Dan led Max downtown. Max wished for about the hundredth time for a smart phone. He’d gotten used to the convenience of Earth technology. He also knew he had to call his mom. However, she’d waited a few years, she could wait another day or two.

He looked around at the part of the city they were at, a place that would have been fairly run down even before the world had changed. Now it looked…worse. "So, what are we looking for?"

Dan replied, "Specifically, we're looking for a pawn shop that's really shitty-looking but also has some muscle standing around. It should have security systems better than what you might expect at a rundown pawn shop. Or, I don't know, I'll know it when I see it."

Max nodded, and the two of them walked in silence for a while until Dan pointed at a pawn shop next to a strip club across the street. "I think that one will work.”.

"All right, let's check it out." The two of them crossed the street and approached the pawn shop. Max noticed a beefy guy standing in the shop, just loitering, and also sensed the energy of someone else who was hidden. They weren't strong enough for him to worry about, and they weren't doing anything antagonistic or violent, so he ignored it.

Inside the shop, it was truly a dive. He had seen a few security cameras outside. The level and cost of the security definitely didn't match what it was supposedly actually selling–mostly just old rusted tools and some ancient-looking cordless tool batteries. The woman at the counter was not smiling or making much of any expression. She had a half-eaten bowl of macaroni in front of her.

"Hi," said Max. He sidled up closer to the counter and quietly said, "I have something special to sell. Something that you can only get in dungeons or from monsters."

The woman's expression didn't change, and she just looked him up and down. "Prove it," she spat.

Max took a small piece of magic-infused rock from his backpack and set it on the counter. The woman became very still for a while before she slowly nodded. "You are lucky today.”

"How so?" .

"Well, I'm not always in the market for merchandise like this. There has to be a demand for it. I need to have the money to pay for it, and it needs to be at a time and place where my 'spidey senses' aren't tingling about narcs or cops or worse…Agency employees. Guild, too."

"Oh really?" said Max. "And what makes you think that I'm not a guild or Agency employee?"

She laughed. "It's super obvious to people that deal with guildies and the fringes of society. Trust me, I know. Besides, you look like shit. There’s no way an Agency employee would come in here looking like that. Even the undercover types have polished shoes."

Max eyeballed the two men loitering around the store. Another had appeared. He watched their body language carefully. Neither seemed to be spoiling for a fight or ready to attack, so he relaxed minutely.

"So let me level with you," he said. "I am a newly returned Challenger. A Returner, I guess. I happened to kill some monsters on the way here, and I'm trying to get some cash so I can start my life. You might be wondering why I'm telling you this, since I'm basically letting you know I don't know anything right now, including what the stuff on the counter is orth." He pointed a finger at Dan. "And you might be wondering who he is too. No need to wonder. Instead, I will give you a very simple reason why I just told you my life story."

He noticed the woman's eyes narrowing slightly as she focused on what he was saying, and Max continued, "You don't know what power level I am. I just got back, and on top of that, I suspect that the way people categorize monsters, the golems I killed for these rocks were not low-ranking. So I'm going to leave it up to you to decide how much money you can make off of this without me later realize that I got mega-screwed."

"What happens if you decide you got screwed?"

He smiled without humor. "Well, I know where this building is. But if you help me, hell, I might even have a warm place in my heart for this pawn shop for the rest of my life. In fact, I might even return to do a lot more business." He left it at that.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him further. The creases and her expression didnt do anything for her looks, but even upon this first meeting, Max knew she wouldn’t care at all. After a few more moments of silently thinking, she quoted him a figure that sounded right–about twice what an average mortgage would be. To one side, Dan gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"Sounds good," said Max. "I'll take it."

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"Good. It was a slow day until you came in," said the woman. "This was a good deal, and I'm glad you stopped by, but I don't hope you take offense when I say that I also hope I never see you again."

"Why is that?" asked Max, genuinely curious.

"There's something about you that makes me nervous as hell."

The men around the store, the barely disguised muscle, perked up at her words. Max ran a gaze over all of them. They went back to pretending to inspect the barely functional cordless drill batteries.

Max didn't say anything further. He pocketed the money that the woman put on the counter without counting it and left the store with Dan in tow.

***

About a half mile from the pawn shop, Max was getting closer to a hotel in the distance, the one he’d chosen to stay at for the night. He pulled the money out of his pocket and examined it under a street light. "So this is the new currency, huh?"

"Yep, that's it," said Dan.

Max thought the new dollar bills looked like fake money used in a game–funny money. Dan had given him a heads up about the new money before going to the pawn shop. Now, each bill had fine amounts of gold interwoven into the fibers, making each one valuable on its own and much harder to fake. Production of this replacement currency, similar with variations for every country around the world, had been sped up through the help of Challengers that had powers that enhanced production. They were even able to convert old dollars into this new currency, given enough gold to implant it with.

While Max had talked to Dan about the subject, he'd learned that in the first year, after the initial monster attacks, and when the world was struggling to get back on its feet, the United States had issued a recall for physical dollars. Trading the old dollars in at government centers hadn't resulted in much of the new currency, also called dollars, but people had gotten some cash in return.

People had still gone in droves to trade their money in, not least of which because some banks had just imploded with all the loss of life, and the old currency had ceased being relevant almost immediately.

The first few months had been rough. Money hadn’t had any value at all–just food, weapons, and other items needed for survival.

Max regarded the strangely heavy paper bills and frowned. "There's other currency than this though, right?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

He pointed at the small collection of bills in his hand. "This is definitely enough for me to do what I need to do tonight, but if we're talking about buying artifacts, or buildings, or things that actually cost a ton of money, how do people handle that?"

"Oh, now I know what you mean. Banks are affiliated with most of the large Challenger guilds.”

“And that's not a conflict of interest?"

"Well, some might think it is, and plenty of people have been petitioning for more power to be given to more banks to open that aren’t directly connected to Challengers, but the truth is, I think the world is still figuring out how in the hell to function."

"I can imagine," said Max, "like police, right?"

"Yes, like police," said Dan. "The average cop with a gun can only stop maybe half of the Challengers that are back, and some of the most powerful would require an entire army to take down. So when people have that kind of power, how do you make them follow the law?"

"I'm guessing you don't," said Max.

Dan laughed nervously. "People talk about how it's a good thing that the most powerful Challengers can make the most money money and have the best lives by not murdering everybody around them…otherwise we'd be in real trouble. Like…we thought the monsters were bad. Imagine if one of the strongest Challengers just went just and took out a city."

"I'm sure other Challengers wouldn’t just sit around and watch it happen. I’m guessing that’s what happens with all the crime that Challengers do. Maybe others are told about it from the cops.”

Dan gave him a searching look. "That’s true, but did you really not know any of this stuff before you killed, you know, everybody in the parking lot?"

“Not really, but I could intuit most of it. Not only that, I was legitimately being threatened so I’m pretty confident about the fact I acted in self defense.”

"Well, like I said, you were right. If somebody acts up, like really bad, Challengers team up to take them down. But they're busy enough and all in cahoots with each other, so somebody has to do something really bad; otherwise, the main thing stopping them from being assholes, at least publicly, are all of the business deals they'll lose."

"Business deals?" Max facepalmed. "Please don't tell me that a bunch of Challengers are influencers now."

"You guessed it, man! Challengers are the new celebrities. Some of the old school celebrities have been marrying, or at least dating some of the powerful Challengers around the world. People joke on the internet that fame used tobe highest at movie stats, but the new elvels are like, Challenger, movie star, rock star, and then everybody else. Maybe politicians are last?

“Politicians still have power?" Max asked.

"Yeah, at least some do. It kind of depends on the country. But some Challengers are still patriotic and signed contracts with their country to officially work for them, usually for a while."

Max was impressed but slightly suspicious too. He'd deliberately chosen somebody who would likely be able to tell him about the lay of the land, but he was becoming surprised by how much Dan actually knew.

"How do you know all this stuff?"

"Didn't I tell you? Challengers are influencers now. You can't get on the internet without seeing Challengers everywhere, and some of them love to talk about themselves."

"Great," sighed Max. He was about to walk in the front door of the lobby to the chain hotel he'd selected. "I'm about to get us both a room. I'll comp you a meal for the night too. If you run away, you don't get your money. And if you run away and try to find somebody to find me, I will find you."

Dan held his hands up in surrender. "I get it. I get it. You're very scary. I saw it, remember? I'm going to hit the bathroom. I'll go to the room you get. But don't blame me if I get shit-faced tonight after I just watched two of my friends probably die."

His veneer of being calm and in control cracked for a second, and Max saw the grief underneath. "Do whatever you gotta do, man," he said.

As Dan walked off to the clearly labeled restroom on one side of the reception area, Max attempted to pay for two rooms with cash. Since the hotel was a chain, apparently they still demanded ID before renting a room out.

"Shit," he cursed under his breath. Not having an ID was seriously becoming a pain in the ass. He moved “getting a new ID” to the top of his to-do list. Eventually, he'd have to get another driver's license, too, since his was probably space dust somewhere in the universe by now. Getting a Challenger card would probably be the quickest way to solve most of his immediate identity problems. He wished he didn't have to wait an entire night before going to do so.

When Dan came out of the bathroom, they had an awkward exchange where Dan had to use his ID in order to get the rooms for the both of them. Luckily, that man had one of his own, even after everything he’d been through.

Upstairs, on the floor with their rooms, Dan disappeared behind his door and didn't come back out at any point to eat, at least not that Max knew of.

For himself, he didn't need to sleep much. So with Lavinia invisibly looking over his shoulder, Max went to the complimentary office area of the hotel and did his best to look everything up on the internet that he could think of, everything that was important, before heading to bed after midnight.

Before he went to sleep, he sat on his bed and said out loud, "I can't believe what that bastard Lance did."

He was frowning, but a smile kept trying to tug on one side of his lips.

"He certainly is a character," Lavinia agreed out loud. “At least now you know he already made it back to Earth.”

Max snorted, laid down, and was immediately asleep.