The Director clapped his hands, and a portal appeared above the middle of the arena. A large, circular table dropped through it onto the sand, an elegant white tablecloth covering its surface. Atop the tablecloth was a delectable array of thinly-sliced meats, cheeses, vegetables, breads, and condiments, along with an array of chips, dips, spreads, and various fresh fruit. Another clap produced a long wooden picnic table off to the side, it too draped in fine white cloth, embroidered cushions covering the benches running along each row.
Brock, still on the sand next to KB (Administrative), stared at the Director suspiciously.
“Is that going to blow up when I sit on it?” he asked, pointing at the picnic table. “Or wait, I know, the food’s poisoned. Yeah, that’s it. Definitely poisoned food. You’re still trying to kill me, aren’t you? What kind of trap is this?”
The Director sighed.
“It’s lunch, Brock. I think we could all do with a break from testing.”
He walked down to the arena floor and started putting together some sandwiches. Mikael and Fiona followed, their weapons no longer openly visible. They gave Brock sheepishly apologetic looks as they passed, then busied themselves making plates of their own. Cap and Yuriel marched straight at him, scowling at each other as they each tried to be the first to arrive without obviously running. Wary, Brock scrambled to his feet, trying to keep an eye on both of them.
Yuriel won the race, beads of sweat trickling down her alabaster face, and immediately began prodding Brock with a tool that looked like an egg-beater and an octopus had engaged in inappropriate relations. It beeped and chimed erratically, various lights set into a circular panel blinking on and off.
“Need to track down... temporal source...” She tried to stick it up Brock’s nose, then glared at him when he slapped it away. “You just hold still and let me-”
Yuriel squawked as Cap elbowed her to the side and began stabbing at Brock with her right index finger, the golden runes of her left pupil still glowing brightly.
“I saw him in there! I know I did! Bring him back out!”
She punctuated each statement with another finger poke into his chest, causing Brock to stumble slightly backwards. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Verdant’s vine doll hop up onto KB (Administrative)’s body, and the robot picked its way over to the picnic table, leaving Brock alone with the two angry women. Yuriel had regained her balance and was now crowding in on him to his left, still trying to shove her scientific device into whatever orifice she could find, and Brock frantically waved his hands in front of himself as a shield.
“Whoa, hey hey hey, what the heck?”
“Stand still-”
“Where’s Starak-”
“Doctor Yuriel! Captain Swift!” The Director’s voice barked through the cavernous open air like a gunshot, and he appeared behind them, sandwich-laden plate in hand. The two glared at Brock, then begrudgingly backed away. “I am halting testing and Appraisal for the moment. Why don’t you two get something to eat. Your blood sugar seems to be a bit low.”
They both shifted their glares at the Director, then with identical haughty sniffs, Cap flipped her eye patch back down and Yuriel folded her probing device into a small cube, which she placed into the pocket of her lab coat. Shoulder to shoulder, they stomped over to the lunch table, deliberately not looking at each other. Brock let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“Would you like a sandwich?” the Director asked, holding out the plate. On it were two perfectly stacked sandwiches, neatly cut into triangles. “One’s a club, the other’s a BLT. I’ll take whichever you don’t want.”
Brock stared at the plate, still expecting some nefarious trap to spring the moment he dropped his guard. Finally, he grabbed the club sandwich, and took a hesitant bite.
His eyes went wide in shock.
It was delicious.
“Mmph. Thish ish really good,” he mumbled around a second bite. The Director nodded.
“Excellent. Come, have a seat with me and let’s talk.”
A quick hand wave by the Director produced a small table with two padded chairs, and they both sat down. As they ate, Brock kept sneaking glances at the older man around mouthfuls of his sandwich. The Director ate swiftly yet economically, without any wasted motions or dropped food, and they both finished at the same time despite Brock’s head start. With a satisfied grunt, Brock relaxed back into his chair.
The Director pulled a napkin out of thin air and tossed it at him.
“On your cheek. You, well.” He made some wiping gestures. Brock flushed and scraped some mayonnaise off the side of his face.
“Thanks.”
“Of course. Now then,” the Director leaned forward with his hands under his chin, elbows on the table, “you present me with somewhat of a dilemma, Brock.”
“...huh?”
“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, you aren’t dead.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Uhhh, yeah. Speaking of that-”
The Director cut him off.
“Therein lies the first part of the dilemma, Brock, because we’re also not dead.”
“...whut?”
The Director’s eyes narrowed.
“We’ve learned many lessons from Sekkies over the years, lessons bought in blood and fire. At the first hint they might be able to use their skills, they invariably go on the offensive. Without exception.” He tapped his fingers together. “Blood and fire. But you, Brock, you simply sat there. Like, well, like a bit of an idiot, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Don’t mention it,” Brock said sourly. The Director chuckled.
“Sekkies never pass up an opportunity to use their skills, Brock, and that brings us to the second part of our dilemma. You have a unique skill, and it is active. The Limiter isn’t affecting it.”
Brock remembered the strange not-voice that he’d heard both recently, and in the gray place before.
“...Catastrophe Suite?”
Perfect teeth behind ivory tusks flashed in an almost-smile.
“Very good. The problem is, as far as we can tell, your skill doesn’t appear to be doing anything, and that’s concerning.” The Director shifted his hands out to the sides, leaning back. “The name, you understand?”
Brock nodded. ‘Catastrophe Suite’ was a fairly concerning name.
The Director continued speaking.
“There’s also the issue of your skill level.”
“Skill level?”
“Yes. Normally, skills have levels, and from what our researchers have been able to determine, each skill level increase is an order of magnitude higher than the level before.”
Brock’s face fell. He’d never been good at math. The older man sighed, then clapped his hands. A bowl appeared on the table, filled with tiny white oblongs. Brock looked closer and realized they were grains of rice. The Director delicately picked one up, turning it in front of his face.
“Level zero can be thought of as an average inhabitant of our reality with no training or natural aptitude. They can do something, but it isn’t much.”
He placed the rice grain on the table, then pinched out a larger amount, placing them in a line next to the first grain. There were ten in total.
“Level one is ten times the amount of level zero. A level one skill is a beginner with basic training, or someone with an inherent ability.”
The Director grabbed a small fistful of rice from the bowl, dropping it in a pile next to the neat line.
“Level two is ten times the amount of level one. A hundred grains, if you will. This represents an expert at their consistent best, and requires diligent work and constant training.”
He dumped the rest of the bowl next to the small pile.
“Level three is ten times level two, and demands a combination of intense training and innate ability, honed to its peak over years of commitment.” He looked over his shoulder at the picnic table, where the members of Cap’s team were busy throwing bits of half-eaten food at each other while yelling good-naturedly, Doctor Yuriel chastising them with a sour frown, then turned back to Brock. “You can usually count the number of native level three skill practitioners alive at any time with one hand. It represents the limits of what we know to naturally exist in our reality. Most Sekkies possess skills at this level.”
Brock swallowed hard, thinking back to the grey place. The very first skills the not-voice had announced had all been level three. The Director clapped his hands again, and this time a small burlap sack with the word ‘Rice’ on the side in black letters appeared, thumping down on the table next to the pile of white grains.
“Level four is what we consider ‘Overlord’ class. Sekkies so powerful that, individually, we don’t stand a chance against them.” He fixed Brock’s eyes with his own. “As you’ve witnessed firsthand. Luckily, whatever mindset it is that brings Overlords to our world also seems to possess an unhealthy degree of paranoia, and usually they’re too busy planning for threats that will never materialize to bother the rest of us.” The Director chuckled grimly. “They also almost always tend to kill each other in mutually destructive first strikes. Cleanup’s a pain in the ass, but eventually we can get the affected areas back to something resembling normal. Given enough time.”
He paused, and Brock stared at him, equal parts confused and fascinated. The skill system sounded a lot like the progression through sports leagues he’d studied as a kid. Youth leagues into all-stars into select teams into traveling squads into freshman high school starters into varsity standouts into college scholarships into national recognition into professional tryouts into a career as one of the best in the world.
Just my luck I was born a negative ten, he thought angrily. I wish I could have been lucky enough to be a zero.
The Director rapped his knuckles on the table, pulling Brock’s attention.
“And then there’s you.”
He snapped his fingers, and a massive burlap sack crunched into the sand next to the table. It was almost as tall as Brock was standing, and nearly as wide around.
“This is a level five, what we classify as ‘Akuma’ class. It means ‘demon’ in a language from your world, but generally a demon so powerful that other demons quail before it. They’re the ones who created the Yggdrasils, and the Tetsuo Exclusionary Zone, and the Kaiju Nature Preserve, and the All Blue.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “One of them also created the Limiters, and we can only thank whatever gods exist beyond the bounds of our world that it chose to do so, because otherwise we never would have been free. We haven’t seen an Akuma in thousands of years, but the wounds they carved still weep.”
Brock couldn’t pull his eyes away from the burlap sack, suddenly ominous in its banal normality.
“That’s... me?”
The Director snorted, the tri-fold claw mark across his face momentarily dancing.
“I wish.”
“...whut?”
The older man waved his hand and all the rice disappeared, leaving them at a barren table once more.
“Despite their powers, from what our histories tell us, the Akuma-class Sekkies still operated by the same rules as all the others who came over, both before and since. They had skills, and those skills had levels.”
He pointed at Brock, halfway between accusation and admiration.
“Your skills don’t, not anymore. When we first Appraised you, your non-ultra skills registered as ‘max,’ which is troubling enough, since we don’t know what a ‘max’ skill value even means, but at least it was a value.”
He shook his head.
“Now, though? Now, you have five skills, none of them has a value, and only one of them is affected by the Limiter.”
The Director leaned forward once more, and it felt like the temperature suddenly plummeted a hundred degrees.
“Do you understand the nature of my dilemma, Brock? It appears we can’t kill you, but how do we make sure you won’t one day decide to kill us? Knowing what I know about the history of Sekkies in my reality? Knowing that your power is beyond our control?”
Brock gulped. All of a sudden, what he thought was an extreme overreaction suddenly made a lot more sense. It felt really weird to be told he might have the power to destroy everything.
“So, uhhh, what now?”
Eyes like steel orbs met his own.
“Now? Now, lunch is over.”
The Director rose from his seat, and Brock shivered, struck by a massively overbearing presence suddenly emanating from the gray-bearded orc.
“Now we resume testing, and we see what you really are, Brock Manly.
“And if what you are threatens my world, none of us will return to it.”