“The dungeon is here,” I said, pointing to a solitary mountain northeast of the city. We were all together in the dorm courtyard, Team Maple Leaf, The Round Table, and me, because we didn’t have a room big enough to fit us all. My map was open for all to see, as was my quest screen.

Quest: Gather material components for Sifu Chow Bo: Gorgon’s eye, Chimera’s heart, Doppelganger’s brain; Bonus: Minotaur’s horn

“Gorgon. Chimera. Minotaur. So it’s a Greek-themed dungeon,” Morgan said.

“Seems so,” I said. “The mountain’s called Olympus too, so...”

“Eye, brain, heart, and horn?” said Arthur. “This is gonna get messy.”

“Yeah, I thought of that too,” I said. “The good news is I picked up the Butchering skill while watching the guy at the meat shop down the street, so you’re all off the hook for the gross bits.” I’d learned my lesson with the initial Jackalope fiasco. No more unexpected brutality from me.

“What’s a Gorgon?” Jane said.

“Think Medusa,” Arthur said, then seeing Jane’s surprised look added, “What? I like mythology.”

She flashed him one of her smiles. “Who knew the pretty boy was such a nerd, too.”

Arthur gave one of his smiles in return. It was dazzling in its own right. Calling him pretty wasn’t a lie. “I’m just full of surprises.”

“If there’s a Minotaur you can bet there’s a labyrinth,” said Byron. “I love mazes.”

“Great,” I said. “You can be in charge of preparing for the inevitable labyrinth. I also had an idea for the Gorgon that you can help with.”

Byron nodded acknowledgement. “My forge is hot and ready to rock,” he said.

“Does anybody remember what the deal is with a Chimera?” said Andy.

“Ask Arthur,” Jane said with that mischievous twinkle she often had in her eyes. “He’s the myth master.”

“It’s a mashup of a lion, a goat, and a serpent,” Morgan said. “And it breathes fire.”

“Wow, it’s a whole family of pretty myth masters,” Jane said.

Morgan laughed. It was a nice laugh, soft and genuine. “We grew up listening to myths and fables.”

“In the myths, the hero Bellerophon rode the pegasus and killed the Chimera by blocking the fire in its throat,” Arthur said.

“It blowed up real good,” Byron said.

“Ick,” Nina said, whether in response to the Chimera’s explosion or her husband’s joke, only she knew for sure.

“Lacking a flying horse, how shall we kill it?” Wayne said.

Nobody said anything, so I spoke up. “Since it uses fire, I suggest Plan A for the Chimera will be for those of us who can to hit it with the opposite affinity attacks.”

“That’d be Water, right?” Kay said. She was the only one with that affinity, besides me and Jane, but we had them all.

“Actually it’s Ice,” I said. "On the affinity wheel, Water is right next to Ice, and opposite Earth."

“Faaaascinating," Chika said. "And if that doesn’t work? What’s Plan B?”

“Oppressive force,” I said.

Chika flashed her single-fanged grin and cracked her knuckles. “That I can do.”

“Damn straight,” Andy said, and the two of them high-fived, Chika using a sliver of her Boing Boing power to jump high enough to reach Andy's hand as he held it over his own head. Ever since the tournament, those two had been peas in a pod.

“What about the Doppelganger?” said Gahalad. “That’s a shapeshifter, right?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Plan B.”

“Hang on,” said Sam. “I don’t remember any Doppelgangers in Greek myths. It sounds German.”

Everybody turned to look at Morgan, who sighed. “The Greeks had a similar concept of the body double. The eidolon was a sort of spirit copy.”

“At the risk of sounding completely nerdy,” Arthur said, glancing over at Jane, “some believe that the Helen who hooked up with Paris and went back to Troy wasn’t the real Helen, but an eidolon copy.”

“Where was the real Helen?” said Jane.

“Egypt. Hera was so pissed that Paris thought Aphrodite was prettier than her that she tricked him. Helen was supposed to be his prize, but Hera whisked the real Helen off to Egypt and gave him a fembot to take back to Troy instead.”

“A woman scorned,” said Jane. “I approve.”

“Wouldn’t that mean the whole Trojan War was a big fat mistake?” said Sam.

Morgan grinned. “If you read between the lines in Greek myths, most of them pretty much boil down to one idea: keep it in your pants.”

“Aw, where’s the fun in that?” Andy said.

“You sound like Zeus.”

We split up after that to make preparations for the dungeon raid first thing the day after tomorrow. Jane caught me alone before we all went our separate ways.

“You know,” she said, “you just talked a whole lot for someone who’s, how did you say it? The guy in the background?”

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“I was just passing on the information Chow Li gave me.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

Is she teasing me right now?

I hazarded a glance at her and caught the eye twinkle.

Yeah, she was teasing, for sure. If only I knew what exactly she was teasing me about.

Two days later, we raided the dungeon. Things went well, right up until the moment they didn’t, and then it was all downhill from there.

The dungeon itself wasn’t far to the Northeast of the city, the same distance as the Void Dungeon was to the Northwest, and the trek there had been quick and uneventful. I was glad we opted against renting mounts to get there. Olympus Mountain rose steeply from the foothills and we soon found ourselves climbing up its craggy rockface, making me doubly glad we came on foot.

I had been worried about finding the entrance, but Sam summoned a few cougars to explore for us — “I like cats,” he said — and they’d managed to sniff it out in no time. It was a cave opening that led to a rough rock tunnel that went on for some time.

“Is anyone else weirded out by the fact that there are no shadows?” Bruce said. I looked around and realized he was right, there were no shadows at all.

Even after we had gone in far enough that sunlight surely could no longer penetrate, the cave was still lit. There was no apparent source of illumination, it just seemed to be coming from everywhere, casting no shadows anywhere. People looked strange, like they weren't real. It almost made everything seem 2D, and I had to smile looking at everyone. We really did look like something out of an anime.

People had started developing their own styles. It usually started with a particular piece of gear they acquired, then they added some more that somehow fit with it, and the next thing you knew they'd gone and developed their own unique look. The massive variety of items that could be found was astounding, if you were clever about how you went about looking for them. I realized that sometimes, in some ways, System was actively working with us to develop the environment to suit our collective and individual preferences and tastes. In this case, if you started asking NPCs about a certain sort of thing, there was a very good chance that you'd stumble across it in the near future. If it was something simple, you might find it in a shop. More significant things could find themselves the MacGuffin in the middle of a quest. I started telling people about the phenomenon, and, long story short, that was how many of the ensembles that the people around me now sported had been assembled.

Bruce was standing right beside me and was the first one I saw. Like me, he'd that his Status pegged him as a wizard, but that still left a lot of choices open for how that could be interpreted. Would he go Gandalf with the robes and pointy hat, or Potter with a wand and cloak, or Constantine with a trenchcoat and scowl, or draw from any number of the various takes on the wizardy look that could be found in the literature? I know this, because we had an extended conversation about it. And by extended, I mean it dragged on for days. This was right about when I had discovered the secret to making available the sorts of things you wanted, so it became painfully apparent that he really had no clue what to do with his look and never would I suggested he just latch onto the next cool thing he saw and let the AI do the rest. The thing he found to work with was a golden metal skull cap, and pretty soon System filled in the rest of the pieces and he ended up looking just like Merlin in the old Excalibur movie.

Could've been much worse.

Wayne was the opposite. He was the first of us to know what look he wanted to adopt. I mentioned earlier when we got the orc's bone necklace that Wayne had been thinking about going for a Baron Samedi voodoo shaman sort of vibe. He'd ended up embracing that idea completely, and now adventured wearing a black tophat, various jangly bracelets, hair bobs, dangly things, and other accessories made out of bones or other body parts. Somehow he'd even managed to come across a collection of shrunken heads that all had a different, minor power; those all dangled from the rope that held up his pants. He wore no shirt, triggering momentary PTSD from my Jackalope venom acid trip, but his dark, muscular torso was decorated with white lines, symbols, and handprints drawn on in white chalk. I'd seen him getting one of his zombie summons to apply it, it was hilarious, like something out of a behind the scenes video outtake.

Wayne's face was made up as an eerie white skull. His shield was bone white and shaped like a skull, and the sword he wielded was a classic longsword with a ruby-studded hilt that looked amazing when he used Affinity Weapon on it. Early on he'd used his affinity with Fire on his swords, but once he got the hang of his Death affinity, he'd been using it more and more to turn whatever sword he wielded into a shimmering black blade that exuded smoky wisps of something that can only be described as a deathly aura. When he hit something with it, it wouldn't just hurt them like an ordinary sword, it would also suck some of their will to live away too.

The young Japanese siblings had landed quickly onto their looks. too. Kenji was full-on ninja, head to toe. Chika went Bruce Lee. Not the shirtless look, of course, nor the yellow with black stipes costume that looked so good when worn in homage by Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, but the black Chinese-style suit with wide, white cuffs that many of the Dragon Clan warriors also preferred. Classic martial artist look. She'd found it waiting for her in her closet in just the right size when she joined the clan and had never looked back since.

Jane had veered off the Swashbuckler path she began on, steering her look more into a slighty gothic, steampunk aesthetic. That had surprised me, but in a good way. It was mostly shiny, tight, and black, with zippers and layered metal plates riveted together with studded straps adding protection in cool-looking but strategically-questionable places. Corset armor chic. The one thing she hadn't changed was her weapon of choice: she always had her trusty rapier dangling at her side.

Sigrid, on the other hand, had stuck with the Valkyrie look. She hadn't actually changed much about her look at all since the start. Most of her armor was the same, although she did have a newer, nicer sword and a shield that was magically both strengthened and made lighter. She noticed me staring at her and stuck out her tongue.

Where there was Sigrid, you could often find Andy hanging around. Andy had gone shirtless Bruce Lee in his look, and unapologetically so. Why would he apologize, he looked buff as hell, with bulging muscles more like the San Francisco Chinatown magic thug Thunder, you know, the one who ended up blowing up in Jack Burton's face. Andy and Wayne both had the pecs to pull off their topless looks. I'd save everyone the embarrassment and keep mine well covered.

At first, people had tried to push Nina into a typical anime healer's costume, white with blue cross-like accents that came either as a long gown or a shirt skirt, but she resisted. Then Kenji told about a manga/anime he quite liked about an elite squad of healers that swept the injured off the battlefield and healed them. He described their white coats, akin to the thick double-breasted medical coats of the Victorian age, and Nina found that a lot more her speed. And wouldn't you know it? Shortly after, the Dragon Clan seamstress presents that exact coat to her: Shannon the gardener had overheard the conversation about it, apparently, and it had somehow ended up in Chow Li's ears, and the next thing you know it was commissioned: a white, secretly-armored healer's coat.

Meanwhile, Byron's outfit had been chosen and assembled by Nina. It was as armored as she could make it while still allowing him to move freely, and heavily inspired by the more recent Batman movies. I wasn't sure it quite fit with Byron's nature, but they both seemed happy with it. Which is to say, it made Nina happy, and that made Byron happy.

Sam dressed as though he had reached into his Tickle Trunk and found Adam Ant's wardrobe waiting there. Adam Ant himself had said his look was put together as though grabbing anything flashy and putting it on, and Sam seemed to take that approach to heart. Sam seemed to grab any and everything he found that piqued his fancy, and now favored a look that incorporated shifting variations of these articles put together seemingly at whim. The subtle variations would shift along with Sam's mercurial mood, but it always landed somewhere on the a pirate slash highwayman slash American First Nations slash dandy dial. But he could do that, because no word of a lie, absolutely everything looked amazing on him.

The Round Table hadn't shifted much from how they looked when we found them: Knights from Camelot. The men all in full, classic, shiny plate armor that went well with Bruce's Merlin look, straight out of Arthurian cinema, with Kay paring down the plate and amping up the chainmail for more flexibility, and Morgan going with a slightly off-theme but totally on-brand floor-length Morticia Addams gown in a purple so dark is was almost black, tastefully accented with thin chainmail that, in the same way as Jane's metal plates, made you ask "is that really gonna help protect you?" at the same time as you say "damn that looks cool."

And as for me? My signature look was still a work-in-progress. I used all my opportunities to suggest to System I might like to find a certain thing to help the others piece together their collections. I still had no clue what my idea look was, so mostly I just kept going with the dark, Asian-inspired, Matrix look. When I saw how cool the others looked, and how comfortable they all looked in the self-images they projected, it made my basic Neo costume feel like I was dressing up for Hallowe'en. I mean, I heart Neo as much as the next introverted nerd, but I'd become hyper-aware that I was not presenting an accurate reflection of who I was.

We ventured deeper into the cave, exchanging excited whispers about what we might find when we entered the dungeon proper. Everyone seemed very comfortable and familiar with one another. Which made sense. Everyone else had done quests with each other before. But this was all new to me. This was going to be my first adventure with them, and I was looking forward to seeing their powers in action.