“You have no choice you have to choose.” -Foo Fighters, Something From Nothing-

_____

The way the Lair was laid out was, originally, with just one floor, mostly three separate parts. The front, which was supposed to be a lobby or a check in area, the kitchen and dining zone, which had been *sort of* unchanged, and the back, which was… a pool hall? James couldn’t remember.

The addition of a few dozen greens and whatever weird chain of effects Momo and Reed had used to link an elevator from here to LA had… *altered* the space, slightly. But not fundamentally changed the floor plan.

There was a restaurant ‘next door’, renting out a chunk of the same building. When the building had been on the market, Anesh had just grabbed the whole thing for them, and that restaurant was where Nate had moved his kitchen to, pushing out the size of the dining area and making the weird buffer zone where the not-underground bathrooms were even stranger as far as positioning went. But the front, cleared of everything else, had been kept the same as it was transmuted to a lounge and communal area.

The back, which was very, very obviously just a warehouse space, had also kept its shape. But they’d done a little more work on it to make it comfortable.

This was where dungeon teams planned out their operations, where maps were assembled and studied as groups, where new life forms were discussed and strategized for. Small pods of desks and tables dotted the space, with generous walkways between them and standing whiteboards surrounding them like walls. Each one a different peek into another world, or a different crisis.

And along the back wall, they’d set up a small stage, a projector and screen, and an assemblage of seating for both humans and camracondas, where anyone who needed to address a group could do so.

James had, weirdly, only really learned the value of a good PowerPoint presentation once he was out of the world of actually having a job, and into the world of dungeon nonsense. People learned in different ways, and for some people, having a written reminder of the list of ways a ratroach could kill you was easier to follow than having someone say it out loud.

Normally, this space was kind of quiet. If there were people here, it was because there was a delve coming up, or there was a scheduled planning meeting or the rotating check in with Officium Mundi groups updating the growing map. James had actually stuck an old couch he’d salvaged in here a while back to use as a place to read when he wanted to relax out of sight.

Normally was the key word there.

Today, the space was… well, ‘crowded’ was kind of the only way to say it. It wasn’t jam packed, or chaotic. But it sure did seem like everyone who’d been available, and many people who hadn’t, had all showed up here on a pretty damn short notice.

“I was in the bath for, like, *thirty minutes*, maximum.” James griped to himself as he looked out over the room. “How did everyone even… I mean, internet, I guess. But damn.”

The pods of desks and tables had been shifted around, clearing a wider semicircle around the stage. Every chair, bench, and beanbag in the room had been dragged over to fill that space, and more still brought in from the rest of the building. There were still paths to walk through, and it looked like *someone* was guiding the organization of it all, so that was good at least. But there were easily a hundred people in here of various shapes and sizes, and the atmosphere was charged.

They’d never really done something like this before. Not really.

The Order had grown a lot since James had shoehorned it into existence. From sporadic hiring of specialists and new delvers to recruiting dungeon survivors, turning FBI agents to growing the Response program, making new life to liberating creations from the dungeons. They sat now at over two hundred active members, and with the incoming resources they were planning on bringing in, James had hopes to scale that up immensely in the coming years.

But boy was it a shock to see a hundred people crammed into one converted warehouse space.

It was also interesting how people divided up. Response teams were *easy* to spot; they sat in their teams in small clusters, humans, camracondas, and sometimes manifested Authorities bantering with each other in a way James found intimately familiar. But Response wasn’t one unified bloc; all those teams were divided up among everyone else. The high schoolers, the ‘interns’ who the Order was trying to give the best tools to be good people to that they could, mostly sat in pairs, blended in with everyone else. Everyone else, the pattern was lost on James. It was just a jumbled mess of researchers, record keepers, engineers, gardeners, builders, wizards, accountants, detectives, spies, and whatever else the Order needed done at any given time personified as an emergent role.

There was a sound in the air; a dozen conversations and debates and arguments. Laughter mixed with tension. The loudest quiet hum of voices that James had ever heard, like the dining area during peak hours, only *more*. Occasionally punctuated by a squeal from one of the four actual young children running around the place, the kids playing their own game while the adults did Serious Business. Well, the human children, anyway.

It also kind of warmed his heart to see there wasn’t a species division. With the exception of a group of camracondas that were ‘new’, who were mostly kept together like this was a field trip, watched over by their caretakers. The caretakers were mixed species, themselves. And suddenly, James made the realization that they might be doing the camraconda population a disservice; eroding their own culture by trying to help.

He’d need to talk to someone about that later. Priestess-Under-Stone, or the first camraconda leader he’d talked to who he was pretty sure still hadn’t picked a name.

It also occurred to him that the potion people who had chosen to attend… he didn’t actually ask them if they had a personal species name, he should get on that… were also sitting separated from everyone else. Just off to the side of the stage, not in the spotlight, but certainly not mixed in with everyone else.

Before he could complete his assessment of the room, James was approached directly by a determined looking masked woman who seemed to be patrolling around the doors. “My, you’re a tall one, aren’t you?” She said bluntly, looking James up and down. He didn’t think he was particularly tall, but the late forties bony woman that only came up to his shoulder certainly might have disagreed. “Let’s find you a seat, eh?”

“Oh, thank you, but I’m good.” James said.

“Well, let’s get you not blocking the door then!” The woman *was* smiling, but somehow James just got a sense of exasperation, bordering on irritation from her.

“Oh!” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I was surveying my domain.” James slid himself to the side, already preparing to explain himself and give an actual apology when a small boxy shape dragged itself down one of the aisles, between a pair of humans having a conversation, and toward James at the door. A shellaxy, obviously one of their tame ones since they were nowhere near the dungeon. But this one with a passenger on it. “Oh, hey Rufus!” James brightened up. “How’s it going?”

The shellaxy dragged its case over next to the woman, Rufus giving her a friendly pat on the leg with one of his own pen legs, before turning to James as his mount coiled its cables underneath itself and settled in. ‘Assorted Jelly Beans’ read the strip of masking tape on its side. Rufus peered up at James, and then pitched himself backward, crossing his front legs with a cock of his elongated stabler head.

“Oh no, I’m in trouble for something?” James guessed, and Rufus nodded. “Uh… am I… in the way?” He glanced at the woman. “Sorry, hi, I’m James. Nice to meet you. Am I still in the way?”

“I’m Mary Ann.” She replied, offering a hand to shake which James took, surprising him with a painfully tight squeeze. “You’re not in the way *anymore*.” She said. “But I have more people placing to do. Don’t loiter!” She said, wagging a finger at him as she turned and headed over to where a camraconda was sitting in the door with a similar look on its face to what James had when he’d first seen the Order’s full crowd. “My, you’re a colorful one! Let’s find you a seat!”

James let her words trail off as Mary Ann launched back into her duties as usher. “That’s Bill’s wife, right?” He asked, turning back to Rufus. The strider just narrowed his eye at James, shifting his legs to make it clear he was still cross with James. “Right, right. Um… Have we not hung out enough lately? Because I have an excuse for… no?” James raised his eyebrows. “Am I just *late*? Is that it?”

Rufus nodded, glad James was finally getting it.

“Okay, but like… it’s been half an hour! How did…!? Actually, nevermind. I’m sorry I’m late. Where should I be, here?”

Rufus jabbed a leg into the air, then tapped at his shellaxy palanquin and braced himself as the ambulatory computer stood up on coiled power cable tentacles and rotated to take them down an aisle toward the stage. Rufus perched on top, leg waving James to follow.

It was hard to argue with that, really. So follow James did. Through a crowd of people who he mostly recognized, some of whom elbowed or nosed each other and pointed his direction as he passed.

It made him anxious, honestly. He was kind of thrilled that the cluster of Researchers up near the front weren’t even remotely focused on him as he made it to the stage. Instead locked in a heated debate about what qualified as ‘lunch’ for the purposes of the lunchbox of holding lunch.

James listened in as best he could as he passed, and remembered Alex’s theory from earlier in the day - was it really only a couple hours ago? - that dungeontech from the Office was actually just blue orb Life. Because nothing, *nothing* that wasn’t alive, and kind of sarcastic, could have such a specific categorization of what ‘lunch’ was as that stupid box. That stupid, amazing, perfect lunchbox. Literally every example he overheard was appended with ‘but it depends’.

“You’re late!” Reed greeted him as he passed, turning away from his subordinates and their inane food based conversation.

“I was in the bath.” James said by way of explanation. “And also, I didn’t set a time for this at all, so I can’t possibly be late.”

“Oh, *you’re* not in charge of this meeting.” Reed told him, stepping over a camraconda and falling in next to James as they trailed behind Rufus the last couple rows of chairs up to the stage.

James sighed. “This is what I get for giving up authority.” He bemoaned. “Well, who is? Karen?”

“No, Planner.” Reed said. “Turns out, infomorphs can be in charge of things.”

“I…” James thought about it quickly. “I had not really considered that. That’s on me, really. Okay, neat!” He planted a hand on the edge of the raised stage platform and hopped up, ignoring Reed’s much more sensible path around to the short set of steps on the side. “I’m still not late though.” He added. “Also hey.” James greeted the people already on stage.

Momo, a guy from Response that James was almost certain was named Marcus, Texture-Of-Barkdust, and three empty seats, arrayed behind long tables that faced the audience. Reed slid into one of the chairs tapping at the tablet screen that was waiting for him on the table, leaving James standing awkwardly in the middle of the space.

“Waiting.” Texture-Of-Barkdust informed James. “You are, surprisingly, not last.”

“*I called this meeting!*” James protested. “Also who’s left?”

“Well, Dave and JP just landed upstairs.” Reed said, reading off the message from the Order’s shared server. “Good landing, I didn’t even notice the building shake. But no, we’re waiting on Nate.”

“I’m here.” Nate said, having appeared from seemingly nowhere, but not looking winded in the slightest, the heavyset chef and or spy taking his own chair and cracking open the laptop he had waiting for himself. “Let’s go.”

“Okay.” James glanced over at the roof access, expecting JP and Dave to slide in at any time. But they were smart, they could catch up. Assuming they could find somewhere to sit. James looked out over the crowed of a hundred or so people, shifting his posture a little, straightening up, and suddenly having a *presence* on the stage. Some of the people in the front quieted down. Research ended their lunch based debate. The parents or caretakers regained control of the kids who were treating the crowd like a playground, either getting them seated, or ushering them out of the room.

Someone handed James a microphone, and he flicked his wrist to give himself enough cord to pace and talk at the same time.

And then it was quiet.

“Alright.” James said. “Here’s how we’re going to do this.” He started pacing lightly, getting into the flow of talking to an audience. “I’m going to give an overview of the situation. Then, Nate’s got some supplemental information from our new guests. After that, we’re going to discuss what to do.” He looked at the crowd, meeting the eyes of everyone looking at him. “We’ve really reached the point where these kinds of decisions affect all of you, in some way. And so your input matters. Someone probably already told you this, but those of us on stage are all going to be trying to actively keep up on your input as it comes in. There are specific channels in the discussion server for each representative on this stage. If you have questions that aren’t being answered, thoughts you think matter, concerns, or even just your own take on things, put it there. If you don’t have a device for that, we’ll do a spoken Q&A twice during this discussion.” James took a deep breath. “We’re fumbling through remaking the democratic process here.” He said. “Right now, the people on stage are functionally acting as unelected representatives. But just because you didn’t vote for us doesn’t mean we aren’t here to listen to you, and take your advice. Especially on expert knowledge that you may just flat out know more than us on. The point is to reach consensus about what we should do, and outline how to do it, before we start assigning people to make it happen and cut loose. We won’t do something like this for every single issue, but we’re gonna try for the important ones. And this is an important one.”

He paused to let everyone digest that. The crowd was quiet now, but for a few rustles of shifting in seats or the low drone of the fans someone smarter than him had brought into the room.

“With that said.” James continued. “Let me tell you how my day has been going.”

What followed was the quickest summary James could give of the events of the last few hours.

Linking up with JP and Dave and making diplomatic contact with the potion people. Then the conversation about their origin and escape. It didn’t take James any kind of magic to see clearly how uncomfortable the surviving potion people were, sitting off to the side of the stage, to have their natures spells out so clearly to so many people. But he pressed on.

He quickly talked about how the Alchemists had intended them to be used, then how they’d experimented on people who were obviously unwilling. About who they all were, including the fact that one of them was an ex-Alchemist himself. And then, his decision to offer them help.

“I’ve got a couple questions about that.” Reed said from behind James.

“Yeah, go ahead.” James stepped aside, letting Reed talk.

Reed didn’t have a happy expression on his face as he relayed the main question to James. “Is it a good idea, to bring in unverified non-human life, without some way of ensuring trust? Also a similar question about making that unilateral decision.”

“I’m going to assume those are rhetorical, and in good faith.” James’ voice was a little colder than he meant it to be as he turned back to the audience. “The decision to help, to essentially offer refugee status, was mine. Everyone in the Order has both the internal authority, and responsibility, to help where we can. Sometimes we’re gonna run into use of resource issues that limit how much we *can* help, but never question that we should. Also, quick reminder that roughly 30% of everyone in this room isn’t human.” He sighed, then grinned and shrugged. “So far, trusting people who need help, and getting them that help, has only made us stronger and closer knit. So, yes, I stand by that call. Any other questions?”

“Karen has preemptively asked about resource use.” Texture-Of-Barkdust’s voice amplified from her speakers without the need for a microphone. “But you have covered that. Somewhat.”

“Look, six people don’t need more resources than we generate.” James rolled his eyes. “Anyway, moving on.”

Moving on to the hard part of the briefing. Which was summarizing, without being overwhelmed by anger or panic, the attack on the home.

Unprovoked assault, tactical in nature. Not as much of an alpha strike as it could have been, though; they were clearly planning to capture more than kill at first, James suspected. He relayed his fight with the first Nobel, and the deaths of the two potion people who hadn’t been able to get past. Trading off his position on stage twice, once to JP who explained the Alchemist’s use of their people disguised as police, and once to Frequency-Of-Sunlight who covered the fight at the back of the house while James was clearing people out the front.

The audience had mixed reactions. Some, mostly Response members, looking appraising. Others reacting with disgust and anger, which James was trying to keep out of his own voice as explained the events. He caught a lot of looks shot over to where the potion people were sitting, but if there was any distrust there before, it was replaced now by pity and active concern.

“Thought from Response.” Marcus spoke into one of the pauses that James left in his briefing. “Are the replacement potions not self replicating?”

“No.” James said. “We originally thought they might be, but it’s been confirmed that is not the case. Just a weird cornercase; the kind that shows up a lot with dungeontech.”

“So no existential threat to humanity?”

“I mean… okay, quick show of hands or… tails? Who wants to come back here tomorrow and talk about the philosophy of species?” James called out to the crowd. “Like… like is it ‘bad’ if humanity is replaced by a different species? This used to mostly be a question about AI, but it’s kind of relevant to other things now.” More people than he was expecting raised their relevant appendages. “Alright. That’s a problem for tomorrow us. Right now, the answer is going to be a simple ‘no’.” He told Marcus.

“Works for me.” The dispatcher nodded. “Though I think it was meant as a *hostile* replacement? Like, a non-consensual one.”

“Oh, yeah. No.” James shook his head. “Anyway. That brings us up to the moment where I flipped off everyone left in the building and teleported out. Now Nate has some follow up information on the Nobels?”

“Yep.” Nate nodded, rising from his chair with a tired grunt. He’d been on his feet all day. Which was basically every day for him, but that didn’t mean he had to pretend to be energetic all the time. “Alright. Nobels. Like the chemist, yes, James. Mundane first, then mystical:”

The Alchemist’s foot soldiers were outlined in quick, efficient detail. Nate was way better than James at staying on track and not diverting. They were soldiers, hired not kidnapped, but modified to have an advantage in a fight that should be overwhelming. The Alchemists didn’t have too many at once because of resource reasons, either in terms of potions or just hard cash.

“It’s the potions that’re the big thing, obviously. They’re all got Latin names, I don’t care what they are, ask Columbia later if you’re curious.” Nate crossed his arms. “One for ghosting through walls - and bullets, yeah - one for psychically linking to a squad, one for durability and ruthlessness, one for blowing up their own body parts. That last one is the one that burned the house down, in case anyone is confused.”

“Dibs on naming that one.” Momo dove into the conversation.

“Uh… sure?” Nate raised an eyebrow, wrinkling his bald forehead.

“Hand grenade!”

“That’s already… kid, that’s a thing already. You can’t make this confusing for people.” Nate flatly replied before he turned back to the audience. Specifically, to the people taking notes. “The Alchemists have a short list of potions they actually sell, which will be on the server and copied to the ops manual, along with an incomplete list of experiments and non-sellers that Columbia remembers. But as for actual combat capacity and threat assessment, I’ve got this for you. In a straight up fight, we’ll win. The fact that a single camraconda stops their big defense, while they don’t have a good way around ours, means we can take ‘em. But they’ll take some of us with them. They’re *soldiers*. Or at least, defense contractors. Mercenaries. They aren’t bad at their jobs, either; the one James fought adapted real quick to the shield bracer. That easily could have gone the other way. So, I recommend *not* getting into a fair fight.”

Nate ended there, and sat back down, ceding the stage to James. “You have never once recommended to me that we get in a fair fight.” He said.

“Yeah, because I’m not a fucking idiot.” Nate answered, perhaps unaware his mic was hot.

Stolen story; please report.

“So.” James said, not really succeeding at suppressing a grin, and hearing a number of chuckles from the crowd. “That’s our tactical landscape. Now we need to decide what we’re going to do about it. Long term decisions about how to approach the existence of a changeling style life form can come later, and the short term defense of our people and homes until we know the situation is settled is already kicked off. What we’re talking about today is *what*, exactly, do we do about the Guild of Alchemists?” He paused, then gave a shrugging tilt of his head to the audience, stepped back to the seat at one of the tables that was left open for him, and settled in, clicking his microphone into the stand as he did so. “Let’s hear some options.”

“First thing,” Nate cut in, setting down his phone, “any tactical military option from the crowd, send through me. I’m gonna cut out the ones that won’t work, and if anyone wants to know why I ignored you, I’ll explain why later.” Then he angled a flattened palm over toward Texture-Of-Barkdust. “Sorry, cut you off there. Go.”

“What do we *want* to do?” She asked, digital voice echoing. “Do we actually want to destroy them? We could. It wouldn’t be hard for us. But do we want to?”

There were some uncomfortable noises from the room, including from James, who sighed as he answered. “I don’t think anyone *wants* to start another fight, no.” He said. “At least, we shouldn’t. It’s… look, the whole point of the Order is to generate more good, right? Dungeon delving isn’t really *about* the combat, though there is that constant danger, it’s about exploration and discovery. Fighting in our world has always been self defense, in some way. This would be… different.”

“Preemptive self defense puts us in different territory.” Marcus said calmly. “We’d basically be declaring that we’re the people who should use violence to end things we don’t like. Which… uh… no?”

Admitting it hurt, but he felt like he needed to anyway. “I mean, we do that.” James said.

“No, we *react*.” Nate said. “That’s different. Even Status Quo was us reacting to constant physical threats on the lives of people under our protection. We don’t target people just for being shitty. If we did that… we’d never run out of targets.”

“Actually, yeah, can I ask a question?” Momo raised her hand.

Nate looked around before realizing she was more or less asking him. “Yes, that’s why we’re here.” He said slowly.

“Okay. So, why are the Alchemists more our responsibility than, like, Nestle?” She asked. “I mean, they’re wizards, and we’re wizards, so maybe we’re uniquely suited to deal with them. And I *do* think we should do something about them; they’re kind of obviously a threat to at least someone, and the fact that they were brewing something to sell to the CIA to replace people is kinda fucked. I don’t think they should have power. But why them, and not, like, a corporation that uses child slave labor?”

“They’re small enough for us to deal with, and their limited arcane resources means their power base is easy to remove.” James answered coldly. “Also, magic, yeah. Reed, do you want to talk about the field effect?”

The head researcher startled in his chair, slamming his elbow into the table edge as he was called on. Once he was done hissing through his teeth, he cleared his throat and spoke. “Uh, yeah, so, the ‘field effect’ that James is talking about is the tendency for people to lose focus on paranormal effects or events. It seems to scale up the larger an organization the individual is a member of, like some kind of bureaucracy shield, but we haven’t done extensive testing on it yet. It’s part of why our anti-cancer lottery hasn’t gotten a lot of attention; we’re going through hospitals, and for some reason, probably… what, seventy percent?... of the people we deal with just don’t… internalize it? They understand what’s happened, the magic works on them, but they don’t change in any meaningful way to adapt to it. Which, yeah, does actually make the Order suited to these kinds of problems. Because we *don’t* seem to get hit with this.”

“I didn’t know that, and that also shoots down about five different ideas.” Marcus said, tapping at his tablet with a stylus. “So, we can’t just call the FDA on these guys?”

“Uh…” James looked over at the Response member with raised eyebrows. “The Alchemists have guns?”

Texture-Of-Barkdust bobbed her head from side to side. “Institutionalized power does not use physical violence to intimidate. It is the implied threat of the greater collective. You can kill one inspector. You could kill the whole office. But you cannot kill the nation.”

“Okay, so, the FDA is on the table then.” Marcus said, cheerfully ignoring how absolutely dire the camraconda had sounded there. “Other options include local police, FBI, or even just public pressure through whistleblowing and news outlets.”

“Aren’t the FBI still trying to shut us down?” Momo asked, a snarl of confusion writ on her face.

“Yep.” Nate said. “But they’re busy with other things these days, and we haven’t caused any extra problems. Beyond… you know.” He gestured to Marcus. “You guys.”

“We’re getting off track.” James said. “We still haven’t answered the core question. *Do we*, from our position of power, take action here?”

“Quick thing, I just want to clarify.” Momo rolled her hand on the table, cracking her knuckles as she got their attention. “We’re talking about doing this to secure the safety of the potion people, right? The…. potpeeps?”

“Don’t ever say that ‘word’ again.” James snorted.

Momo nodded. “Right. And because we don’t want them making more, now that they know that the potion does what they *thought* it did.”

“Correct.”

“Because we misjudged a thing that almost killed you, spent months spying on the Alchemists, then tried to spring a trap on them by telling them the potion did a thing that they didn’t think it did, but that they meant for it to do originally, then we waited while all the potion people came together, including one who *was* an Alchemist, thus leading the Alchemists right to them, putting all of them in danger, which is bad because they’re *not* trying to replace humanity, *don’t* want more potions made, and are innocents that we fucked up the lives of by blowing their cover, and now we need to stop the Alchemists from making potions that they want to sell to governments so they can make sleeper agents by killing people in sensitive positions in rival governments or organizations?”

There was a moment of quiet, and Momo taking a deep breath to replace what she’d just used.

“Jesus, my head hurts.” Marcus uttered.

Texture-Of-Barkdust moved her mouth silently, like the camraconda was slowly parsing the words Momo had said. “That… is… yes?”

“Yes, that is all technically correct.” James said with a sigh.

“I mean, I vote yes.” Momo said quickly. “This sounds like a problem we created, which means it’s a problem we should solve.” She nodded twice to herself before adding. “Which means my *department* votes yes!” She seems excited about this prospect.

Reed glanced at her with narrowed eyes. “Your department is… three people? Anyway, Research already voted, we’re in.”

“Response, too.” Marcus added. “Though you can sort of safely treat us as being part of a command structure. You don’t need our votes to have our support.” He glanced into the audience. “At least, that’s what Harvey told me to say. I don’t know if that’s correct.”

“Not how we work kid.” Nate shook his head. “Texture? What about your people?”

The camraconda hissed in small bursts, like a laugh. “Which ones?” She said.

“The… other camracondas?” Nate asked. “No, wait, I just realized you’re sitting in for *Karen*. Wait, where the hell is Karen? Shouldn’t we have someone here to tell us we’re over budget.”

“That’s kinda a reductionist but completely fair look at what Karen does every day.” James said, and got a few isolated laughs from the people in the room that had encountered Karen at various points. “Texture-Of-Barkdust is here for Recovery. Karen is doing a family thing.”

“We do not think we should fight.” She said simply. “But other action is possible.”

“Okay.” James looked out at the assembled crowd. “Does *anyone* have a strong reason that we should do nothing?” He asked the assembled group.

A few people slipped out of seats and moved to form a central line in front of the stage, while several others began typing on digital devices to send up to the stage. It actually didn’t take long to get through most of them, because there was some pretty big overlap in a lot of the concerns.

It was too risky, it was too public, and no one actually *wanted* to make an enemy that would hold a grudge.

While they took a quick break to process concerns, small conversations popped up around the room. And James, listening in almost without meaning to, started to get a shape of the Order as represented by the people here.

Yeah, it was risky. But Response did a risky job every day, and they were almost certainly making enemies doing it. Yeah, it was public, but… well, same answer. James started to realize as he heard people talk to each other just how much the Order had become defined by the Response program. On one hand, that was neat. They were the helping hand, reaching out. But stopping immedient threats and helping with emergency medical transport was a band aid, not a solution. He needed to talk to Karen, get a picture for how long until the mass material duplication procedures could make the Order irrationally wealthy enough to start pointing Recovery at strategic problems the same way they pointed Response at tactical ones.

In the end, they took a simple vote. Yeah, not everyone was here, but this was a pretty representative sample of the Order, and they’d work out a better system later. The fact that they had this option during what could otherwise have been a pressing emergency was kind of a great perk of the telepads to begin with.

Do something won. But no one, James included, felt like they should get into a shooting war.

Discussion resumed, with a tension bled out of the room that James hadn’t even noticed. Or maybe it was just him.

“Okay. So, does the FDA thing not work? There’s no way the potions are legal for sale.” Marcus brought up again.

“It’s more that… okay, look, these guys have over a billion dollars in personal wealth, and probably more tied up in their Guild’s assets. They’re also only a dozen or so people, not a corporation with a major bottling factory.” Nate shrugged. “They can, and probably will, bribe their way out of legal trouble. Either just by paying off investigators, or by hiring a legal team that will drag it out so long that they’ll all be dead by the time it’s done.”

“I have a somewhat grim suggestion.” Momo said, looking like she was apprehensive about bringing it up.

James looked over at her, seeing some pretty unpleasant worry in her eyes. “I mean, you don’t need to if you don’t think it’ll work.”

“Well… it would probably *work*, that’s the thing.” Momo winced. “Why not just wipe their memories? We’ve done it before, with people who are… you know, awful. Why not here? They don’t have any innate magic, right? They’re just… dudes with a magic cauldron.” Momo looked unhappy for having even brought it up, and many of the assembled Order members who had survived exactly that kind of antimemetic effect didn’t look happy with her either. “It’s better than killing them, right?”

“Sap.” Nate corrected. “But yeah, she’s right.”

“Two problems.” Texture-Of-Barkdust said matter of factly in an electronic tone that somehow came across like a disappointed teacher. “One. Planner is not equipped for, or willing, to take that action in a hostile fashion. Two. It is wrong.”

“Wrong is kinda flexible sometimes.” Nate pointed out.

“No.” Texture-Of-Barkdust replied with that same voice, like she was lecturing. “You complicate this, and you should not. *Right* is flexible. Wrong is not, and it is easy to see from where I am.”

“I’m actually on her side here, sorry Nate.” Reed spoke up. “It’s… look, we’re a bunch of nerds in the basement, right? We talk about sci-fi concepts that should be out of reach but suddenly aren’t basically all day. Wiping someone’s memory is assault. These guys have been doing the alchemy thing for *decades*. Wiping that memory, you’re basically killing whoever they were. If we’re prepared to do that, we may as well just shoot ‘em. Because if they’re not willing to give up the knowledge, then any infomorphs doing the procedure is going to basically shred their personality in the process.”

“Alright! So it won’t work! Cool!” Momo slapped the table. “Moving on. Why not just… actually, hang on, back to the infomorph thing.” An entire room of people glared at her. “I’m sorry!” She threw her hands up. “But why not incept them with an infomorph that guides them to be better people? Or just locks them out of selling to governments or something?”

“Euuuuuuugh…” James made a low, uncomfortable groan. “That’s… still bad? Have you ever had a nascent assignment in your head? Being unable to do or talk about a specific thing when you know it’s there is… kind of a massive violation. We’re still talking about using force to change someone’s personality.”

Momo rolled her whole head along with her eyes. “I was more thinking as a form of corrective confinement, to keep them from hurting anyone, while they work to be less garbage people.”

“Uh… what if we don’t use force?” Marcus asked, interjecting. “Sorry, I’m new to *this* whole thing. Maybe this is a stupid question. But what if we just… ask them to stop?” Everyone looked at him. Even Reed looked up from the constant input from his screen. The young man withered under the attention; somehow less comfortable to be talking to other members of the Order than he was answering emergency calls. “I just mean… isn’t that what you *do*? I’ve heard stories. Or, rumors, I guess?” Marcus asked James.

“In fairness,” Momo said, patting James on the shoulder, “you do keep using the power of friendship to solve problems.” Her words got a small laugh from a lot of the people seated around the stage.

“Yes hello.” Texture-Of-Barkdust added pointedly, getting the laugh to echo again, even louder.

James would have had an answer, but he was too busy being bright red from embarrassment and trying to hide his head in his arms. Probably not the most professional attitude for a leader to take, but, he reminded himself, he had abdicated leadership.

Wait, he was still on a stage guiding a discussion about group action. How had this *happened*? He’d told them all directly and everything!

“If we’re making contact, there’s a few options on the table, actually.“ Nate said, giving James a reprieve. “Just asking them to drop the matter might *work*, kind of for the same reason Barkdust brought up earlier. We’re an implicit threat, but it could be that neither of our groups *want* to fight. So we can find another solution. If we want to be the ones coming out on top, then yeah, we can try to absorb them into the Order somehow. Probably by buying them out.”

“A billion dollars.” Texture-Of-Barkdust said dryly.

“See, this is why I should have known you were Karen’s replacement.” Nate grumbled. “The problem with the magic of friendship is that we don’t actually have a lot to offer them. The Order is an amazing deal for anyone facing poverty, memetic erasure, or other dungeon fuckery. But it’s not going to sway a bunch of old white guys who are used to eating caviar and drinking thousand year old scotch while they pretend to play golf.”

“That cannot be accurate.” Texture-Of-Barkdust mused.

“He’s exaggerating, but not by much.” Reed said. “My grampa was like that. Especially the pretending to play golf thing. And yeah, it’s pretty… uh… pretty hard to get through to people who are already rich. Because from their perspective, they won, you know? They don’t want to fight the system, because the system is the game they’re good at. The best we can probably get here is offering them a *lot* of money for their magic tree, but they’re just going to say no, because they can make more money keeping the tree.”

“Can we steal the tree?” James asked. “Reminding all of you that we can *teleport*.”

“Oh good god.” Nate rubbed his forehead. “This is the nuke thing all over again.”

“You told me not to tell anyone about that, and now here you are, speaking into a microphone you *know* is on.” James chastised the Order’s chef. “But yeah. What if we just take the tree?”

“Then they have a time sensitive vested interest in hunting us down and retrieving their asset, and since they *can’t* teleport, it’s probably going to end with us remodeling this building to patch up bullet holes again.” Nate snapped out. “So *no*. Don’t *do* that. Because they still have at least a dozen highly trained heavily armed alchemically enhanced murderers on their side, and they *know* we exist.”

“Okay, so, we’re looking at… what, just asking them to stop?” Reed paused. “That can’t be our best option, can it? They… killed people.” His voice wavered, got quiet even though it was still broadcast out to the room. “You can’t just kill people and not have some kind of punishment. Right? We could at least demand they give up the tree. Drain their bank accounts. Demilitarize them, or - yeah, Nate, I fucking know that’s the wrong word - just… something! Right?! Right?”

A rumbling of discontent passed through the room. Mostly from the newer human members who had joined them, though. James shook his head sadly at Reed as he answered. “It’s not about punishment.” He said. “I know… like, don’t get me wrong, I *get it*. I’m *mad*. They tried to blow me up, at least twice today. And striking back would probably feel good, right up until we counted our losses. But it doesn’t actually matter how it feels. What matters is getting results. We were literally talking about this a couple weeks ago; punishment doesn’t stop ‘crime’, right? And we actually want the Alchemists to stop what they’re doing, not just stop while we’re watching or until they can hide it better.”

“It doesn’t help that they’re a really boring kind of evil.” Marcus added. “They aren’t crazy cultists or secret Nazis or… wait are they secret Nazis?”

“Probably.” Nate shrugged, the word slipping dryly from him without thinking.

Marcus stared at the barrel chested chef and tactician for a couple seconds before whipping his head back to face the crowd. “But they’re mostly just… rich jerks who want more money. They’re the least interesting James Bond villains, except they’re barely even a threat to anyone.”

“I don’t think we should ignore that they did kill a bunch of people.” James added with more calm than he felt. “But yeah. We can’t really pretend it would be justified to retaliate now.”

Momo raised a hand, and James glanced over at her before ceding talking priority. “Hey, someone just sent me a question to ask. If they’re just a bunch of old money jerks, why were they suddenly trying to make a super stealthy spy substance?”

“...To sell?” Texture-Of-Barkdust asked. “I am still new to your world, but that is how economy works, yes? You produce goods or services, or siphon wealth from those that do. They chose to produce goods.”

“Right, right. But what I’m saying is, they were *already* making potions and selling them for a ton of money.” Momo said. “And probably also the siphoning thing?”

Nate nodded and interrupted. “They have a lot of investments, yeah.”

Unfaltering, Momo plowed through the thought someone had brought to her attention. “So, why suddenly work to make something like *that*? Because, and correct me if I’m wrong here Nate, they were never going to last long once they started selling it, right?”

“Uh…” Nate paused, and ran a hand over his bald head. “Well shit, yeah. You can’t just let the manufacturer of something like that keep operating. It’s not just a weapon, it’s a whole new battlefield. Whoever got to them first would have probably just fed them their own potions, replaced them, and kept it for themselves. Probably CIA, from what their plans were. Which is fuckin’ of obvious now that you say it. I shoulda seen that.”

“Okay,” Momo continued, “so *why* were they making this, and not their tried and true cash cows?”

There was a beat of silence, before James awkwardly suggested “...ghosts?”

“What? How would that-“

“I don’t know!” He threw his hands up. “I’m using humor to keep from just swearing a lot at how this stupid rabbit hole of problems keeps getting deeper!” James stood again and started pacing up at the front of the stage. “Okay, we’re not going to hammer out any more details here today. But now you’re all on the same page we are. If anyone has any further thoughts, there will be a monitored discussion space for it.” He looked around at the crowd, nodding proudly without thinking about it. “I like this method.” James said. “We’ll refine this. As for the Alchemists, assignments. Nate, Momo, get me more information on the motive behind the potions.”

“Got it.”

“Yes sir!” Momo saluted like she was in some kind of navy.

James rolled his eyes and turned back. “Texture-Of-Barkdust, please get a Recovery agent set up with the survivors. Make sure they get what they need. And for you,” He turned to face the three potion people who had stayed by the stage, listening the whole time, “we’ll talk after you’re settled in about the future. But this is as close as we’ll get to a formal introduction to the Order. Welcome. Wish it could have been better circumstances.” He sighed as the potions silently inclined their heads back at him. “Okay. So. We’re going with ‘diplomacy’ as our option. Response and Recovery, please pick someone suitable to be our emissary, and also Response arrange for a security team for it and when this goes horribly wrong.”

“You know Harvey’s gonna try to pick you, right?” Marcus asked.

“I have arranged help.” Texture-Of-Barkdust cut off whatever complaint James was going to make. “...What now?”

“Now?” James clapped once. “Now we put all the chairs back, let people get back to what they were doing, and I go back to pretending I’m not in a leadership position.” He grinned at the Order, a lot of them grinning back. “Thanks for coming. Get back to solving problems.” He made a shooing motion at them.

*Now* noise and chaos overtook the room, as a hundred people started working out how to leave, starting conversations, and moving furniture.

Most of the people on stage vanished pretty quickly to get their tasks rolling, but Reed stayed behind to talk to James. “Hey.” He said quietly.

“Hey. You alright?”

“I’m not, I don’t think.” Reed said. “I don’t get it. How you can just… let it go. Have you even talked to the potions about this?”

James shook his head, sighing as he unfolded the chair he was going to put away and sat back down. “Not yet.” He said. “I will, though. But it won’t change the decision.”

“They murdered people. And you know they’ve done it before.” Reed stated.

“I do. But we’ve got two options, and neither of them are great. Either we just demolish them, and do that every time we run into people we judge to be threats or monsters. Or, we try for something nonviolent first.” James leaned back over his chair, his head throbbing with a dull ache. “Ugh. We can’t bring back the people who are dead. The only thing we can do is making sure that we minimize the harm going forward.”

“We could remove their ability to take action.” Reed said. “And yeah, it would be a fight. But we did that before with Status Quo.”

“And because we didn’t cross the line and execute all of them, it came back to bite us in the ass.” James snarled. “Do you want to do that? Kill everyone, even if they surrender or are down? Because you’ll have to. I sure won’t.”

Reed stared at him, face contorting in internal conflict as he tried to figure out if he was angry, or just depressed by all this. Eventually, he sighed and turned away. “We’ve got a portable room done with the orange totems.” He settled on. “We’d like a few more, but you can safely use one to copy bulk mundane material now. Also I’ve got a design for a space elevator that should work, and we can put together in, like, a month. Let me know when you have some of the sap for me to start testing with.”

“How do you…”

“James.” Reed said quietly. “I’ve met people like this. I’ve met a *lot* of people like this. I grew up around people like this.” He turned, and James could see beads of tears in the corners of his eyes just past the rims of his glasses. “You’re gonna ask them to change, and all they’re going to see is someone weaker than them begging for them to give up what they’ve got. They won’t change. They’ll laugh at you. Even if you take everything they have, they won’t get it. They’ve spent *so fucking long* like this, they don’t… you could lock them in this building and force them to live like us, and it still might take years for them to actually fix their shitty attitudes. If they ever do.”

“Maybe that’s what we’ll do then.” James said quietly, pulling himself forward to meet Reed’s eyes. “I’ll put it on the list. But it’s going before gunfire, and after words.”

The researcher stared back, eventually breaking the staredown as someone came through folding leftover chairs and stacking them by the wall, interrupting the moment and causing him to turn away and deflate slightly. “Good enough.” He said. “I just… don’t want this to be the moment where we decide to compromise.”

He didn’t bother jumping off the stage, just tore a telepad and vanished, leaving James as the last one up there with the dozen or so people still in the room.

“Yo! That was fun!” Alanna stormed the stage like it was Normandy as soon as James’ conversation was over, wrapping him in an affectionate hug. “I’m loving the whole ‘lets do a weird democracy’ thing you settled on.”

“Hey, be fair, you helped with the concept.” James ruffled her hair, accepting a kiss from Anesh as his boyfriend also joined them. “Hey. I need you to check some space math for me before Research causes an international incident.”

“On it.” Anesh said with easy acceptance. Then he paused, seeing James’ subdued demeanor. “Are… you alright?”

“I… I dunno.” James said. He tried to put on a more earnest smile. “Are we doing the right thing?”

“No clue.” Alanna said instantly. “Like Barkdust said; it’s hard to tell what’s right.” She squeezed him a bit tighter, pinning his arms to his sides. “But we’re all making the effort to not be *wrong*.”

“I dunno if that’s enough.” James admitted.

“Well, we can always change.” Anesh said peacefully. “Speaking of change, there’s three .mem files being shared on the server already of this very meeting. Want to go get coffee and vibe to how other people see you on stage?”

“Oh *god* no.” James recoiled. “But also yes. Let’s go, before anyone tries to get me to be responsible again today. I am… exhausted.”

Exhausted, but still moving forward. Still trying.

That was just what they did.