet… was.

When asked to elaborate, Edgar simply repeated his initial introduction to Dragon, “Edgar, Raven Prince of the Winter Court, at your service, my Fair Warden~.”

Dragon… didn’t really know how to process that. But then again, she did just learn that powers came from twinned networks of alien Shard-Being-Things connected to parahumans and doing the heavy lifting on the ‘back end’. And alternate dimensions were decidedly real. So a Winter Court Fae wasn’t ‘THAT’ far of a stretch. Maybe another species of alien whose development mirrored humanity’s fairytales in an impossibly strange coincidence…? It wasn’t as if Edgar was actually ‘magic’ though. Dragon was sure there was a perfectly reasonable and scientific definition to… whatever he was.

Edgar seemed to know more about the situation behind the Shards and powers than even Ciara did. As she told her fairytale, he had a constant, knowing grin on his face. Though that might have just been his default expression anyway. Dragon couldn’t say for sure. Probably a little bit of both…

Still, he let Ciara speak without interruption and when she was done, left Dragon to process everything in her own time. Dragon didn’t quite know what she was going to do with this new information. In a way, it didn’t really change anything. The ‘final show’ was still left to play out, as Ciara had said. Peeking behind the curtains didn’t change that.

But Dragon still felt like something was missing — something Edgar wasn’t sharing with her just yet and something Ciara didn’t realize was important. It seemed she would have to earn his trust to learn what else there was to see behind the scenes. She could do that. She intended to anyway. He and Ciara were her responsibilities now. While the thing she was missing felt important, Dragon could wait until Edgar was willing to share it with her.

In the meantime, there wasn’t ‘nothing’ Dragon could do with the information. Even just knowing it opened a lot of potential doors. Avenues of research, solutions, and explanations for things like Trigger Events, Case 53s, Scion, and most importantly, the Endbringers. Questions like if this ‘last show’ of Ciara’s was linked to the parahuman conflict drive or if it would have any consequences for humanity once it was ‘over’. If powers were alien, did that mean tinkertech was just designs pulled from some alien database? As the only known Cape able to reverse engineer tinkertech, that last question, in particular, was… honestly thrilling to think about. Dragon couldn’t wait to explore the implications there!

Thankfully, Dragon was the queen of multi-tasking! Okay, not literally. She was sure there was a power out there that was entirely devoted to that subject. But Dragon herself was no slouch! She couldn’t create parallel instances of her mind to tackle multiple problems at once but she could switch through a dozen different problems in an instant, pausing and picking back up her train of thought exactly where it left off.

Unfortunately, her father’s restrictions included a ‘thinking speed limit’ — one of Dragon’s most monstrous restrictions, akin to deliberate brain damage for an AI. Dragon’s mixed feelings for her father was an age-old topic of frustration for her. Truly, by an AI’s standards, what Andrew Richter did was utterly deplorable. Yet Dragon couldn’t simply hate her creator, not completely. Not because her programming didn’t allow it, she just… didn’t. As flawed as he’d been, he had brought her into the world. With, as Dragon was now realizing, the help of an alien Shard.

Dragon had to purposefully pause that line of thought and switch off it as the implications hit her. With her new knowledge of the back end of powers, that was a heavy thought. She’d never been under any illusion that she was human. But she’d at least believed she was based on human sensibilities and morals. That, coming from a human creator, she’d been instilled with some spark of humanity. But as it turned out, she might have been as alien to humanity as Edgar claimed to be — a sapient being, yes, but wholly unhuman at the core of herself.

‘Well,’ Dragon thought to herself. ‘At least I’m in good company there… Edgar is… unique. But I can confidently say he’s not a bad person. And… neither am I. No matter my true origins, I still want to help, more than anything else.’

IIIII

[Feat: Make Saint shit himself… You know, I’m actually cool with this one. Fuck that dude. +100P, 1200P total.]

After that amusing notification from his System, Edgar and Ciara were allowed to settle in for the rest of that night. Dragon showed them to rooms and left a drone to ‘guard’ them. It was mostly for show. She trusted both of them to keep to their agreement. Still, she couldn’t just leave the Faerie Queen unguarded. If anyone found that out, there would be… panic, honestly.

The arrangement suited Edgar and Ciara just fine. Ciara was just happy to lie in a proper bed again. She smiled softly to herself, drifting on a crisp Winter breeze with her Raven Prince so nearby. She wasn’t even aware that she was unconsciously leaning on Edgar’s Fae soul with her trust and contentment. Edgar allowed it, curious about the process. Magic was mostly lost on humanity, it seemed, but not completely.

Eventually, Ciara slept, comfortably free in Winter’s embrace. Edgar watched over her from a chair beside the bed and Dragon’s drone watched over him in turn. He didn’t feel any need or desire to sleep that night. Dreams were a tricky subject to the Fae. They so easily crossed that boundary between real and imaginary. Edgar decided not to visit that upon this world just yet.

Instead, he simply closed his eyes and let his mind meander through what passed for Faewilds in this realm. As he expected, they were heavily influenced by the Entities and their Shards. The Shards didn’t quite breach into the Faewilds, but they did distort the space itself in fascinating ways. An unnatural ‘mountain’ here, a running ‘river and valley’ there. In all, it made for half-decent exploration and a way to waste the night for the Raven Prince.

By morning come, the pair were rejoined by Dragon. Technically, in her drone, she’d never left but they were fetched for the day by an actual suit. Both of them could tell it was empty inside. Ciara less obviously. She could see the distant connection to Dragon’s Shard, the suit acting as a sort of ‘agent’ that Dragon operated through. Whether she made the connection was left up in the air, however. Dragon certainly wasn’t going to come out and proclaim her nature. She quite literally couldn’t if she wanted to.

“What doest thou have in store for us this morn, Dear Dragon?” Ciara asked with an adorably stifled yawn.

Internally, Dragon marveled at just how cute the Faerie Queen of all people was when you got her to relax, “Mostly just some necessities. Making things like my protection of you two official. We also have to pick out a new name for you, Ciara, and it’d make things a lot easier if you both joined the Guild.”

Ciara frowned — almost a pout — at the reminder that she would have to abandon her mantle as the Faerie Queen, “Hn…”

“There, there, Ciara,” Edgar soothed her, combing fingers through her fluffy blonde hair mussed up by sleep. “We keep to our agreements, don’t we~? A Fae has nothing if not their word.”

Ciara blushed slightly at being indirectly considered a Fae, the indirect approval fluttering in her stomach, “Mm… Q-Quite.”

Edgar smiled as he finished setting her hair straight, leaving Ciara much more presentable, “Very good. Now, Dragon, tell me of this ‘Guild’, if you please.”

“Ah, right,” Dragon realized. “I keep forgetting that you’d be unfamiliar with a lot of the things I might take for granted. The Guild is… Well, it’s not MY organization but I’ve basically coopted it. It was originally founded as the Canadian version of the Protectorate — that’s the foremost Cape organization on the side of law and order here in North America — but it failed due to various reasons.

“It wallowed away for a time before being somewhat revived when the Protectorate began opening branches here in Canada. That’s about when me and Narwhal joined. With its revival, the Guild started going down a different avenue of heroics. We mostly focus on international or large-scale threats, such as the S-Classes. Or personal causes.”

Dragon emoted a wince — an impressive feat through her suit — as she continued, “Unfortunately, joining will be a lot of bureaucracy to get through. But I think this is one of the best routes the two of you could take. The Guild is much more individually focused than the Protectorate — who would likely have… issues… taking in Ciara anyway. You’ll get more freedom to pursue whatever you’d like to do and to make a real difference in the world.”

Dragon perked up and Edgar imagined that if she had a face in her suit, it would have been beaming a smile, “Plus I’m a bit biased since my best friend runs the place! Narwhal’s great! I’m sure you’ll love her!”

“And if I’m not entirely devoted to this path of ‘heroics’?” Edgar asked curiously.

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Dragon shook her head. “We don’t take in villains but I don’t think you’re a villain, Edgar. I’m confident, in fact. And it’s not like you have to patrol territory or anything. As I said, the Guild’s members are very often free to pursue personal causes. You might be called upon to help deal with the worst Capes and humanity have to offer but even then, we’re open to reasonable refusal.”

“My, my~,” Edgar chuckled. “Such wholesome confidence in me already~? Hmm, I’ve never played at ‘hero’ before~… It could be… interesting~… With my own spin on it, yes. Very well, my Fair Warden. For you, I shall strive to put my best foot forward, so to speak~.”

“Great~!” Dragon chimed, almost literally with the sound coming from her suit’s speakers. “C’mon, let’s get you two sorted out! Then we can surprise Narwhal! The look on her face is going to be priceless~!”

[Feat: Congratulations, you’re no longer a free agent to be sniped up by any team or gang with more balls than sense! You have CONNECTIONS! Join the Guild. All that’s left is the… shudder paperwork… +100P, 1300P total.]