A knock came from the door.
Mark startled, looking up from his books and his worksheets. He got up and opened the door.
“Oh. Hello David.”
David the Paladin stood beyond Mark’s door, looking vaguely cheerful. “Hello, Mark. I stopped by to see if you were doing okay. May I come in?”
Mark stepped away from the door, saying, “Sure. I don’t have, like… tea or anything, though.”
David shut the door behind him, and said, “I’m just here to check up on you, to see if you’re adjusting. You needn’t treat me as a guest. So are you adjusting?”
“Uhh…” Mark said, “It’s tough.”
And then he fell silent.
Somehow, in some awkward way, Mark sat down at his desk.
David sat down on a spare chair.
David waited.
Mark stared at the floor and said, “I hate feeling sad. I hate that the world seems to find Addashield’s dragon… acceptable. But… Fuck. If this hadn’t happened to me. To… to Mom and Dad. To Orange City and Red Thunder and Mistress Storm and who knows how many others...” Mark looked up at David. “I wouldn’t hate him so much if it wasn’t so personal. The dragon is acting like a Hero of Humanity; like how I wanted... like… like that’s the reason I went through with all of that shit in the first place! I did this so that Addashield would come back to himself! So all sorts of normal, good things would happen! You told me it was happening whether I wanted to do it or not, but I wanted to do it! I helped make that happen! So why do I feel so bad?! And why… Why don’t I hate him more?” Mark did not cry. He had cried too much already. “If he wouldn’t have killed my parents… If…”
Mark fell silent.
David listened.
Mark said, “Soldiers give their lives every day to save the world… I didn’t think… I didn’t think I would give up my parents. I signed up for what I signed up for. I didn’t… I dragged them along. They said it was okay, though. That they knew that this would happen… or something like this. In those videos… But it hurts.”
Mark lost his train of thought.
David said, “Maybe it would help for you to think of it in this way: You had a task. What happened was a tragedy and boon of unequal measure, but also a global 99.9% success.”
Mark wasn’t sure that helped at all, because… He asked, “But what if he goes bad?”
David breathed deep, and said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Mark. He could very well go bad. But we have a lot of resources we did not tap in our probing attempts to kill the High Dragon. Keep in mind that before the Reveal, dragons were in control of a lot of Daihoon. Dragons are usually bad and we kicked them all out over there, but there is a history of dragons being in control. So Addashield’s Dragon might be one we can parley with. We have plans now, though, to kill him if we need to kill him. You did your part. Let the superheroes worry about the rest.”
“Did I really do my part? Did I really do everything I could?”
“Yes. Unequivocally yes.”
“… Okay.”
“Mark. I want to tell you something important.”
Mark looked at him.
David said, “This world is full of monsters and problems that need to be killed and solved, and not always in that order. Sometimes, monsters must be solved. Like kaiju that plant themselves in parts of the ocean and disrupt shipping lanes, or dragons that hollow out mountains for themselves and take over the land around them. This is one of those times where a monster must be solved, and then left alone. Shipping lanes must move. Villages must kowtow, or move. You can’t do anything to Addashield’s Dragon, and the world wouldn’t want you to, anyway. Not right now.
“I know a lot about this sort of thing, Mark.
“I’m a Paladin, specifically an Inquisitor, and we hunt down people who need to be permanently solved. But sometimes, we have to let problems go, too. And so, what I do is I put those problems into little mental boxes, and I set them aside. I don’t let them rule my life. I am the master of my own life. Those problems are not the masters of my life. I am the master of my own life.
“You will be the master of your own life. You will understand the true nature of the beast of being a hero, eventually. This, here? This is just a taste of what it means to be a hero.
“And so, for now, take your rage, your hate, your need for justice against this one specific situation, and put it in a box. Set the box aside. You can look at it as much as you want. But leave it alone as much as you can. And when you need to open the box, to let out your rage, you can do that.”
Mark breathed, and said, “… Yeah.”
David was quiet.
Mark said, “I don’t want to think about anything anymore. I want to lay down. Can you come back in like. Two days?”
David stood and said, “Rest well, Mark Careed. It was good to see you.”
“You… you, too.”
David left.
Mark went to his bed and laid down.
- - - -
Surprisingly, when Mark woke the next day, he felt better.
Sparring with Raoul, Jacob, and Svea was actually really fun… Well. It had been fun for the last 3 days, but today was different. Today, Raoul and Jacob trounced Mark. Just plain bodied him. It was still fun, though, because it meant Mark had ways to improve.
Laying on the ground, chuckling, Mark looked up at Raoul, saying, “You both improved a lot!” He sat on his elbows, looking at both of the guys. “What changed?”
Raoul smirked.
Jacob said, “We were accepted into the Chosen System yesterday.”
Raoul said, “We got tiered up, across the board. Both of us.”
“Both tier one!” Jacob happily said. “Power Level 15!”
“And Union healing!” Raoul said, smiling wide.
Well that seemed amazing?
Mark had no idea what all of that really meant, though, because he had only vaguely ever considered that option before he went for the option that put him in a coma.
The low levels of the Chosen system all had a low entry bar. Dedicating a few days a month to healing others at the healing houses was a common burden, and the one that Mark had considered taking onto himself in order to get healing magic. That low burden would have given him a set of spells he could use to heal himself and others. But Jacob and Raoul had gotten more than the basic set, and by a lot. A full tier up, across the board? Like, +10 to Body, Kinetic, Mind, Natural, Arcane, and Arch? That had to require a big demand… Right?
Or were the early levels not a big deal to get?
Mark wasn’t sure about any of that, only that it was clearly a big deal to Jacob and Raoul—
“We’re officially acolytes of Freyala, too,” Raoul said, happy about that. “It wasn’t a sure thing before, but we are now, and we’re ready to go out in the field.”
Okay! So that’s a big commitment!
“Oh wow!” Mark said, “Congrats!”
Svea cheered, “Congrats!”
Instructor Charms said, “Congrats, you two. What’s your assignment?”
Jacob said, “It’s shipment out to the Good Hope Station; back home for me.”
“Ah,” Charms said, “Soon, then?”
“In five days,” Jacob said. “Raoul and I are going together and we’re going to pick up some other Freyalan team waiting for us there. That other duo needs a Sound Kinetic and Hexer to round out their Mind Spike and True Brawn.”
Mark wasn’t sure how good that was, but Charms and Svea both looked truly impressed.
Raoul said, “It’s a good team.”
Svea instantly said, “That’s a really good team!”
Charms was a little wide-eyed, too. “A True Brawn, huh?”
Mind Spike was sort of self explanatory, except not really at all. Mark assumed it was a mindkiller Talent, or something like that. A locator Talent, too, probably; can’t kill the minds if you can’t find them. True Brawn could mean anything, though. There was an accepted definition of just being a ‘really strong brawny’, but Mark was pretty sure that when these people said ‘True Brawn’ they meant something else.
Mark asked, “What’s a True Brawn?”
They looked to Mark like he had asked a weird question. And perhaps he had. He just wasn’t sure if their ‘True Brawn’ was the one he thought of when he thought of ‘True Brawn’.
“Tactile Telekinesis,” Charms said. “It’s the Talent that most people think of when they think ‘good brawny’, and one of the major reasons why the Curtain exists. True Brawn is the most reliable monster killer out there and it’s the only Talent that is reliably reproducible, and incredibly safe for both its user and everyone else.” She added, “Even normal brawnies can achieve it with practice and skill, but True Brawn starts with it.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Mark’s eyes went wide. He had no idea that Tactile Telekinesis was the hallmark of True Brawn. He had known True Brawn was good, but not that good.
“How many brawnies get that one?” Mark asked.
The others thought—
Charms instantly said, “One in 120. It’s not an even distribution, though. There’s histories to consider. Most brawnies can eventually develop the skill, though; especially the stronger ones.”
Tactile Telekinesis was a well known power, like Telepathy, Elemental Control of all kinds, Mage, and Tinker. Tactile Telekinesis was the one that let a guy pick up a sword, and then use it like it was an extension of their own brawny body. It allowed someone to pick up clumps of ground like it was a boulder, and pick up a house from an edge without the house falling apart. Glorious Man was a tactile telekinetic, and he famously punched kaijus away from major cities or other fragile areas. If he didn’t have tactile telekinesis, then he would have simply punched into the kaijus instead…
Well.
Glorious Man shot through monsters, too, when he wanted to do that. He usually had to punch them a few times to get them away from important stuff and then he started punching through them.
But more than that—
Mark suddenly wondered if the Curtain was actually a good thing. True Brawn was a good Talent… Hmm. Mark reconsidered. If all of Earth was just playing a numbers game, with 1/120 people Awakening to True Brawn, then they could just as easily play the numbers game with other Talents. According to Charms, even normal brawnies could achieve tactile telekinesis too, if they tried for it. So that 1/120 guess was probably more like… Mark did some mental math. 90% of people were brawnies, and even if only 50% eventually gained tactile telekinesis, then something like 50-ish Tutorial-clearing people could develop themselves in that direction, becoming one of the best possible brawnies there are.
Brawny was already one of the safest Talents out there, too…
And yet...
Mark said, “I still don’t appreciate the Curtain.”
Though that seemed kind of petulant of him, now that he was thinking about it more and more.
Svea had looked miffed at Charms calling the Curtain a ‘good thing’, but then she nodded triumphantly when Mark said he didn’t appreciate it.
Charms said, “Get strong enough and change some minds if you want to change the world. Until then, stand to the side. Raoul! Jacob! Spar.”
Mark walked to the side and watched as the two guys squared off, but it was a slow sort of walk, because Charms’ words echoed in his mind.
If he wanted to kill Addashield’s Dragon he would need to change the entire world, wouldn’t he?
Get allies.
Get real power.
Political power, too?
Or just… Mark wasn’t sure what he would need at all.
And yet… It was already hard to stay angry, especially with the bastard dragon fixing so many problems. Could Mark maintain his rage for the decades it would take to kill the dragon? After 10 years of peace, assuming Addashield’s Dragon didn’t turn evil, could Mark roust anyone against Addashield’s Dragon? Anyone at all?
No. He couldn’t. Not if the dragon made himself valuable and cooperative.
And Mom and Dad had already told Mark not to focus on revenge.
Oh, gods. Mark was already giving up on revenge, wasn’t he.
This wasn’t the outcome he wanted, but only because his parents had been targeted by the demon and then Addashield had killed them. The thousands that Addashield had killed before didn’t matter to Mark… except they did matter a whole lot, because people mattered, because Mark wanted to be a hero.
People were already calling him a hero, weren’t they. Mark had looked at the news some this morning, at a story with him in it, talking about how he had ‘given everything’ in the hopes of a ‘good outcome’, and now here they were with Addashield’s Dragon—
“Mark and Svea!” Charms said.
Mark got onto the field and fought, but his mind was elsewhere. He almost lost to Svea, but then he rallied and got his head in the spar. The flow came upon him and Mark parried, blocked, and then kicked Svea’s legs out from under her. She went down. Mark helped her back to her feet.
Svea frowned as said to him, “You weren’t really fighting except at the end.”
“Yeah— Sorry. My mind is… a lot elsewhere right now.” Mark bowed. “I apologize.”
Charms said, “Svea and Raoul.”
Svea wanted to say something else, but then she was fighting Raoul and Mark was on the side, thinking.
How would he even kill Addashield’s Dragon, if he wanted to? Needles of adamantium? No. The dragon could already control that. Freyala had even told Mark, directly, that the most he could hope to do was to stop the dragon’s use of adamantium on himself, so Mark would need to use Union… But… No. He was so much smaller than the dragon, both physically and in the astral...
In order to take down a High Dragon—
What even was a ‘high’ dragon? Mark still didn’t know that.
How to take down a ‘really big, smart, magical dragon’, then.
… Mark had no basis to begin to think in that direction, only that Addashield’s Dragon was fucking massive and strong and smart and Mark couldn’t hope to beat him at all. Not in 20 years, and certainly not alone. Freyala had specifically called out the need for both demons and other dragons to take down Addashield...
So! Let’s consider the idea of forming an alliance against someone like Glorious Man. Was it a 1-for-1 comparison? No. Of course not. It was… hmmmm… close enough? Not really, but let’s try this thought experiment.
How would Mark go about tearing the top superhero down? Because that’s what Addashield’s Dragon would become, if he kept up these actions of killing kaiju and creating protective walls the world over.
Glorious Man was the captain of the Crystal Tower, the lead of Team Adamantium. Team Adamantium was usually all the captains of all the teams working together under Glorious Man for whatever thing necessitated their gathering, but usually there was Glorious Man and then there were all the other teams doing their own thing.
So, to kill Glorious Man, one would need to destabilize every part of his entire support structure…
Not an easy feat.
Crystal Tower was the pinnacle of humanity; the big defenders…
Hmm.
So in that case, maybe taking out Addashield’s Dragon wasn’t like taking out Glorious Man at all. Addashield’s Dragon had no support structure… Or at least he had no support structure right now. In 10 years? He’d have a major support structure. Too much to—
Charms announced, “And that concludes the last meeting of 101 sparring club for tier 0 non-brawnies.”
Mark realized the world had gone on without him.
Raoul and Jacob were bowing to Charms. Svea was on the ground, but she got up and bowed as well, and since that seemed to be what everyone was doing, Mark did the same. It was normal to bow to the instructor after the session was over, but this was a deeper sort of bow.
… Wait.
She had said ‘last meeting’, hadn’t she.
Ah, shit.
Charms said, “Rise.”
They rose.
“Three of you have been here for a while, and you’re all ready to move on. Therefore, you should move on to bigger and better things. Mark, I will speak to you afterward.”
They stood.
Charms said, “Raoul. Jacob. Well done on gaining tier one, and becoming true acolytes of Freyala. May she always guide your path to glory, and if you should fall, may she welcome you into her True Citadel. Good luck, and good skill to you both. You’re dismissed.”
Raoul and Jacob both bowed deeper, saying, “Thank you, Instructor!”
And then they walked away.
Charms said, “Svea. You have achieved a great deal of personal growth since I first saw you. More than I have seen from most people. You no longer cower from the sword, and you can lift the shield and parry the blow. You are not afraid of defeat, and you take instruction well. You have grown much. You have much further to go. Walk with Freyala, and may she guide your footwork, and guide your magic. You’re dismissed.”
Svea smiled wide, tears in her eyes, as she bowed, saying, “Thank you, Instructor Charms!”
Svea sobbed a little as she walked away, looking happy.
When Svea was out the door, and the door shut behind her, it was just Mark standing in the sparring room with Instructor Charms. The half-giant of a woman loomed, and yet she was still four meters away, and not trying to loom at all.
Charms said, “All of them are moving on, but you remain, Mark. What are you going to do for the next year?”
“Uh… Train, I guess?” Mark rapidly added, “And get a few college credits and a bigger understanding of the world.”
Charms nodded. “Join the brawny 101 sparring club in 12 days when it rolls over into a new session. Expect to stay in a 101 brawny club for 2 weeks, before most people surpass you. You’ll probably have to sit out the last 2 weeks in every rotation. A lot of people do.
“Do that for as long as you can stand it. Maybe 3 or 4 rotations.
“Healthy Body is Rank F, but you should still be able to get it up to tier 2, maybe around 25/100, all on its own. When you add in your other Talents your Body Power Level will become artificially high, but it’ll still just be Healthy Body.
“A normal Brawn at the average multiplicative rate of power of 2.5 is a Rank C, and that’s gonna be near impossible for you to straight power through. You should still try. Later, when that 2.5x brawny is fully within their own power, they’ll get to PL 75ish, unless they slack off. You won’t be able to fight one of them with Healthy Body at all, but maybe you will. I don’t know much about tri-Talents.
“Since you’re gonna be here for a while, you might end up reaching tier 2 or 3 before you leave, which would be good for whatever you want to do next, but which will make you ineligible for any beginner class. You can take the 103 series, or maybe even 104. You’re never going to be a direct fighter though. You understand that?”
Mark stood tall, saying, “I know that. As soon as I can actually lift Adamantium at all then I should be able to use some of it to do the heavy fighting for me.”
“I don’t know where you’re going to get any of it, but I know you came in with some, so maybe whatever the Citadel is holding for you will be enough. Maybe they’ll even let you have it back for training purposes—” Charms was suddenly concerned. “They didn’t permanently confiscate it, did they?”
Mark realized that Charms didn’t know that Mark was already producing adamantium, inside of his own body. He was suddenly struck between wanting to tell her, and knowing that he shouldn’t, and then he suddenly felt guilty about not revealing himself when Charms had already told him that revealing capabilities was important for group cohesion. But even Addashield had warned him against telling people that adamantium was a biometal, and that Mark would be producing adamantium in his bones for the rest of his life, at a rate of 1 cubic centimeter every 8-ish months.
Charms looked at Mark while he thought, and as Mark remained silent in thought for more than a few seconds, she opened her mouth—
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” Mark said. “Should I tell you a state secret?”
Charms said, “Ah… I see.” She said, “No. Something like that you keep to yourself. Moving on: If you can get it back, then train with it, but for Freyala’s sake, don’t actually carry it around with you like you must have been when you got knocked out in that classroom. Not until you can actually carry it.”
Mark wanted to scoff, disbelieving. He got maybe halfway there, but then he asked, “Would someone actually try and steal it?”
“No. Not here. Good habits are still good habits.”
“Oh. Well… Yeah.”
“When you reach maybe 18 in Adamantiumkinesis, or maybe all the way into tier 2, you might be able to walk around with some of the stuff, but it will be like carrying around a 300 pound weight atop all of your body. Carry it around anyway, for at least a few hours a day. The only way to grow into being able to use your power is to use your power. If you had something less magically dense, like water, then you could start small, but you don’t, so you can’t.
“Union is outside of my expertise aside from what Freyala has given me, so I can’t help you there and you have a private tutor for that anyway.” Charms stood to her full height as she looked upon Mark, saying, “I’m usually active in the brawny sparring clubs, from 101 to 105, but I got tagged for this non-brawny class a while ago. Now that this one is dissolved I’m headed back to 101 and 105. I expect to see you in brawny sparring 101 in 12 days. Check your schedules and sign up for it. I’m a hardass there, and I do a lot to cultivate that persona, but I’m here for my students, and that means you, too. Good luck, Mark. You’re dismissed.”
Mark felt a warmth in his chest. He bowed, saying, “Thank you for your instruction, Instructor Charms.”
And then Mark walked away.
Non-brawny Sparring Club 101 hadn’t lasted very long at all, just 3 sessions over 3 days, but it had been nice.
He was looking forward to the brawny version of the sparring club.