The day came for Max to meet Amy for lunch. From the moment he'd set out, Lavinia seemed grouchy about the entire situation. "What is it that you don't like about Amy?" asked Max. He walked along the pathway to the summoner at the gate, his four guarding golems following at a discreet distance.

"It's not that I don't like her," said Lavinia. "It's that I think you're wasting your time.”

“What do you mean by that?" asked Max.

"Well, you are not on your world right now. You're in a quartet. If you're going to invest time in people, you should invest time in fellow warriors, Challengers, people who can help you on your way, or at least people who share your same values and energy. Amy might be a nice girl, I don't know, but I’m not sure what she can offer you right now past what ever other woman in the universe has. Like, what the hell can she possibly know about you, the reincarnated Chassa de Milo, the number one student in Summoner academy, the number one target for Mystic Spear Path Lifers, a goddess’ champion, and a three-Path Challenger?"

Max frowned. "People can't be categorized just by their achievements or their talents. My mom back on Earth hasn't really accomplished anything great, but I still care about her."

"Of course you do," said Lavinia. "She's your mother. She's your family. You've known her your whole life."

"Yeah, well, I know Amy too, and she seems like a good person," said Max. "More importantly, when I talk to her, I feel like in some ways maybe things get a little bit better, that my stresses aren't quite so stressful."

"Max Cunningham. All you've ever done is buy or sell weapons to her. Where are you getting this from?"

He shrugged. "It's just a feeling. And besides, I'm just going to have lunch with her. And I realized yesterday that I don't really know much about the Quartet Born."

"You're probably better off not knowing," Lavinia muttered.

"What was that?"

"Never mind. I just think you’re acting like someone a fraction your age.”

“On the contrary, it’s because of my long life that I’ve come to appreciate people for more than just their stats on paper. For instance, my accomplishments in my past life were lengthy, but I was a bastard who didn’t really care about others until I was mellowed with a family. There is logic in some of what you have said, but it ignores the reality that life is complex. Friendship and relationships are not so easily quantified.”

“Whatever. I've said my piece. Do what you need to do. But if you’re just thinking with little Max, I’m never going to forget about this."

He rolled his eyes. Since Lavinia was almost always with him, she knew for a fact that merely spending a night with a woman would be stupidly easy. Just that week, two women in the Summoner academy had asked him back to their dorm. One had handed him a note. Like always, he’d just ignored them.

Despite saying she was done, Lavinia continued grumbling. Max let her keep complaining to herself. Ever since he'd contracted Tom, Lavinia had been a little bit surlier than usual. She was obviously putting effort into acting the same as she usually did, and Max didn't have the heart to tell her that he’d noticed and she'd failed miserably. Grief could be a tricky thing and Lavinia had known Tom for a long time. Of all people, Max understood how difficult that could be. He'd lost most of his childhood on Earth to grief for things that had happened in a different life.

Max enjoyed his walk to the Summoner academy gate. It gave him a little more time to think about what he was about to do. He was meeting Amy today at a cafe he'd never been to before called The Little Wing.

Once he was back in the central area, it wasn’t too difficult to find. The building was on the other side of the mall, a place he'd barely been to before, and really only seen from a distance. When Max arrived, he was pleased to discover it didn't seem very busy, and when he walked in, Amy was already seated at a table in the corner. She waved at him and smiled nervously.

Max took a seat and looked at the menu. "Is this a place where there are servers, or do we order at the counter?"

"We order at the counter," she said. "They can be kind of slow, though. I kind of already ordered for you since you told me what kind of things you like. But since you offered to pay, I made sure I didn't order the most expensive things on the menu."

Max chuckled. "All right, sounds good to me. I guess you really did pay attention. I told you I'm not too picky, huh?"

She flashed him a bright smile. "Absolutely. Not only that, to be honest with you, I hate the whole…discussing-the-menu thing with someone you're eating with. This way, I can spend more time chatting and less time thinking about sandwiches."

"Okay, so, you wanted to meet up. Here I am."

"Oh geez. No pressure, huh?" Amy chuckled nervously. "You know, you can be kind of intimidating."

Max gave her a weird look. "Intimidating? What are you talking about?"

"You're just so self-confident and direct, and it's just strange. I have a hard time explaining it. The other customers I deal with, the other students in the quartet who are as self-confident as you are, usually also arrogant. A lot of them are the lifers that come in and think that just because they have mommy or daddy's homeworld money that they are special too. But you... You're totally different. It's hard to explain.

“One thing that is easier to explain is that with people like that, what they want is obvious. Whether it’s weapons, money, or leering at my body, whatever it is they’re after is always obvious. Believe it or not, someone just stopping to chat and…treating you like a person is not exactly common, at least not in my experience. You stood out right away.”

She went quiet for a while and then said, "I actually have to come clean with you, both for my conscience's sake and also so that maybe we can at least really be friends."

"What are you talking about?" asked Max.

"Well, the truth is, yes, I know you as my customer, but ever since you first showed up, I've kind of taken an interest in you, and I've paid attention to the gossip. So I've heard about a lot of the things you've done in the Quartet. And I even heard about how you killed Hannibal."

"Hannibal?" asked Max.

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"The Quartet born man who worked in the dungeon building. He’s dead now. I think you had something to do with it."

"Oh." Max schooled his face into a neutral position. "Is that a problem?"

She shook her head. "No, not at all. The opposite, in fact. You have no way of knowing this, but Hannibal has been a terrible, terrible man for many years. A lot of us have feared him, especially girls."

Max stayed quiet and listened.

"Hannibal has liked groping and worse over the years. You see, you might not know this, in fact, you probably don't, but we don't really have any defenses in the Quartet. Sure, in shops we do. Not only are there defenses in the shops, there are steeper punishments too. If we get killed by one of the students, they can actually be expelled."

"Expelled?" asked Max.

"Yes. Demerits are one thing, and from what I understand, if a student gets too many demerits and they're broke, their time in the Quartet is very unpleasant. There are a few things that are usually deemed bad enough for a student to be expelled. Expelling a student means forcing them back to their body on their original world."

Max blinked. "Just like if they died in the dungeon?"

"Exactly," said Amy, nodding.

"I had no idea that was even a thing," said Max.

"Well, from what I understand, the Quartet staff don’t advertise it. The known deterrents to stealing or assault in the shops are usually enough . Besides, if a student has already gotten enough demerits that they couldn't eat anymore and also didn't have any money, it might actually incentivize them to try killing central area clerks."

"I see," said Max. "Basically, for students like that, it would cut their time in the Quartet short, and they didn't care about the power they'd bring back with them anyway."

"Exactly. And like I said, there are the defenses. As you likely know, the different shops in the Quartet have strong defenses in place for the Quartet workers. But on top of that, what you probably don't know–and all of us are encouraged not to tell students–is that we have direct access to our shops.”

“Direct access?”

“Yes. From our living area and to all the other shops in the Quartet too. So, with very few exceptions, Quartet workers don't really need to go outside of shops at all. That’s why you don’t see us on the streets very often. If we stick to shops and our living areas, we stay protected. But that's only protected from students.”

“It's not protected from each other, huh?" asked Max.

"Exactly. And we still get punished if we kill each other. So the Quartet born have had to figure out their own methods of justice. The problem with that is, and I assume every Quartet varies, but in our quartet, things can get kind of murky around anything other than really obvious crimes. So certain people–like Hannibal–would skirt around our self-made laws. People like that can be terrible forever without ever truly getting in trouble for it unless some other Quartet-born fights them. But the risk of death is always there, and even if not, if the system decides someone is too close to death, the attacker can be punished. The bad people usually know better than to start fights they can’t win."

"That sounds, uh, not ideal," said Max.

"Yes, definitely. It made walking the hallways of the Quartet-born living areas kind of scary, and sometimes... and it's why a lot of us, especially us girls, never walk anywhere alone."

Max thought, Wow, the universe is really rotten just about anywhere you look. He asked, "So how many people know that I'm the one who killed Hannibal?"

"By now, pretty much everybody, or at least all the Quartet born who as clerks, which is most of us. It’s why you have special permissions now."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Max.

Suddenly the person working behind the counter called Max's name. He looked up and saw a couple of trays waiting on the table.

“I’ll grab it,” said Max.

“You sure you can get it all?”

“No problem.”

"Okay, I'll wait," said Amy. She gave him a dimpled smile.

Max got up to get the trays, and when he approached the counter, the woman on the other side asked, "Are you Max? Max Cunningham?"

“That's me.”

She gave him a look that was halfway between embarrassed and grateful. "Thank you. Thank you for what you've done."

He blinked. Over the course of two lifetimes now, Max had killed a decent number of people. It had been a long time since he’d gotten this reaction after killing somebody, especially someone he'd killed for mostly selfish reasons. He mumbled an awkward thanks, grabbed his trays, and took them back to the table. It looked like Amy had ordered him a couple of turkey sandwiches, which he was more than fine with.

"So you were saying?" he asked, and spared no time immediately tucking into his food.

Amy chuckled at his ravenous behavior and then gave him a genuine grin. "If a worker wishes to bring a student into the Quartet born living area, they need to petition it. That means a formal request that the elders need to vote on. But in your case, you have been given an honorary pass already."

"What? Just for killing a guy?"

"Yes. Well, not just that, also your behavior in the schools. It is obvious to us that you are very different from most of the other students who are either powerless or tyrants."

“I killed a lot of people. They come back to life. Aren’t the Quartet born worried that I’ll do the same there?”

“No. First off, you’re a student, so the punishment if you murder one of us is the same anywhere. Also, several of the elders really hate some of the Mystic Spear students. Lastly, I, uh, might have vouched for you.”

Max thoughtfully finished chewing his food and said, "So... I'm able to visit the workers' area of the Quartet, where you all live, whenever I want?"

"More or less," said Amy, "but somebody needs to accompany you. I'm not going to give you the code to the portal."

"Code to the portal," Max silently mouthed. He began eating again, mulling over everything Amy had said. She ate too, and he got the impression that she was carefully watching him for any other reactions.

To change the subject, while he further considered what she'd said earlier, he asked, "So you work in the Quartet and all the other Quartet born do too. How often do you get to eat in a restaurant like this?"

"Once in a while. We don't actually get paid in money; we get paid in vouchers. And the vouchers can add up to whatever a restaurant will charge for food or services or whatever. That's also how we save up enough resources to buy new outfits at the mall and whatnot. But the way clothing usually works is that every Quartet-born, receives a new set of clothing every half year when they're children, and then after we become an adult, you get one new set per year unless we petition for a new wardrobe based on our body changing or if we get pregnant. Clothing replacement is possible too, and it’s another way some people can get new clothes if their bodies change. They just have an ‘accident.’"

"I see," said Max. "So if you work, how much do you get from it? And I'm sorry if this is too personal."

"Oh no, it's fine. In fact, it's refreshing. This is the first time a student has ever asked about my life or how the Quartet actually works." She frowned and then said, "The simplest way to explain it is, at first when we're learning a job, we get room and board and not much else. But the better we get at the job, the more we'll earn. So for instance, with my job at the weapons store, after I became an expert on armor and weaponry, this meant I could make the store more money by doing deals and trades without having to message the owner. After that I was able to start getting higher pay and a small commission. So I do better than most, I think."

"Really?" said Max. His meal came with a pickle, which reminded him of Earth and meant the practice of pickling stuff like cucumbers must be universal. He usually didn't eat pickles that were included with sandwiches, but he absentmindedly munched on his and decided it was delicious.

"So what if you are Quartet-born and you don't work or you don't have a job?" asked Max.

Amy looked sad. "This Quartet's pretty lucky right now, because we have enough jobs for everybody if they want to work. But I've heard it wasn't that way in the past. And everybody who doesn't work has to live in the Holdover Bay. The Holdover Bay is basically just a large set of tunnels with cots and not much else. Everybody living in the Holdover Bay gets fed three meals a day, but they're really basic, like…gruel sort of stuff. It'll keep you going but not much else. Some workers are stupid and they get mixed into drugs, and all of them end up in the Holdover Bay at some point. Some pull out of it, get better, some don't."

"What's the rest of the area like? Like for workers?" asked Max.

"It's hard to describe," said Amy. "I want to say it's sort of like a mall, but I think you'd have to see it for yourself."

Max nodded and waited politely while she finished the rest of her food. When she was done, she wiped her hands on a napkin and wiggled her eyebrows at him in a humorous way that tried to hide her nervousness. "So what do you think? You want to see it?"

Lavinia grumbled in the back of his head, but Max said, "Sure, why not?"