7/6
Jun's House
3:05 AM
4 days until the raid boss.
“He's moving far south,” Jose tells me after I open the door.
“Uh, it's 3 AM Jose.” I'm in my boxers, having just been woken up by banging on my front door.
“Your brother, I think he's on a plane.” Jose closes his eyes. “I think he's heading for Australia.”
I attempt to rub tiredness from my eyes. It does not work. “That's where we're doing staging for the raid boss.”
“Yeah. Jun, I think it's time you talked to people about him. Like Davis. Or that one guy on the President's staff. Will Mounds.”
I hang my head. I know he's right. I can't afford to let my brother interfere with the raid boss fight, or let him do whatever else fuckery he's planning on. I wanted to deal with him myself. But it's looking like that's not going to happen.
“Okay, but that's an 18 hour flight. It'll wait until morning. Go back to bed, Jose.”
He nods and says, “you make calls or I will.” He walks away into the quiet Carrollton night. It's only then that I realize he'd come over with just a towel around his waist.
---
7/6
Jun's House
9:25 AM
4 days until the raid boss.
I make two extremely awkward calls in the morning.
Jetta Davis, current head of the Army Rangers, sounds like she'd suspected something, but didn't have confirmation. She says she'll have to kick it up the chain of command. There aren't Rangers in or on their way to Australia anytime soon, so there's not much she can do on her own.
Will Mounds sounds less than surprised. “Ahem, yes, Mr. Han, we've been tracking your brother as well. We're aware of his location and activities. And, what he's alleged to have done.”
“You guys already knew?”
“Well, yes, Mr. Han. The FBI doesn't like to tell you about their research methods, but apparently they matched certain key functions of the Dracosys to your brother's online story. The class system is the same, I believe.”
“Oh.” That... Makes sense. Somebody at the FBI had to do searches for all the keywords that pop up in Dracosys language, and could have put it together that way.
“Mr. Mounds, are they going to kill my brother?”
“That's not the plan. He can tell us a lot about the others involved. He could be our first real witness to a global crime.”
“I don't want to admit it, but he's strong. He's got some powerful magic that rips through anything. If he doesn't want to cooperate-”
“Mr. Han, let me assure you that the President is aware of this situation and has told all parties involved to treat him as a high priority informant. We want him alive and in a mood to cooperate.”
My Wisdom is telling me there's a lot more going on, but I'm not sure if I want to know more. Maybe just hoping he'll be brought in for questioning is how I should be thinking.
“Alright, I'm sure you're busy, Mr. Mounds. Thanks for the reassurance.”
“Not a problem, Mr. Han. And if you think you have more information, please feel free to contact me again. Even if I can't do anything about it, I'll know who to send you to.”
He hangs up. I slump down in a recliner. I feel anxious. I can fight monsters myself. That's not a problem. It's letting people act without me being there that drives me up the wall. At this point, I know I'm stronger than I was when we fought. I think that I can take him now. I think that I could subdue him.
But I don't know about others. I don't know if they'll talk to him, and if that fails, they'll just blow his head off from a thousand yards away. Jose's not the only expert sniper. I know others are capable of bringing him down. Probably.
How does superman deal with being superman, knowing that no matter what, bad things will happen in other places? That, if only he'd been there, he could have made a difference? Again, probably depends on the writer.
Stolen story; please report.
7/6
The upstairs office of Pathbreakers HQ
10:50 AM
We're spending the day figuring out what to do with the Amendment Proposals. So far we've got the Adventurer's Guild idea, which we're combining with the system shop idea. Both get us stuff, but would benefit everyone else as well. We're also proposing Jose's dungeon break scaling. We've got two more scrolls, but are split on what, if anything, we should do with them.
Adventurer's Guild.
A location may be declared an Adventurer's Guild by the agreement of at least 10 members of the proposed guild.
Adventurer's guilds give housing, training respite and other support features to members. The guild may be improved by spending Dracosys-generated currency. Functions such as shops, a bar, restaurant, beds, enchanters, smiths and armorers can be purchased for Dracosys-generated currency.
Quests may be generated by the Dracosys itself or by the Guild Leader. A quest board will be placed in each Adventurer's Guild, and quests will be posted there. Dracosys-generated quests may appear in certain Guilds or in all Guilds at once, as the Dracosys deems fit.
Each Guild has one Guild Leader, and a number of officers equal to 10% of the number of guild members. The Guild Leader and Guild Officers have control over the Guild's upgrades. They also control who retains membership, and under what circumstances.
There's a bunch of statistics below the general rules. The actual functions and numbers are laid out in a similar format to the Dracosys rules we got from my brother, to increase the chances of it being accepted by the Dracosys.
Dungeon Break Scaling
Dungeon Breaks will scale in difficulty based on the opposition ready to face the breaks.
The highest tier of monster that will appear is equal to the highest step class within 1000 feet of the dungeon, calculated each hour right before monsters are released.
The number of monsters released is equal to the number of Leveled within 1000 feet of the dungeon.
Again, there's a bunch of legalese following that which basically combines to mean “monsters of equal number and equal strength to the Leveled opposition, with minimum numbers if there's no Leveled around.”
So for example, if there's a 5th step and three 2nd steps, the dungeon can spit out a tier 5 and three tier 2s. Which is still pretty lethal, but it's better than dropping 23 tier 5s on that same group.
We had to add the 1000 feet thing because that seems to be a standard measurement length inside the Dracosys. I'm pretty sure my brother has no fucking idea how long 1000 feet is and he used it because it sounded cool.
Jose is leaving. Shit. I look over at him from across the conference table. He doesn't look any different. He doesn't look either guilty or like he's particularly happy about leaving.
Basically everyone is here, including our support staff. Which includes people whose names I can't remember, because I've improved my Memory stat, but that only helps when you pay attention. Janey? Hector? Yeah, that guy is Hector.
“I've been thinking about transparency,” Hector says. “Like, making it possible to see or check the inner workings of the Dracosys. Or at least making it give notes when it updates the system.”
“That's interesting, Luis,” Mercy says, and writes it on the whiteboard. Luis! His name is Luis. Okay, now I'll remember it.
There's a bit more talk about getting more info from the Dracosys, when I think about the System Scan ability I have. “I think giving people System Scan wouldn't violate the rules, and would improve a lot. Most people don't know what magic items do unless they have a System Scout classed person around.”
Parker begrudgingly says, “I took the Scout class just to get that one ability.” She'd really taken it so someone on Team Phoenix would have it during missions. She's a real team player.
“Some kind of ability swap could solve that,” Madeline offered. “Give people more ways to get the scan.”
It would kill two birds with one stone. People talk about how an ability swap system would work without it being too beneficial for humanity.
I think about what my goal is. To break the system. In the usual way, I'm breaking the system with Synergist, mixing and matching abilities in ways that they really shouldn't be able to. But, on the actually fucking up the system route, I'm stuck. I can keep blasting apart Dracosys sites, sure. But... Honestly if I was an AI in control of the Dracosys, I'd probably figure out that I'd need to put up more powerful sites eventually. That's my long term fear, that more difficult sites replace the easier ones we're clearing out.
I don't think we can actually make a rule to give us a huge advantage. The system rules are pretty well laid out, and one of the primary ones, “kill them humans” precludes a lot of amendments that would save humanity.
Sigh. If only I could just punch the system itself real good. Wait. Is that a thing?
I interrupt the ability swap talk. “Hey, sorry but what do you think it would look like if we could literally fight the system? Like give it a punchable face.” I address my query to Mercy and Gwen L'Ronge, who is still with us. They're leading the group, and are standing at the big whiteboard.
There's a second of silence, then a cascade of answers. I won't bore you with the hour and a half convo, but we came up with this:
Etheric Elementals
Excess Etheric energy may be accumulated by the Dracosys and formed into Etheric Elementals. These creatures may be deployed in addition to or instead of dungeon monsters inside dungeons or during dungeon breaks.
That should help reduce the Dracosys's extra energy, which is apparently a thing. When I bring up my idea of new Dracosys sites cropping up, Gwen confirms that's an option, but would cost the system's Etheric energy supplies. Making punchable personas would also use up energy, hopefully delaying that outcome.
With any luck, the Dracosys makes the elementals talk and spill secrets... Nah, that could never happen.
Jose is leaving. I still feel gutted, but also... I understand. He's got kids. Kids who need a dad. And he's a good dad. It's just...
I know for a long time, since the cave, really, I've had him by my side. When I got out of the service, he called me and told me to come live with him in Carrollton. He didn't ask, he told me to. I didn't object. Since then, I got a job at the Get! store, and he got part time work there during school hours. We've spent hundreds of hours in Destiny 2, fighting aliens and robots together. We escaped the Get! dungeon together. We formed the Pathbreakers together. We've drunk together and I told him about all the shit in my family's history.
I have to stand on my own now. I've depended on him for so long. I've been using a one-legged guy as a crutch. Well, he got the leg back, anyways. But my point is, that I've always had him there to keep me going. To keep me from going down a dark path. I think, and this is my enhanced Wisdom talking, that I didn't value my life for a long time after the cave. But he was always there. Always telling me that there was something we were going to do next week. Always there to tell me not to just sit alone, to get on Destiny with him. He helped me get through the darkest time in my life, just by being a friend. Just by making me enjoy my life, even if just a little.
Jose is leaving. He's just down the street. He's with his kids. He's with his wife. He's just going to be there for them, like he has been for me.
I don't want to make a scene but I gotta tell him, so I send him a text.
Me: Hey, I love you, man. You've been there for me when no one else was.
Jose: You finally put points into Wisdom?
Me: lol yes
Jose: You just needed someone in your corner. Since nobody in your family could do it. Now you've got Mercy for that.
Me: I hadn't thought about it that way.
Jose: You can't marry me so it has to be her.
Me: oh, I know! Y'all don't even know how awesome she is!
Jose: Jun, if you talk about her thighs one more time...
Me: Look, I'm a gentleman, so I can't go into detail... But DAMN she thirsty
Jose: gross dude.
“Jun!” comes Mercy's voice. She doesn't seem thirsty right now. More annoyed.
“Yeah, I agree,” I wisely say.
Gwen, in her French-Canadian accent asks, “to what are you agreeing to, Mr. Han?”
“To whatever Mercy thinks.” I got this.