“Woah there, what happened? Are you hurt?” Beth shouted as she rushed over to my side, soon followed by Mira and even Letitia.

“F-fine. I’m fine.” I said only somewhat truthfully.

The brain fog brought on by the sudden and unexpected pain, was beginning to lift, letting me stand up a bit straighter.

‘What was that?’ I asked myself internally

Looking at the series of blue boxes floating in front of me, and quickly scanning through them, I came to two horrifying conclusions.

First, while I just gained two levels, I had also lost two levels from the experience penalties applied from two different veil breaches.

The second conclusion made the hair on my arm stand on end and my eyes go wide, as I quickly looked around at all the others staring at me.

The two veil breaches meant that two of these people now knew the truth.

I’d failed at my job of hiding all this from them, and as a result, their lives were now forever changed. Not necessarily for the better.

“Frick…” I muttered as Beth and Mira both had their hands placed on my arm to comfort me.

“You alright? Were you hurt somewhere?” Beth asked while looking me over with a critical eye.

“Uh, yes to both of those questions. I’m fine though.” I said, trying to put on a brave face as my mind tried to work out what these two veil breaches meant for me and the others.

Okay, first of all, I’m fine, physically speaking. Well, mostly fine. Losing the two levels I just gained sucks, but it's not something that can’t be fixed later.

The bigger issue is dealing with the consequences of two of them finding out, and trying to prevent the same thing from happening to the rest.

But who knows, and who doesn’t? Mira, obviously already knew, so I can take her out of the equation.

‘Who else…?’

Looking at Beth, I could see a mixture of emotions in her eyes as she was staring at me. There was concern in them, likely over my sudden outburst of pain. There was fear, not surprising given everything that just happened. Finally there was also confusion and… accusation?

She knew. She was one of them. Frick.

“Beth, I…” I tried to start, but the correct words eluded me.

“What is it? Do you need me to go to the nurse's office and get some first aid supplies?” She offered, despite the growing sense of confusion I was still picking up from her. She must be trying to focus on something she understood, to ground and center herself. Helping me, her friend.

It was heartwarming, but the subtle feeling of accusation I also picked up in her look tempered that warm fuzzy sensation somewhat.

Beth, I can handle it, but that meant there was also one other, and it was one of the girls in Jackie’s trio.

I looked over at Jackie and Niki as they stood a reasonable distance away, but still kept a wary eye on me to see how I was doing.

Jackie seemed more relaxed, but still very tense and on guard, still prepared to deal with anything that came her way. Typical Jackie behavior, but what about Niki?

She seemed even more relaxed than Jackie, almost happy and excited even. The hints of a smile were creeping onto her face and threatening to break free at any moment. Definitely not her, she would not be feeling so happy and excited if she was suddenly hit by world-upending truths with no accompanying explanations.

That left…

Letitia was standing near me right beside Beth and Mira. Unlike them, she kept a somewhat respectful distance away, and avoided all eye contact.

It was her, frick. But she was probably a better option than the other two finding out honestly.

“Okay.” I said in a commanding voice, standing up completely straight now and creating some distance between myself and the others next to me. “Mira, can you go with Jackie and Niki and see if the phones are still dead, the doors are still locked, or just see if you can find some way to turn off the security system now that we're not under immediate threat of dying.

“Depending on how the lockdown system works, either it's fully mechanical, which means we probably need to find a physical switch and maybe a key, or it is digital. In that case we'd need to get access to the school computers, and likely find a way to bypass one of the teacher's logins.” Jackie calmly rattled off.

“Uh, yeah.” I said a bit surprised. “All that sounds good.”

“You… want me to go with them, now?” Mira asked, obviously confused about the distribution of people taking place.

“I am. Trust me.” I said while giving her a meaningful look that I hoped conveyed the correct emotions I wanted her to sense and needed her to understand.

“Fine…” I she said morosely before walking over to join Jackie and Niki.

“Look for any first aid supplies as well, Jenni still might need them.” Beth said while keeping her eyes locked with mine. Why was she refusing to look away?

Oh frick. The body. She was trying to avoid looking at the body of the monster.

“Jackie, Niki, Mira, hurry up please.” I nearly shouted.

“Fine we're going. You don’t need to yell at us, sheesh.” Niki complained as she and the others made their way out of the gymnasium.

“Beth, can you uh, look over Letitia and make sure she’s not injured or anything.” I said slightly awkwardly.

“Uh sure, but she seems fine.” Beth said with a raised eyebrow.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“I know, but better safe than sorry right? Haha.” I said even more awkwardly.

“Jenni, I…” She started, likely wanting to protest or maybe mention something about the two clashing realities that were currently conflicting and playing havoc with her brain at this very moment.

“I’m… fine.” Letitia said not all convincingly. Her eyes were still glued to the floor. Poor girl. She had already been through one extremely traumatic event barely a month ago, and now she had to go through this as well.

I need to make sure that learning the truth about what really happened then and now doesn’t cause me to act out in any dangerous ways. Like, for example, screaming and shouting the truth to any person she meets. The most likely thing I need to worry about though is her confiding to her friend about these sorts of things.

Not to sure if she even can, but if so, I doubt the outcome will be good for her or me.

“Just, uh let Beth take a quick look over you while I check on the uh, remains over here.” I said somewhat evasively as I stepped further away from the two and made sure they were looking away before I walked over to the tangled-up mess that the monster corpse was trapped in.

If they really are unveiled now, they’ll notice if the corpse suddenly disappeared, but I still think it probably better not to reveal everything, especially to Letitia, right now. Also, this disgusting lump of monster meat needs to go before the others come back. No need to make more problems for myself.

Forgoing any chants or somatic movements, I just did a quick cast of Grave Return over the monster remains, turning them to ash and disposing of at least one of my problems. After barely a few seconds it was gone, and I turned back around to see what the other two were doing.

“So, uh, how is she?” I said immediately upon turning around.

“She’s fine, like I said.” Beth said a bit petulantly.

“Good, good. So, um, how are you feeling Beth?” I asked hesitantly.

“Pretty sure I’m in shock or something.” She said casually. “I feel like I'm going crazy, probably.”

“What do you mean?” I said softly while I walked up beside her.

“One moment, I’m feeling completely numb and detached about everything, the next moment my mind is on the very edge of going full-on panic attack mode. Oh, also I’m pretty sure I’m seeing things, so that’s awesome too.” She admitted while continuing to fuss over the limp and gloomy form of Letitia.

“Ah, yeah, that.” I said absently, not having any clue how to even start that conversation. Suddenly I had a great deal more sympathy for how Gunderson handled things.

Speaking of, I should really try calling Gunderson now. If the spam of blue boxes was any indication, then the death of the monster changed something. Likely it was related to the seals it apparently put up on all the windows. If I was right, and it was blocking the quest and other updates from getting to me, and now it's not, then that means it's probably also possible to use my cellphone as well.

Plus, I could really, really use Gunderson’s help right about now, with pretty much everything honestly.

“That?” Beth said before turning to look right at me, clearly cluing in on my word choice.

“I’m not even sure how much I should explain-” I started to say before a whole storm of sounds could be heard coming down the hallway toward the gymnasium.

“What the fuck now?” Beth said irritably, before taking a ready stance and facing the door.

“When will it end?” Letitia said pitifully before trying to move behind us and further away from the large set of doors the noise was coming from.

“Just, whatever it is. Let me handle it.” I told them as I walked slightly ahead and prepared myself for whatever it was that was headed our way.

It didn’t take long, for the mystery to be resolved and the figures of several dozen people became visible as they all were running at nearly a full sprint toward us.

“Is it the police? Did they get some kind of warning alarm?” Beth asked as she could see the crowd of people rushing in our direction.

She was probably partially right, as some of the uniforms did look like local police, but the figure at the front painted a very different picture in mind.

“Gunderson?!” I shouted loudly down the hallway at the man at the front of the pack wearing a well-tailored black suit, and running well ahead of others who looked like they might be half his age.

I waved an excited hand over my head, as my body was flooded with a sense of relief at seeing him already here.

“Hey there.” He said slightly winded as he got closer, waving a hand of his own at me.

“Is that, the FBI guy?” Beth asked

“Yeah, that’s definitely him.” I said feeling even more relief wash over me as the crowd of police, EMS, and other emergency service personnel all surged forward and around us.

“Oh.” Beth said simply, clearly still feeling very overwhelmed with everything.

Letitia was silent as she was swarmed by half a dozen people as they started to check her over.

“We ran into your other friends on the way here, uh two of them are fine. But one of them tried to do a runner before we convinced her to stop.

Mira. Poor girl probably had a panic attack at seeing an IDPA agent running straight at her.

“Yeah, Mira’s not super comfortable with… law enforcement.” I said while giving Gunderson a look.

“Ah, yeah.” Gunderson said somewhat sheepishly. “Thought that was her. But how are things over here? How are you?”

He walked closer to me with those questions and seemed to be looking me over for any injuries or signs of distress.

“Well, I’ve got some light bruising, but all the blood on me isn’t mine. I might have done the little trick you told me about with your baton.” I said, patting the sleek black weapon sticking out of the hem of my jeans.

“Ha, probably should have warned you to wear a poncho or something when doing that one, but it seems to have worked out for yeah.” He said before looking behind me at the wreckage where the monster's corpse used to be. “You took care of the remains already?”

“Yeah, uh, I didn’t want any more veil breaches to occur.” I said while turning my eyes to the floor in awkward embarrassment.

“More veil breaches, you mean…” Gunderson said while looking at the two other girls in the room.

“Yeah, these two. Mira already knows, obviously, but the other two girls who were sent away don’t…I think.”

“Huh, well, you seem okay. The experience penalty wasn’t too bad then?” He asked out of both concern and curiosity.

“Yeah, I mean I lost the two levels I just gained from killing the monster, but then the pain was manageable enough.” I admitted with an added shrug for effect.

“Good, well thankfully you have enough experience under your belt now that two breaches aren’t a death sentence, thank God.” He said emphatically.

“Yeah, I’m more worried about these two.” I said while looking at both Beth and Letitia having to deal with a small army of personnel fussing over them and doing sweeps around the room.

“Are these… people with the IDPA?” I asked uncertainly

“Yep, either full-time or part-time. We keep a number of people working in public service jobs like the police and medical services, for obvious reasons. But yeah, everyone here is cleared, no need to worry about more veil breaches from them.” He said calmly.

“What happened? How did you get here so quick, and with a small army in tow.” I asked with genuine curiosity.

“Hah, as for what happened, and why we got here so quickly, the signal on your cell phone went dead. Which by itself was concerning, but after our seers and other diviners couldn’t get a read on you, we went full DEFCON 3, and no that’s not really a thing, just a metaphor.” Gunderson explained.

“Wait, you’ve been tracking me?” I asked apprehensively.

“Of course we do.” Gunderson said with a raised eyebrow at my question. “Look around Jenni. All these people are here because of you. You’re important to them, to us, the IDPA. In case you’ve forgotten, the IDPA was created and exists to help and assist you and others like you.”

It was a sobering reminder as I looked at the over three dozen men and women in the room, all of whom were older, wiser, and more experienced than me. They all came rushing to my rescue… because it was me?

It felt unfair, but in their eyes, I was the priority.

Am I really so important?

My thoughts swirled as I took another look around the room before my eyes finally settled on my closest friend in the world.

Our eyes met, and I could tell, despite her confusion and questions, that she felt exactly same way they did.