Mama Grace was running a surf and turf special today. I didn't ask where any of the components had come from, just accepted a plate of something that passed for breaded shrimp and a purple steak with all the fixings. Sage and I dove right into our plates. When I was about halfway through, Mama Grace came back with a pitcher of sweet tea to refill my cup and another woman with her.

The woman had a pair of dogs with her, both of them the little frizzy, yappy kind I’ve never liked much. Give me a dog that can chase down the bird you just shot any day. Sage exclaimed and slid out of her chair right away, crouching on the floor and holding her hands out to the dogs. "Come here!"

"This is Alison," Mama Grace said. "She's going to be your new raid manager."

“Raid manager?” I looked the woman over. She looked maybe forty years old, so probably that was her real age. The Reality Engine rejuvenated anyone older than that down into their mid thirties like grandpa. She had a pleasant round face, dishwater blond hair cut just above her shoulders, and wore glasses. The Reality Engine also healed most eye problems. Probably the glasses were part of her class.

“I’m Shad Williams of Team Twofeather," I said, standing up and extending my hand. "Won't you sit down, ma'am?"

"Certainly.” She gave me a genuine smile, sat down, and pulled a paper out of her inventory. Alison slid it across to me. Nobody but Juana bothered to use paper here. I picked it up. It said: “Resume of Alison Grinnel, Personnel Management.” Then it listed a bunch of jobs in HR.

“Ok, I can see this being useful. I’ll put you in touch with Arjun.”

“Flip it over, please,” she told me.

I did. On the back, written by hand, was an addendum.

Class: Dog Lady. It’s like a cat lady, but with dogs. Then she had listed her abilities, none of which looked particularly combat focused, like [Walk the Dog]: Your base walking speed is decreased by 15% but you gain a boost to charisma and are more persuasive to other miners.”

Below that my eyes seized on a relevant heading. Six years experience leading raids in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. She then listed three big ones that I had heard of, though never played myself. She had led 40 man, 25 man, and 20 man raid teams and achieved server first on multiple of them.

“Ok, I’m interested. Let’s talk.”

Mama Grace brought her a cup of ice tea. She picked it up and took a sip. “I’m not a great raider myself,” she said without preamble. “I studied strats and did my job but I’m no theorycrafter. What I was good at was raid coordination. For instance, if you’ve got a forty man raid, how many need to be healers? How many ranged DPS? Do we have someone to provide all of the needed deep off for the boss? How many tanks do we need in a fight? I also regularly served as heals team coordinator on the bigger fight.”

“Explain?” I leaned forward.

Sage, down on the floor with the dogs, interrupted. “First, tell me what their names are and how you brought them along?”

“Those are Jock and Willie,” Alison said. "I've actually got a bunch more and a pair of cats I don't know what to do with. They're in my inventory. "

"Really?" I was surprised. As far as I knew, you couldn't store live creatures in your inventory.

"Yes, "Alison said. “It’s a special trait for my class. You see, I was at the vet with Jock and Willie for their yearly physical when the event happened. It took me, two vet techs, a mom and son there to get their new puppy his shots, and the contents of half the building. That included a bunch of animals waiting for or recovering from surgery. We couldn’t put them in inventory at the time, so we —” she hesitated. “Four of us took the ones who could walk and escaped with them. Milla, one of the techs, wouldn’t leave the others. Even with the countdown.”

I closed my eyes. “I understand.”

“Then when we were offered classes, I saw this ability.” She tapped an ability on her list, [Petsitter]. She hadn’t written out what it did. “That lets me store any nonsentient living creature in my inventory. Doesn’t work on the things the reality engine generates, though. So I took all the good boys and girls we had and am carrying them around. I have several abilities that let me unleash them in combat but I’m so afraid they’ll be killed. I know you removed the human death penalty. Do you know if that stands for animals?”

“I have no idea. We don’t have anyone else on the team with pets. I’ll see if Veda knows. Did they eat SoulCoins or anything?”

“They did, but it didn’t seem to do anything. No abilities or intelligence boosts, if that’s what you’re asking.” She looked fondly at the pair of dogs. “They’re just my same friends who’ve been with me for the past eight years. I don’t know what I’ve done without them.”

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

“Can I adopt one of the cats?” Sage asked. “It could be my mascot, I’ll get it a cowboy hat to wear and teach it tricks!”

“No,” I said firmly, thinking of all the problems that would cause. “All right, Alison, I'm convinced that I want you on our team. With that kind of experience, we need you. Are you willing to join our guild?”

She nodded. "Yes, I've already talked it over with Mama Grace and I am ready to team up."

I sent her an invite to Misfits. She accepted. I immediately pulled her full profile up on my guild officer’s interface. Juana was trying to get me to use that more, but I always forgot to bother. Now I had access to Alison’s full profile.

She was only level 2, which worried me. She must have avoided fighting in Phase One. Her health was a minuscule 45 points. She had 20 points in Charisma — almost as many as Sage — and the rest were scattered around randomly. I winced. “Look, don't take this the wrong way, but it doesn't seem as though you've got much combat experience. "

"I know. But I do think my raiding knowledge will be invaluable for you. As soon as I heard about Phase Three, I knew I had to come help out Team Twofeather.” She hesitated. “I was a Lotus Eater,” she admitted.

That made sense. If she’d spent most of the last two phases hiding, that explained a lot. “No shame in that. If you’re willing to help now, that’s enough.”

“I am, and I’m ready to start immediately. Mama Grace had me approach you first, but when I heard the theme for Phase Three I started putting a team together. A couple of them are here waiting for you.”

I had eaten most of my lunch. I glanced around the restaurant, which was bustling like usual, trying to guess who Alison’s friends were. They made it easy by waving to me. A table in the far corner had five people around it; two women, three men. I stood up. “That’s them?”

Alison lead me over. Sage followed, the dogs tucked under her arms. I smiled as I approached the table. “Hi, I’m Shad. Alison says I should talk to you.”

“We all know who you are,” one of the women said. She was about my age, red-headed and pretty. She had a splash of freckles across her cheeks. She looked me over and smiled. “You’re even cuter close up then when we saw you on stage the other day, isn’t he, Lauren?”

“Now that he’s gone all red, sure,” the other girl about her age said. Lauren had darker skin and her hair in a thousand beaded braids. She wore scrubs. So did two of the men.

“Are you healer classes?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Alison said. “Like I said, during raiding my particular expertise was managing heals teams. From the videos Colonel Ames brought us, your fights have been kind of ad-hoc. Sage has a nice little heal, sure, but you guys mostly seem to rely on potions. That’s not going to work here.”

I thought about how the dwarves had managed in the Podaga fight. They’d had what seemed to be a dedicated healing team. It hadn’t been enough for them. “I’ve got more for you to watch. I’d appreciate your analysis. Once we’re done here, I’d like you to head for our outpost and ask Arjun about it.”

Alison nodded. “Sounds good. If you’ll let me, I’ll coordinate for the first fight and we can adapt.”

“Anything the rest of you want from me?” I asked. I was trying not to be too suspicious, but this seemed ridiculously convenient for us. “What is it you’re hoping to get, here?”

The girl who wasn’t Lauren blushed. She giggled and looked away. One of the men spoke up. He had tanned skin, like Grandpa after a day out in the sun, and wrinkles up by his eyes that made me think he had been rejuvenated by the Reality Engine. Otherwise he looked about thirty. “Captain Williams, what you and Team Twofeather have been doing is inspirational. I can only speak for myself, but I was lost. Yanked away from my home and family, put to work by aliens, fighting for my life with a set of rules that made no sense — when I learned about the safe zone, I hauled ass there as fast as I could. Had been there probably two months by the time you arrived and it turns out an eternal vacation wears thin. I was about three days from becoming one of the sleepers.”

I remembered the creepy catacomb full of unconscious humans that Ames had showed me, and shivered. “Any luck waking them up?”

“Cronos beamed your inspirational speech into everyone’s dreams and asked for volunteers,” another of the men said. He looked tired. He was also wearing scrubs, green ones, and had a stethoscope around his neck. “My name is Chen. I was a radiologist on Earth and I’m a [Radiologist] again here. I’ve got some abilities that I took thinking I could use them to help protect my team. We tried running missions. Our backer told us it was the fastest way out of debt. We managed two. Then disaster. All four of my friends died in front of me. It — I couldn’t take it. I found Cronos, and hid.”

“But you’re here now.”

“Your sister woke me up.” He looked pensive, staring down at the table. “I have two little girls back on Earth about her age. I miss them so damn much. I was thinking about how they would be ashamed of me, hiding away where it was safe while a child fought for their future.”

That was a big burden to lay on me. I’d promised to help fight for Earth, and I meant it, but I didn’t have a very good idea how. I cleared my throat. “Glad to have you aboard.”I extended all five an invite to Misfits. “We’ll be gearing up for our attempt soon. Everyone move out. I’ll meet you back at headquarters.”

I sent a quick message to the [Too Many Cooks] channel, letting Grandpa, Juana, and the other department heads know we’d just recruited a bunch of healers.

Great, Juana sent back at once. We actually had a pair of men who should make good tanks show up and volunteer. This is going to be a pretty decent dry run. Are you on your way back?

I’ve got another stop to make. I’ll be in time for the fight, I promise.

I signed off and turned to Sage. “Can you escort them back? I need to do something.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh, like what?”

I cast around for an excuse that wouldn’t make her more suspicious. I didn’t have time to visit the Hub… “I owe you a present,” I said. “For your heroic above-the-call-of-duty efforts to keep me from killing myself too often. I’m going to talk to someone about it and I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Oh, in that case, sure.” She grinned at me and turned to the new recruits. “Come on with me. I’m going to introduce you to Juana. You make sure you’re nice to her. Mama Grace is her actual mother and she’s like the scary boss lady so don’t get on her bad side.”

I slipped out of the restaurant and sent a message to Warren Black. I’m free. Where do we meet?

The reply came back at once. Two blocks left, three blocks toward the elevator. Look for the shack with the hubcap hanging over the door.