That, Ken thought as he watched his subordinates pair off into their assigned sleeping quarters, was a close call.

His feet swished through the ankle-high grass covering the site, which had yet to be cut or trampled down, and he let out a sigh. He was willing to improvise when circumstances demanded, but this whole operation reeked of hasty plans thrown together at the last second. To be honest, it was starting to make him a touch uncomfortable.

Naomi had been asking a lot of pointed questions during the flight over to Argentina, and more once they were on the ground. She was quite a bit sharper than she pretended to be, he knew... but she still didn't seem to have anything more than vague suspicions to go on, so far. As best he could determine, the other three remained completely clueless.

And they only had to stay dumb for another day or two, right? After that, it would hardly matter. Either the professor's crazy theories would turn out to be true, in which case they'd all be much too rich to care about the lead-up, or else it would turn out to be false, and they'd have more immediate problems on their hands.

No one would be pinning any accusations on Raid Captain Kaneko for misleading them, though, however it turned out. That was the important thing. He had a reputation for honest dealing, one that he'd carefully constructed, and was equally careful to maintain.

Well, he told himself, if they weren't suspicious already, they'd almost certainly figure out something was up tomorrow morning. When his party met up with the Heroes sent out by the other big guilds, and realized just how far the coincidental similarities between them extended, it would definitely be an awkward moment for him and the other officers. He still hadn't decided exactly how they were going to explain it.

The Rinzler woman had been absolutely no help in that regard. Apparently, the possibility of their carefully-selected party catching on before it was time to enter the Dungeon had never occurred to her. He shook his head as he climbed the steps leading up to the portable trailer "office". Some people shouldn't be let out into the real world.

Most of the trailer's interior was taken up by a long table, a rectangular slab of silvery brushed steel that looked like it belonged on a film set as the centerpiece of some villain's secret lair. Especially with the overheads dimmed. The floodlamps outside, shining in through room's slatted blinds, cast odd patterns of light and shadow over the assembled individuals. Everything about the setup made meeting feel unnecessarily sinister, he thought, flipping on the lights as he passed. There, that was much better.

All the other participants had been waiting for him, but that was fine. The protagonist, he said to himself, always shows up last.

Of course, he wouldn't voice a thought like that out loud. Sure, maybe there was a little smirk on his face as he took in the assembled leaders of the parties the other guilds had sent. And sure, they'd probably be able to take a guess as to what he was thinking. But he hadn't said it, so they couldn't complain about it, even if they knew.

His smirk grew wider – just by a bit – as he took his seat.

At the same time, the man at the head of the table, a forgettable-looking bureaucrat in a cheap off-the-rack suit, pushed his chair back and stood. He cleared his throat.

"Now that all of us are here," the man said in a faintly reproving tone, "we can begin."

Ken knew who he was, of course. Anyone in Ken's position would. The honorable Mr. Stephen J. Tomlinson III, United States deputy undersecretary of defense for extraterrestrial affairs – which was a fancy way of saying his job was to serve as a glorified clerk for the people handling all the real work in protecting Earth from Dungeon Breaks.

Tomlinson's department was responsible for locating new Dungeons when they appeared, disseminating that information, managing the federal access control list that determined who would be allowed to enter, and predicting how long lockouts would last between runs. All of which were important tasks that someone needed to do, granted, but not especially dangerous or glamorous ones.

There were Heroes working directly for the government, of course, but not many of them. Those who chose to follow that route tended to be on the... less competent end of the spectrum, to put it charitably. The state simply wasn't able to match the sort of incentives, financial or otherwise, that the international guilds could offer to draw in high-performing Heroes.

As much as they might hate it, that meant the United States – and every other country in the world – was dependent on maintaining good relations with at least a few of the stubbornly-independent Hero organizations.

Otherwise, who were you going to call when a Level 25 portal decided to open up in the suburbs of your capital city and start spewing out Monsters?

The army?

Please.

That, in turn, meant that if Ken Kaneko felt like tweaking the nose of a stuffy cabinet official from time to time, he could usually get away with it. Not because of who he was, but because of who his aunt was. President Kaneko was DragonFire, or close enough to it, and everyone knew Ken was her favorite. America needed DragonFire more than DragonFire needed America, and no one could really say what a volatile individual like Lady D might do if they happened to get on her bad side.

What could the man do but impotently seethe about it?

And that – that was real power. Power that would be his in his own right, soon enough.

He was wearing a full-blown smile now, as he reclined in his seat and kicked his expensive designer shoes up on the table's mirrored surface.

To his left, a dour-faced bald man wearing a lapel pin with Dongfeng's guild logo leaned forwards, placing both hands on the table. He spoke, and a moment later his interpreter repeated his words in English for those who didn't speak Mandarin – which, it seemed, was everyone present other than Ken.

"Enough of these games," the Dongfeng officer had said, the translator doing her best to convey his annoyed tone. "For what reason are we here?"

Around the table, the officers representing the other guilds nodded in agreement. No one liked to be kept in the dark.

Ken didn't join in. He had a pretty good idea already, courtesy of Doctor Sharon Rinzler. He had no idea what they'd been thinking, giving that woman of all people a full situation briefing and then packing her off on an unaccompanied twenty-hour flight. Not even an agency minder or anything! How fortunate for her, that it had been a gentleman like him that she was sharing a plane with.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She resisted his charms, in the sense that he hadn't quite managed to talk her into his bed. Yet. That would happen sooner or later, he was sure. But in the meantime, he'd been able to get a lot out of her about this abnormal Dungeon. It made the background briefing they were currently getting a lot less surprising for him than it was proving to be for everyone else in the room.

"What do you mean, we don't actually know what the message said?" a woman whose business-casual outfit was in Regulators colors asked incredulously.

"Our counterparts in the Argentine government have proven... less than fully cooperative with our efforts thus far," the undersecretary replied.

Ken snorted. That was one way to put it.

Perhaps more accurate if he'd said "they totally blew us off because they're still mad about something Reagan did a decade ago", but still. Close enough.

The raid captain that Memento Mori sent seemed to share his amusement. "So you're telling us that we flew halfway around the planet for... some rumors about talking Dungeon Monsters? That's it?"

"Not just rumors," Tomlinson said, a touch defensively. "We have it on good authority that –"

"Whose good authority?" the last remaining guild officer wondered. From Fortune Days, she was the only one of the group he'd worked with before. Sandra James, he thought. Or maybe it had been Jones? A small woman with a vulpine face and close-set eyes – pretty enough, he thought, but incredibly vain, and yes, he was well aware of the irony in making that statement. "Where's this information even coming from?"

"We were provided with a transcript of statements made by the two local independent Heroes who first entered this Dungeon. Unfortunately, at this time we have not been able to obtain recordings of the interviews, or direct access to the witnesses themselves for questioning."

A round of grumbles and mutters swept around the table in the wake of that revelation.

"We have no need for your speculation," said the Dongfeng representative through his interpreter. "Just give us the information that is confirmed."

The other officers nodded in agreement.

Tomlinson glanced at Doctor Rinzler, who up to this point in the meeting had remained silent. Immediately, every other pair of eyes around the table shifted to stare at her as well.

"...professor?" he prompted.

"Er, yes." She jerked to her feet, haphazardly spreading the folders and pages in front of her. Without looking up, the blonde woman began speaking, words spilling out at an excited rapid-fire pace "As you are all no doubt aware, this isn't the first time one of these abnormal Dungeons has appeared." She laughed. "I guess if this was the first, we wouldn't already have a name for them, huh?"

A moment of awkward silence followed.

"Um, okay. Anyway. This one is particularly unusual, in that..."

Having already heard it all before, Ken tuned out most of the lecture that followed. Instead, he took the opportunity to study the reactions of his opposite numbers from the other guilds.

The Dongfeng representative listened impassively as the attendant next to him spoke quietly into his ear. Not once did his bushy eyebrows so much as twitch. If this Hero thing didn't work out for him, Ken decided, he'd probably be able to make a second career as a poker player.

Meaningful glances passed repeatedly between the Regulators woman and the man Memento Mori sent. He had no clue what that meant, but it bore further investigation. Those two guilds – at least publicly – were barely willing to operate in the same country together. Was their feuding just a front, or was something else going on here? He'd have to send a fax to the guild headquarters and request biographies on both of them.

Mrs. Jones (James?) leaned in excitedly when Rinzler mentioned that the Heroes had (reportedly) exited the Dungeon in possession of a bag full of (reportedly) pure twenty-four-karat gold coins. That was a typical Fortune Days attitude, counting the payday before the job was even started. The way her blue eyes were sparkling, he doubted that she'd even heard a word from the rest of the briefing.

"...we're talking about a message that was first transcribed in phonetic English, then translated into Spanish, then possibly redacted, then summarized, then translated back into English and passed on to us." The woman pushed up her thick-lensed glasses, which had begun to slide precipitously down her nose, then shrugged. "Between the incomplete nature of the source and the high probability of transcription issues, I'm not confident in saying we have a complete picture of what the Dungeon Monster's request was."

"Having said that, our understanding is that the Monster demanded to speak to specific Heroes, by name, as a precondition for any future cooperation. 'Shawn', 'Naomi', 'Philadelphia'." She ticked off her fingers as she said each word, before looking up at the assembled guild officers. "And before you ask, no, we have no idea why a Dungeon Monster would make a request like that. Your guess is as good as ours."

"Still," she continued breathlessly, "the mere suggestion that a Dungeon's Monsters could communicate with us – in English, no less! - is simply astonishing. My entire field of research has been totally upended overnight. If there's even the slightest chance that this offer is genuine, we must do absolutely everything in our power to see it through. This is a priceless opportunity for the advancement of human knowledge! It's our duty to –"

"Thank you, professor," the undersecretary said, cutting her off with the weary finality of a man unwilling to reopen an argument that has been closed numerous times already. "The United States government agrees that reaching an agreement with this... intelligent being is a priority, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. There's just one problem." He paused meaningfully. "We don't actually know which Heroes the Dungeon Monster wants."

"Two Heroes named Shawn and Naomi from Philadelphia, obviously," said the Fortune Days representative in a bored tone, her mind clearly still occupied by bags of gold. "It only took a couple days for my guild to find and recruit them, and we brought them over with us. How soon can we head in?"

Tomlinson shook his head. "If it was that easy, we'd never have contacted your guilds."

"No offense," he added quickly, when it looked like the Memento Mori officer was about to say something rude in response. "However, both of those names are surprisingly common. There are sixty Shawns and twenty-five Naomis for every hundred thousand residents in Pennsylvania. What's worse is the names were transcribed phonetically, so we've had to account for possible variations: Sean, D'Shaun, Shauna, LaShawn, Noemi, and so on. You'd be surprised how many of those are residing in the greater Philadelphia area, even limiting the pool to awakened Heroes."

"So... what. You had us bring all of them here, and we just send in groups of them in at random until this talking Dungeon Monster tells us that we brought it the right ones?" the Memento Mori officer wondered. "That's the best plan your people could come up with?"

"Well, I wouldn't phrase it precisely like that..."

"Good lord, that really is the best plan they could come up with. What happens if these Dungeon Monsters get mad at us for bringing them the wrong Heroes? Or what if they turn hostile? Hell, what if this whole setup was some sort of trap from the start?"

"Didn't you read the briefing? It's just a Category 2 Dungeon," Ken reminded him. "Really, it barely even qualifies as Category 2 – the report said it was still Level 10. Don't tell me your guild can't even manage that?"

The man's dark eyes narrowed at his verbal needling, but didn't rise to the bait. Instead, his attention remained focused on the government bureaucrat.

"Your organizations are all being paid very well for their parts in this operation. If you anticipate trouble, I expect you to make your own contingency plans. It's not my job to hold your hands."

The Dongfeng representative nodded sharply, then spoke up in clear, if accented, English.

"Acceptable. And how shall we decide which party is to enter first?"