For a little while, everything had been going great. The Pocket of Sanctuary slowly roamed around, barged into fights and universally killed pretty much everything it came across. It avoided the Bladed Slayer, who had immediately focused on the largest concentration of living creatures it could kill and ran off deep into the woods.
For a little while things had been going great.
The bugs were bugs, but their numbers were starting to get a little thin between the gremlins, the Pocket of Sanctuary, and the way all the different species of insects were fighting one another. The gremlins had just flat out retreated. Ben could tell that they were still around, but they were keeping their distance.
With the Quasar Soul Stone in his utility pocket, he felt like a man walking down a crowded street with a diamond the size of a robins egg in his pocket. It made him nervous to have something so powerful and valuable in his possession.
No way the Gremlins were going to leave, not until there was no chance of recovering it. Instead, they had opted to stay out of range, out of sight. At least, that was what his paranoia was telling him. He didn’t need evidence, after all just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.
Ben took a deep, calming, breath and made his way back to the group. The fantasy creatures were poking around the facsimile of Ben's old apartment, and Ben found he just didn't care about that one bit. The Leap-rechaun had settled on wrapping an old towel around his waist and then doing his best to secure it.
His best had turned out to be pretty fucking great actually, he'd found an old sewing kit that he had stashed away somewhere and started experimenting with his Utility Pocket. First, he took the needle and thread and stored it away. Then, he took the needle out, and threaded it with the utility pocket, which was, like, super easy.
After that, Ben started to get a little tricky about it. The first thing he tried was attaching a thread dispensing utility pocket to the eye of the needle, which worked perfectly. The needle's eye was obscured by a little utility pocket bubble that reacted to Ben's needs and fed out thread as he needed it.
Then Ben realized that wasn't how sewing worked, and the thread dispenser ended up where it belonged, affixed to the first hole he made. Ben spent 20 minutes experimenting with the Utility pocket and his sewing supplies. He acknowledged that it would probably be easier to sew by hand, but also acknowledged that sewing via spatial manipulation was much more manly, and way cooler.
Ben was becoming increasingly frustrated when the solution, as these kinds of solutions often did, came from the Utility Pocket itself. Ben was still undecided if the pocket did or did not have its own intellect, but it definitely seemed to come up with some pretty good ideas.
He created a utility pocket unlike any he'd created before, one that was separated from his regular inventory. It was less like a pocket dimension, which was essentially a hole, and more like a reverse pocket, which was additive rather than subtractive.
To put it another way, rather than a hole in reality, Ben created a bubble.
After that, Ben started getting really crafty. He ran the Utility Bubble over the two edges of the towel he wanted to sew together, and the edges vanished inside of the strange spatial anomaly. Once they were inside, Ben began to manipulate the needle and thread directly with his mind, moving them around with clumsy, untrained motions.
That's when Frankie came over, hopped on top of Ben's head, and started to use their soul-bond to help guide Ben's motions. It was a bit like how a golf instructor would correct someone's posture, or having a golf instructor take over your body and showing you exactly how it felt to swing the club correctly.
It was, admittedly, much more like the second one than the first.
Still, Ben made rapid progress, and sooner than he could believe, he'd sown himself a simple bit of clothing.
When he put it on, shimmying into it, he realized it was basically a skirt, then he rationalized it and called it the world's shittiest kilt.
He was pretty sure Leap-rechauns wore kilts.
When Ben looked up, he realized he'd been fucking around trying to do the simplest sew job in the world for like an hour and a half. Though it was a dirty towel that still felt a little damp, it was worth it.
He was finally clothed once again.
--
“So,” Anna said, after Ben had walked over and rejoined the group, “we've got some questions for the Aeon Slug.”
“Fine,” Vivi said, sounding exasperated already, “I was expecting as much with that awful frame job The System did on me.”
“Ok, so you're saying you didn't open any portals to The Beyond?”
“I did not. Gremlins did.”
Anna exchanged a look with her party members, which was really impressive, considering how she was the only one of the group with actual eyes.
“I'm. . . inclined to believe you,” she said somewhat diplomatically, “but the problem is, there's a substantial bounty on your head. You're wanted dead or alive big guy.”
“I'm innocent,” Vivi said.
“Well, that's why they don't just want you dead. We get paid just as well if we bring you in alive, and then you get a trial. Solas isn't full of fools, they realized The System didn't directly accuse you of anything. It was up to our discretion to decide if you were guilty or not. . .”
“Was?” Ben asked, looking Anna in the eyes.
“Was. We met this guy, I think he was a human, and he told us what was going on and then ran away. We sort of freaked out when we got here and sent an emergency message to Solas, appraising them of the situation.”
“Was his name Nemo?” Ben asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Probably, I'm not great with names,” Anna said.
“It was Nemo,” Dryst said helpfully, and Ben marveled at how he kept forgetting the gigantic glowing sno-cone was even there.
“Are you,” Ben asked, about to say something rude like, 'are you just a boring person', and then he thought better of it and kept his mouth shut.
“Right, Nemo,” Anna said, “well, we sent an emergency priority one message, expensive, and basically you can expect a. . . um, a very powerful group of adventurers to descend on this location at any moment.”
“This is good, isn't it?” Red asked, “They will kill the gremlins and take Vivi in for questioning. They are law enforcement, yes?”
“Ah, no. Two things are going to happen. One, a suppression force is going to be immediately assembled from Solas's best to deal with the threat; that's the good part. Unfortunately another group is going to show up as well. They're technically responsible for this entire quest, well, this entire fuck-up now. Dryden's Poets. They're a Silver rank adventuring team-”
“Silver rank,” Ben said, suddenly grinning, “holy fuck, this is some isekai-ass magical world bullshit right here.”
“Ok, but they're kind of scumbags? Silver rank thugs? No reaction to that at all?” Anna said, trying to provoke a common sense reaction from literally anyone in Ben's party.
The short answer was, she wouldn't get any.
The slightly longer answer was, she was talking to a group of five people. Three of them were from different dimensions and had been here less than a week. One of them was a highly intelligent fairy who had never left the Overcavern Forest. The last of them was an Aeon Slug who had been exiled for decades.
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She really couldn't have found a more out of the loop group of people.
“So they're just gonna kill Vivi?” Ben asked.
“Yes, because they are a group of silver rank adventurers? Where as my team is an iron rank team? They're three ranks above my group?”
“Point of order,” Short Bus said, “but I've got no idea how good your group is, because you've all been hiding behind us since the moment we met you.”
“Sick burn,” Ben said, then fist bumped Short Bus from over his shoulder. The entire event, from shit-talking to fist-bump, had been coordinated telepathically.
“You mean to tell me lawless mercenaries are coming to kill Vivi,” Red asked, a note of derision in her voice.
“Yes,” Thirty-One, the cyborg said.
“Let them come, I will break their minds, banish the life from their bodies, and turn their corpses into crowns for my Prince to wear,” Red said, and Ben suppressed a blush. He also suppressed saying 'holy shit' and having a conversation with her right there. Short Bus rolled his eyes in the first expression of irritation Ben had ever seen from the man-shark.
“How long,” Ghost Ears asked, and Ben was grateful that someone was asking the important questions.
“Depends on how drunk they were when the message went out,” Dryst said, his body lighting up with every sound he made. It was sort of mesmerizing to look at.
“Vivi, do you have anything to say about this?” Ben asked, looking over his shoulder at the Aeon Slug who was way taller than Ben now, and appeared to be deep in thought.
“No, well, yes. I'm willing to stand trial, but I'm not willing to die. I'd just like to put that out there, and if anyone is going to get the bounty, it's going to be my team. I've done nothing wrong, and I've risked my life to protect reality itself tonight. I'm not ashamed of myself,” Vivi said, his eyes practically shooting lasers as he bored his gaze into the faces of Anna's party, “and if any of you want to try and take me by force, I invite you to try, because I was just talking with Short Bus,” Vivi said, and Short Bus waved helpfully, “and he's really disappointed he didn't get to use his [Anima Blast] ability.”
“I'm super disappointed,” Short Bus repeated, then he coordinated a fist bump with Vivi. It. . . was a little gross, because Vivi used his eyeball, lacking a fist, and there was a little wet sound when there was an impact.
Ben thought their group shit-talking skill could still use some work, but there was a solid foundation for improvement. Short Bus was just all about the fist bumps right now, he was already trying to coordinate one with Ghost Ears. Ben coughed a little and made a 'cut it off' motion, a stiff hand going briskly back and forth near the neck.
Anna looked like she was having trouble with just about everything that was happening right now. She also looked like she wanted to take Vivi up on his offer for a fight, but then she looked over at Red, met the eyes of the Daughter of Chaos, and decided to keep hacking away at diplomacy.
“So I'm sensing a lot of fucking hostility right now,” she said, then noticed that Frankie was on top of Ben's head, and that the little Utility Pocket Elemental had once again done the 'I'm watching you' gesture, “and I think that's. . . how about we start over. I'm Anna, an adventurer, and this is my team, Anna's Coinpurse. We adventure for money, exclusively. Say hello everyone and introduce yourselves!”
It was painfully awkward Ben felt, but it was so sincere that he had to let them at least try to reset relations to something more workable.
“I'm BRX-031,” the floating alien skull shaped cyborg said, sounding out each letter, number and dash of his name, “an adventurer. A [Rouge]. I open locks, solve puzzles, and stab monsters where they would most like not to be stabbed.”
“I am Dryst-la-la-la,” the Higher Music Elemental said, and the lalala part of his name he sung, “an adventurer. I am a [Mage].”
“I'm a [Brawler],” Anna added.
“Nice to meet you all,” Ben said, suppressing a sigh and the urge to start messing with his face with his hands. “I'm Ben. These are my friends. What do you want from us?”
Dryst answered.
“We'd like to escort your party out of the Overcavern Forest and bring you to the safety of Solas. From there, we would like to turn Vivi in so he can stand trial and prove his innocence. If you all cooperate, we will testify as much, and it will help his case immensely. There is no future where Vivi is not hunted unless he turns himself in. This is your best chance of getting out of this mess.”
“And the silver rank team?” Ben asked.
“We'll deal with them,” Anna said, “I'm pretty sure they're going to try and kill us as well. Don't ask, it's a long story, but suffice to say I think this entire mission was a set up.”
“Question, are they going to deal with the gremlins?” Ben asked, and Red nodded like she had been about to ask the same question.
“I suspect they will put forth a token effort,” Dryst said, “Dryden is not known for being particularly conscientious when it comes to doing a job correctly. Lately he's been much worse.”
“Those gremlins must be destroyed,” Red growled, “otherwise they will continue to open portals-”
“Yes,” Ben said, cutting Red off before she heated the conversation up way more than it needed to, “and plus, Vivi issued some sort of quest about it. The Quest, if I'm not mistaken. We're going to die if we don't track down and kill the Elder Gremlins.”
“You issued The Quest,” Anna said, her eyes going wide and then shifting into disbelief, “you issued The fucking Quest?”
“Yes I issued The Fucking Quest,” Vivi snapped, capitalizing the 'f' when he said it, “because this is important!”
“Pfff,” Anna said, “I'd never issue the quest to anyone,” her team looked relieved, “I like my freedom, thank you very much.”
“Well, I guess some of us just take our responsibilities as members of the Signatory races more seriously than others,” Vivi said, getting super haughty and superior.
“Ugh, look everybody, someone forgot there was an Aeon Slug in the room,” Anna said, then made a 'wank-wank' motion with her hands, which is to say she violently mimed the male masturbatory motion, “glad you reminded me.”
Ben winced a little bit, I think most males would. Anna's attempt at miming a hand-job looked more like a threat of a mauling.
“So Vivi,” Ben said, trying to interrupt.
“Issuing The Quest was the only way,” Vivi said, and Ben sighed, because of course Vivi was ready to fight about this.
“Okay,” Ben said, enunciating it.
“Oh really, you couldn't have just gathered your party here and gone to town on some fucking gremlins? They're gremlins, not exactly powerhouses.”
“They sort of jumped up on the threat ranking when they started opening portals to The Beyond,” Vivi spat back.
“Whatever, everybody knows you did it. The System practically announced it! I can't wait for you to stand trial, 'Oh, gremlins did it!' Oldest excuse in the fucking book!”
“The System was trying to provoke an immediate response force to come and take care of the gremlins! That's why he was so vague. He won't interfere directly, but he can,-”
“Yeah,” Anna said, interrupting, her voice getting higher and more petulant, more bratty, “oh yeah, why don't you go ahead and give me a lesson slug! Yeah, it's not like my parents didn't drill this shit into my head, oh wait! They did, funny! But nobody knows as much as Aeon Slugs, right! Oh, look I'm just a dumb-ass Sunlet!”
“So we,” Ben said, and Ghost Ears flew over and patted him on the shoulder, his face in a tight line, shaking his head. Ghost Ears had a look like 'nuh uh' and 'just let them go at it'.
“Wow,” Vivi said, “Wow! A Sunlet finally admitting to being a piece of-”
“So, I'm going to just put a stop to this right now,” Ben said, his crown going from cold, to shimmering hot in a moment. He felt the metal groan, and heard it make those sounds electric stove top burners do sometimes when they get turned on. Vivi immediately acquiesced, bobbing an eye in apology, but Anna. . . did not.
“What,” she said, suddenly moving like there was a weight on her, “holy fuck, what is going on?”
“I'm asking you to table this argument,” Ben said, his small Leap-rechaun hands steepled, and his chin lightly resting on his fingertips. He wasn't even looking at Anna, his eyes were on the portal.
“You can't,” she said, then realized 'He can', “I'm resistant to,” then realized she wasn't resistant enough. She looked at Vivi, opened her mouth, then shut it. Then she gritted her teeth and, civilly I might add, said a single phrase.
“Radiant soul?” she asked, and her tone wasn't very civil.
“That's his secret to share,” Vivi said in a calm, mysterious tone of voice that absolutely drove Anna up the wall in irritation.
Ben felt his crown getting hotter and hotter, it was starting to pop and ping as the metal got brighter, expanding against his skin just so slightly. Ben glanced up and could just barely catch the edge of its light. He experimentally touched it with a finger, it still felt cool to him.
A bit of iron flaked off and drifted to the ground, and that was Ben's que to quit pushing its limits. He relented, and the crown rapidly cooled to its regular dull, black iron appearance.
“Vivi, how likely are you to be found innocent in a trial?” Ben asked.
“Extremely likely, almost a guarantee. Any amount of investigation will prove I'm not responsible for any of this.”
“Great. Second question, if we go to Solas and get this warrant for your arrest taken care of, will it count as us abandoning The Quest, and will we die?”
“No. No no no,” Vivi said, “you'll know if you are abandoning The Quest. As long as we intend to continue it, we'll be safe.”
“Awesome, we're going with them,” Ben said, deciding for his group. He was pleased to find they didn't object.
“Frankie,” Ben said, “Anna's in charge of navigation now. Let's point this thing in the right direction and get as far as we can.”