As Mickey and the teen delvers were walking to the office they found their way blocked by a group of gun toting paramilitaries, clad in skin-tight black and grey camouflage.

‘Aww fuck here we go. Kids unless you want to deal with bridezilla levels of drama, take these keys, go into the office and fill out your after action reports.’

While the rest of the team looked nervous in the presence of so many heavily armed men, Cassowary immediately perked up at them mention of drama.

‘Oh we can’t fill in the forms yet, you haven’t shown us how or even where the forms are. We’d better wait until you’re done here.’ She grinned, eyes sparkling.

The exchange had captured the interest of the paramilitaries, who turned towards them. Now a logo of a crimson wolf head on a black triangle was visible over their hearts.

‘Oh, not these fuckers,’ Mickey muttered recognising the logo.

One of the paramilitaries stepped forwards. Unlike the rest of them this one had removed the arms of his uniform showing off defined muscles, and wasn’t carrying any guns. Mickey pegged him as a metahuman and probably an ‘officer’.

‘Excus-‘ before the buff meta could finish the word Mickey interrupted.

‘Black Wolf Brigade, this is private property and you are trespassing, please fuck off.’

Blonde man blinked in surprise before trying again.

‘We were-‘

‘No, Private property, fuck off.’

‘Listen –‘

‘Private property, fuck off.’

At this point the paramilitary spokesperson was clearly losing patience and attempted to speak over Mickey when he interrupted.

‘As I was SAYING WE WOUld like to conduct an exploration into the nearb-‘

From the beginning of the ‘conversation’ Mickey had been pulling a couple of contingencies out of his dimension, one of them a bugle horn. Mickey was a firm believer that where words might fail, volume would prevail. He put this into practice by interrupting the spokesperson with full volume rendition of ‘Reveille’.

As the last brassy note faded Mickey smiled unpleasantly at the PMC’s covering their ears.

‘Now, let me clarify. This is my property. The metaregion is under my stewardship, and since I haven’t given you reckless, desecrating, incompetents permission to be here, nor do you have permission to explore the metaregion. So. Private property, fuck off. Or I’ll call the cops.’

The PMC spokesperson glared at Mickey. As soon as the man opened his mouth Mickey inhaled and put the bugle to his lips, raising an eyebrow.

The spokesperson shut his mouth and, without a word turned on his heel and stomped out of the guild compound, smoke rising from his uniform.

‘Hmm a pyrokinetic I guess.’

Turning to the teens Mickey found Cassie staring at with something approaching awe.

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‘Holy fuck. You must be the most ANNOYING man alive.’

Mickey coughed out a laugh in surprise as she continued.

‘I mean you just had no fucking give! They had guns and you’re just like “ Eh Fuck off no don’t care.” What if they shot you?’ She said.

‘Well that would have simplified things quite a lot.’ Mickey replied.

Benji asked the next question.

‘What’s your problem with them. It seemed you could have talked to them or at least been more polite.’

Mickey paused at unlocking the office door to scratch his chin before answering.

‘Well for one, they’re glorified mall ninjas pretending to be soldiers and that offends me. Also, their whole company is just awful at running regions. Think of a metaregion like a bee hive. The goal is to get honey and there are three ways to do it.

First, you run in with no equipment or training and get stung to hell for little to no honey. That’s where you guys are.

Second, You go in with proper gear and training. You don’t get stung as much, and you get more honey but not so much you starve the bee’s or damage the hive. That’s what I’ll teach you to be.

Third, You go in with an axe and smash the hive to bits and grab as much honey, wax, royal jelly whatever you can. This either kills the hive or turns it into a insane pissed off city killing abomination hell bent on the destruction of humanity, which renders the entire area around it unliveable until someone else dies cleaning up your mess.’

Mickey paused and took a deep calming breath.

‘Metaphor got away from me a bit at the end there, but you get my point right? Those guys are the worst wildcat cowboys. They get the maximum profit with no eye towards the damage they cause or sustainability because once they’re done they’ll leave and hide in a tax haven somewhere. They just don't care.’

The teens nodded uncertainly.

‘We’ll go over it more in the workshop. For now though, allow me to introduce you kids to the great adult joy of after action reports!’

Alphonse groaned.

‘More paperwork?’

‘Always more paperwork kid. Unless you got a meta paperwork power it’s something like half an hour of paperwork for every five minutes of action, or two hours of boredom. Get used to it.’

‘Hey you never told us what you would do if they shot you.’ Cassowary said as they entered the office building.

‘No I didn’t did I? Look at me being all mysterious and shit. In fact I’m so mysterious I’m still not gonna tell you.’ Mickey smirked.

Mickey moved over to the side of the office and pulled open a draw filled with paper and started explaining the after action report.

‘Okay these are the after action reports. Fill one out each time you leave the dungeon. Now after the first run you’re gonna wanna check this box labelled ‘Routine’ unless something unusual happen. If something does there a box for ‘Significant Achievement’ for good things and bragging rights, And another box for ‘Adverse Action’ If something goes wrong.

The rest of the form is pretty self explanatory, just fill in the date, names and inventory used. On the flip side of the paper there’s the narrative section. Write down what happened as you remember it. For routine reports it doesn’t have to be long or that detailed but for significant or adverse reports I’m going to want details, Okay?’

‘So about those army guys...’ Benji said.

‘Like I said I’ll talk more about them in the workshop next Saturday. Right now you guys need to fill out paperwork.’ Mickey said, waving a filled report in front of Benjamin’s face.

‘Until your report looks like mine you don’t have question rights.’

Benji and Cassie looked frustrated at this, but after a quick look at the bugle Mickey was still carrying they got to work on the reports.

‘Do we include what happened after we left the dungeon?’ asked Rosa.

‘Yes. Include everything that you think is relevant. Even if it happened outside the dungeon or a while ago. Referencing old reports is an art in itself. More on that in the workshop. Prepare to be bored to tears.’

In due time the teenaged delvers filled in the reports and placed them in the appropriate inbox that Mickey directed them to.

Impatiently Benji spoke up.

‘Okay now can you tell us about the army guys?’

Mickey considered it.

‘Okay I’ll give you a summary. First they’re not army. They’re bottom feeding private military companies. Metaregions can contain a lot of valuable stuff. Various companies make money by extracting that stuff and selling it. Those guys are employed by one of the worst companies, Black Hearth Procurement. This metaregion is still in it’s infancy and if I let them in they would have killed it for the only thing it really has of value. The anchor stones. So I told them to fuck off.’

‘But they had guns. They could have shot you.’ Benji said.

‘Ah, right. The guns. Look. I’m a meta and I’ve been around a while, and at some point guns just stopped being scary. Face down someone who can freeze your blood in your veins or can throw an entire building at you, and suddenly bullets fail to impress.’

‘So if you’re a meta what’s your name and classification? What’s your tier?’ Benji asked.

‘Ugh. Okay so first of all, the classification system is crap, and tiers are unreliable to say the least. But if you must know, I’m classified as an internal passive dimensional creator. And I’m upper tier one or tier two. That’s E or D in the American system. Oh, and I’m not on an active roster, being mostly retired, but my codename is, or was Cargo.’

Seeing Benji get ready to ask another question Mickey pre-empted him.

‘And kid, I’m gonna stop you there. Anymore questions about my metapowers fall into the “unspeakably rude” category. Hell even asking my tier was pretty risky. A lot of meta’s take their threat tier way too seriously.’

Benji reluctantly settled down.

‘Okie dokie, now that you lot have filled in your report you can piss off and do whatever. Go home, or something, whatever kids do for fun nowadays.’

Mickey paused and then pointed at Big Al and Donga.

‘OH wait. You two got active skills right? I should show you what passes for a training ground, and we can test them out. C’mon.’ Mickey said gesturing at the teens to follow him as he lead the way to the training grounds.